Today, Explained - It’s been a year

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

The year in revue. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. It's been a year. It was March 11th, 2020, one year ago today, when this novel coronavirus situation got upgraded to a pandemic. It was March 11th, 2020, when it felt like something sort of irreparably changed in the United States. The whole country kind of took a breath and realized that this was gonna be for real. And I was actually not hosting Today Explained that day. I was away from the job and my intrepid reporter producer Noam Hassenfeld was filling in for me.

Yeah, it was quite a week. It was my first full week, I think, guest hosting Today Explained. And then right halfway through it on that Wednesday, they were like, okay, everybody pack up. Everybody go work remote for maybe forever. Is that how it felt in the office that day? Yeah. I mean, we were in this meeting to talk about how we would record with Vox reporters remotely, like maybe if we had to leave. And the next thing I knew, it was just everyone pack up your desks and get out of here in like an hour. Wow. And it might have felt weird in the office that day, but pretty soon it felt pretty weird all across the country later that night, right? Yeah. I remember getting home and, you know, shifting from working in the office to working

out of my closet while making a daily show, while having it be my first week hosting the show. It was kind of a lot. And then we finally got the episode out and I turned on the TV and I was watching basketball. And I remember it was just kind of crazy. Like this jazz player, Rudy Gobert, he had been kind of joking about having coronavirus. He was like touching all the microphones in the press room. In a video that surfaced on social media, Gobert can be seen getting up from his seat and touching the mouthpieces of several reporters' microphones and recorders. And then the Jazz were going to play the Oklahoma City Thunder,

and right before the game started, they all came out, and they were like, oh, no, we can't play this game, and the fans weren't sure what was going on. The fans, due to unforeseen circumstances, the game tonight has been postponed. You are all safe. And then within a couple hours, they suspended the whole basketball season. And then next thing you know, like, Tom Hanks has coronavirus. They're not worried about it.

They're not tripping, but they're going through the necessary health precautions, obviously. Donald Trump is, like like addressing the country. I mean, it was just kind of this snowball, like everything was changing really quickly. Good night, fans. March 11th, 2020, a day a lot of us will never forget. But also, I don't want this to be a bait and switch for people. Not the reason I asked you to join me on the show today. The reason you're here today is because one year later, March 11th, 2021,

you are again hosting something, but you're not the guest host. You are the host of a brand new podcast from Vox called Unexplainable. Yeah, I'm super, super excited about this new show. It's a science show about unanswered questions, just diving straight into the unknown. And this was an idea that grew out of one of our dear friends at Today Explained, Vox science reporter Brian Resnick and the science editor, Eliza Barkley. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, Brian has been thinking about this idea for a really long time. He was doing some

reporting on the replication crisis in psychology, which is basically this thing that happened over the last 10 years or so where a lot of psychological research had been shown to have sort of questionable methods. And he was like, maybe we need to be thinking about science a bit more humbly, a little bit more skeptically, you know, not assume that everything is so certain and set in stone. And he started doing more reporting on intellectual humility. So he and I started talking about this. We made some great Today Explained episodes that were sort of related. We did one about proprioception, about the sixth sense of how you know where your body is in space. When you close your eyes, it's not like the world disappears.

There's an impression of it. That's proprioception. Proprioception is critical for that type of coordination where you can close your eyes and you can reach out and you can touch something. Because how else would you know where it is? And we did one about moon poop, which I loved, about why we should maybe go back to the moon to get the astronauts' poop to prove if life could exist in space.

We brought life to this dead world for the first time in billions of years. And then we just left life there. The answer to whether that life is still living or how long it lived while it was on the moon really points to some fascinating questions about the origin of life on Earth. And then towards the end of the year, we actually ran sort of the pilot episode of Unexplainable that featured you and Brian talking a lot about dark matter. Yeah, I mean, Brian and I were really excited to get this chance. Blainable that featured you and Brian talking a lot about dark matter. Yeah, I mean, Brian and I were really excited to get this chance.

We worked also with another co-creator of ours, Bird Pinkerton. And the three of us made this episode about dark matter and Vera Rubin, this astronomer who convinced the scientific world that dark matter was real and somehow never won a Nobel Prize for it. I mean, when you first see it, I think you're afraid of being, you're afraid of making a dumb mistake. You know, that there's just some simple explanation. And we ran that in the Today Explained feed and we got such great response from listeners

via email and tweets. So we decided to make this a full show and we launched yesterday and I couldn't be more excited about it. What's coming up on the show? What are you guys working on? Well, we're trying to hit kind of all areas of science. So we've got an episode on the replication crisis that I mentioned in psychology. That's going to come up in a couple of weeks. We've got this really, really cool episode I'm excited about that Brian and Bird have put a ton of work into about something called ball lightning, which is basically when lightning forms as a ball and floats through windows and walls and just kind of sits there and

then goes like poof and disappears. And it's a real thing. Like people see it. I hate it already. But scientists can't really explain what's going on. And then we've got episodes on ancient DNA and how it's making us rewrite the history of humanity. And then we've got one I'm really excited about that Bird is reporting on the twilight zone in the ocean. This is sort of like the middle distance in the ocean where it's not quite at the top. It's not all the way at the bottom. And surprisingly, we know very, very little about what's going on there. What have you discovered making the show so far when you talk to the scientists who are trying to answer these sort of questions about the unknown?

Yeah, I mean, I love approaching science in this direction because I feel like it's way too easy to think of science as just like a riddle with an answer. And then you just kind of tie it up in a neat bow. You have your little snapple fact, you go, you know, science is just a lot messier. And when you're expecting kind of neat, concrete answers to all your questions, you end up missing out on a lot of really interesting and honestly important scientific work that's out there. So you'll miss out on ball lightning because we don't have a really great explanation for it. You'll miss out on other things like unexplained infertility or why cancer sometimes just spontaneously goes into remission. There are a lot of these questions that we don't really know but are worth studying.

And when we've talked to scientists about this on the show, like when we were making our first few episodes, they were all just so excited that someone's finally making a show that thought we need to have a little bit of a send-off for you because you've contributed so much to our show, including the very last thing you and I ever worked on together, which, of course, was a song. Yeah, that was one that I remember when you asked me to do this. I was like, how in the world are we going to fit an entire year's worth of stuff in like the most insane year that's ever happened? How are we going to fit all of 2020 into one six minute song? That was the idea. The idea was this year has been so insane. I can't think of any other way to recap it, but some sort of musical. Yeah, I remember I wasn't planning to do it. I was kind of planning to hope it didn't happen. And then one day you just sent me this recording of yourself playing

this melody on the piano and singing the It's Been a Year melody on top of it. And I just couldn't not do something with it. I just loved it. It was so good. At that point, I think we just had to do it. And then we spent 1,000 hours approximately writing the words to it. 1,000 hours, yes. And of course, our pal Christina Aminashan from Vox came by to lend some vocals. Yeah, Christina did such amazing work on this song. Well, we're going to play that after a quick break. Before we do, thank you, Noam, for everything you've done on this show. And we're also excited about your new one. Thank you so much, Sean. I really can't thank you enough.

And everyone at Today Explained, it's just been like, it's been an incredible three years. And I can't thank you enough. Noam Hassenfeld was a producer and a reporter and a guest host and a sports correspondent and a musical director at Today Explained. But now he's the host of Unexplainable. You can and should find the show and subscribe for free episodes about all of the most important, unanswered questions in science. You're going to love it. I'm Sean Ramos for him.

The Today Explained team includes our engineer, Afim Shapiro, producers Will Reed, Muj Zaydi, Halima Shah, and Cecilia Lay. Facts Check by Laura Bullard. Welcome, Laura.

Music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam. Amina Alsadi is our supervising producer. Jillian Weinberger is our supervising deputy. And Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Quick break, and then we're going to play you a song. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames.

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And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame and because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting

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We're still not in the clear It's been a year It's been a year And after all the news We're still not in the clear It's been a year Can't even remember what life was like Back before we didn't need a mask to go outside It's been a year

Can't even remember how it used to sound Before the streets were quiet and we had to lock it down It's been a year 2020, the year began on fire Australia was burning and Iran was looking dire And you know you might forget it But back in the before time We thought we'd have to deal with Third World War time

It was only January The last time I went to a wedding And we barely knew back then that the virus was already spreading Meanwhile the end of the impeachment trial finally It went the way you thought it would except for maybe Romney The virus leaves China on planes and on ships The world watches closely as Italy gets hit Viva la nostra Sena! Viva la nostra Sena!

But Italians sang from their balconies And then came the celebrities Imagine there's no heaven Easy if you try It's been a year It's been a year And after all the news, we're still on in the clear It's been a year 2020 is cancelled, no Olympics And Costco took away free samples So long Coachella, goodbye in-person classes

No European travel, we ban their white asses. COVID conspiracies, we got varieties, Bill Gates made it in a lab and 5G wants to kill your dad. Maybe it'll go away when temperatures are high, maybe some disinfectant is worth the college try. Lockdown, shutdowns, layoffs and a market crash Mask on, mask off, the stimulus won't help my rash We're running out of TP We're running out of PPE I'm scared of getting groceries

I'm losing all my sanity When is this all gonna end? It feels like everything's the same Every single day blends into the next day It's been a year It's been a year And after all the news We're still not in the clear

It's been a year Late May, a wall starts to shatter More than half the country screaming Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

A monumental protest movement started in the streets Statues start to fall and people protest the police Racist mascots fall and athletes protest in the bubble. John Lewis passed away but left us his good trouble. The Confederate flag lost again in this pandemic. While more and more people saw that racism's systemic. But unity, it doesn't last. It quickly gets politicized. They're shooting in Kenosha and everyone's still taking sides One step forward, one step back

The United States, staying right on track Wait, wait, hold the phone, the president has got it He didn't wanna wear a mask but now he tested positive Yeah, he's gonna beat it, but he won't win the election. Even after RBG, the court will not correct it. Convinces half his party it's a steal without a reason. Tries to throw good ballots out, but books the wrong four seasons. 50 different lawsuits winding through the courts. He's losing and losing and losing and losing and losing and losing and losing and losing

Who cares? Now there's a vaccine And another new vaccine It's actually happening It's all predicted by Fauci Thank you to the doctors And to all the educators Thank you to the nurses And to all the educators Thank you to the nurses

And to grocery store workers And also all the drivers Who now have my address And for saving our election God bless USPS It's been a year It's been a year And after all the news We're still not in the clear

It's been a year It's been a year And after all the news we're still not in the clear It's been a year Can't even remember what it's like to be Dancing with my friends and eating with my family It's been a year Can't even remember what normal was

But give me more hugs in 2021 It's been a year It's been a year And after all the news we're still not in the clear It's been a year It's been a year We've given up so much

But somehow we're still here We're still here you