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Science
Theater of Relief
Medical procedures used to be a scream-filled endurance test until doctors at this Boston institution learned to tame the pain of patients
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Cellphones Were Created to Untether Us. Then They Got Smart and Evolved Into an Omnipotent Appendage
One device made it possible to hold a telephone, a watch, a calculator, the mailbox, credit cards, a meteorologist, a television, a detailed map of the globe, millions of songs and books … all in one hand.
Smart News
Off the Coast of Sicily, Divers Discovered a Roman-Era Shipwreck With Hundreds of Amphorae, Ancient Jars Frequently Used to Hold Wine
A ‘Scallywag’ Schoolboy Swiped an Abbot’s Kneecap 70 Years Ago. His Widow Just Returned It to Glastonbury Abbey
This Dutch Painting Showed a 17th-Century Drinking Game Until Someone Smudged Out a Player, Spoiling the Fun. A Museum Just Restored the Imbibing Soldier
The Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week Amid Ideal Viewing Conditions. Here’s How to Watch the Event’s Bright Shooting Stars
Why Did the Ancient Romans Bury This Monumental Marble Statue Facedown? They Wanted to Repurpose It as a Paving Stone
Latest Features
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Travel
Rediscovering America’s Original Grand Tour
Follow along as we retrace the route one journalist laid out in “The Fashionable Tour,” from New York City to Niagara Falls, when memories of the fight for independence were still fresh
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History
How to Build a Character
Silence Dogood. Richard Saunders. Benevolus. Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim. All were pen names that allowed Franklin to say things he couldn’t have otherwise said
Archaeologists Analyze How Diseases Impacted Indigenous Populations in the Americas During Colonial Times
Discover the Story of Gertrude Ederle, an Olympic Gold Medalist and World Record Setter Who Made Waves as the First Woman to Successfully Swim the English Channel
Unveiling the History and Renaissance of Native Tattoos
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Most Popular
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Special Report
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America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark
A Smithsonian magazine special issue in celebration of the nation's 250th
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Photo of the Day
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Pretty In Pink II
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Podcast
Smithsonian Podcast: There’s More to That
Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only it can — through a lens on the world that is insightful and grounded in richly reported stories. In There’s More to That, meet the magazine’s journalists and hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time.
Latest Episodes
The Remarkable, Amazing Stories of Route 66 Reflect the Twists and Turns of 100 Years of Americana
April 23, 2026 | 34 minutes
History
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Why Did the Ancient Romans Bury This Monumental Marble Statue Facedown? They Wanted to Repurpose It as a Paving Stone
Archaeologists discovered the roughly 2,500-year-old sculpture of a young man while conducting excavations at Sardis in western Turkey. The artwork reflects the different cultures that wielded control over the city in the first millennium B.C.E.
Science
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‘Like a Hole in the Universe’: Artemis 2 Astronaut Victor Glover Reflects on Seeing a Total Solar Eclipse While Flying by the Moon
The four astronauts who rounded Earth’s natural satellite in April got an extremely rare view of the dark lunar disk blocking out the sun. Researchers say the observations provide unique scientific value for understanding our star’s mysteries
Innovation
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The First At-Home Test for Infected Ticks Could Improve Lyme Disease Diagnosis
LymeAlert will hit the market in August. The latest tool against the tick-borne illness could become a medicine cabinet staple
Travel
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A New Generation of Chefs Reimagines Indonesian Cuisine in the Netherlands to Tell the Stories of Its Origins
The shift reflects a larger cultural moment, with chefs asking whether the cuisine should remain tied to colonial nostalgia or evolve into a reflection of modern Indonesian identity
Arts & Culture
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The History of the Beach Read, From 19th-Century ‘Moral Debasement’ to BookTok
The still-popular genre got its start 150 years ago, when publishers profited off the rise of travel in the United States during an otherwise slow publishing season
At the Smithsonian
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These Shark Look-Alikes Have Long Confounded Fishers and Scientists on the East Coast. Tracking Where They Migrate Could Help Clear the Confusion
Researchers are tagging and tracking spinner sharks to map out their geographic distribution, because they’ve seen that the range of the very similar blacktip shark has shifted