Smithsonian Magazine: July-August 2012
Features
Britannia Rules the Games
Although it’s not well known, the modern Olympics owe their model and their success to England. As the Games return to London for the third time, let’s raise a toast to Dr. Penny Brookes, Lord Desborough and the glorious, and sometimes slapstick, history of the British Games
By Frank Deford
Summer Olympics Look
Poet J. Allyn Rosser's new piece on watching the Olympic Games
By J. Allyn Rosser
Heart and Solo
She holds the fate of the U.S. women’s soccer team in her hands, but as her controversial new memoir will show, Hope Solo has always defended her turf
By Nancy Hass
The Rings Cycle
A whimsical new opera celebrates the life and times of Albert White, Britain’s pioneering bicycle champ and the working-class hero of a hard-luck factory town that sure could use one
By Franz Lidz
The Science of Doping
Behind the scenes at the Games is a fierce competition between those top athletes who secretly use illicit substances to gain an edge and the scientists racing to catch them. This summer, the stakes are higher than ever
By Christie Aschwanden
The Future of Cheating
As technology advances, so will access to ingenious—and troubling—new techniques
By Christie Aschwanden
The All-American
100 years ago, Jim Thorpe became the greatest American Olympian of all time. So why has he still not been given his due?
By Sally Jenkins
Let the Good Thames Roll
Float down England’s longest river, from its origin in the Cotswolds to its ramble through London, a journey across centuries of “liquid history” that leads right up to the razzle-dazzle of this summer’s Olympic Games
By Joshua Hammer
Scull and Bones
England's Olympic rowers trace their achievements on the Thames back 300 years
By Joshua Hammer
Wish You Were Here
Our editors pored over more than 67,000 photographs, each one a postcard from a unique time and place
By Jesse Rhodes
Departments
From the Castle
The Latest and The Greatest
Objects from Muhammad Ali's headgear to Nat Turner's Bible sit in a holding facility in Maryland, ready to be put on display
By G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Phenomena
The Mind
The famed author, livestock-management expert and advocate for people with autism argues for a smarter approach to thinking about thinking
By Temple Grandin
Order in the Cortex
Scientists have discovered that the brain is even more beautifully organized than they had imagined
By Laura Helmuth
Wise Up
Forget about senior moments. The good news is that researchers are discovering some surprising advantages of growing old
By Helen Fields
Why Play is Serious
A leading researcher in the field of cognitive development says when children pretend, they’re not just being silly—they’re doing science
By Alison Gopnik
Rise of the Chatbots
Could you be fooled by a computer pretending to be human? Probably
By Brian Christian
Performance Anxiety
With amateurs and pros clamoring for answers, a researcher who studies choking under pressure comes through in the clutch
By Abigail Tucker
Profile
Speaking Truth to Power
Barbara Kruger has been refashioning our idioms into sharp-edged cultural critiques for three decades—and now she has a very special word for Washington, D.C.
By Ron Rosenbaum
History
We're Number 2!
The U.S. vice presidency has been filled by a rogues gallery of mediocrities, criminals and even corpses. They all have a home in Indiana, at Dan Quayle’s vice-presidential museum
By Tony Horwitz
America
Going for the Gold
Lured by the soaring price of the precious metal, prospectors are heading for the California hills like it's 1849 all over again
By Abigail Tucker
Around the Mall
American Idol
New Woody Guthrie songs keep turning up, 100 years after his birth
By Abigail Tucker
Fast Forward
Served Cold
Facebook friends the sub-Arctic with a gargantuan computer facility
By Mark Strauss
