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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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See Magnificent Photos of the Total Solar Eclipse Over Europe That Showcase the Sun’s Beauty and the Wonder of Skywatching
The moon’s shadow swept over Earth on Wednesday, captivating millions across the planet. It was the first total solar eclipse since the North American eclipse of April 2024
Smart News
From Armpits to Feet, Our Ticklish Hot Spots Are Surprisingly Universal. The Finding Offers Clues About the Sensation’s Evolutionary Origins
See Magnificent Photos of the Total Solar Eclipse Over Europe That Showcase the Sun’s Beauty and the Wonder of Skywatching
Thousands of Years Ago, Denisovans Might Have Been Huge, Especially Compared to Their Archaic Human Neighbors
A Historian at MIT Discovered the Surprising Truth About This Chinese Label Long Thought to Be a Souvenir of the Boston Tea Party
NASA Completes Daring ‘Big Bang’ Fix on the Voyager 2 Probe, Allowing It to Keep Studying Interstellar Space
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
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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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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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Could Psilocybin Help Treat Anorexia? A Small Clinical Trial Suggests the Psychedelic May Make Patients More Open to Recovery
The drug, paired with intensive psychological support, may loosen the rigid patterns of thought associated with the eating disorder, scientists say—but they caution that it is not a magic cure
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