Black soldier fly larvae grow in a high-tech facility at Innovafeed in Nesle, France. The company, which also has a facility in Decatur, Illinois, is the world’s largest producer of black soldier fly larvae.

Maggots Are an Incredibly Efficient Source of Protein, Which May Make Them the Next Superfood for Humans

Inexpensive to raise and insatiably hungry for trash, black soldier fly larvae are already on the menu for livestock, pets and, maybe soon, people

Mary Roach
Photographs by Justin Jin and Khadija Farah

Miles Davis’ ceaseless reinventions of his art led Duke Ellington to call him the “Picasso of jazz.”

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Miles Davis Emerged From Middle America to Become the ‘Picasso of Jazz’ and Taught Us All How to Be Cool

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This Invasive Wasp Is Wreaking Havoc on Elms in North America—and the Damage May Soon Spread to Other Trees

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Archaeologists Say They’ve Unearthed a Massive Medieval Cargo Ship That’s the Largest Vessel of Its Kind Ever Found

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OpenAI Says ChatGPT Health Can Understand Users’ Medical Data and Provide Personalized Answers to Their Questions

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Could Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA Be Hiding Inside One of His Renaissance Sketches?

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Research suggests that elephants use certain plants for medicinal purposes.

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When Some Elephants Raid Farms, They Might Not Be After a Snack. They Could Be Looking for Medicinal Plants

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Miles Davis Emerged From Middle America to Become the ‘Picasso of Jazz’ and Taught Us All How to Be Cool

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Detail of a 19th-century mural in the Library of Congress that depicts America as a successor to ancient Egypt

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How White Southerners Distorted the History of Ancient Egypt to Justify Slavery in the U.S.

January 12, 2026

A hand-colored map from 1860 depicts parts of Manhattan,  Brooklyn, Hoboken and Jersey City.

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The Time When New York City Seriously Considered Seceding From the United States

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During a training exercise in Houston in January 2025, the Artemis 2 crew practiced configuring the Orion spacecraft for orbit and its return to Earth.

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It’s Almost ‘All Systems Go’ for Artemis 2 to Take the Next Giant Leap Toward Stepping on the Moon Again

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December 2025

OPENER - Chubby the macaw arrived with self-plucking injuries, which are typically caused by stress, boredom, anxiety or life changes. Chubby was 22 at the time of being photographed in 2025, and she has since been adopted.

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Best Friends Animal Society has a sprawling campus in the canyons of Utah, but its influence has grown to reach almost every shelter in the country

OPENER - The Tugunbulak settlement was inhabited between the 6th and 11th centuries.

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Photo of the Day

Diffused soft morning light reflecting on the mud flats of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. As a coastal brown bear discards the remains of an unearthed bivalve, competitive gulls sweep in for the scraps. Gulls rely on the bears' foraging and powerful digging of razor clams for an easy source of food.

Sweepers

By Deborah Russell

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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.

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The Foods and Flavors That Make Our Holidays Delicious

December 18, 2025 | 33 minutes

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Why Are There So Many Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes?

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The ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’ Sank Half a Century Ago. We’re Still Fascinated.

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History

Scientists found the DNA on a drawing similar to the Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk, which is shown.

Could Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA Be Hiding Inside One of His Renaissance Sketches?

Scientists have discovered male human DNA on a chalk drawing that may have been created by the famous artist and scientist. But they cannot definitively link the genetic material, nor the sketch, to Leonardo

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How White Southerners Distorted the History of Ancient Egypt to Justify Slavery in the U.S.

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When Some Elephants Raid Farms, They Might Not Be After a Snack. They Could Be Looking for Medicinal Plants

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