There's More to That / Video
Dive Into the Deeper Story of the American Revolution on How New England and Virginia United Agai…
Two hundred and fifty years ago this month, silversmith Paul Revere took to his horse on a midnight ride to warn American rebels that British troops were approaching. The famous …
A Field of Dreams Built in an Unlikely Place: A Japanese American Internment Camp
Baseball was a way of life in the camps that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. The United States government stripped the Americans who lived in these camps of …
The Swarm of People Intent on Saving Our Bees
Native bees in the United States are dying due to pesticides, disease and habitat loss. These insects play a critical role in nature and on farms, yet we know very …
A Mystery Surrounding the Grave of JFK Is Solved
Before he was a civil rights activist, James Felder was a member of the elite U.S. Honor Guard who helped bury John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery after his …
The Truth About the Sex Lives of Dinosaurs
Dinosaurs are often thought of as aggressors—giant beasts that dominated our planet for millions of years. But these prehistoric animals almost certainly had a softer side. In the last decade, …
Why Auroras Are Suddenly Everywhere All at Once
For millennia, auroras have both enchanted and haunted human beings. Ancient lore is filled with myths attempting to explain what caused the celestial phenomenon. More recent historic documentation of auroras …
How to Use Renaissance Paintings to Improve the Farming of Tomorrow
Italian researcher Isabella Dalla Ragione has a most unusual job. An “arboreal archaeologist,” Dalla Ragione scours Renaissance paintings and medieval archives, discovering endangered fruits that might be revived. Her life’s …
RE-BROADCAST: Meet the Wide-Awakes, The Club of Cape-Wearing Activists Who Helped Elect Lincoln a…
We’re busy at work on our new season, which will hit your feeds later this month. In the meantime, we’re bringing you an episode of the Smithsonian Institution’s podcast Sidedoor …
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[Rebroadcast] Meet The 6888: The WWII Battalion of Black Women That Inspired the New Netflix Film
[First released in 2023.] The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was the only unit comprised entirely of Black women to have been deployed overseas during World War II, and it …
Coming January 23: There’s More to That from Smithsonian magazine and PRX, Season 2
Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only we can — through rich reporting sparked by our editors’ insatiable curiosity. On There’s More to That, meet the …
As Hurricanes Get Stronger, Can a $34 Billion Plan Save Texas?
After Hurricane Ike destroyed thousands of homes and inflicted an estimated $30 billion in damages in 2008, engineers hatched an ambitious plan to protect southeast Texas and its coastal refineries …
Coming July 27: There’s More to That from Smithsonian magazine and PRX
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. On …
How We See Oppenheimer. Plus: Smithsonian’s Inside Look at the Top-Secret Los Alamos Site
Christopher Nolan’s epic new film “Oppenheimer” is no mere biopic… nor is it the first attempt to capture the father of the atomic bomb in fiction. We look at prior …
He’s (Not) Just Ken: The True History of Barbie’s Beau
He is (K)enough… or is he? With filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s Barbie breaking box-office records—and devoting much of its story to Ken’s existential crisis—we wondered if there’s any more to Barbie’s …
What Happens When the Colorado River Dries Up?
What happens when one of the nation’s largest rivers dries up? Photojournalist Pete McBride tells us about the consequences of a prolonged drought in the Colorado River, which provides drinking …
Beyond the Titanic: The Real Science of Deep Sea Exploration
After five people perished on a controversial submersible dive to the wreckage of the Titanic in June, we got to thinking about what genuine undersea exploration looks like. In this …
Meet the WWII Battalion of Black Women That Inspired an Army Base’s New Name
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was the only unit comprised entirely of Black women to have been deployed overseas during World War II, and it had served a critical …
Those Orcas Aren’t Doing What You Think
It’s not the most urgent news story that’s gripped the world since 2020, but it might be the weirdest: The last three years have seen more 400 “encounters”— many reports …
A Brief History of Book Banning in America
Book-banning might seem like a relic of less enlightened times, but the practice is back in a big way. The American Library Association reports (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/american-library-association-names-2022s-most-banned-books-180982048/) that 2022 saw more attempts …
How the Osage Changed Martin Scorsese’s Mind About “Killers of the Flower Moon”
A true-life saga involving organized crime, racial prejudice, and evolving American identity, David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the …
Healing the Wounds of the Vietnam War
Every Veterans Day, Jeremy Redmon thinks about his father, Donald Lee Redmon — an Air Force veteran who survived more than 300 combat missions over Southeast Asia, but who took …
How NASA Captured Asteroid Dust to Find the Origins of Life
Capturing a piece of an asteroid and bringing it to Earth is even more difficult than it is time-consuming. After four years in space, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx craft made a brief …
Why Wildfires Are Burning Hotter and Longer
The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, begins this week in Dubai. A new topic on the agenda this year is how wildfires are emerging as a serious …
When Your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Is a Civil War Hero
Photographer Drew Gardner has a passion for history. His long-term project, “The Descendants,” (https://www.drewgardner.com/descendants) wherein he recreates famous portraits of historical figures featuring their direct offspring, is his most visible …
You can describe what a journalist does in any number of ways. One definition that’s as accurate as any is that a journalist is someone who liked having homework back …
How We See Oppenheimer (redux)
Christopher Nolan’s epic new film “Oppenheimer” is no mere biopic… nor is it the first attempt to capture the father of the atomic bomb in fiction. We look at prior …
How to Separate Fact From Myth in the Extraordinary Story of Sojourner Truth
The facts of Sojourner Truth’s life are inspiring: Born into slavery in the late 1790s, she became an influential abolitionist and Pentecostal preacher, transfixing audiences from the mid 1840s through …
Before Beyoncé and Taylor Swift Ran the World, There Was Joan Baez
Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have achieved a degree of power in the music industry that singer/songwriters of earlier eras like Joan Baez—as the folk icon tells us—never even contemplated. Six …
Eclipses have been a subject of fascination throughout human history, and the fact that we now have a clearer understanding of what they actually are—at least in the celestial mechanics …
How Artificial Intelligence Is Making 2,000-Year-Old Scrolls Readable Again
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., it covered the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under tons of ash. Millennia later, in the mid-18th century, archeologists began to unearth …
America’s Best New Restaurant Celebrates the Flavors of West Africa
African cuisine has always been well represented in the United States, particularly in dishes characterized as “Southern” in origin, like gumbo or hoppin’ john. But even before chef Serigne Mbaye’s …
‘The Crime of the Century,’ a Century Later
The past hundred years have seen more than one high-profile prosecution branded as the “crime of the century.” The shocking 1924 crime that was among the first to carry the …
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