There's More to That / Video
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 …
As highways encroach ever further into animal habitats, drivers and wildlife are in greater danger than ever. And off the beaten path, decaying old forest roads are inflicting damage as …
How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than A Century Ago
In 1918, Lulu Hunt Peters—one of the first women in America to earn a medical doctorate—published the best seller Diet and Health With Key to the Calories, making a name …
Before it was even published in 2006, historian James Swanson’s book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer attracted the notice of Hollywood. After several prior attempts to adapt the …
Survey: Help Us Design Our Future Season
We’re over here making podcasts, and you’re over there listening. Let’s bridge that gap! We want to know more about you, like: why you’re listening, what your favorite topics are, …
Have you ever felt embarrassed by the need to carry a towel, or even a fresh shirt, with you during the most sweltering months of the year? You shouldn’t. Sweating …
ENCORE: Those Orcas (Still) Aren’t Doing What You Think
Last summer, news reports of orcas deliberately tearing the propellers off of yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar thrilled observers who were eager to cast these intelligent and social pack …
The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos
Four decades ago, Pablo Escobar brought to his Medellín hideaway four hippopotamuses, the centerpieces of a menagerie that included llamas, cheetahs, lions, tigers, ostriches and other exotic fauna. After Colombian …
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