Jennie Rothenberg Gritz

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine. She was previously a senior editor at the Atlantic.

Shannon LaNier, a TV news anchor, has complex feelings about being descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. “He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn’t practice it. He owned people. And now I’m here because of it.”

These Portraits Revisit the Legacies of Famous Americans

Photographer Drew Gardner painstakingly recreates the images with the notable figures' descendants

Ecologist and Smithsonian associate Aung Myo Chit soothes an elephant in Myanmar after it was fitted with a collar.

Researchers Are Learning How Asian Elephants Think—in Order to Save Them

As the pachyderms increasingly clash with farmers and villagers over disappearing land, scientists study the way the animals' minds work

The coastline of Quadra Island in British Columbia. Some scientists believe that prehistoric humans spent thousands of years in the region.

The Story of How Humans Came to the Americas Is Constantly Evolving

Surprising new clues point to the arrival taking place thousands of years earlier than previously believed

Left, Giovanni Maria de Agostini, a peripatetic Italian monk who was banished from Brazil, reached northern New Mexico on foot in 1863. He holed up on a mountain that would become known as Hermit Peak, today the object of an annual pilgrimage. Right, view of Hermit Peak.

The Inspiring Monk Who Lived in a New Mexico Cave

The mountaintop home of an Italian hermit who lived in the U.S. in the 1860s still attracts a handful of pilgrims

Aaron Wixson, a Marine field artillery radar operator in Oceanside, California, transitioned from female to male in 2016. His biggest challenge was getting everybody to change the pronouns they used for him. “Some of them said, ‘We’ve been calling you “her” for so long.’”

The Faces Behind Transgender Troops' Struggle for Acceptance

Meet some of the servicemembers at the center of one of the most controversial matters facing the U.S. military

Wanderlust

How Graffiti Artists Used iPhones and Paint to Transform the Beatles’ Ashram

Miles Toland describes how he captured Indian street scenes on his phone and recreated them as giant murals that same day

John Lennon chats with Mike Love (far right, in dark blue) as the Beatles sit for a photo with Maharishi and other course participants.

The Ashram Where the Beatles Sought Enlightenment

Beach Boys singer Mike Love recalls what it was like to be at the Indian locale, which remains a destination for fans of music and meditation

The Unsavory History of Sugar, the Insatiable American Craving

How the nation got hooked on sweets

David Lynch

Director David Lynch Wants Schools to Teach Transcendental Meditation to Reduce Stress

The acclaimed filmmaker has become the champion of the practice that's now been adopted by thousands of kids

LIGO's founding fathers, from left: Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish. Not pictured: Ronald Drever

Meet the Team of Scientists Who Discovered Gravitational Waves

This year, the geniuses behind LIGO announced that they had finally found what Albert Einstein had predicted a century ago

A Hadza elder wears a roughly tanned wild-animal skin over a T-shirt. The skin strips on his bow reinforce his weapon while the furs attest to his recent kills. His headband is not traditionally Hadza; members of the tribe have begun to adopt styles from neighboring groups.

Get Face to Face With the Tribes of Tanzania

As safari parks encroach on their ancestral lands, indigenous groups struggle to maintain their ways of life

The Browns in Topeka, Kansas

The Children of Civil Rights Leaders Are Keeping Their Eyes on the Prize

The next generation is following in the footsteps of its forebears

Mary Reynolds sits in a moss-covered pod designed by the West Cork artist Peter Little.

The Unlikely, Charming Designer Who Is Changing the Face of Gardening

With weeds, critters and Celtic symbols, Mary Reynolds is transforming what it means to garden

A diagram of Reynolds's gardens

Take a Closer Look at Mary Reynolds’s Innovative Celtic Gardens

The award-winning landscape designer bases her ideas on the four seasons, but with a regional twist

Beluga whales blow bubbles.

Why Do Beluga Whales Blow Bubbles?

The animal’s whimsical pastime offers insight into the mammalian brain

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