In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers arrived home when he was shot and killed. It would be over 30 years before his killer was brought to justice.

A London blacksmith has perfected a technique known as pattern welding to create elaborately-designed replica Saxon swords and knives. He demonstrates his technique on camera.

Scientists have created thin polymer sheets that expand and contract when in contact with water

By 2020, the Starkey Hearing Foundation plans to donate one million hearing aids to kids in the developing world

In 1969, three men traveled to the moon cameras documented their every move

Credit: David Marshall, University of Bristol

In 1967, a horrific fire broke out during a routine pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at Cape Kennedy, Florida. It would claim the lives of three NASA astronauts

The biological urge is too strong to resist for penguin chicks as they fledge and dive into the water for the first time.

Caretakers feed the new baby clouded leopards at the Zoo's research facility in Virginia

In March 1895, Boston and New York City began an epic and highly competitive race to become the first American city with a working subway system.

When did we start getting cuddly with cats? And have those tabbies really been tamed? In this one-minute video, Ask Smithsonian host Eric Schulze investigates the surprising history and science behind today’s house cat.

Kenneth Morris is the great-great-great-grandson of the heralded abolitionist and helped compile an illustrated biography of his ancestor. (Credit: Drew Gardner)

The water torture cell escape was arguably Houdini’s most memorable stunt. So much so that many people wrongly assume it killed him–a myth invented by the 1953 movie about his life starring Tony Curtis.

Koshik, an elephant in a South Korean zoo, learned to say five different Korean words (Still: iStock/ROMAOSLO)

Megan Leftwich, an engineering professor at George Washington University, is building a robotic flipper based on her observations of sea lions

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 when they were in school so much that they decided to keep doing homework for a career. That certainly describes the team here at Smithsonian magazine. We’re all big readers. So we thought that before our brief winter hiatus—a time when many of us are trying to think of gift ideas to please the empathetic, curious people in our lives—we’d poll the staff of Smithsonian on their favorite books they read this year. Because we’re primarily a history and science magazine, we tried to steer them toward nonfiction published in 2023, but as you’ll hear, we weren’t sticklers for either criterion. We thought it better to let you hear from our staff about the books they were most genuinely excited to share. You’ll recognize some of these voices if you’re an avid listener, but this episode also provides the chance to hear from some of the talented staffers we haven’t been able to feature on the show before now. Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

The octopus places the arm in its mouth, treating it like food.

It's 1933 and Mae West is just arriving at Grauman's Chinese Theater for the premiere of I'm No Angel. It draws fans from all over the country—as well as an organized protest from conservative religious groups.

The newly discovered Lllacme plenipes has up to 750 legs, more than any other known creature

Re-enactors relive the Battle of Baltimore and celebrate the flag that inspired our national anthem (Ryan R. Reed). Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/star-spangled-banner-back-on-display-83229098/

Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer from Burkina Faso, has become a pioneer in the fight against desertification – succeeding where many international agencies have failed

DC chef Erik Bruner-Yang interviews Jill-of-all-trades Kaitlyn Hova about her plan to infuse STEM education with open source, 3D printable instruments.

After a dog digs up a rabbit's nest and leaves a litter exposed, the team at the Toronto Wildlife Center must rehabilitate the malnourished babies before they can be released back into the wild.

Watch as researchers study the paradise tree snake that is capable of launching itself as far as 330 feet

The naked stone is on exhibit at the Natural History museum through next spring

Venture into Virunga National Park with Smithsonian writer Paul Raffaele as he examines the threats facing mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

A step-by-step tour of the renovation of the National Museum of American History (Narration by Beth Py-Lieberman / Edited by Ryan Reed and Brian Wolly)

Aziz Ansari | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for Performing Arts The actor, comedian and author is being honored for his starring role as Dev Shah in “Master of None,” the Netflix series that he created with Alan Yang. Like the character he plays, Ansari is the son of Indian immigrant parents, and his smart, surprising take on life, love, technology and cultural identity in the United States has helped make the show “the year’s best comedy straight out of the gate,” as the New York Times put it. Among Ansari’s other accomplishments are his unforgettable portrayal of the loopy Tom Haverford on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” his best-selling book about dating in the internet age, Modern Romance (co-authored with Eric Klinenberg), and his blockbuster stand-up act that sold out Madison Square Garden. Read more about Ansari’s work: http://smithmag.co/jvdAaL | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

In the Virunga National Forest, the mountain gorilla population sits in the middle of a war zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as forest rangers track and keep a watchful eye on the threatened primates Music: Kevin MacLeod

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 dramatizations of this very complicated man—including one wherein J. Robert Oppenheimer played himself!—and examine why they worked or didn't. In this episode: Physicist-turned-photographer Minesh Bacrania shares his experience photographing inside the top-secret labs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists created the first nuclear weapon. Next, with Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer exceeding commercial expectations, Smithsonian magazine writer Andy Kifer discusses the complexities of Oppenheimer's genius and how prior attempts to depict him in film and television and on stage have fared. Read Andy Kifer’s “The Real Story Behind Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer” here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-christopher-nolans-oppenheimer-180982529/) . See Minesh Bacrania’s photographs of Los Alamos and read Smithsonian senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz’s text here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/exclusive-behind-scenes-look-los-alamos-lab-where-robert-oppenheimer-created-atomic-bomb-180982336/) or in the July/August 2023 issue of Smithsonian. Original release date: July 27, 2023 There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rozas Rivera, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

From tumultuous love affairs to violent betrayals, the six wives of Henry VIII all left marks on the Tudor dynasty – and shaped the course of history. READ MORE about these women here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-history-behind-six-the-musical-about-henry-viiis-wives-180978781/ --- For more videos from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/ Digital Editorial Director: Brian Wolly Supervising Producer & Scriptwriter: Michelle Mehrtens Video Editor: Sierra Theobald

In 1945, Maraquita Sargeant was admitted to a mental institution in Australia against her will and remained their for 22 years - produced by Matt Cleaves and George Clipp

Gemini 8 was in trouble. After completing the first space docking with another craft, it begins to spin uncontrollably. Ditching protocol, commanding officer Neil Armstrong tries an unorthodox plan.

Read more about Haleakala: http://j.mp/ufv44s The Hawaiian volcano, with its unique vegetation and meditative winds, has a spiritual connection to the native population

The holiday was used as a call for freedom during the civil rights movement and as a day of mourning by Native Americans.

By the 1930s, the black middle class had arrived, with the purchasing power to match. Sensing an opportunity, developers established Idlewild: a summer resort aimed exclusively at African-Americans.

The curators at the American History museum delve into the archives to show artifacts from the 1960 election.

A close look reveals how the famed photographer altered his glass negatives, creating the popular image of Native Americans that still exists today

Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Ronald Drever | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winners for Physical Sciences In February, physicists announced the first-ever detection of gravitational waves—a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted back in 1915. The faint reverberation, from two merging black holes 1.3 billion light-years ago, registered in the two giant detectors that make up the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. It took decades for LIGO’s founders—Weiss, of MIT, and Thorne and Drever, of Cal Tech—to amass the necessary funding and brainpower. Barish, a particle physicist at CalTech, became LIGO’s director and expanded its work to include more than 1,000 researchers worldwide. Their revolutionary achievement opens the way for a new understanding of the universe, perhaps even a glimpse of the Big Bang. Read more about their work: http://smithmag.co/FZBFeP | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

Smithsonian magazine commissioned Drew Gardner for a project that connects Black Americans today to their lost ancestry. Read about Gardner’s project and process, as well as more details about the subjects of this incredible series here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/descendants-black-civil-war-heroes-wear-heritage-pride-180983397/ Video produced by Sierra Theobald. Special thanks to Drew Gardner Additional credits: Emma MacBeath, WikiTree US Black Heritage project; Ottawa Goodman, research and coordinator; Sam Dole, Penumbra Foundation; Elizabeth Zuck, set design; Calvin Osbourne, props and costume; Angela Huff, hair and make up; Diego Huerta, Lexia Krebs, behind-the-scenes filming; background prints by Fujifilm USA

In July 1925, a young science teacher named John Scopes was in court, accused of contravening the Butler Act—a Tennessee law that prohibited the teaching of evolution in schools.

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 for herself as an apostle for weight reduction in an era when malnutrition was a far greater public health threat than obesity. She pioneered the idea of measuring food intake via the calorie, which at the time was an obscure unit of measurement familiar only to chemists.  A century later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm) that 42 percent of American adults are clinically obese and that Type 2 diabetes is on the rise (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p1229-future-diabetes-surge.html) . With those who can afford it now turning to pharmaceuticals to help them lose weight, we’ll examine why and how calorie counting has failed to help Americans maintain a “healthy” weight.  In this episode of “There’s More to That,” we hear from food historian Michelle Stacey about Peters’ legacy—and from Ronald Young Jr., creator and host of the critically acclaimed podcast “Weight For It (https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/weight-for-it) ,” about how American society continues to stigmatize what he calls “fat folks” for reasons that have nothing to do with public, or even individual, health. A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on the complex legacy of Sojourner Truth (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-to-separate-fact-from-myth-in-the-extraordinary-story-of-sojourner-truth-180983820/) , how Joan Baez opened the door for Taylor Swift (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/before-beyonce-taylor-swift-ran-world-joan-baez-180983893/) , how machine learning is helping archeologists to read scrolls (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-artificial-intelligence-is-making-2000-year-old-scrolls-readable-again-180984264/) buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago and more, find us on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theres-more-to-that/id1694965155?ign-itscg=30200&ign-itsct=podcast_box_player) , Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4NYRCRxkYJTLjW71sqYOFv?si=08fa62c3e59d450f&nd=1) or wherever you get your podcasts. Read Michelle Stacey's story about Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters in the June 2024 issue of Smithsonian here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/doctor-pioneered-counting-calories-century-ago-were-still-dealing-with-consequences-180984282/) . Listen to Ronald Young, Jr.'s podcast "Weight For It" here (https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/weight-for-it) . Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

Astrophysicist Stephen Murray explains how X-ray energies can be used to understand dark matter and its place in the universe

Manufacturing of bitumen-lined water bottles in the traditional method of Native Californian Indians. Credit: Nicholas Radtkey, UC Davis & Sabrina Sholts

The North American Orchid Conservation Center is working to ensure the survival of some of the most unique plants in the world

Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of the popular speaker series, shares his ideas for how to make learning more interesting

Equipped with wings and a propeller, Moulton Taylor Aerocar aerobile was capable of taking off from a stoplight or the runway