In the wild, titanoboa probably ate large crocodiles, fish and other snakes—but if there were a titanoboa at the National Zoo today, what would the zoo keepers feed it?

David Burnett on His Experience Jumping Out of a Plane With D-Day Vets

Our host, Eric Schulze, explains how science is tackling this puzzling question from space.

As a part of a television broadcast, world travelers Hal and Halla Linker toured the Afghan countryside in 1973, years before the Soviets invaded and the Taliban took control of the Buddhist site

The American Ingenuity Award winner is using geographic information systems to map history's most iconic landscapes

Host Eric Schulze opens the floodgates of knowledge to reveal the answer.

This traveling exhibit reveals the mystery behind some of the women that helped shape this country's social and cultural landscape

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

"They have given mankind a completely new way of looking at the universe." – Stephen Hawking, congratulates Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Ronald Drever, the first scientists to detect gravitational waves. | Smithsonian magazine #IngenuityAwards The Smithsonian has been celebrating innovation in American culture for more than 150 years, and following in this tradition, Smithsonian magazine presents the American Ingenuity Awards, honoring revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress.

Home to the worlds largest shell collection, the Smithsonian catalogues and studies shells both large and small, spiky and smooth (Brendan McCabe).

The answer has everything to do with falling flat on your face

The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this epic footage of Venus crossing the face of the sun on June 5, 2012

Quiksilver captures stunning aerial views of the world champion surfer's dazzling technique

Eric Schulze delves into little Rover's mind to see what all that racket is about

Not one to hide from the bitter truth, our host, Eric Schulze dishes up the answer

Fifty years ago, the Amazon comprised 14 percent of the Earth's surface. Now, it covers just 6 percent.

At the Coastal Discovery Museum’s exhibition, visitors will be able to view a 3D digital interactive that reconstructs the original Fort San Marcos on Santa Elena. (Credit: Coastal Discovery Museum at Honey Horn)

Feeling blue? Try watching this one-minute video. Our Ask Smithsonian host, Eric Schulze, explains how colors affect our moods.

One of the most evocative and breathtakingly beautiful coastal landscapes in Britain is the historic county of Cornwall. It’s also a place steeped in legend, including that of Britain’s legendary King Arthur.

Forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley discusses the skeletal specimens in a new exhibit at the Natural History Museum (Meredith Bragg). Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/meet-the-scientist-who-reads-bones-40315000/

David Lynch | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for Education As a filmmaker, Lynch has a reputation for creating dark, surreal movies such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart as well as the TV show “Twin Peaks.” In the education world, he's becoming known for something very different: promoting inner peace. Over the past decade, the David Lynch Foundation has sponsored Transcendental Meditation classes for half a million children in places as far-flung as the Bronx, Detroit, Los Angeles, Congo and the West Bank. The program, called Quiet Time, is now at the center of one of the largest-ever studies of meditation for children—a 6,800-pupil research project conducted by the Crime Lab at the University of Chicago and designed to learn if meditation can help kids in highly stressful environments fare better at home and in school. Read more about Lynch’s work: http://smithmag.co/9sHhtm | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

Carleton Watkins' 19th-Century Photographs of Yosemite Valley (Produced and Narrated by: Brendan McCabe. Text by Bruce Hathaway). Read more at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/john-muirs-yosemite-10737/

“Superman isn’t coming. It is a moment in our time when we must look to ourselves, and not take for granted or wait for something from the top to come down, but rather…pick up the torch, carry the torch, to find information and the truth…” – Erin Brockovich applauds Marc Edwards and LeeAnne Walters for their work exposing the Flint water crisis | Smithsonian Magazine American #IngenuityAwards Read more about Edwards and Walters’ work: http://smithmag.co/D4dIHy The Smithsonian has been celebrating innovation in American culture for more than 150 years, and following in this tradition, Smithsonian magazine presents the American Ingenuity Awards, honoring revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress. http://smithmag.co/R7hyRO

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In a 11-4 vote, the City Council decided to remove the 65-foot-tall monument from its location in the heart of the city

Investigators discovered that the original print of "The Roaring Lion" had been sold to a buyer in Italy

A melting glacier caused a mountain in Greenland to collapse into a narrow fjord, setting off an oscillating wave that rattled seismic detectors around the world

Two Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority railcars were added to an artificial reef off the coast of Georgia to create more wildlife habitat

"Le Lyonnais" descended into the depths off the coast of Massachusetts after colliding with the "Adriatic," a sailing vessel that left the floundering steamship to fend for itself

Officials launched an investigation and recovered the $360,000 print less than a week after it vanished from Grove Gallery. Two men have been charged for the crime

Experts have confirmed that the image of "Knight, Death and the Devil" is a real master engraving by the renowned German artist Albrecht Dürer

Archaeologists unearthed a series of mudbrick rooms filled with religious tributes, soldiers' personal effects, engraved weaponry and animal bones

When the blaze in Moscow subsided on September 18, 1812, the French—who had traveled hundreds of miles into Russia—were left without vital resources as a brutal winter approached

The artist's cityscapes, once dismissed as too masculine, would later influence the floral artworks that became central to her iconic style

Due to a drought in Eastern Europe, the scuttled German vessels are reemerging 80 years after they disappeared beneath the river's surface

A ring could explain a mysterious arrangement of impact craters near the equator and might even have caused an ice age, according to a new study

Una Pizza Napoletana on the Lower East Side has claimed the top spot in an annual ranking of pizzerias around the globe

The technology, enabled by thorium atoms, could keep time more accurately than atomic clocks and enable new discoveries about gravity, gravitational waves and dark matter

The viewfinders are outfitted with special lenses that help people with red-green colorblindness distinguish between hues

More than 250 years after a teenage Mozart wrote "Serenade in C," a copy of the piece has surfaced in the collections of a German library

The collaboration across species reveals a surprising social behavior of octopuses, researchers say

In 1858, the mountain was named for a Confederate general. Now, it will once again be known as "Kuwohi"

The mysterious missive was written by P.J. Féret, who conducted an archaeological dig at the same site in northern France in 1825

Researchers recently identified James Fitzjames, a captain on the ill-fated HMS Erebus that went looking for the Northwest Passage in 1845

New research has revealed that the mysterious white substance found alongside three ancient mummies was once a soft cheese called kefir

The "John Evenson" tugboat was helping another ship enter the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Wisconsin when it sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan in 1895

The Kyoto museum will feature interactive exhibits, gaming artifacts, workshop spaces and oversized controllers inspired by iconic video games

The show coincides with an initiative that will give away 49 of the tree's saplings to individuals and communities across the country

Researchers studying the ancient site of Fregellae reveal the consequences of challenging the Roman army

The small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, is one of the only sources of high-purity quartz on Earth, but it has been left battered by the storm's heavy rains