Aerial America: Wilderness premieres Sunday, Sept. 7 at 9PM ET/PT

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.

Between the unusual court shape and specialized equipment, jeu de paume is a game that must be seen to be believed

Marine biologist Nancy Knowlton discusses a research trip to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where she and her collaborators collected data on coral reef populations. Reef sustainability is closely tied to coral reproduction. Then director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Knowlton, who has since been hired to lead the Smithsonian's Ocean Initiative, has reservations about the long-term future of corals

A curator from the Houston Museum of Natural Science explains how the terra cotta warriors were discovered and what they reveal about China’s Qin dynasty

You might think twice about picking that chip off the carpet and putting it into your mouth.

Mineralogist Bob Hazen talks about what he loves about walking along the coast of the Chesapeake Bay, hunting for fossils and shark teeth hidden in the sand

Fossils found in Colombia indicate that a giant snake may have roamed the earth 60 million years ago

In this time-lapse video, watch how workers built a visitor’s center in South Africa using ancient Roman techniques such as the arched ceiling, or vault

Author Harold Holzer discusses Abraham Lincoln's presidency and the President's lasting impact on modern American politics and nostalgia (Meredith Bragg). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/life-of-lincoln.html

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.

Watch a course video excerpt from Rise of the Superheroes: The legendary Stan Lee, creator of the Avengers, Spiderman and Iron Man, has partnered with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to launch the first global online course about superheroes to fans around the world.

Five categories (People, Arts, Nature, Travel and Mobile) and a grand prize of $2,000.

Learn more about color blindness: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-how-does-world-look-the-color-blind-180960415/ Have a question in mind? It's your turn to Ask Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian/ask-form/

The first coffin Marcus Daly built was for his own child. Now, he has mastered the art of creating a final resting place for so many

New technologies helped marine archaeologists recover the H.L. Hunley, a Civil War submarine

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.

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

Selected by Albert Watson for our special issue, this up-and-coming photographer discusses his work

Videos from the 1950s show architect Frank Lloyd Wright at the site of the Guggenheim Museum

Filmed by the famous photographer during the Spanish Civil War, this clip debuted at the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium

Honeybees get a caffeine buzz and memory boost when they drink coffee nectar

Recently digitized footage shows the Marine assault on Iwo Jima during World War II, including prepping equipment, arriving on the island and raising the flag. (U.S. Marine Corps History Division and Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina)

Behind the Scenes with Harry Rubenstein At the National Museum of American History (Beth Py-Lieberman, Ryan Reed and Molly Roberts). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/life-of-lincoln.html

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.

Use #physnobel on Twitter to submit your questions. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced on Tuesday, October 7. Join guests Charles Day of Physics Today, Andrew Grant of Science News, Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics and Amanda Yoho of Starts With A Bang! as they discuss predictions for possible winners. Who are the best contenders, and who are the potential "dark horse" candidates? Which major physics finds of this year might stand a shot at a win in the future? Victoria Jaggard and Helen Thompson of Smithsonian.com will be your hosts for the event. Tune in on October 2, and submit your questions on Twitter. Charles Day is the Online Editor for Physics Today magazine. Follow him on Twitter @CSRDay Andrew Grant is the physics reporter for Science News magazine. Follow him on Twitter @sci_grant Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer and blogger at Cocktail Party Physics. Follow her on Twitter @JenLucPiquant Amanda Yoho is a graduate student in theoretical and computational cosmology at Case Western Reserve University and a blogger at Starts With A Bang! Follow her on Twitter @mandaYoho Victoria Jaggard is the science editor for Smithsonian.com. Follow her on Twitter @vmjaggard99 Helen Thompson is a science reporter for Smithsonian.com. Follow her on Twitter @wwrfd

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

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.

Recently digitized footage shows Marine in dugouts in the field, working on building a hospital and assisting the wounded on the front lines. (U.S. Marine Corps History Division and Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina)

Uncover the bittersweet story of this ancient treat. Read more at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-brief-history-of-chocolate-21860917/

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

Researchers from the University of West Florida are slowly uncovering the remains of a 16th-century shipwreck of a Spanish galleon in the shallow, murky waters near Pensacola

Learn how to stage a sit-in right next to the Greensboro lunch counter, the location of one of the civil rights movement's most famous protests (Video by: Katy June-Friesen). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Courage-at-the-Greensboro-Lunch-Counter.html

Smithsonian Institution Secretary Dr. David Skorton joins some of the world’s leading thinkers in a spirited discussion about our ever changing planet

As foliage darkens in the fall, the pigments within the plant matter break down and transform

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 F.B.I. seemed at first glance like a perfect fit for Martin Scorsese, the beloved filmmaker whose dozens of critically adored movies include Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, and The Departed. But when Jim Gray, a former chief of the Osage Nation, and other Osage leaders invited the filmmaker to Oklahoma to hear their concerns about his new project, Scorsese came. Scorsese listened. And then he rewrote and reconfigured Killers of the Flower Moon from soup to nuts, with a result that has earned a rapturous response from Native viewers like Gray and journalist Sandra Hale Schulman, and from the broader critical community, too. The movie opens in theatres tomorrow and will appear on the Apple+ streaming service before the end of the year. In this episode, Schulman walks me through a brief history of how Native Americans have been depicted in a century’s worth of movies. Then, Chief Gray tells me about his personal connection to Killers of the Flower Moon, the pattern of Native American erasure from national discourse, and how he and his colleagues persuaded Scorsese to rethink the new movie. A transcript of this episode can be found here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/how-the-osage-changed-martin-scorseses-mind-180983094smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/how-the-osage-changed-martin-scorseses-mind-180983094) . Sandra’s Smithsonian story about Native representation in cinema is here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-native-representation-in-film-180983043/) . You can learn more about Sandra and her work at her site (http://www.sandraschulman.com/) . Dennis McAuliffe Jr.’s The Deaths of Sybil Bolton: An American History, which Chief Gray cites as formative in this episode, is here (https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Sybil-Bolton-American-History/dp/081292150X) . 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, Terence Bernardo, 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.

Smithsonian magazine's poetry consultant recites his poem commissioned for a special photography issue

After reviewing more than 30,000 photos, the editors of Smithsonian magazine are proud to announce the winning submissions. Learn more about the finalists and winners of 2024 here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/see-winners-21st-annual-smithsonian-magazine-photo-contest-180984001/. --- 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

Through her television shows, Julia Child shared her love for culinary arts with the world.

"OK Go made music videos relevant again." – Stephen Colbert OK Go​, Damian Kulash Jr. and Trish Sie​ won the Smithsonian magazine​ American Ingenuity Award for Visual Arts for pushing the music-video envelope with their zero-gravity video for "Upside Down & Inside Out." Read more about their work and see the video here: http://smithmag.co/HZ8vzr 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

Human remains discovered at Wharram Percy are about to be examined by an expert, in a bid to determine what happened. Is it a medieval murder mystery—or something far more sinister?

Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Wayne-B-Wheeler-The-Man-Who-Turned-Off-the-Taps.html Beverage expert Derek Brown shows how to make three cocktails from the early 20th century at his Washington, D.C. bar.

National Portrait Gallery historian David C. Ward discusses images of Abraham Lincoln that document his life in the White House (Anika Gupta, Beth Py-Lieberman, Jesse Rhodes and Ryan Reed). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/life-of-lincoln.html

The CIA burglar who went rogue: http://j.mp/UpJtCJ Using the Enigma and the Sigaba, world powers encrypted their messages in hopes of catching their opponents by surprise.

Recently digitized footage shows the 5th Div. cemetery dedication on Iwo Jima with band, gun salute and officers speaking. In the final scene, tow Marines kneel over the temporary resting place of 3/13 PFC Ernest T. Langbeen. (U.S. Marine Corps History Division and Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina)

The southern widow's Maryland house was a crucial stop on the escape route for assassin John Wilkes Booth the night he shot the president. Read more about Abraham Lincoln at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/life-of-lincoln.html

Four hundred years ago, escaped slaves formed the village of Palenque. The town’s younger generations have reconnected with their African roots through cultural traditions handed down from their ancestors (Kenneth Fletcher/SmithsonianMag.com). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/colombia-dispatches.html

Watch breathtaking underwater footage off the Panama coast, where coral reefs reproduce in a flurry of carefully-timed action. Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/A-Coral-Reefs-Mass-Spawning.html

Video by David VanZandt