Sidedoor

Beetles make up a quarter of all known animal life on Earth. A QUARTER! Beetles are everywhere, doing almost everything. From eating flesh off skeletons to making poop disappear, these little buggers make the world a lot less gross for the rest of us… and look cool doing it. With a little help from the Smithsonian’s beetle experts, we’ll discover why these tiny powerhouses are so wildly diverse, w...

When baby Asian elephant Linh Mai was born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, her mother rejected her. Then things got worse. Linh Mai couldn’t digest her formula, she was losing weight, and her care team was running out of time. Join us behind the scenes at the National Zoo to learn how curators and "turd nerds" race to save Linh Mai with an unusual treatment: a fecal microbiota transplant. But n...

Season 13 of Sidedoor is almost here! Follow us behind the scenes at the National Zoo to meet the new baby elephant, Linh Mai. We open the vaults to see some of the weirdest beetles in the collection. And we track the wild journey of the Declaration of Independence after it was signed (which was actually not on July 4, 1776). New episodes begin next week! 

One of the deadliest poisons known to man is now used to treat wrinkles, migraines, and even, maybe, depression. How did that happen?  This is a special episode from Unexplainable   podcast from Vox and the Vox Media Network.  Guests:  Jean Carruthers , ophthalmologist and “godmother” of cosmetic Botox.  David Simpson , neurologist at Mount Sinai hospital in New York.  Axel Wollmer , psychiatrist...

What happens when we slow down enough to really experience art? We visit a museum to discover how slow looking at art can cultivate awe, empathy, and a greater sense of connection in a distracted world. This episode comes from the podcast The Science of Happiness.  Science of Happiness on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-science-of-happiness/id1340505607 Science of Happine...

How do you stop being so afraid? Tracy Twombly had such a strong phobia of spiders, it was messing with her life — stressing her out while she was working at her native plant nursery or hiking through the woods. So, she embarked on a journey to make peace with her eight-legged neighbors (even the extra hairy ones). This is a special episode from the Up From Dust   podcast, produced by the NPR Netw...

For more than two decades, the StoryCorps silver Airstream trailer has crisscrossed the country, recording the stories of everyday Americans. In this episode honoring the 250th anniversary of the United States, our friends at The StoryCorps Podcast introduce you to the kaleidoscope of voices that make up these United States. 

In 1935, a diver searching Lake Champlain found something extraordinary: a nearly intact warship from the American Revolution. It was the Gunboat Philadelphia. In this episode, we dive into the story of how a ragtag American army built a fleet of ships to stand up against the British Navy in 1776 ... and lost. But that loss changed the course of U.S. history.  So, how did Benedict Arnold and a bun...

In the 1880s, a conservator at the Smithsonian set out for Montana to capture an American bison before the dwindling species vanished forever. He returned with six taxidermied bison that he displayed in the museum.  The bison diorama wowed visitors so much that it helped kickstart a movement to save the species. But then, just like that, the stuffed bison vanished!  Where did they go?  With the na...

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III has spent a lifetime thinking about how history gets told. Before becoming the head of the Smithsonian, he was a curator, someone whose job is deciding which stories, people, and objects help us make sense of ourselves. So as America approaches its 250th birthday, Lizzie wanted to know: if you had to tell the story of the United States through just a handf...

A screw. A stuffed possum. A shoe-sizing device. What could any of these objects possibly tell us about the history of the United States? When we think of historic artifacts, we tend to picture the extraordinary: Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch, the original Kermit the Frog, Martin Luther King Jr.'s draft of the "I Have a Dream" speech. But the story of America can just as easily be found in the ev...

Everyone thought ghosts lived in the basement of Stockton, California's old Daguhoy Lodge. So, nobody went down there. But when one man refused to be spooked, he made a discovery that would bring the ghosts back to life.  In this episode, we explore how an accidental discovery resurrected the stories of a nearly forgotten generation of Filipino immigrants who came to work in the fields. Why did th...

How did a car with chopped suspension and hydraulics become a symbol of pride and self-expression for an entire community? We'll cruise back in time to see how lowriders emerged from the post-WWII car craze and became a powerful symbol of Mexican American pride. It's a long road with a few speed bumps, but lowriders are now more popular than ever (especially in Japan!) So, lean your seat back and...

At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, archivists are working with Native communities to correct the historical record … one photo at a time. In this episode, we go inside the archives, where century-old photographs once labeled “Indian man” or “woman in costume” are being reexamined and renamed so they can be reconnected to living descendants. It’s a painstaking effort that’...

A long time ago, in movie theaters not far away, Star Wars: A New Hope revolutionized American entertainment. In honor of May the 4th, we explore how a scrappy space fantasy reinvented a tale as old as time — and gave Americans hope in a time of difficulty. We'll also trace the journey of two bickering droids from a galaxy far, far away to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  Gu...

As we approach the nation's 250th birthday, we are looking back at some of the most important moments in American history. One of those moments is when Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. But, as we discovered, there’s actually no proof that Ross sewed the first flag. In fact, we don't even know what the first American flag even looked like!  In this episode of Sidedoor , we unravel this vex...

When a Smithsonian archaeology intern opened a dusty box of bones in a Panamanian warehouse, she didn't expect to find a mystery, let alone a potential crime scene. But Nina Hirai’s discovery of a tapir skull riddled with what appeared to be bullet holes sparked an investigation that would lead her several miles up the Panama Canal and nearly forty years into the past. Join us as we unspool the st...

What does it look like for something to be made in America?  Through the photography of Christopher Payne, we journey across the past, present and future of American manufacturing to answer this question. From centuries-old textile mills to modern assembly lines, Payne’s photographs offer a rare, behind-the-scenes view of how everyday objects—from pencils to airplanes to marshmallow Peeps—are made...

Something dark and invisible makes up as much as 90 to 95 percent of the universe—and it took a little girl staring out a bedroom window at the night sky to bring it to light.  As a child, Vera Rubin built her own telescope. As an adult, she uncovered a problem no telescope could solve: stars at the edges of galaxies were moving just as fast as those near the center. The math contradicted everythi...

A string of unsolved murders in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1970s led police to the door of a young Korean immigrant named Chol Soo Lee — who was quickly arrested and sentenced to life in prison. But when investigative journalist K.W. Lee started digging into the case, he discovered a world of twisted law and order that went far deeper than one man. The articles K.W. wrote about what he uncov...

Orville and Wilbur Wright have been immortalized as the men opened the skies to human flight. But could they have achieved such great heights without the wind beneath their wings — their sister? Katharine Wright was her brothers' biggest champion, official spokesperson, closest confidante and the only one of the Wright siblings with a college degree. For years, Katharine, Wilbur and Orville were i...

Clifton Chenier grew up in rural Louisiana, watching how his father’s accordion could magically turn front porches into dance parties. When he was old enough to play himself, Chenier began blending the Creole zydeco of his childhood with R&B and blues sounds of the 1940s and ’50s. His style packed dance halls across Louisiana and eventually carried zydeco to stages around the world. Through ra...

He’s a symbol of patriotism, protest, and power. But behind the red, white, and blue is a real man—and a disputed American origin story. How did a real guy go from meatpacker to meme, to personification of a nation and, eventually, the most famous Army recruiter in history? I WANT YOU… to listen and find out. Guests:  Frank Blazich , curator of modern military history at the Smithsonian's National...

American newspaper publisher and all-around eccentric, Charles Francis Hall, was an unlikely candidate to become an Arctic explorer. Nevertheless, he made three trips to the frozen north, until he died there under suspicious circumstances. Sharpen your powers of deduction and join us on Sidedoor for an epic frozen whodunit, featuring shipwreck, romance, and a social media darling with a dark secre...

It started with a messy lab and a mysterious mold. But turning “mold juice” into the world’s first antibiotic would take a sick policeman, a market cantaloupe, and an extraordinary wartime collaboration between scientists, governments, and industry. This is the story of how penicillin changed the world. Guests: Kevin Brown , Trust Archivist to Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and curator of t...