There's More to That

Book-banning might seem like a relic of less enlightened times, but the practice is back in a big way. The American Library Association reports that 2022 saw more attempts to have books removed from public libraries than in any prior year this century — indeed, it documented more than twice as many attempted bans in 2022 than in 2021. In schools, attempts to keep certain books out of the hands of...

It’s not the most urgent news story that’s gripped the world since 2020, but it might be the weirdest: The last three years have seen more 400 “encounters”— many reports have used the word “attacks”—between orca whales and boats in the Strait of Gibraltar. Because the orcas are particularly fond of tearing the propellers off of yachts, the temptation to characterize these six-ton, pack-hunting, de...

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion was the only unit comprised entirely of Black women to have been deployed overseas during World War II, and it had served a critical function: clearing the backlog of mail that marked the only line of communication between American soldiers in Europe and their loved ones back home. In this episode, we speak with retired Army Colonel Edna Cummings , who...

After five people perished on a controversial submersible dive to the wreckage of the Titanic in June, we got to thinking about what genuine undersea exploration looks like. In this episode, we speak with Tony Perrottet , who profiled the late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush for Smithsonian magazine in 2019, about our ancient fascination with exploring hostile environments. Then we’re joined by Susan...

What happens when one of the nation's largest rivers dries up? Photojournalist Pete McBride tells us about the consequences of a prolonged drought in the Colorado River, which provides drinking water and electricity to millions of Americans, and shares his experience walking the river from end to end. What can we learn from the landscape revealed by the historically low water levels, and will they...

He is (K)enough… or is he? With filmmaker Greta Gerwig's Barbie breaking box-office records—and devoting much of its story to Ken's existential crisis—we wondered if there's any more to Barbie's perennial plus-one. Journalist and lifelong Barbie fan Emily Tamkin talks us through Ken’s development, or lack thereof, over the decades. Read Emily’s “A Cultural History of Barbie,” and Chris’s brief Ken...

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 the episode: Physicist-turned-photographer Minesh Bacrania shares his experience photogra...

Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only it can — through a lens on the world that is insightful and grounded in richly reported stories. On There's More to That , meet the magazine's journalists and hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time.