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Latest Episodes:

As Hurricanes Get Stronger, Can a $34 Billion Plan Save Texas? Aug 08, 2024

After Hurricane Ike destroyed thousands of homes and inflicted an estimated $30 billion in damages in 2008, engineers hatched an ambitious plan to protect southeast Texas and its coastal refineries and shipping routes from violent storms. The $34 billion collaboration spearheaded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a harbinger of the type of massive public works projects that could be required to protect coastal cities like New York and Miami as sea levels rise and hurricanes become less predictable and more severe due to climate change.

Smithsonian magazine contributor and Texas native Xander Peters reflects on his experiences growing up in a hurricane corridor and tells us how the wildly ambitious effort came together. Then, Eric Sanderson, an ecological historian, tells us how the project could be applied to other low-lying coastal cities.

Read Xander Peters' Smithsonian magazine story about the Ike Dike here.

Let us know what you think of our show, and how we can make it better, by completing our There's More to That listener survey here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

Listen to the New York Botanical Garden podcast "Plant People" here.

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.

How to Sweat Like an Olympian Jul 25, 2024

Have you ever felt embarrassed by the need to carry a towel, or even a fresh shirt, with you during the most sweltering months of the year? You shouldn’t. Sweating is one of the most remarkable ways our bodies protect themselves when the mercury heads north.

With summer temperatures spiking around the world as the sweat-filled Olympic Games begin in Paris, we’re joined by Sarah Everts, a Smithsonian contributor and the author a marvelous book called The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration. She explains why the body’s thermostat is so ingenious, and how it cools athletes—and the rest of us. Plus: A series of snack-sized anecdotes about the Olympics!

Let us know what you think of our show, and how we can make it better, by completing our There's More to That listener survey here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

Read Smithsonian magazine's coverage of the Olympics, past and present, here, here, here, and here.

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.

Survey: Help Us Design Our Future Season Jul 15, 2024

We're over here making podcasts, and you're over there listening. Let's bridge that gap! We want to know more about you, like: why you're listening, what your favorite topics are, and what Smithsonian magazine can do to make "There's More to That" even better. Tell us what you think at smithsonianmag.com/podcastsurvey.

The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos Jul 11, 2024

Four decades ago, Pablo Escobar brought to his Medellín hideaway four hippopotamuses, the centerpieces of a menagerie that included llamas, cheetahs, lions, tigers, ostriches and other exotic fauna. After Colombian police shot Escobar dead in December 1993, veterinarians removed the animals—except the hippos, which were deemed too dangerous to approach. The hippos fled to the nearby Magdalena River and multiplied.

Today, the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are believed to number nearly 200. Their uncontrolled growth threatens the region’s fragile waterways. Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer joins us to recount this strange history and explain why Colombian conservationists have embarked upon an unusual program to sterilize these hippos in the wild via “invasive surgical castration,” a procedure that is, as he has written for Smithsonian magazine, “medically complicated, expensive and sometimes dangerous for hippos as well as for the people performing it.” Then, ecologist Rebecca Lewison tells us how her long-term study of hippo populations in Africa offers hints of how these creatures will continue to alter the Colombian ecosystem—and what authorities can do about it.

Let us know what you think of our show, and how we can make it better, by completing our There's More to That listener survey here.

Read Josh Hammer's Smithsonian story about Escobar's hippos and their descendants here.

Learn more about Rebecca Lewison and her work here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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 Crime of the Century,’ a Century Later Jun 27, 2024

The past hundred years have seen more than one high-profile prosecution branded as the “crime of the century.” The shocking 1924 crime that was among the first to carry the title turned out to be a harbinger of how public mania around criminal cases could influence the legal system, and how psychiatry would be used and abused by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike as the 20th century wore on and gave way to the 21st.

Smithsonian editor Meilan Solly introduces us to teens Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and their botched, but still deadly, effort to perpetrate “the perfect crime.” What happened next was also surprising: After confessing to the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, they were spared capital punishment thanks to their famed attorney Clarence Darrow. True-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson then tells us how public interest in Leopold and Loeb’s fate helped solidify true crime as a durable subject of fascination. She also tells us about the tools used by the prosecution that were in their infancy during the famed case.

Read Meilan Solly's Smithsonian story about Leopold and Loeb here.

Learn more about Kate Winkler Dawson, her books, her podcasts, and her work at her site.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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 / photography by Katherine Kimball, Joshua Brasted, and Jeremy Tauriac

Music by APM Music.

America’s Best New Restaurant Celebrates the Flavors of West Africa Jun 13, 2024

African cuisine has always been well represented in the United States, particularly in dishes characterized as “Southern” in origin, like gumbo or hoppin’ john. But even before chef Serigne Mbaye’s New Orleans eatery Dakar NOLA was named the Best New Restaurant of 2024 at the James Beard Awards this week, the contributions of the African diaspora to the American diet had at last begun to enjoy a long-overdue reappraisal via reality television, Netflix docuseries and, most important, a number of widely praised dining establishments: If you want to book a table at Tatiana in Manhattan, Dept of Culture in Brooklyn or Kann in Portland, you’d better plan ahead, because their tables are often booked up well in advance.

In this episode, Smithsonian contributor Rosalind Cummings-Yeates explains how the ascendancy of pan-African cuisine from “auntie” restaurants into the rarefied fine dining sphere is part of a larger and more meaningful campaign of cultural reclamation. And Mbaye tells us why it was so important to him to make Dakar NOLA a showcase of the distinctive flavors of Senegal, where he spent his formative years.

Read Rosalind's Smithsonian story about the rise of West African fine dining in the U.S. here.

See the full list of 2024's James Beard Award winners here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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 / photography by Katherine Kimball, Joshua Brasted, and Jeremy Tauriac

Music by APM Music.

How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than A Century Ago May 30, 2024

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 that 42 percent of American adults are clinically obese and that Type 2 diabetes is on the rise. 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,” 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, how Joan Baez opened the door for Taylor Swift, how machine learning is helping archeologists to read scrolls buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago and more, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Read Michelle Stacey's story about Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters in the June 2024 issue of Smithsonian here.

Listen to Ronald Young, Jr.'s podcast "Weight For It" here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

ENCORE: Those Orcas (Still) Aren't Doing What You Think May 20, 2024

Last summer, news reports of orcas deliberately tearing the propellers off of yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar thrilled observers who were eager to cast these intelligent and social pack hunters as class warriors striking a blow for the “common mammals” against the one percent. That turned out to be wishful thinking, according to guest Lori Marino, a biopsychologist who studies whale and dolphin intelligence. She told us that these six-ton whales were just having fun—if they wanted to harm the occupants of those boats, we’d know it.

Even so, these encounters are becoming a predictable seasonal occurrence between the months of May and August: A 50-foot charter vessel sank after its hull and rudder were damaged in an orca encounter near the Strait of Gibraltar on May 12. So here again is our episode on the perils of assigning human motives to wild animals, featuring Marino and Smithsonian assistant digital science editor Carlyn Kranking. This episode was originally released in September 2023.

Dr. Marino invites you to learn more about The Whale Sanctuary Project at their site. You can also see Dr. Marino in the documentary films Blackfish (2013), Unlocking the Cage (2016), and Long Gone Wild (2019).

Find prior episodes of our show here. And read the transcript of this episode here.

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.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Making 2,000-Year-Old Scrolls Readable Again May 02, 2024

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., it covered the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under tons of ash. Millennia later, in the mid-18th century, archeologists began to unearth the city, including its famed libraries, but the scrolls they found were too fragile to be unrolled and read; their contents were thought to be lost forever.

Only now, thanks to the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, scholars of the ancient world have partnered with computer programmers to unlock the contents of these priceless documents. In this episode of “There’s More to That,” science journalist and Smithsonian contributor Jo Marchant tells us about the yearslong campaign to read these scrolls. And Youssef Nader—one of the three winners of last year’s “Vesuvius Challenge” to make these clumps of vulcanized ash readable—tells us how he and his teammates achieved their historic breakthrough.

Read Smithsonian’s coverage of the Vesuvius Challenge and the Herculaneum scrolls here, here, and here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Roads Scholars Apr 18, 2024

As highways encroach ever further into animal habitats, drivers and wildlife are in greater danger than ever. And off the beaten path, decaying old forest roads are inflicting damage as well. “Roads are this incredibly disruptive force all over the planet that are truly changing wild animals’ lives and our own lives in almost unfathomable, unaccountable ways,” says science journalist Ben Goldfarb, author of the 2023 book Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet.

Ben wrote about this problem for the March 2024 issue of Smithsonian. For Earth Day, we’ll talk to Ben about what’s being done to make the relationship between roads and lands more harmonious, and we’ll meet Fraser Shilling — a scientist at UC Davis who’ll tell us what he’s learned from his rigorous scholarly examination of… roadkill. Meep meep!

Learn more about Ben and his work at his site.

Learn more about Fraser and the UC Davis Road Ecology Center here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Why We Love Eclipses Apr 02, 2024

Eclipses have been a subject of fascination throughout human history, and the fact that we now have a clearer understanding of what they actually are—at least in the celestial mechanics sense—than we did in centuries past has not made them any less exciting. With the North American total solar eclipse just days away as we’re releasing this episode, and the next one visible from the contiguous United States not due until 2044, we’ll learn about the eclipses from astronomy obsessive (and Smithsonian science correspondent) Dan Falk and hear from Indigenous astronomer Samantha Doxtator about how the Haudenosaunee people have observed and interpreted these mysterious daylight darkenings of the skies over many centuries.

You can read Dan’s Smithsonian story about how ancient civilizations responded to eclipses here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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 Man Behind "Manhunt" Mar 21, 2024

Before it was even published in 2006, historian James Swanson’s book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer attracted the notice of Hollywood. After several prior attempts to adapt the nonfiction thriller for the screen, the first two episodes of the seven-part Apple TV+ miniseries Manhunt finally premiered on March 15, with the subsequent five arriving weekly. Meet Swanson — a self-described Lincoln obsessive — and hear about what moved him to write the book, what his role in its long-gestating adaptation was, and how he came to be so obsessed with our most-admired president in the first place.

Smithsonian magazine related articles:

The real history behind the events dramatized in “Manhunt,”

James Swanson’s favorite Lincoln artifacts.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Before Beyoncé and Taylor Swift Ran the World, There Was Joan Baez Mar 07, 2024

Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have achieved a degree of power in the music industry that singer/songwriters of earlier eras like Joan Baez—as the folk icon tells us—never even contemplated. Six decades ago, Baez was part of a folk revival that regarded music not merely as entertainment but as a vessel for political engagement and social change. In the documentary Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, the now-83-year-old musician and activist reflects on her career and legacy.

Smithsonian senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz interviewed Baez about the film and about the shifting intersection of art and activism. We present excerpts from that conversation in this episode. Then, veteran music critic Evelyn McDonnell discusses how the political dimensions of pop music have changed since Baez’s era, and what it means that many fans now look Beyoncé and Taylor Swift not just for great music, but for comment on the state of the world.

Clips from Joan Baez: I Am a Noise in this episode are used with permission from Magnolia Pictures & Mead Street Films. Learn more about that film here.

Evelyn McDonnell’s latest book is The World According to Joan Didion. You can learn more about Evelyn and her work at her site, Populism.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

How to Separate Fact From Myth in the Extraordinary Story of Sojourner Truth Feb 22, 2024

The facts of Sojourner Truth’s life are inspiring: Born into slavery in the late 1790s, she became an influential abolitionist and Pentecostal preacher, transfixing audiences from the mid 1840s through the late 1870s with her candid and powerful voice, not to mention her singing. Tall and strong, Truth was physically formidable, too. No one was using the term “intersectionality” in the 19th century, but Truth embodied this idea, declaring that her Blackness and her womanhood were equally essential facets of her identity.

But many people, both in Truth’s lifetime and in the approximately 140 years since her death, have found it useful to recast Truth as they wish to remember her instead of as she was. There’s no better example of this than “Ain’t I a woman?,” the hypothetical that Truth supposedly put to the audience when she addressed a women’s rights convention in 1851 in Akron, Ohio—the city where a public plaza will be dedicated in her honor this spring. There’s reason to doubt she said that, or at least that she said it in that way.

In this episode, we speak with two historians who’ve dug into Truth’s complicated legacy and challenged much of what’s been written about this American icon. Cynthia Greenlee reported on recent efforts to honor Truth for the March 2024 issue of Smithsonian. Nell Irvin Painter wrote the groundbreaking 1996 biography Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, and she’s hard at work on a follow-up volume titled Sojourner Truth Was a New Yorker and She Didn’t Say That. Together, Greenlee and Painter help us understand us who Sojourner Truth really was, and why several generations of activists have claimed her as a symbol — at the expense of our understanding of her as a person.

Read Cynthia Greenlee’s March 2024 Smithsonian story about Sojourner Truth here. You can learn more about Dr. Greenlee and her work at her site.

You can learn more about Dr. Nell Irvin Painter’s work as an author, artist, and historian at her site.

And read more here for the history of Mar-a-Lago mentioned in our dinner party fact.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

How We See Oppenheimer (redux) Jan 23, 2024

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.

See Minesh Bacrania’s photographs of Los Alamos and read Smithsonian senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz’s text here 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.

The Books We Loved Dec 21, 2023

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.

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.

When Your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Is a Civil War Hero Dec 14, 2023

Photographer Drew Gardner has a passion for history. His long-term project, “The Descendants,” wherein he recreates famous portraits of historical figures featuring their direct offspring, is his most visible expression of this interest. But like a lot of people who study history, Gardner has in recent years begun to contemplate more deeply the question of whose stories have been judged worthy of preservation, and whose have been allowed to fade into obscurity. That was how he decided to shift his specific focus to locating and photographing Black American descendants of Civil War veterans.

You can take a look at Gardner’s photographs and read magazine editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz’s exploration of their meaning here.

On the latest episode of the Smithsonian podcast “There’s More to That,” I speak with Janisse Flowers and her 9-year-son, Neikoye, who are descended from the Civil War drummer boy David Miles Moore Jr. After some reflection, Janisse and her husband decided to grant Gardner’s request to photograph Neikoye dressed in a replica of Moore’s Union Army uniform. Both Janisse and Neikoye share their surprise over how this experience made them more conscious of their heritage.

I’m also joined by Gardner himself, who describes the challenges—and, he hopes, the potential benefits—of asking Black Americans to revisit one of the most painful chapters of America’s history by (almost) literally stepping into their ancestors’ shoes.

You can learn more about Drew and his work at his website.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Why Wildfires Are Burning Hotter and Longer Nov 30, 2023

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, begins this week in Dubai. A new topic on the agenda this year is how wildfires are emerging as a serious health risk not just to those in their immediate vicinity, but even to people thousands of miles away. Last summer, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted not only as far south as the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, but even across the Atlantic Ocean.

We speak with John Vaillant, whose book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World recounts a 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray, Canada that dislocated tens of thousands of people and caused billions of dollars in damage. That natural disaster seemed like a terrifying outlier when Vaillant began his reporting, but 2023’s unprecedented fire activity suggest that Fort McMurray was merely the shape of things to come. John explains how climate change is making wildfires hotter and harder to contain. Next, we’re joined by photojournalist Andria Hautamaki, who observed a “prescribed burn” in Plumas County, California. Andria shares how these kinds of carefully planned, intentionally set fires can be a useful tool for preventing more destructive blazes.

Read an excerpt from John’s book Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World here, and learn more about John and his other books here.

Andria’s reporting for her wildfires story from the April/May 2023 issue of Smithsonian was supported by the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. You can learn more about Andria and her work at her website. Andria recommends these resources for anyone seeking more information about prescribed burns:

Your state’s Natural Resources Conservation Service
The Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils
The Great Plains Fire Science Exchange, which can help you find Prescribed Burn Associations in your area
The National Fire Protection Association, aka Firewise USA
The Cooperative Extension of any universities in your region

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

How NASA Captured Asteroid Dust to Find the Origins of Life Nov 16, 2023

Capturing a piece of an asteroid and bringing it to Earth is even more difficult than it is time-consuming. After four years in space, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx craft made a brief landing on the asteroid Bennu to collect samples of the ancient rock. Six months later, part of the spacecraft began its journey home to Earth, and earlier this fall, that sample collection canister landed, via parachute, in Utah. Scientists will be studying those samples of Bennu for decades in the hope of unlocking the mystery of how life on Earth began — but they’ve already learned enough to get them excited.

In this episode, we speak with Linda Shiner, the former editor of Air & Space / Smithsonian magazine, about the challenges and triumphs of the OSIRIS-REx mission, and what scientists hope it will teach us about how life on Earth began.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Healing the Wounds of the Vietnam War Nov 02, 2023

Every Veterans Day, Jeremy Redmon thinks about his father, Donald Lee Redmon — an Air Force veteran who survived more than 300 combat missions over Southeast Asia, but who took his own life when Jeremy was 14. This year, Redmon traveled back to Hanoi with a group of former prisoners of war, many of whom had flown the same missions as his dad. Jeremy asked these veterans questions he was never able to ask his own father, about how they’d healed from the war and lived rewarding lives thereafter.

In this episode, guest host Jennie Rothenberg Gritz speaks with Redmon about the complexities of the Vietnam War, as well as his own experiences as a reporter in Iraq. Then, Vietnamese American author Mai Elliott discusses her family’s experiences in North and South Vietnam, and how her feelings about the conflict changed throughout the 1960s.

Read Jeremy Redmon’s Smithsonian story “Fifty Years After Their Release, Former Vietnam POWs Journey Back to Hanoi” here.

Order Mai Elliott’s book The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions.

From the magazine, our team is Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, 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.

How the Osage Changed Martin Scorsese’s Mind About "Killers of the Flower Moon" Oct 19, 2023

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.

Sandra’s Smithsonian story about Native representation in cinema is here. You can learn more about Sandra and her work at her site.

Dennis McAuliffe Jr.’s The Deaths of Sybil Bolton: An American History, which Chief Gray cites as formative in this episode, is here.

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.

A Brief History of Book Banning in America Oct 05, 2023

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 students have been even more aggressive and draconian. What’s new about these efforts is the subject that binds the most-challenged titles: Most of them address themes of LGBT+ identity or gender expression.

In this episode, we talk with journalist Colleen Connolly about Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, the first book ever to be suppressed in North America. What did the Puritans find so threatening about it, and how has this book echoed through subsequent centuries? Then we’re joined by Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, for a wide-ranging conversation about the history of book bans in the United States, how a resurgent wave of book bans in many states differs from those of prior eras, and why organized attempts to prevent specific people from reading specific books usually fail.

A transcript of this episode can be found here.

Read Colleen’s Smithsonian story about New English Canaan here.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Those Orcas Aren't Doing What You Think Sep 21, 2023

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, demonstrably intelligent mammals as class warriors fighting back against the 1 percent is strong, and the memes have been fun. But trying to understand animal behavior in human terms is a mistake.

In this episode, we speak with Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian’s assistant digital science editor, about why stories about animal behavior are so popular with our readers, and how she decides which ones deserve more scrutiny. Then, I speak with Lori Marino, a biopsychologist with a specific focus on whale and dolphin intelligence, about what’s really happening between the orcas and the yacht set.

Dr. Marino invites you to learn more about The Whale Sanctuary Project at their site. You can also see Dr. Marino in the documentary films Blackfish (2013), Unlocking the Cage (2016), and Long Gone Wild (2019).

Find prior episodes of our show here. And read the transcript of this episode here.

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.

Meet the WWII Battalion of Black Women That Inspired an Army Base’s New Name Sep 07, 2023

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 made it her business to get the 6888 their belated recognition, and with Smithsonian magazine senior writer Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, who wrote about Col. Cummings' quest for the March 2023 issue of Smithsonian.

NOTE: In the interval since we recorded our interview with Col. Cummings, another veteran from the 6888 has died. With the passing of Crescencia J. Garcia last month at the age of 103, there are now five women who served in the 6888 during World War II who remain alive.

Learn more about the women of the 6888th Central Postal Battalion at the Women of the 6888th site.

Find prior episodes of our show here.

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.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz.

Music by APM Music.

Beyond the Titanic: The Real Science of Deep Sea Exploration Aug 24, 2023

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 Casey, who has written four best-selling books about the ocean and its creatures, the newest of which is The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean. Susan tells us why understanding the ocean is key to humanity’s survival, and how, while serious research and shipwreck tourism may have some overlap, they remain two very different things.

Read Tony Perrottet’s June 2019 Smithsonian profile of Stockton Rush. Learn more about Tony and his work at his site.

Read an excerpt from Susan Casey’s new book, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean. Learn more about Susan and her work at her site.

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.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz (contains elements by Madelgarius, via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Music by APM Music.

What Happens When the Colorado River Dries Up? Aug 10, 2023

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 become the new normal?

Read “The Breathtaking Glen Canyon Reveals Its Secrets,” photographs & text by Pete McBride, Smithsonian, October 2022. Learn more about Pete and his work at his site.

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.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz.

Music by APM Music.

How We See Oppenheimer. Plus: Smithsonian’s Inside Look at the Top-Secret Los Alamos Site Jul 27, 2023

In the episode:

Read Andy Kifer’s “The Real Story Behind Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer” here.

See Minesh Bacrania’s photographs of Los Alamos and read Smithsonian senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz’s text here or in the July/August 2023 issue of Smithsonian.

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.

He's (Not) Just Ken: The True History of Barbie’s Beau Jul 27, 2023

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 history “Not Your Average Beau,” here or in the June 2023 issue of Smithsonian. Emily is the author of The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society and Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities. Learn more about Emily and her work here, or subscribe to her Substack newsletter.

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.

Coming July 27: There's More to That from Smithsonian magazine and PRX Jul 20, 2023

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.

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