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There's More to That

Smithsonian Magazine

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.  Every two weeks, There’s More to That will give curious listeners a fresh understanding of the world we all inhabit.

Host Ari Daniel is an independent science journalist who has reported across six continents and contributes regularly to National Public Radio among other outlets. In a previous life, he trained grey seal pups and studied wild Norwegian killer whales. In the fifth grade, Ari won the "Most Contagious Smile" award.

© 2023 - 2025 Smithsonian Magazine

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.  Every two weeks, There’s More to That will give curious listeners a fresh understanding of the world we all inhabit.

Host Ari Daniel is an independent science journalist who has reported across six continents and contributes regularly to National Public Radio among other outlets. In a previous life, he trained grey seal pups and studied wild Norwegian killer whales. In the fifth grade, Ari won the "Most Contagious Smile" award.

© 2023 - 2025 Smithsonian Magazine
19hr 10min
Thumbnail for "Looking Back on the L.A. Wildfires Through the Lens of Two Photographers".
As wildfire becomes an increasingly lethal force that’s remaking broad swaths of California, people and animals alike are in the hot seat
May 1, 202529min 10sec41.95 MB
Thumbnail for "Dive Into the Deeper Story of the American Revolution on How New England and Virginia United Against the British".
Inside the steeple of Old North Church and among the Southern Colonies, less familiar stories of the events from 250 years ago emerge
April 17, 202529min 23sec42.26 MB
Thumbnail for "A Field of Dreams Built in an Unlikely Place: A Japanese American Internment Camp".
A baseball diamond buried long ago at Manzanar has been rebuilt to honor the Americans who once played the sport there.
April 3, 202538min 13sec54.96 MB
Thumbnail for "The Swarm of People Intent on Saving Our Bees".
An army of experts and citizen scientists devoted to documenting and protecting the country’s native bees is telling us a lot about the hidden lives of these insects
March 20, 202524min 42sec35.54 MB
Thumbnail for "A Mystery Surrounding the Grave of JFK Is Solved".
A sculpture recognizing a spontaneous gesture of affection toward the slain president vanished into thin air more than half a century ago. Here’s the story of how it was just recently rediscovered.
March 6, 202539min 37sec56.97 MB
Thumbnail for "The Truth About the Sex Lives of Dinosaurs".
Fossils are providing more and more clues about how dinosaurs attracted one another and reproduced, which contributed to their remarkable ability to populate much of the Earth
February 20, 202529min 39sec42.64 MB
Thumbnail for "Why Auroras Are Suddenly Everywhere All at Once".
Auroras have long mystified humanity. Now that we know what they are and why they happen, we can better predict how best to experience them
February 6, 202529min 53sec28.7 MB
Thumbnail for "How to Use Renaissance Paintings to Improve the Farming of Tomorrow".
An arboreal archaeologist roots around the Italian countryside and in centuries-old frescoes for a cornucopia of fruits long forgotten—but still viable to grow and consume.
January 23, 202525min 38sec24.62 MB
Thumbnail for "Coming January 23: There’s More to That from Smithsonian magazine and PRX, Season 2".
January 16, 20257min 12sec10.36 MB
Thumbnail for "RE-BROADCAST: Meet the Wide-Awakes, The Club of Cape-Wearing Activists Who Helped Elect Lincoln and Spark the Civil War".
January 9, 202536min 26sec52.41 MB
Thumbnail for "[Rebroadcast] Meet The 6888: The WWII Battalion of Black Women That Inspired the New Netflix Film".
December 19, 202438min 2sec71.39 MB
Thumbnail for " As Hurricanes Get Stronger, Can a $34 Billion Plan Save Texas?".
August 8, 202432min 36sec78.27 MB
Thumbnail for "How to Sweat Like an Olympian".
July 25, 202430min 22sec72.91 MB
Thumbnail for "Survey: Help Us Design Our Future Season".
July 15, 202434sec838.79 kB
Thumbnail for "The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos".
Ever since the demise of Pablo Escobar, his pet hippos have flourished, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem and terrorizing local communities
July 11, 202429min 31sec70.86 MB
Thumbnail for "‘The Crime of the Century,’ a Century Later".
June 27, 202435min 6sec84.26 MB
Thumbnail for "America’s Best New Restaurant Celebrates the Flavors of West Africa".
The James Beard Award-winning Dakar NOLA is at the forefront of a generation of fine-dining establishments determined to educate foodies about the true origins of “Southern” cuisine
June 13, 202427min 18sec65.52 MB
Thumbnail for "How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than A Century Ago".
A food history writer and an influential podcast host tell us how our thinking about health and body weight has—and hasn’t—evolved ever since Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters took the nation by storm
May 30, 202436min 42sec88.09 MB
Thumbnail for "ENCORE: Those Orcas (Still) Aren't Doing What You Think".
May 20, 202428min 52sec55.44 MB
Thumbnail for "How Artificial Intelligence Is Making 2,000-Year-Old Scrolls Readable Again".
The innovative “Vesuvius Challenge” unlocked a mystery that had confounded archeologists for centuries
May 2, 202435min 53sec86.15 MB
Thumbnail for "Roads Scholars".
Meet a roadkill scientist and a journalist tracking how roads mess with nature—and what we can do about it.
April 18, 202425min 38sec61.55 MB
Thumbnail for "Why We Love Eclipses".
Two perspectives on the astronomical phenomenon that has fascinated humans for as long as we’ve been watching the skies
April 2, 202428min 30sec54.66 MB
Thumbnail for "The Man Behind "Manhunt"".
Meet James Swanson, the lifelong Abraham Lincoln obsessive who wrote the nonfiction thriller that inspired the new Apple TV+ miniseries.
March 21, 202432min 50sec62.97 MB
Thumbnail for "Before Beyoncé and Taylor Swift Ran the World, There Was Joan Baez".
Today’s artists — especially women — are sometimes criticized for speaking out, but for Baez, art and activism were indivisible.
March 7, 202432min 5sec61.55 MB
Thumbnail for "How to Separate Fact From Myth in the Extraordinary Story of Sojourner Truth ".
Two historians tell us why the pioneering 19th-century feminist, suffragist and abolitionist’s legacy has so frequently been misrepresented.
February 22, 202438min 4sec73.01 MB
Thumbnail for "How We See Oppenheimer (redux)".
We look at prior dramatizations of this very complicated man—including one wherein J. Robert Oppenheimer played himself!
January 23, 202418min 58sec27.33 MB
Thumbnail for "The Books We Loved ".
Smithsonian editors choose their favorite (mostly) nonfiction of (mostly) 2023
December 21, 202333min 13sec63.72 MB
Thumbnail for "When Your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Is a Civil War Hero ".
Can recreating photographs from the 19th century connect a family to its lost heritage?
December 14, 202327min 18sec52.42 MB
Thumbnail for "Why Wildfires Are Burning Hotter and Longer".
As conflagrations become hotter and more difficult to contain, a citizen movement to try to manage them through “prescribed burns” is growing
November 30, 202333min 1sec63.42 MB
Thumbnail for "How NASA Captured Asteroid Dust to Find the Origins of Life ".
The sample of the space rock Bennu that OSIRIS-REx collected could unlock an ancient existential mystery
November 16, 202331min59.54 MB
Thumbnail for "Healing the Wounds of the Vietnam War".
Two perspectives on the 20th-century conflict look back, five decades after the fighting stopped, to discuss what was lost and what is remembered today
November 2, 202334min 2sec65.35 MB
Thumbnail for " How the Osage Changed Martin Scorsese’s Mind About "Killers of the Flower Moon"".
"Killers of the Flower Moon" sets a new standard in its nuanced depiction of Osage life. In many prior Native-themed films, Hollywood didn’t even try.
October 19, 202335min 11sec67.57 MB
Thumbnail for "A Brief History of Book Banning in America".
The censorship tactic that started with the Puritans 400 years ago had a massive resurgence across libraries and schools in 2022
October 5, 202326min 16sec50.45 MB
Thumbnail for "Those Orcas Aren't Doing What You Think".
News reports about orca, otter and bird “attacks” has us wondering if maybe trying to understand animal behavior in human terms is the wrong approach.
September 21, 202328min 52sec55.44 MB
Thumbnail for "Meet the WWII Battalion of Black Women That Inspired an Army Base’s New Name".
Retired Colonel Edna Cummings has spent years campaigning to get the 6888 the recognition they earned.
September 7, 202337min 7sec71.29 MB
Thumbnail for "Beyond the Titanic: The Real Science of Deep Sea Exploration".
Two journalists tell us why understanding the ocean is key to humanity’s survival, and how while serious research and shipwreck tourism may have some overlap, they are two very different things.
August 24, 202334min 35sec83 MB
Thumbnail for "What Happens When the Colorado River Dries Up?".
What happens when one of the nation's largest rivers dries up? Photojournalist Pete McBride tells us about the consequences of a prolonged drought.
August 10, 202323min 49sec57.2 MB
Thumbnail for "How We See Oppenheimer. Plus: Smithsonian’s Inside Look at the Top-Secret Los Alamos Site".
We look at prior dramatizations of this very complicated man—including one wherein J. Robert Oppenheimer played himself!
July 27, 202317min 42sec25.5 MB
Thumbnail for "He's (Not) Just Ken: The True History of Barbie’s Beau".
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.
July 27, 202325min 37sec36.89 MB
Thumbnail for "Coming July 27: There's More to That from Smithsonian magazine and PRX".
Smithsonian magazine journalists on how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time
July 20, 20231min 34sec3.76 MB
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