There’s a new sculpture at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: a giant torch that’s strikingly familiar – and entirely unique. Artist Abigail DeVille has reimagined the Statue of Liberty’s torch to shine a light on historical contradictions of American freedom. Through her work, DeVille asks us to re-examine the stories we’ve inherited as a nation, including the story of Lady Liberty herself. As it turns out, the statue holding her torch alight in New York Harbor today has c...
Nov 17, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a wild herb that countless cultures have used for centuries as a wonder drug to cure any ailment. It's so rare and valuable that it’s been dug to extinction nearly everywhere, except a small area of the United States. This time on Sidedoor, we go searching for the elusive wild American ginseng — and find that scientists, conservationists, and criminals are also on the hunt.
Nov 03, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Leeches don’t get a lot of love. They’re slimy, wriggly, and, well, they suck — blood that is. But there’s a lot to learn about the lowly leech. Led by a troupe of Smithsonian experts, we’ll discover how these toothy hangers-on wormed their way into medical practices, performance art, and EVERY human cavity. Yes, even that one. It's a journey of discovery from the swamp to the stage and deep into the vaults of the Smithsonian. And it just may leave you with a little more appreciation (dare we sa...
Oct 20, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The endangered Asian Elephant may be a conservation success story as its rapid decline appears to be stabilizing. But this has created a new set of problems. With little remaining habitat, these elephants have nowhere left to go but into roads, farms, and cities. This time on Sidedoor, we look at what happens when wild elephants go urban.
Oct 06, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sidedoor returns for its seventh season on Wednesday, October 6th!
Sep 29, 2021•1 min•Transcript available on Metacast A new season of Sidedoor is just two weeks away! In the meantime, we’re sharing a special guest episode from Wonder Media Network’s podcast, “Encyclopedia Womannica.” In this episode, you’ll hear about the life of Patsy Mink, the first Asian-American woman to serve in Congress and run for U.S. President. She was also the first woman of color elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She made a brief appearance in the Sidedoor episode, “Votes for Hawaiians,” and here you’ll hear more about ho...
Sep 22, 2021•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast The “Men of Progress” painting, from 1862, shows the first Secretary of the Smithsonian surrounded by a group of scientists and inventors credited with “altering the course of contemporary civilization.” But what may be most remarkable about this tableau is who’s not there. To mark the 175th anniversary of the Smithsonian’s founding, the National Portrait Gallery’s Portraits podcast takes us back in time – to trace how the concept of progress has evolved, and who current Smithsonian Secretary Lo...
Aug 18, 2021•29 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast This summer – for the first time ever - skateboarding will be an Olympic sport. In honor of its Olympic debut, we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes: the story of how the best women skateboarders stood toe-to-toe with the most powerful people in the industry to demand equal pay. One of those women is none other than Mimi Knoop, who is coaching the USA women’s skateboarding team. In this bonus episode, we also talk about how skateboarding's entry onto the Olympic stage is a major achievem...
Jul 23, 2021•35 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast 100 years ago, in the hills of West Virginia, Black, white and European immigrant coal miners banded together to demand better pay and safer working conditions and were met with machine guns. While the story made headlines in 1921, it didn't make it into the history books. In our final episode of the season, we unearth this buried history to help mark the centennial of the largest labor uprising in American history.
Jul 14, 2021•29 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Every 17 years, the notorious Brood X cicadas crawl out of the earth by the billions to deafen Washington D.C. After nearly two decades underground, they spend their few short weeks in the sun singing, mating, and dying so the next generation can start anew. The cicadas' distinctive sound and strange life cycle have captivated our human ancestors for millennia, inspiring songs, art, royal attire and even some unique burial rituals.
Jun 30, 2021•30 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast When Diosa Costello took the stage in the 1939 production of “Too Many Girls,” she became the first Puerto Rican performer to tread the boards on Broadway. She was fearless, funny, and brimming with talent. She never considered herself a trailblazer, but her legacy – and the gowns she left at the Smithsonian – tell a different story
Jun 16, 2021•25 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast LeRoy Neiman was a colorful man, both figuratively and literally. His handlebar mustache, long cigar, and sketchpad were fixtures at the sidelines of American pop culture: from boxing matches to jazz clubs and political conventions. His paintings, sketches, and prints papered the second half of the 20th century, highlighting American icons in his colorful expressionist style. He was rich, famous, and adored by many Americans… but not the art critics.
Jun 02, 2021•32 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast One hundred years ago this week, from May 31 and June 1, 1921, a mob targeted and destroyed nearly 40 blocks of a wealthy black neighborhood in North Tulsa, Oklahoma. No one knows how many people died, no one was ever convicted, and no one really talked about it nearly a century later. This is the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre and why it's important that you know it. At least 1,256 homes, along with churches, schools, businesses and even a hospital were deliberately burned or destroyed. Recen...
May 26, 2021•24 min•Ep 13•Transcript available on Metacast Groucho and Freddy. Oryx and ostriches. Cats and dinosaurs. These things go together like… well, they really don’t go together at all. These are fun-sized stories in one goodie bag of an episode. It’s Sidedoor’s third “Best of the Rest!”
May 19, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast We carry portraits around all the time: pocket-sized history lessons in the form of dollars and cents. The recent decision to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill has us thinking about who’s on our money, and how they got there. This episode of the “Portraits” podcast, from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, takes a whirlwind tour of money of yore, featuring everything from piles of bunnies to George Washington’s nipples. This episode will have you taking a closer look at the portraits y...
May 05, 2021•30 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast In 1918, a flu pandemic killed more than 50 million people worldwide. Forty years later, it nearly happened again. This week on Sidedoor we go back to a time when the viruses were winning, and we remember one man, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, whose vaccine virtuosity helped turn the tide in the war against infectious diseases . We’ve updated this episode with a bonus interview to reflect on what we’ve learned from our current pandemic. If you want to learn more, please see vaccinesandus.org ....
Apr 28, 2021•28 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast Henrietta the river herring is not a particularly glamorous fish. But she’s got grit. Every summer, she swims out to the Atlantic ocean, and every spring, she makes the 500 mile journey back to Maryland’s Patapsco River, where she was born—a habitat that’s been only partially accessible to herring like her for more than a century. But this year will be different. Join the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s herring tagging team as they study what happens to herring like Henrietta when so...
Apr 21, 2021•31 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast Every spring, for as long as records have been kept, a crowd of hundreds of black crowned night herons descend on the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, mating, eating and generally causing a ruckus. Many of the keepers at the zoo enjoy them, but they can be a tough bird to love. Every fall, peace is restored when the herons decamp and fly off to… where? For more than a century, nobody knew. Until now.
Apr 07, 2021•27 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast When Lena Richard cooked her first chicken on television, she beat Julia Child to the screen by over a decade. At a time when most African American women cooks worked behind swinging kitchen doors, Richard claimed her place as a culinary authority, broadcasting in the living rooms of New Orleans’s elite white families. She was an entrepreneur, educator, author, and an icon—and her legacy lives on in her recipes....
Mar 24, 2021•33 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast 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 secret.
Mar 10, 2021•33 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast As Americans approach a full year of pandemic life, there’s an overwhelming sense of anticipation: when can we get vaccinated? What will life look like in six months? When will life return to normal ? Maybe because looking outward feels so daunting, a lot of people are looking inward, through mindfulness and meditation. In this episode of Sidedoor , we learn about mindfulness and meditation through the lens of religion – a Buddhist priest shares the story of her religious journey; and we hear ab...
Feb 24, 2021•27 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast If you’ve heard the phrase, “full blooded,” you’re already familiar with the concept of blood quantum. But Native Americans are the only peoples in the United States whose identity is defined by it. Through the photography of Tailyr Irvine, displayed at the National Museum of the American Indian, we take a look at the colonial origin story of blood quantum: where it came from, why it endures, and how it continues to impact the most personal decisions many Native Americans make about love and fam...
Feb 10, 2021•33 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast As an up-and-coming young blues singer in the 1950s, Barbara Dane faced a choice: fame and fortune, or her principles. She left the mainstream music industry and became a revolutionary music producer – literally. Spurred by Fidel Castro’s international gathering of protest singers, Dane created a record label that published the sounds of social change around the world, and inspired generations of protest music to come. For more information, check out: https://folkways.si.edu/paredon...
Jan 27, 2021•30 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Wonder Woman is the best known female superhero of all time, but she’s been through a lot. The brainchild of a psychologist, Wonder Woman hit the comic pages in the 1940s as an antidote to the “bloodcurdling masculinity” of male superheroes. But by the early ‘70s, Wonder Woman was having a midlife crisis. She’d given up her bullet-blocking bracelets and lasso of truth…and opened a clothing boutique. It took a feminist magazine cover to make-over Wonder Woman from comic book character to the icon...
Jan 13, 2021•32 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In 1890, Americans were delighted when they heard the news that Thomas Edison was using his phonograph technology to give voice to porcelain dolls. But their delight turned to horror when they got their hands on his dolls. In this episode of Sidedoor, we’ll hear a short story that imagines what happens when two little girls receive one of Edison’s talking dolls as a holiday gift, as well as meet one of these dolls with an expert from the National Museum of American history. To see one of these d...
Dec 16, 2020•26 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we have an episode from the NHPR podcast “Outside/In” about passenger pigeons. The passenger pigeon is one of the world’s most symbolic extinction stories. It’s a cautionary tale of how in just a few short generations, one of the wonders of the world could be completely eradicated. But when that narrative was questioned in a popular book, 1491 by Charles Mann, what does the response tell us about the conservation movement as a whole?
Dec 02, 2020•34 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we’re sharing an episode of ‘Detours,’ a new podcast from our friends at GBH and PRX. The podcast shares surprising stories that unfold behind the scenes at the PBS classic TV show “Antiques Roadshow.” In this episode: a rare daguerreotype, Edgar Alan Poe, and…the FBI. You can find ‘Detours’ wherever you listen to podcasts.
Nov 18, 2020•24 min•Ep 18•Transcript available on Metacast When a highly-contagious mystery illness spread through the world’s mountain gorilla population, biologists feared the entire species could be lost. Gorillas don’t wear masks or social distance, so there wasn’t much time for the scientists to identify the illness and find a cure for humanity’s hirsute cousins. What they found in 1988 reminds us in 2020 that humans and wildlife share more than a planet: we share disease.
Oct 14, 2020•31 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Dress codes have been around a long time—from the old days of long skirts and bloomers to today’s regulation-length shorts. But while the specifics of what girls can wear to school have changed, the purpose of the codes has not.
Sep 30, 2020•29 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast When Abigail Washburn and Wu Fei first jammed together, “it was magic.” Fei was shocked to meet an American banjo player so curious about China’s culture; and Abigail Washburn met a classically trained composer whose talents on the guzheng, a 2500 year old 21-string Chinese harp, perfectly complimented her banjo pickin’. Today, they collaborate to make a new brand of folk music: one that combines the tones of Appalachia with the melodies of China.
Sep 16, 2020•24 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast 
