Sometimes, in fact, nature is stranger than fiction

Our host, Eric Schulze, has the answer

High-speed video captures the unique ability of a leaping praying mantis to control its spin in mid-air and precisely land on a target.

In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers arrived home when he was shot and killed. It would be over 30 years before his killer was brought to justice.

Chef Darin Nesbit demonstrates how to cook cricket-crusted redfish. (Still Image: Natthanan Chumphookaew/iStock)

A London blacksmith has perfected a technique known as pattern welding to create elaborately-designed replica Saxon swords and knives. He demonstrates his technique on camera.

Scientists have created thin polymer sheets that expand and contract when in contact with water

Tod Machover, an MIT professor whose classroom produced Guitar Hero and Rock Band, talks about a future in which everyone can make music

A blue-throated side-blotched lizard defending his territory against an orange-throated side-blotched lizard

Coffee - it's a staple of American life, and inside the vaults of the National Museum of American History, they know the secret to its wide spread success: packaging

More on Kathleen Turner and her show at Arena Stage: http://j.mp/T0IkkZ Before taking the stage in "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins," Academy Award nominee Kathleen Turner discusses the woman who inspired the show.

The entertainment curator at the American History Museum shows cinematic highlights from the museum's collections, including Dorothy's red slippers and Superman's cape (Produced by: Ryan Reed). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Night-at-the-Museum.html

The Moab Music Festival combines timeless music with nature's beauty

Scientists are researching how the rodent can become less susceptible to its feline foe.

In March 1895, Boston and New York City began an epic and highly competitive race to become the first American city with a working subway system.

By late September 1918, in a bid to contain the spread of the flu, the U.S. had made the decision to cancel the draft. It was too little, too late—in October alone, over 200,000 Americans were killed by the disease.

When did we start getting cuddly with cats? And have those tabbies really been tamed? In this one-minute video, Ask Smithsonian host Eric Schulze investigates the surprising history and science behind today’s house cat.

Kenneth Morris is the great-great-great-grandson of the heralded abolitionist and helped compile an illustrated biography of his ancestor. (Credit: Drew Gardner)

The water torture cell escape was arguably Houdini’s most memorable stunt. So much so that many people wrongly assume it killed him–a myth invented by the 1953 movie about his life starring Tony Curtis.

For the first time ever, researchers observed a cricket as a pollinator for a flower

Credit: Ken Catania, PNAS, 2016

This video from the Illustris project simulates 13 billion years of the universe in just two minutes

Smithsonian curator Larry Bird shows off convention artifacts and other campaign memorabilia from the collection of the National Museum of American History (Smithsonian.com). Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Inauguration-2009.html

Megan Leftwich, an engineering professor at George Washington University, is building a robotic flipper based on her observations of sea lions

Hours after the Titanic sank, news organizations latched onto a telegraph message that seemed to say that the ship and all its passengers had been rescued. It would turn out to be a tragic case of fake news.

A slowed-down recording, made as part of a scientific study, shows one dog quickly mimicking another canine's expression during playtime in a park in Palermo. (Video courtesy Elisabetta Palagi)

Watch a course video excerpt from Rise of the Superheroes: The legendary Stan Lee, creator of the Avengers, Spiderman and Iron Man, has partnered with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History to launch the first global online course about superheroes to fans around the world.

Our giant of a host, Eric Schulze, explains why size mattered in prehistory.

Around the Mall bloggers sit down and talk with a few old friends from Sesame Street (Narration and Video by Megan Gambino / Anika Gupta as Intrepid Reporter / Beth Py-Lieberman as the voice of Big Bird / Script by Jesse Rhodes / Jesse Rhodes as the voice of Cookie Monster and Oscar). Read more at http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2008/10/sesame-street-redux/

DC chef Erik Bruner-Yang interviews Jill-of-all-trades Kaitlyn Hova about her plan to infuse STEM education with open source, 3D printable instruments.

Can quicksand really swallow you up, or does that just happen in the movies? Host Eric Schulze dives in to separate science fact from science fiction."

Fifteen-year-old Esteban, a clarinetist from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, uses music to survive his chaotic environment Reporting by Dominic Bracco II / Prime and Susana Seijas

More on The Music Box: http://j.mp/KX15yK The artists behind the most eccentric place in New Orleans present their wacky homemade instruments

A step-by-step tour of the renovation of the National Museum of American History (Narration by Beth Py-Lieberman / Edited by Ryan Reed and Brian Wolly)

Aziz Ansari | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for Performing Arts The actor, comedian and author is being honored for his starring role as Dev Shah in “Master of None,” the Netflix series that he created with Alan Yang. Like the character he plays, Ansari is the son of Indian immigrant parents, and his smart, surprising take on life, love, technology and cultural identity in the United States has helped make the show “the year’s best comedy straight out of the gate,” as the New York Times put it. Among Ansari’s other accomplishments are his unforgettable portrayal of the loopy Tom Haverford on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” his best-selling book about dating in the internet age, Modern Romance (co-authored with Eric Klinenberg), and his blockbuster stand-up act that sold out Madison Square Garden. Read more about Ansari’s work: http://smithmag.co/jvdAaL | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

The Director of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum predicts what the museum's collections will hold in the next 40 years Read more at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/Arts-Bold-New-Direction.html

The power behind the music of Our Native Daughters comes from giving voice to the struggles of those who came before us—and few have struggled to be heard as much as black women.

Winter in Washington, D.C. may be too warm for outdoor ice skating, so organizers at the National Zoo brought in a special kind of rink for their annual "Zoo Lights" celebration

Take in the sights and sounds of the European influences of Argentina's capital city (Produced by: Brendan McCabe). Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/daniel-politi-on-hola-buenos-aires-138874294/

Use #physnobel on Twitter to submit your questions. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced on Tuesday, October 7. Join guests Charles Day of Physics Today, Andrew Grant of Science News, Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics and Amanda Yoho of Starts With A Bang! as they discuss predictions for possible winners. Who are the best contenders, and who are the potential "dark horse" candidates? Which major physics finds of this year might stand a shot at a win in the future? Victoria Jaggard and Helen Thompson of Smithsonian.com will be your hosts for the event. Tune in on October 2, and submit your questions on Twitter. Charles Day is the Online Editor for Physics Today magazine. Follow him on Twitter @CSRDay Andrew Grant is the physics reporter for Science News magazine. Follow him on Twitter @sci_grant Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer and blogger at Cocktail Party Physics. Follow her on Twitter @JenLucPiquant Amanda Yoho is a graduate student in theoretical and computational cosmology at Case Western Reserve University and a blogger at Starts With A Bang! Follow her on Twitter @mandaYoho Victoria Jaggard is the science editor for Smithsonian.com. Follow her on Twitter @vmjaggard99 Helen Thompson is a science reporter for Smithsonian.com. Follow her on Twitter @wwrfd

A close look reveals how the famed photographer altered his glass negatives, creating the popular image of Native Americans that still exists today

The act of dive bombing during World War II was a death defying trial of skill and nerve. You aimed your plane down, four miles above the ocean and plummeted at speeds of up to 275 miles per hour

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 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/galveston-texas-plan-stop-next-big-storm-hurricane-ike-180984487/) . 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 (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfS90zjBZ2oGa9JxVa-R5affKcOHaR2-ib1_KZeWm3HDQXJIA/viewform) . Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . Listen to the New York Botanical Garden podcast "Plant People" here (https://www.nybg.org/plantpeople/) . 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.

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 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm) that 42 percent of American adults are clinically obese and that Type 2 diabetes is on the rise (https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p1229-future-diabetes-surge.html) . 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 (https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/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 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-to-separate-fact-from-myth-in-the-extraordinary-story-of-sojourner-truth-180983820/) , how Joan Baez opened the door for Taylor Swift (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/before-beyonce-taylor-swift-ran-world-joan-baez-180983893/) , how machine learning is helping archeologists to read scrolls (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-artificial-intelligence-is-making-2000-year-old-scrolls-readable-again-180984264/) buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago and more, find us on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theres-more-to-that/id1694965155?ign-itscg=30200&ign-itsct=podcast_box_player) , Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4NYRCRxkYJTLjW71sqYOFv?si=08fa62c3e59d450f&nd=1) or wherever you get your podcasts. Read Michelle Stacey's story about Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters in the June 2024 issue of Smithsonian here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/doctor-pioneered-counting-calories-century-ago-were-still-dealing-with-consequences-180984282/) . Listen to Ronald Young, Jr.'s podcast "Weight For It" here (https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/weight-for-it) . Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . 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 North American Orchid Conservation Center is working to ensure the survival of some of the most unique plants in the world

Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of the popular speaker series, shares his ideas for how to make learning more interesting

Listen for the subtle clicks of the eland bull's knees

See how geometric designs are inspiring new ways to make stretchy materials. (Video by Ahmad Rafsanjani and Damiano Pasini/McGill University)