Sometimes, in fact, nature is stranger than fiction

Why are we equipped with this curious modification? Find out in this one-minute video, where Ask Smithsonian host Eric Schulze gives us the info on our wrinkled digits.

Christopher Gray | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winner for Youth Achievement Christopher Gray is the founder and CEO of Scholly, the groundbreaking web and mobile app that matches current or future college students who need financial support with scholarships that can help them. Scholly has been downloaded 850,000 times and has connected college students with some $50 million in scholarships. Philadelphia-based Gray, an ABC “Shark Tank” winner and recipient of a $100,000 grant from philanthropist Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest competition, sees his digital platform as a 21st-century tool for helping countless young Americans achieve their college dreams without piling on crushing debt.

Snowball the cockatoo bobs his head and lifts his leg to the beats of the Backstreet Boys' "Everbody"

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.

The Siberian jay screeches at predators when they are near, but uses a different call for each deadly intruder

Photographer David Burnett focused his camera on the many tourists who flocked to Florida in 1969 to watch the launch of Apollo 11 (Produced by Molly Roberts; Photographs by David Burnett/Contact Press Images)

Archaeologists in Saqqara make a dazzling discovery: a late period Egyptian coffin with a gilded mask. Now, to bring it to the surface, they use a pulley known as a "tambora," a technology that dates back to Ancient Egypt

With millions of men serving in WWII, the nation needed pilots to ferry planes from the factory to the air bases. That’s when Jackie Cochran proposed a novel idea: why not let women fly?

The answer depends on how you feel about cluster headaches

It depends on which variety of boomerang you're using. Our host Eric Schulze has more

Our host explains why you should never say ‘no’ to a hungry pregnant woman

The science behind earworms and why they won’t leave us alone

Selected by Mary Ellen Mark for our special issue, this up-and-coming photographer discusses his work

In a conversation with architect David Rockwell, the philanthropic chef urges an invested effort to create technology that could collect water from the clouds

The "Manned Orbiting Laboratory," or "MOL," was built to capture high-resolution images of Soviet targets on the ground. It was so advanced, it could pick up objects on earth as small as a baseball

Visitors to Nantucket were able to ski through wide strips of slushy ice left on the beach in February 2015.

Building captive colonies for eventual re-introduction to the wild, scientists from Atlanta rescue endangered frogs and other amphibians threatened with extinction by a fatal fungus spreading through South American forests

Discover evidence of natural selection and evolution at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum (Meredith Bragg)

Smithsonian.com's puzzle master and your gaming adventure guide

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

How many of your questions can our host, Eric Schulze, answer in 45 seconds?

A series of remarkably well-preserved human remains in a remote cave in Scotland has archaeologists grappling with a staggering question: were these bodies brought here during the Bronze Age to be mummified?

After mapping the movement of stars for years, astronomers believe they have found a black hole at the center of the Milky Way

http://smithsonian.com/ask Now it's your turn to ask the Institution's experts your questions about science, history, art or culture

Under exuberant coach, Knute Rockne, Notre Dame set the standards for football excellence. But off the field, the Fighting Irish was a PR sensation, capturing the hearts of a riveted nation.

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. 

Art car designers tour the country with their cars, some thousands of miles a year, not for fame or money, but just to make people smile. (Produced by: Abby Callard and Ryan Reed)

Researchers are able to track Venus flytrap plants that were stolen from protected areas

Find out what it takes to build a museum large enough to house 130 aircraft

By 2020, the Starkey Hearing Foundation plans to donate one million hearing aids to kids in the developing world

Credit: David Marshall, University of Bristol

To save a species from extinction, scientists scour the Panamanian jungle for the few remaining frogs. But will they be too late?

Artist Michael Kirby spent four days painting an image from "Falnama: The Book of Omens" in front of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Read more at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/muralist-uses-the-sidewalk-outside-the-sackler-gallery-as-canvas-20678724/

Our host, Eric Schulze explains how 1 + 1 = 0 when it comes to sound

Caretakers feed the new baby clouded leopards at the Zoo's research facility in Virginia

Why the American Ingenuity Award winner believes higher education should be a basic human right

Bonnie, the subject of a recently published paper, is the Smithsonian National Zoo’s famous whistling orangutan

Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough offers personal insights on the realities of climate change and the best ways for society to adapt

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.

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 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fifty-years-finding-freedom-vietnam-vets-healing-journey-hanoi-180983052/) . Order Mai Elliott’s book The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family here (https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Willow-Generations-Vietnamese-Family-ebook/dp/B074JBTTZ3?ref_=ast_author_mpb) . 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 Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, 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. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

The American Ingenuity Award winner warns that no place on Earth is safe from the dangers of global warming

Marine biologist Nancy Knowlton discusses a research trip to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where she and her collaborators collected data on coral reef populations. Reef sustainability is closely tied to coral reproduction. Then director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Knowlton, who has since been hired to lead the Smithsonian's Ocean Initiative, has reservations about the long-term future of corals

Dismembered war captives from the 17th century uneartherd

A curator from the Houston Museum of Natural Science explains how the terra cotta warriors were discovered and what they reveal about China’s Qin dynasty

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

A mata mata turtle can go 15 minutes between breaths--it's another one of the Smithsonian's National Zoo's many unique animals. Join the Zoo's experts for an inside look at some of its 2,000 rare and extraordinary creatures.