Sidedoor: History & Culture

Sidedoor digs into the family story of a secret message etched inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch.

Learn how philanthropy and power have been intertwined since the Gilded Age. 

Blast off with Sidedoor and AirSpace podcast to learn about the Voyager Golden Record and the decisions behind the out of this world mixtape.

Meet Jhoon Rhee, the Father of American Taekwondo and part of the reason the U.S. has more martial arts schools than any other country.

Journey back in time to the “Golden Age of Arsenic" when the deadliest killers often wore corsets.

Sidedoor explores what became of America’s first female astronaut candidates.

Collected, a podcast from the National Museum of American History, dives into the history of Black women in music. 

Why do we pledge allegiance to the flag? Learn the history behind this everyday occurrence on Sidedoor.

Join Sidedoor and travel around the Smithsonian to explore how facing the unknown brings us together at New Year’s.

Much of what we know about Sojourner Truth is fiction. Turns out, the whole Truth is even better than fiction.

Learn how a mass movement of working-class Americans marched to end slavery.

Explore how silent films led to some of the musical scare tactics we see in horror films today.

A look at how the the Equal Credit Opportunity Act improved women's lives.

The mid-1800s was a golden age of counterfeit and one very talented con artist stood out from the rest.

Follow the money to see behind-the-scenes in the process of minting twenty new quarters featuring American women from history.

Listen to some of Japanese theater’s most popular tales of scorned lovers seeking vengeance from beyond the grave.

The Sidedoor team runs all around the Smithsonian to answer from a grab bag of listeners' questions.

Listen to tales of animals that joined their human companions on the battlefield.

Virginia Hall dreamed of being America’s first woman ambassador. Instead, she became a spy.

Learn what "auld lang syne” really means and how it's connected to Charlie Chaplin.

Hear about the U.S. movement against ageism started by Maggie Kuhn in the 1970s.

The Smithsonian is home to countless tales of unexplained phenomena and—dare we say—ghost sightings.

Re-examine evidence from "The Last Great Train Robbery" to find out how U.S. Postal Inspectors tracked down a band of old-school outlaws.

Conserving the history of Jim Henson's Muppets. 

In the 1980s, a series of events sparked a movement to fight back against environmental injustices.

In 75 years, Folkways Recordings has grown into one of the world’s most eclectic, iconic, and largest repositories of recorded sound. 

Americans spend countless hours on patches of grass that don't make much sense, economically or ecologically. But why? 

We sit down with Bill Nye to get schooled on science education and comedy.

A look at the women who blazed the trail allowing for competition in marathons. 

Learn a tale of subterfuge, scandal, and the Smithsonian’s first donation of rare instruments.

Sidedoor tracks down the origins of some puzzling Christmastime traditions.

When her gender was put on trial in the 1940s, her case made her one the first documented Black transgender figures in American history.

Explore the concept of blood quantum and how it continues to impact Native Americans today. 

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made history when he flew more than 800 feet across a blustery beach in North Carolina. 

Historians take a years-long journey to determine who the enslaved African Americans were who built the White House.

Learn how the Smithsonian helps protect the world's cultural treasures in times of war and natural disaster.

A 200-year-old legal document changes what we know about the founding of the Smithsonian.

Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. At least that's what we were taught in school.

A long-forgotten lyric reveals a feminist message buried within a favorite song.

Hear the origin story of the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest passed down since time immemorial.

Sidedoor traces the evolution of King's dream, from a secret friendship to an experimental poem to the speech we all know today.

Retrace the steps of an enslaved African American woman who fled to freedom in 1808 and made a life for herself brewing beer.

Artist Abigail DeVille has reimagined the Statue of Liberty’s torch to shine a light on historical contradictions of American freedom.

When Mimi Knoop entered her first skateboarding competition, she never anticipated leaving her mark on the sport forever.

More than 100 years ago, a diverse group of coal miners banded together to demand better pay and safer working conditions.

The first Puerto Rican performer to tread the boards on Broadway, Diosa Costello was fearless, funny, and brimming with talent.

Learn the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 that destroyed almost 40 blocks of a wealthy black neighborhood.

Join the Sidedoor team to learn who’s on our money, and how they got there.

When Richard cooked her first chicken on television, she beat Julia Child to the screen by over a decade.

This epic frozen whodunit, features a shipwreck, romance, and a social media darling with a dark secret.

A view of mindfulness and meditation through the lens of religion.

As an up-and-coming young blues singer in the 1950s, Barbara Dane faced a choice: fame and fortune, or her principles.

It took a feminist magazine cover to catapult Wonder Woman from comic book character to the icon.

Dress codes have been around a long time—from the old days of long skirts and bloomers to today’s regulation-length shorts.

Abigail Washburn and Wu Fei make a new brand of folk music that combines the tones of Appalachia with the melodies of China.

Learn how women’s suffrage came to Hawai‘i—and what was taken from Hawaiians to get there.

Hear the often-overlooked story of Apollo 12, one full of danger, discovery, and the power of friendship.

In 2017, a photograph of a young Harriet Tubman surfaced that had been lost to history for more than a century. How does it change how we see her?

You may not know his name, but Alexander von Humboldt inspired a key part of America’s national identity through science and art.

Meet the man behind the Ponzi Scheme, and hear from a postal investigator trained to catch swindlers who use the U.S. mail for nefarious purposes.

When Adam Rippon stood on the Olympic podium in 2018, he was sure about his next steps.

Explore the less common uses of dynamite: the artistic blasting at Mount Rushmore, and how anarchists used dynamite to advance their political agenda in 1886.

Behind the fossilized teeth, bones, and claws displayed in the National Museum of Natural History’s Fossil Hall is the story of two men and a nasty feud.

National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet discusses four First Ladies and their portraits.

Meet Regie Cabico, who has been called the Lady Gaga of spoken word poetry and hear poetic cooking tips from the annals of American history.

Deep within the National Museum of American History’s vaults is a battered Atari case.

Learn how the steel guitar helped Hawaiians preserve their culture and change American popular music.

Glittering treasures, gleaming coins, and eye-catching jewelry…gold can be all of these things, but in some parts of the world it's also an enduring link to the past.

Behind the face on the penny lies an unlikely jokester, hear about the other side of our 16th president.

Gladys Bentley, a blues singing trailblazer, was unapologetically herself.

Meet Muybridge, a photographer from the 1800s whose work paved the way for the invention of motion pictures.

How much of what you think you know about Thanksgiving may be more fiction than fact?

What if you found out that your grandmother's house was going on display at a museum?

Learn more about gentrification through a conversation with Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum.

Grab your Scooby Snacks and join Sidedoor as we journey to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to hear about unusual bones found on a dig.

We track the lore of this notorious gem through the centuries.

Explore the power stories hold to keep people connected to their culture across time and geographic distance.

Crawl with Sidedoor into into a deep, dark cave in search of long-lost wine. 

Meet the food spies—globe-trotting scientists and explorers of the 19th-century who sought exotic crops to enhance America’s diet and help grow the economy.

In the late 1700s Muslim Americans made up about five percent of the country's population. Where did they go, and why didn’t we all learn about them in school?

One hundred and twenty years ago, Owney was a global celebrity famous for simply riding trains with the U.S. mail.

In this Sidedoor episode, we’re telling the story of J Dilla’s life and legacy through those that knew him best.

A live episode that explores how food can be a powerful storytelling tool and can transform a dining experience into a cultural, historical, or educational adventure.

Learn how France Glessner Lee’s "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" blend art and science.

Writer Anelise Chen discusses the ways in which our families shape our personal and cultural identities, for better or worse.

Lear about Paul Cinquevalli, one of the most famous and thrilling entertainers in the world in the late 1800s.

Learn tales of small things that snowballed and had outsized impacts on history, art, and culture.

Meet the Smithsonian's brewing historian and a new wave of brewers who are working to craft some flavorful history of their own.  

A grab bag of stories from the Smithsonian Sidedoor team.

A grab bag of stories from the Smithsonian Sidedoor team.

A grab bag of stories from the Smithsonian Sidedoor team.

A grab bag of stories from the Smithsonian Sidedoor team.

The payoff is all in the delivery: missile mail, orangutan pregnancy, and landing a joke.