4+ day, 19+ hour ago   (133+ words) Brian Wolly | Digital Editorial Director Bunch was named to the role by the Smithsonian Board of Regents in 2019, having most recently served as the founding director of the Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). In the…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago   (290+ words) Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent From Mandarin and English to the many Indigenous languages spoken around the world, humans today communicate via roughly 7,500 tongues. But humanity’s linguistic diversity may once have been far greater, according to a new study published in…...

2+ mon, 2+ week ago   (617+ words) Homer’s Odyssey, the nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem chronicling Odysseus as he tries to return home to Ithaca following the Trojan War, is among the world’s best-known and most-replicated stories. It’s an early example of the hero’s journey archetype, perhaps the…...

2+ mon, 3+ week ago   (544+ words) Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent Houseplant lovers are probably familiar with Chinese money plants, fast-growing perennials known for their coin-shaped leaves. But they might not know that their roundish greenery holds a well-known geometric pattern. The major veins follow something called…...

2+ mon, 3+ week ago   (752+ words) Marta Hill | Freelance contributor Inside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is a room that brings together objects from all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and five territories. In the stunning collection are a Menominee dugout canoe from Wisconsin, megalodon teeth…...

3+ mon, 3+ day ago   (476+ words) Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent Women are, at least anecdotally, often considered to be more beautiful than men—the so-called fairer sex. In many other species, however, males showcase flashy features to attract female mates. The inconsistency has long caught the…...

3+ mon, 2+ week ago   (485+ words) Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent More than 700 years ago, an anonymous scribe set down the tales of King Arthur and his Round Table in a vellum manuscript. He punctuated the Old French text with 126 miniature illustrations adorned with polished gold leaf,…...

3+ mon, 4+ week ago   (583+ words) More from Smithsonian magazine Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent If you actively listen to music, read a book or look at art at least once per week, you may live longer than those who don’t. That’s according to a new study…...

4+ mon, 1+ day ago   (491+ words) More from Smithsonian magazine Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent In Victoria, Australia, the Great Ocean Road takes tourists past the “Twelve Apostles”—a collection of seven (confusingly, not a dozen) limestone rock stacks that stand 131 to 230 feet tall in the Southern Ocean,…...

4+ mon, 6+ day ago   (644+ words) More from Smithsonian magazine Ryley Graham | Correspondent A new adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies is airing on Netflix for U.S. audiences. The four-part miniseries, written by Jack Thorne and originally aired by BBC, follows a group…...