Articles

A wild pony blocks the trail.

The Only Place on the Appalachian Trail Where You Can See Wild Ponies

More than 100 ponies roam free on the slopes of Virginia's highest peak

Is this supposed to be a democracy or what? (Shown here: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un visiting Mangyongdae Revolutionary School in 2014.)

Metaphorically Speaking, Your Nervous System is a Dictatorship

Except when it's an oligarchy. Or a democracy. Or all three.

Scientists are able to detect the DNA of tumor cells floating in blood.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Are We Close to Having a Blood Test That Detects Cancer?

New research into "liquid biopsies" is promising, but there's still not proof they can find cancer in a healthy person

How You Wound Up Playing 'The Oregon Trail' in Computer Class

From the 1970s to 1990s, the government-owned Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium dominated the educational software market with more than 300 games

Organic! Doesn't always mean what people think it means.

Age of Humans

Podcast: Our Food, Our Selves

Food is a focal point for understanding broader environmental problems. In this podcast, we learn how food buyers are influenced in surprising ways.

The Egyptian Pharaoh With the Biggest Ego

Though little is known about Khufu, the pharaoh who oversaw the Great Pyramid's construction, vicious rumors about him persist today

Images are fast outpacing words as the major means of communication.

Commentary

How to Avoid the Pitfalls in the Politics of Graphic Messaging

The director of the National Portrait Gallery offers a few pointers on how to acquire visual intelligence

Yao honey-hunter Orlando Yassene holds a wild greater honeyguide male in the Niassa National Reserve, Mozambique.

New Research

Forget Bees: This Bird Has the Sweetest Deal With Honey-Seeking Humans

The effectiveness of the honeyguide call sheds light on why this golden relationship has stuck around so long

Inupiaq culture has traveled from fur-clad hunters with stone-tipped harpoons to kids carrying iPhones—in just 200 years.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Alaska

The Essence of Alaska Lies Somewhere Between Myth and Reality

An Alaska native grapples with the meaning of his home state

A burn patient uses VR.

Instead of Painkillers, Some Doctors Are Prescribing Virtual Reality

Virtual reality therapy may be medicine's newest frontier, as VR devices become better and cheaper

Illustration of a Velafrons, a hadrosaur whose name means "sailed forehead."

Chew on This: Powerful Jaws Fueled a Jurassic Herbivore Boom

Teeth, not flowers, might be the key to the duckbills’ success

How Did a Grizzly Bear Get on California's Flag?

As more and more settlers began to pour into California throughout the 1840s, a chain of events led to the Bear Flag Revolt

The Mauna Loa observatory.

Age of Humans

The Enduring Climate Legacy of Mauna Loa

Sixty years after a trailblazing climate scientist scaled its heights, the Hawaii-based observatory remains essential

How America's Public Parks Were Born

Learn how Central Park, the first of its kind, was given a completely visionary design that's since influenced cities around the country

Being a blood fluke is more popular than you might expect.

How Parasites Became So Popular

A new study finds that parasitism evolved independently 223 times. But that number is actually surprisingly low

Tiny nurse ants tending to white ant larvae are dwarfed by the queen ant in the upper right. All the ants feed upon protein-rich food produced by a white-grey fungus that they cultivate underground.

Were Ants the World's First Farmers?

A new study shows that a group of ants have been conducting a subsistence type of farming since shortly after the dinosaurs died out

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Commentary

Should We Hate Poetry?

It was precisely because poetry wasn’t hated that Plato feared it, writes the Smithsonian’s senior historian David Ward, who loves poetry

History of Now

What the Candidates (and Journalists) Can Learn From the 1948 Democratic Convention

The first time television was beamed into millions of homes meant that presidential politics would have to change

"Fading Thoughts" by Andrew Myers

Please Touch the Art: This Artist Creates Tactile Portraits for the Blind

Andrew Myers uses screws to make 3-D masterpieces for curious fingers

The Incredible Things a Hammerhead's Nose Can Do

A hammerhead shark is capable of detecting a single drop of fish oil in a body of water equivalent to an Olympic-size swimming pool

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