Sidedoor
More than 154 million treasures fill the Smithsonian’s vaults. But where the public’s view ends, Sidedoor begins. With the help of biologists, artists, historians, archaeologists, zookeepers and astrophysicists, host Lizzie Peabody sneaks listeners through the Smithsonian’s side door, telling stories that can’t be heard anywhere else. Check out si.edu/sidedoor and follow @SidedoorPod for more info.
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 26 minutes
- Episodes
- 230
- Years Active
- 2016 - 2025
The Fugitive Brewer
A skill for brewing beer and $100 reward for her capture. Those were the clues in an old newspaper ad that got Smithsonian brewing historian Theresa McCulla hooked on the story of Patsy Young, an ens…
00:29:25 |
Wed 12 Jan 2022
Edison’s Demon Dolls
In 1890, Americans were delighted when they heard the news that Thomas Edison was using his phonograph technology to give voice to porcelain dolls. But their delight soon turned to horror. In this ep…
00:26:19 |
Wed 29 Dec 2021
Chiura Obata’s Glorious Struggle
When Chiura Obata painted “Moonlight Over Topaz, Utah,” he was a prisoner at the camp: one of 120,000 Japanese Americans to be incarcerated during World War II. The painting shows a dreamy moonlit de…
00:33:32 |
Wed 15 Dec 2021
Love in the Time of Emoji
When LOL just isn't enough to respond to a friend's killer joke, emoji are there for you. But for many people, there isn't an emoji to represent them or the things they want to say. This has pushed a…
00:27:50 |
Wed 01 Dec 2021
Light of Freedom
There’s a new sculpture at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: a giant torch that’s strikingly familiar – and entirely unique. Artist Abigail DeVille has reimagined the Statue of…
00:27:49 |
Wed 17 Nov 2021
King of the Herbs
It’s a wild herb that countless cultures have used for centuries as a wonder drug to cure any ailment. It's so rare and valuable that it’s been dug to extinction nearly everywhere, except a small are…
00:29:36 |
Wed 03 Nov 2021
Bloodsuckers!
Leeches don’t get a lot of love. They’re slimy, wriggly, and, well, they suck — blood that is. But there’s a lot to learn about the lowly leech. Led by a troupe of Smithsonian experts, we’ll discover…
00:30:35 |
Wed 20 Oct 2021
Make Way for Elephants
The endangered Asian Elephant may be a conservation success story as its rapid decline appears to be stabilizing. But this has created a new set of problems. With little remaining habitat, these elep…
00:29:10 |
Wed 06 Oct 2021
It’s Season Seven!
Sidedoor returns for its seventh season on Wednesday, October 6th!
00:01:29 |
Wed 29 Sep 2021
Bonus: Patsy Mink
A new season of Sidedoor is just two weeks away! In the meantime, we’re sharing a special guest episode from Wonder Media Network’s podcast, “Encyclopedia Womannica.” In this episode, you’ll hear abo…
00:07:09 |
Wed 22 Sep 2021
Bonus: Happy Birthday to Us
The “Men of Progress” painting, from 1862, shows the first Secretary of the Smithsonian surrounded by a group of scientists and inventors credited with “altering the course of contemporary civilizati…
00:28:49 |
Wed 18 Aug 2021
Olympic Bonus: Shredding Skateboarding’s Glass Ceiling
This summer – for the first time ever - skateboarding will be an Olympic sport. In honor of its Olympic debut, we’re revisiting one of our favorite episodes: the story of how the best women skateboar…
00:35:05 |
Fri 23 Jul 2021
The Battle of Blair Mountain
100 years ago, in the hills of West Virginia, Black, white and European immigrant coal miners banded together to demand better pay and safer working conditions and were met with machine guns. While t…
00:28:53 |
Wed 14 Jul 2021
Ode to Cicadas
Every 17 years, the notorious Brood X cicadas crawl out of the earth by the billions to deafen Washington D.C. After nearly two decades underground, they spend their few short weeks in the sun singin…
00:30:21 |
Wed 30 Jun 2021
The Goddess of Broadway
When Diosa Costello took the stage in the 1939 production of “Too Many Girls,” she became the first Puerto Rican performer to tread the boards on Broadway. She was fearless, funny, and brimming with …
00:25:26 |
Wed 16 Jun 2021
The Artist Critics Love to Hate
LeRoy Neiman was a colorful man, both figuratively and literally. His handlebar mustache, long cigar, and sketchpad were fixtures at the sidelines of American pop culture: from boxing matches to jazz…
00:31:30 |
Wed 02 Jun 2021
BONUS: Confronting the Past
One hundred years ago this week, from May 31 and June 1, 1921, a mob targeted and destroyed nearly 40 blocks of a wealthy black neighborhood in North Tulsa, Oklahoma. No one knows how many people die…
00:23:45 |
Wed 26 May 2021
Best of the Rest III
Groucho and Freddy. Oryx and ostriches. Cats and dinosaurs. These things go together like… well, they really don’t go together at all. These are fun-sized stories in one goodie bag of an episode. It’…
00:28:33 |
Wed 19 May 2021
On The Money
We carry portraits around all the time: pocket-sized history lessons in the form of dollars and cents. The recent decision to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill has us thinking about who’s on our mon…
00:29:34 |
Wed 05 May 2021
BONUS: The 1957 Pandemic That Wasn’t
In 1918, a flu pandemic killed more than 50 million people worldwide. Forty years later, it nearly happened again. This week on Sidedoor we go back to a time when the viruses were winning, and we rem…
00:27:35 |
Wed 28 Apr 2021
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