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
Field Trip!
Sidedoor hits the road, sneaking behind the scenes for the ultimate Smithsonian field trip we never took as kids. Lizzie and producer Justin O'Neill journey by bike, train, and even horse (okay, plas…
00:28:21 |
Wed 04 Sep 2019
Memory, Myth & Miniatures
David Levinthal is a New York-based artist whose photography depicts “the America that never was but always will be.” He uses toys to recreate iconic moments in American history and pop culture, enco…
00:23:17 |
Wed 21 Aug 2019
The Wild Orchid Mystery
You probably know orchids as the big, colorful flowers found in grocery stores and given as housewarming gifts. But those tropical beauties represent only a fraction of the estimated 25,000 orchid sp…
00:22:55 |
Wed 07 Aug 2019
Things You'd Never Tell Your Parents
Regie Cabico has been called the "Lady Gaga of Spoken Word poetry"—he's outspoken, provocative and iconoclastic. The son of Filipino immigrants living in rural Maryland, Regie says he’ll never be “en…
00:20:03 |
Wed 24 Jul 2019
Space Jocks & Moon Rocks
When NASA’s Apollo 11 mission sent the first astronauts to the moon 50 years ago, there were many things we didn’t know. Like whether the moon’s surface would turn out to be a field of quicksand, if …
00:26:23 |
Wed 10 Jul 2019
The Worst Video Game Ever?
Deep within the National Museum of American History’s vaults is a battered Atari case containing what’s known as “the worst video game of all time.” The game is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and it was…
00:25:48 |
Wed 26 Jun 2019
The Dinosaur War
Behind the fossilized teeth, bones, and claws displayed in the National Museum of Natural History’s new Fossil Hall is the story of two men and a nasty feud. During the paleontology boom of the late …
00:29:32 |
Wed 12 Jun 2019
Update: Meet the New Voice of Season Four!
With our fourth season’s launch quickly approaching, take a moment to meet the new voice of Sidedoor!
Season Four of the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast launches on June 12, 2019. Subscribe now!
00:02:12 |
Wed 05 Jun 2019
Aloha, Y’all
Close your eyes and think of Hawaii. That sound you undoubtedly hear? Well, that’s the ocean. But that other sound floating on the breeze—that’s the steel guitar, an indigenous Hawaiian invention tha…
00:29:22 |
Wed 24 Apr 2019
Good as Gold
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. Gus Casely-Hayford, director of …
00:21:08 |
Wed 10 Apr 2019
Abraham Lincoln: Prankster-in-Chief
We all know Abraham Lincoln, right? Well, we know one side of him—the grave-faced leader of a troubled country—but behind the face on the penny lies an unlikely jokester. This week, Sidedoor reveals …
00:32:34 |
Mon 01 Apr 2019
The Feather Detective
In 1960, investigators found dark bits of feather stuck inside a crashed airplane's engines. They needed someone to figure out what bird they belonged to—and how that bird took down a 110,000-pound p…
00:27:10 |
Wed 27 Mar 2019
Singing the Gender-Bending Blues
Gladys Bentley loved women, wore men's clothing, and sang bawdy songs that would make sailors blush...and did it openly in the 1920s and 1930s. This was long before the gay rights or the civil rights…
00:26:58 |
Wed 13 Mar 2019
The Silence of the Frogs
In the mid-1990s, investigators identified a mysterious and seemingly unstoppable killer. Its name? Chytrid. Its prey? Frogs. Since then, the disease has ravaged frog populations worldwide, and despi…
00:26:06 |
Wed 27 Feb 2019
Cheech Marin Gets Artsy
In the 1970s and ’80s, Cheech Marin was famous for being half of the stoner comedy duo "Cheech and Chong." Today, he’s a passionate advocate for Chicano art and is raising awareness around a uniquely…
00:26:24 |
Wed 13 Feb 2019
50 Shades of Gray Whales
Happy New Year! We’re busy working on a new batch of Sidedoor episodes and while you wait, we wanted to re-share a story we like from the fall, just in case you missed it the first time around. From …
00:25:27 |
Wed 30 Jan 2019
Amelia Earhart's Revolutionary Flight Club
You know Amelia Earhart, but did you know she was just one of a daring group of women aviators who defied both expectations and gravity in the 1920s? They called themselves the Ninety-Nines, and they…
00:26:38 |
Wed 26 Dec 2018
Inventor, Photographer...Murderer
Meet Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneering and eccentric photographer from the 1800s whose work changed how people understood movement, and paved the way for the invention of motion pictures. But this inv…
00:27:31 |
Wed 12 Dec 2018
This Color Is Who I Am
Artist Frank Holliday's social circle in the 1980s was a who's who of New York City cool: Andy Warhol, Cyndi Lauper, RuPaul, Keith Haring, and even Madonna. But Frank's odyssey through the art world …
00:27:30 |
Wed 28 Nov 2018
That Brunch in the Forest
In 1621, a group of Pilgrims and Native Americans came together for a meal that many Americans call "The First Thanksgiving." But get this—it wasn't the first, and the meal itself wasn't so special e…
00:25:19 |
Wed 14 Nov 2018
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