Sidedoor

In 1860 the fastest way to get a message to a family member, partner, or colleague wasn’t by text but by hoof...specifically, a pony’s. In just ten short days the Pony Express delivered mail between St. Louis and Sacramento. To find out what it was like to travel this legendary trail, there’s only one way: get on a horse and follow all 2,000 miles of it. That’s what writer Will Grant did, retracing the route from Missouri to California over four and half months. This guest episode of the Outside podcast brings you an epic camping tale in the name of history.

We’ll be back with new episodes of Sidedoor in September! If you enjoyed this episode, find more stories from Outside at https://www.outsideonline.com/podcast

If you’ve bought a plane ticket recently, you’ve probably had the option to pay a few extra dollars to offset your carbon emissions. That money might go toward planting some trees... but how many trees? Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are trying to answer this very question by hand-measuring trees, weighing wood, and climbing to the top of the canopy. We tag along to see how carbon is measured, and why so much ends up in tropical forests.

Guests:

Joshua Tewksbury, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama

Helene Muller-Landau, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute researching tropical forests and ecosystems, leader of ForestGEO Global Carbon Program

David Mitre, research manager for ForestGEO at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Sergio dos Santos, project manager for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Hydro-Meteorological and Oceanographic Monitoring Program in Panama

Luisa Fernanda Gómez Correa, intern at the Forest Carbon Lab at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Eline De Loore, graduate student at Ghent University conducting research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

They bring out the voyeur in us. And the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art is full of them. In three short letters, we offer a glimpse of tender moments in the complex lives of others.

Guests:

Josh T. Franco, Head of Collecting at the Archives of American Art.

Liza Kirwin, Interim Director of the Archives of American Art.

Jenny Williams, Associate Director for Advancement at the Archives of American Art.

Imagine this: invisible robbers break into a bank and steal massive sacks of cash, but instead of running away with it they set their haul on the front stoop of the bank in a glass case. Everyone can see the money, but only the robbers can get to it. That’s how IRS Special Agent Chris Janczewski describes the 2016 Bitfinex heist – when mystery hackers made out with over $70 million in Bitcoin. By 2020, their loot had ballooned to over $4 billion. With only digital footprints to follow, federal agents tracked the criminals through the blockchain, across the dark web, and up the service elevator of a posh Manhattan apartment building in a sleuthing story that ends at the Smithsonian.

The renovated The Value of Money exhibition will be opening at the National Museum of American History in November 2024. Check it out in person or online!

Guests:

Ellen Feingold, curator of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

Zia Faruqui, United States Magistrate Judge at the District Court for the District of Columbia

Ari Redbord, Ari Redbord is the Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs

Chris Janczewski, Head of Global Investigations at TRM Labs, previously a special agent with IRS-CI Cyber Crimes Unit

Beyoncé is one of the most well-known and appreciated Black women in music today, but to understand her work, we need to look at who came before her and what those women contributed to the story of Black women on stage. In this special guest episode, curator Krystal Klingenberg introduces a new season of Collected, a podcast from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, all about Black women in music.

Guests:

Daphne A. Brooks, PhD., is professor of African American Studies and Music at Yale University. Dr. Brooks most recent books is Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard University, February 2021). https://afamstudies.yale.edu/people/daphne-brooks

Margo Jefferson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, and a 2022 recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. Her most recent book is Constructing a Nervous System: a memoir (2022). She is a professor of Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University. https://arts.columbia.edu/profiles/margo-jefferson

Crystal M. Moten, Ph.D., is a historian who specializes in twentieth century African American Women’s History. In 2023 she published Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee. Dr. Moten is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago, Illinois and was previously curator at Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History https://www.crystalmoten.com

Dwandalyn R. Reece, Ph.D. is curator of Music and Performing Arts at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Dr. Reece curated the museum’s permanent exhibition, Musical Crossroads, for which she received the Secretary’s Research Prize in 2017. https://music.si.edu/dr-dwandalyn-reece

Fath Davis Ruffins was a Curator of African American History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). She began working at the museum in 1981, and between 1988 and 2005, she was the head of the Collection of Advertising History at the NMAH Archives Center. Ruffins was the original project director of Many Voices, One Nation, an exhibition that opened at NMAH in June 2017. She was leading a museum project on the history and culture of the Low Country region of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. https://profiles.si.edu/display/nruffinsf1102006

Craig Seymour is a writer, photographer, and critic who has written about music, particularly Black music for over two decades. His most recent book is Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross (HarperCollins, 2004). https://randbeing.com/