In the mid-20th century, three trailblazing women journalists bore witness to the great changes happening and transformed readers’ understanding of the world. Martha Gellhorn stowed away in the bathroom of a Red Cross hospital ship to report from Omaha Beach on D-Day. Emily “Mickey” Hahn filed stories from Japanese-occupied Shanghai that transported American readers into the wartime life of a Chinese family. Rebecca West interviewed the sister of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s would-be assassin in 1930s Yugoslavia and then covered the Nuremberg trials. Journalist Julia Cooke shows how these three women not only found stories that others overlooked but also pioneered new ways of telling them.
In honor of America’s 250th, William McShea of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and SnapshotUSA are embarking on a massive project to resurvey the mammals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Trail—and they could use your help. McShea, a conservation biologist and pioneer in the use of camera traps, explains the development of wildlife observation and tracking protocols and how ordinary people can help advance scientific knowledge of mammals and the ecosystems they inhabit, with this project and beyond.
An ambitious expedition left central Mexico in 1540 as Francisco Coronado led nearly 2,000 Spaniards north in search of mythical golden cities. Instead of wealth, they confronted the vast, unmapped American West and formidable Indigenous nations who controlled it. Over two years, the expedition crossed more than 2,500 miles. Hard terrain, starvation, internal collapse, and Indigenous resistance devastated the force: nearly 90 percent never returned. Peter Stark, author of The Lost Cities of El Norte, examines how Indigenous power and the landscape combined to halt European domination of the Southwest and Plains for the next three centuries.
Spend a fascinating Friday evening expanding your knowledge of the world of wine as you sip along with sommelier Erik Segelbaum in a series of delectable adventures. He explores offerings from both sides of South America’s Andes in an immersive program that includes a curated personal tasting kit to enhance the experience.
This spring, 55 colorful carved horses—plus one dragon—will again canter in circles on the National Mall when the Smithsonian Institution’s historic carousel returns after two years of restoration work. Built in 1947, the carousel was moved to the National Mall in 1981. After the Smithsonian purchased it in December 2022, restoration and fabrication experts Carousels and Carvings disassembled the carousel to begin repairing and restoring it. Company owner and president Todd Goings illuminates the intricate process of refurbishing the carousel.
In the wildly popular British series “Poldark,” Ross Poldark returns to Cornwall after the American War of Independence to find his estate in ruins, his finances exhausted, and his first love engaged to his cousin. Determined to rebuild, he reopens his copper mines, marries his former kitchen servant, and champions the working class, even risking his life in a duel. Historian Julie Taddeo examines the show’s topics—economics, religion, marriage, medicine, social customs, fashions, and the details of daily life in Cornwall and London—and explores what the series portrays accurately about the period and what its creators fictionalized.
Over nearly 250 years, the National Mall has evolved as the center stage of the nation’s capital. The Founding Fathers saw the District of Columbia as a shining beacon of democracy for a newly independent nation, reflected in the L’Enfant Plan’s vision of the National Mall as its ceremonial core. In the first program of a 2-part series, Carolyn Muraskin, founder of DC Design Tours, traces the Mall’s transition from pasture lands to military training grounds and from mud flats to grand monuments, sharing the complex and lesser-known history of some of the most enduring national landmarks. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)
Media historian Brian Rose examines the many ways the internet has radically transformed the “old” media of newspapers, magazines, the recording industry, film, radio, and television. He traces how this digital revolution took place in such a short period of time and considers what might lie ahead in the continually changing era of “new” media.
