This evening, Barbara Oakley shares insights into how everyone can learn how to learn, no matter your age or stage of life.  You’ll walk away with practical tools based on solid research—and you’ll have fun along the way!

Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 6:45 p.m.

The 2017–­18 season marks the Emerson String Quartet’s 38th year in residence at the Smithsonian. In this concert, the Grammy Award-winning ensemble performs masterworks by Purcell, Britten, and Shostakovich.

Sunday, October 15, 2017 - 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Celebrated journalist Sally Quinn's life is also the story of modern Washington during some of its most turbulent years. This evening, Quinn sits down for a wide-ranging interview with Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and journalist and author Elsa Walsh.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017 - 6:45 p.m.

Nearly a century after the 19th Amendment was ratified, it is worth asking whether having the women’s vote has made a significant difference in American politics. Historian Elisabeth Griffith, a biographer of suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, reviews women’s political engagement from marching for the vote to campaigning for (or against) a woman for president.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - 6:45 p.m.

If you were unlucky enough to need surgery in the early 19th-century, you had more to fear than your malady: The procedure itself could kill you. Medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris leads a fascinating Halloween-night excursion into the germ-ridden, dirty, and often-deadly Victorian operating room, where your surgeon made up for his lack of skill by some fairly gruesome means.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - 6:45 p.m.