There's More to That

Half a century ago, on an unseasonably warm fall day, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald set off from the western edge of Lake Superior with a cargo full of iron ore. Within hours, a ferocious storm gathered in strength, ultimately producing 50-foot waves and sinking the prized vessel. There were no survivors. The exact cause of its demise remains unknown.Over the decades, many ships have faced a similar fate on the Great Lakes, a part of the world that some say is more dangerous than the open ocean. But the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald looms the largest in our collective national memory — and it led to changes in the maritime industry that dramatically improved the safety of shipping.In this episode, host Ari Daniel speaks with author John U. Bacon about what made the Edmund Fitzgerald famous even before it sank, what we know and don’t know about the crew’s final moments, and the ship’s lasting legacy.Read more coverage of the sinking of the Fitzgerald here.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the return of a set of important belongings to the Lakota community, the search for the remains of three fallen World War II airmen, and the role that enslaved Africans and Southern colonists played in launching the American Revolution, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Ali Budner, Cleo Levin, Genevieve Sponsler, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz / Photo by Lake Superior Maritime Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Superior Special Collections and Archives, Bob Campbell / Images by mdnahidkha23 via Adobe Stock, Newspapers.com and public domain

This fall, 69 belongings made their way home to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. These items, which included buffalo robes, blankets, moccasins and a doll, had been taken from the Lakota community after the Blue Water Massacre in 1855, the first major ambush on a Native American community by the U.S. Army. It would become the start of a decades-long campaign against the Plains tribes that would end with the death and displacement of numerous Native Americans.The return of the belongings offers a modicum of closure, but the pain of the massacre lives on among those on the reservation today. In this episode of Smithsonian magazine’s podcast “There’s More to That,” host Ari Daniel speaks with Ione Quigley and Karen Little Thunder, two members of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, and Smithsonian contributing writer Tim Madigan about the journey of these belongings from their birthplace to a museum and back.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the search for the remains of fallen airmen from World War II, a baseball field resurrected in a Japanese internment camp and a deeper look at lesser known stories of the American Revolution, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Cleo Levin, Sandra Lopez Monsalve, Pedro Rafael Rosado and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photos by Gary Whitton / Nawaphon via Adobe Stock and public domain.

The durian, a spiky fruit that grows across Southeast Asia, has a polarizing reputation for its pungent odor and strong taste. There are the durian haters — people who experience waves of revulsion at the mere thought of consuming one.And then there are the superfans who sing its praises and travel the world to experience the rare and complex bliss it inspires on the palate. Those who relish this fruit say there’s a lot to love. It can be eaten raw (shortly after falling from the tree) or prepared as the hero of both sweet and savory dishes.In this episode, host Ari Daniel travels with his children to a San Francisco restaurant to interview its chef and owner, Azalina Eusope, about her love of durian and the cuisine it inspires. And he speaks with Smithsonian contributing writer Tom Downey about his trip to Malaysia to experience the euphoria of fresh durian firsthand.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about using fruit depicted in Renaissance paintings to rescue modern agriculture, an award-winning restaurant in New Orleans that showcases Senegalese cuisine, and a prehistoric pit that entombed animals for millennia, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photos courtesy of Dr. Susumu Tomiya and public domain.

In the fall of 1944, Japanese fighters opened fire on a wave of U.S. planes near Palau, including a bomber carrying pilot Jay Ross Manown Jr., gunner Anthony Di Petta and navigator Wilbur Mitts. Their aircraft crashed into the sea, and the three men were “presumed dead.” They were assigned by the Navy, like so many others, to a purgatorial category—not likely to be alive, but not declared dead, either.Decades later, a group known as Project Recover worked relentlessly to track down the wreckage and then exhume the bones whose DNA could be tested. They ultimately identified the remains of all three crewmembers, allowing them to be laid to rest and giving a sense of closure to their families.Host Ari Daniel speaks with Stephen Mihm, who wrote about this effort for Smithsonian magazine. And he interviews Rebecca Sheets, Manown’s niece, about what her uncle’s recovery meant for her and her family.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the untold stories of the American Revolution, baseball at a Japanese internment camp and a recently solved mystery surrounding the burial of President John F. Kennedy, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photo courtesy of the Mitts and Di Petta Families. Images via Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library and public domain.

After multiple wildfires ripped through greater Los Angeles earlier this year, Californians were left to rebuild communities and grapple with the loss of life, nature and property. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and as many as 180,000 residents were under evacuation orders until the flames could be controlled. Unfortunately, this seems to be the new order in California; officials are already working to prepare for the next fire season.In this episode, host Ari Daniel speaks with photographer Ivan Kashinsky, who witnessed and documented the devastation of the Palisades Fire up close, even as he tried to rescue his cats and valuables from his family home in Topanga Canyon. And we hear from writer and wildlife biologist Anton Sorokin, who chronicled the animals that escaped, fled and perished due to the fiery forces that are increasingly shaping our world.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about a group of people dedicated to saving native bees, the sex lives of dinosaurs and the story of Pablo Escobar’s hippos, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photos by Anton Sorokin and public domain.

Baseball was a way of life in the camps that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. The United States government stripped the Americans who lived in these camps of their liberties, but for those communities, having played the game for generations, baseball brought them closer to each other and, paradoxically, to their country. At Manzanar, one such site at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California, dozens of baseball and softball teams played regularly.Decades after the camps closed, and after Japanese Americans had returned to their homes on the West Coast, Manzanar was established as a historic site. Replicas of camp buildings were erected to memorialize what had happened there, but the baseball field was in complete disrepair. Artist and baseball enthusiast Dan Kwong led the herculean restoration effort. Host Ari Daniel talks with Kwong and Smithsonian writer Rachel Ng, who reported on the endeavor. Read the original Smithsonian article here.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on a recently solved mystery surrounding the burial of John F. Kennedy, the only battalion during World War II composed entirely of Black women, and everything you wanted to know about sweating and sports, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. “There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photos by Aaron Rapoport and the National Archives under public domain.

Before he was a civil rights activist, James Felder was a member of the elite U.S. Honor Guard who helped bury John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery after his assassination in 1963. In a move that was unrehearsed, after laying the casket to rest, the members of the Honor Guard placed their military hats upon the gravesite in what James Felder called “a final salute to President Kennedy.”Years later, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis commissioned a bronze wreath to be made in honor of her husband that incorporated the caps. Once completed, this sculpture disappeared quite suddenly. Half a century later, improbably, it was found due to the help of a couple of sleuths at a private garden in Northern Virginia.In this episode, we hear from Elinor Crane of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and James Felder. Read the original Smithsonian article by Ellen Wexler here.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on the man behind the nonfiction thriller about Abraham Lincoln's assassination, separating fact from fiction in the life of Sojourner Truth, and the complicated legacy of being the descendant of a Civil War hero, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson.Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Images via John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and public domain.

For millennia, auroras have both enchanted and haunted human beings. Ancient lore is filled with myths attempting to explain what caused the celestial phenomenon. More recent historic documentation of auroras may even help us predict damaging solar storms in the future.As we head into a year expected to bring the best northern lights in two decades, we consider the science behind auroras and why they are suddenly so plentiful—even in places that hardly qualify as northern.In this episode, Jo Marchant, author of The Human Cosmos, and Smithsonian science editor Carlyn Kranking revel in auroras through the ages and explain how to view these dazzling displays yourself.Tap here to see the NOAA tracker mentioned in the episode.Read Carlyn's coverage of auroras here and here.To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on our love of eclipses, the use of asteroid dust to find the origins of life and why orcas may not be doing what we think, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. / Images via public domain.