Sidedoor

When the Smithsonian’s Richard Kurin learned that a museum curator found hair inside a Bible in the Smithsonian’s collections, his own hair stood on end. This wasn’t just any Bible. It was Thomas Jefferson’s personal Bible. Could the hair belong to Jefferson? If so, it might help resolve one of the oldest and most contested questions in American history: Was Thomas Jefferson the father of Sally Hemings’s children?
The mystery hair sent Kurin on a years-long quest for answers. Now, he’s ready to share what he found. Join us as well follow him from the Smithsonian to Monticello, DNA laboratories, and the living rooms of Jefferson and Hemings descendants. Can scientists reconstruct a genome from a 200-year-old strand of hair? And what might that DNA reveal?
Guests: 
Richard Kurin, Smithsonian distinguished scholar, and ambassador-at-large
Leslie Greene Bowman, president emerita of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation 
Arthur (Art) Westerinen, great-great-great grandson of Sally Hemings through her son Eston Hemings 
Robert Fleischer, senior scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation Genomics
Beth Shapiro, co-director of the Paleogenomics Lab at UC Santa Cruz
Richard E. Green, professor of bimolecular engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-director of the Paleogenomics Lab
David Miller, sixth generation descendent of Thomas Jefferson through his daughter Maria Eppes
Clara Lee-Nutt, great-great-great granddaughter of Sally Hemings through her son Madison Hemings
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Did Thomas Jefferson Father Sally Hemings' Children? | Smithsonian Magazine

Beetles make up a quarter of all known animal life on Earth. A QUARTER! Beetles are everywhere, doing almost everything. From eating flesh off skeletons to making poop disappear, these little buggers make the world a lot less gross for the rest of us… and look cool doing it. With a little help from the Smithsonian’s beetle experts, we’ll discover why these tiny powerhouses are so wildly diverse, why Ancient Egyptians considered them sacred, and what makes a dung beetle beautiful. (Yes, really.) Get ready to see beetles in a whole new light. Just watch where you step. 
Guests:
Inger Toraason, osteological specimen preparator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of National History's Osteo Prep Lab
Floyd Shockley, entomologist and collections manager for the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History 
Frank Krell, coleopterist and curator of beetles at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History

When baby Asian elephant Linh Mai was born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, her mother rejected her. Then things got worse. Linh Mai couldn’t digest her formula, she was losing weight, and her care team was running out of time.
Join us behind the scenes at the National Zoo to learn how curators and "turd nerds" race to save Linh Mai with an unusual treatment: a fecal microbiota transplant. But not just any poop will do!
Roll up your sleeves (and pinch your nose) as we explore the extraordinary lengths people will go to save one very big baby.
Guests: 
Sally Bornbusch, Microbial Ecologist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation Genomics and Department of Nutrition Science
Robbie Clark, Curator and Manager for Elephant Trails at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
Erin Kendrick, Clinical Nutritionist at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

Season 13 of Sidedoor is almost here! Follow us behind the scenes at the National Zoo to meet the new baby elephant, Linh Mai. We open the vaults to see some of the weirdest beetles in the collection. And we track the wild journey of the Declaration of Independence after it was signed (which was actually not on July 4, 1776). New episodes begin next week!

One of the deadliest poisons known to man is now used to treat wrinkles, migraines, and even, maybe, depression. How did that happen? 
This is a special episode from Unexplainable  podcast from Vox and the Vox Media Network. 
Guests: 
Jean Carruthers, ophthalmologist and “godmother” of cosmetic Botox. 
David Simpson, neurologist at Mount Sinai hospital in New York. 
Axel Wollmer, psychiatrist at the Asklepios clinic in Hamburg, Germany.