There's More to That

Smithsonian Magazine
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There's More to That

Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only it can — through a lens on the world that is insightful and grounded in richly reported stories. On There's More to That, meet the magazine's journalists and hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time.  Every two weeks, There’s More to That will give curious listeners a fresh understanding of the world we all inhabit. Host and Smithsonian magazine editor Chris Klimek is a longtime public radio contributor and a frequent panelist on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. His substantive conversations with journalists and culture-makers will make There’s More to That an essential listen for anyone seeking to understand today’s most pressing issues.

  1. As Hurricanes Get Stronger, Can a $34 Billion Plan Save Texas?

    AUG 8

    As Hurricanes Get Stronger, Can a $34 Billion Plan Save Texas?

    After Hurricane Ike destroyed thousands of homes and inflicted an estimated $30 billion in damages in 2008, engineers hatched an ambitious plan to protect southeast Texas and its coastal refineries and shipping routes from violent storms. The $34 billion collaboration spearheaded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a harbinger of the type of massive public works projects that could be required to protect coastal cities like New York and Miami as sea levels rise and hurricanes become less predictable and more severe due to climate change. Smithsonian magazine contributor and Texas native Xander Peters reflects on his experiences growing up in a hurricane corridor and tells us how the wildly ambitious effort came together. Then, Eric Sanderson, an ecological historian, tells us how the project could be applied to other low-lying coastal cities. Read Xander Peters' Smithsonian magazine story about the Ike Dike here. Let us know what you think of our show, and how we can make it better, by completing our There's More to That listener survey here. Find prior episodes of our show here. Listen to the New York Botanical Garden podcast "Plant People" here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz  Music by APM Music.

    33 min
  2. How to Sweat Like an Olympian

    JUL 25

    How to Sweat Like an Olympian

    Have you ever felt embarrassed by the need to carry a towel, or even a fresh shirt, with you during the most sweltering months of the year? You shouldn’t. Sweating is one of the most remarkable ways our bodies protect themselves when the mercury heads north. With summer temperatures spiking around the world as the sweat-filled Olympic Games begin in Paris, we’re joined by Sarah Everts, a Smithsonian contributor and the author a marvelous book called The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration. She explains why the body’s thermostat is so ingenious, and how it cools athletes—and the rest of us. Plus: A series of snack-sized anecdotes about the Olympics! Let us know what you think of our show, and how we can make it better, by completing our There's More to That listener survey here. Find prior episodes of our show here. Read Smithsonian magazine's coverage of the Olympics, past and present, here, here, here, and here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz  Music by APM Music.

    30 min

  3. JUL 15

    Survey: Help Us Design Our Future Season

    We're over here making podcasts, and you're over there listening. Let's bridge that gap! We want to know more about you, like: why you're listening, what your favorite topics are, and what Smithsonian magazine can do to make "There's More to That" even better. Tell us what you think at  smithsonianmag.com/podcastsurvey.

    1 min
  4. The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos

    JUL 11

    The Wild Story of What Happened to Pablo Escobar’s Hungry, Hungry Hippos

    Four decades ago, Pablo Escobar brought to his Medellín hideaway four hippopotamuses, the centerpieces of a menagerie that included llamas, cheetahs, lions, tigers, ostriches and other exotic fauna. After Colombian police shot Escobar dead in December 1993, veterinarians removed the animals—except the hippos, which were deemed too dangerous to approach. The hippos fled to the nearby Magdalena River and multiplied.  Today, the descendants of Escobar’s hippos are believed to number nearly 200. Their uncontrolled growth threatens the region’s fragile waterways. Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer joins us to recount this strange history and explain why Colombian conservationists have embarked upon an unusual program to sterilize these hippos in the wild via “invasive surgical castration,” a procedure that is, as he has written for Smithsonian magazine, “medically complicated, expensive and sometimes dangerous for hippos as well as for the people performing it.” Then, ecologist Rebecca Lewison tells us how her long-term study of hippo populations in Africa offers hints of how these creatures will continue to alter the Colombian ecosystem—and what authorities can do about it. Let us know what you think of our show, and how we can make it better, by completing our There's More to That listener survey here. Read Josh Hammer's Smithsonian story about Escobar's hippos and their descendants here. Learn more about Rebecca Lewison and her work here. Find prior episodes of our show here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz  Music by APM Music.

    30 min
  5. ‘The Crime of the Century,’ a Century Later

    JUN 27

    ‘The Crime of the Century,’ a Century Later

    The past hundred years have seen more than one high-profile prosecution branded as the “crime of the century.” The shocking 1924 crime that was among the first to carry the title turned out to be a harbinger of how public mania around criminal cases could influence the legal system, and how psychiatry would be used and abused by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike as the 20th century wore on and gave way to the 21st. Smithsonian editor Meilan Solly introduces us to teens Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and their botched, but still deadly, effort to perpetrate “the perfect crime.” What happened next was also surprising: After confessing to the abduction and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, they were spared capital punishment thanks to their famed attorney Clarence Darrow. True-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson then tells us how public interest in Leopold and Loeb’s fate helped solidify true crime as a durable subject of fascination. She also tells us about the tools used by the prosecution that were in their infancy during the famed case. Read Meilan Solly's Smithsonian story about Leopold and Loeb here. Learn more about Kate Winkler Dawson, her books, her podcasts, and her work at her site. Find prior episodes of our show here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz / photography by Katherine Kimball, Joshua Brasted, and Jeremy Tauriac Music by APM Music.

    35 min
  6. America’s Best New Restaurant Celebrates the Flavors of West Africa

    JUN 13

    America’s Best New Restaurant Celebrates the Flavors of West Africa

    African cuisine has always been well represented in the United States, particularly in dishes characterized as “Southern” in origin, like gumbo or hoppin’ john. But even before chef Serigne Mbaye’s New Orleans eatery Dakar NOLA was named the Best New Restaurant of 2024 at the James Beard Awards this week, the contributions of the African diaspora to the American diet had at last begun to enjoy a long-overdue reappraisal via reality television, Netflix docuseries and, most important, a number of widely praised dining establishments: If you want to book a table at Tatiana in Manhattan, Dept of Culture in Brooklyn or Kann in Portland, you’d better plan ahead, because their tables are often booked up well in advance. In this episode, Smithsonian contributor Rosalind Cummings-Yeates explains how the ascendancy of pan-African cuisine from “auntie” restaurants into the rarefied fine dining sphere is part of a larger and more meaningful campaign of cultural reclamation. And Mbaye tells us why it was so important to him to make Dakar NOLA a showcase of the distinctive flavors of Senegal, where he spent his formative years. Read Rosalind's Smithsonian story about the rise of West African fine dining in the U.S. here. See the full list of 2024's James Beard Award winners here. Find prior episodes of our show here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz / photography by Katherine Kimball, Joshua Brasted, and Jeremy Tauriac Music by APM Music.

    27 min
  7. How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than A Century Ago

    MAY 30

    How Americans Got Hooked on Counting Calories More Than A Century Ago

    In 1918, Lulu Hunt Peters—one of the first women in America to earn a medical doctorate—published the best seller Diet and Health With Key to the Calories, making a name for herself as an apostle for weight reduction in an era when malnutrition was a far greater public health threat than obesity. She pioneered the idea of measuring food intake via the calorie, which at the time was an obscure unit of measurement familiar only to chemists.  A century later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 42 percent of American adults are clinically obese and that Type 2 diabetes is on the rise. With those who can afford it now turning to pharmaceuticals to help them lose weight, we’ll examine why and how calorie counting has failed to help Americans maintain a “healthy” weight.  In this episode of “There’s More to That,” we hear from food historian Michelle Stacey about Peters’ legacy—and from Ronald Young Jr., creator and host of the critically acclaimed podcast “Weight For It,” about how American society continues to stigmatize what he calls “fat folks” for reasons that have nothing to do with public, or even individual, health. A transcript is below. To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes on the complex legacy of Sojourner Truth, how Joan Baez opened the door for Taylor Swift, how machine learning is helping archeologists to read scrolls buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago and more, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Read Michelle Stacey's story about Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters in the June 2024 issue of Smithsonian here. Listen to Ronald Young, Jr.'s podcast "Weight For It" here. Find prior episodes of our show here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

    37 min
  8. ENCORE: Those Orcas (Still) Aren't Doing What You Think

    MAY 20

    ENCORE: Those Orcas (Still) Aren't Doing What You Think

    Last summer, news reports of orcas deliberately tearing the propellers off of yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar thrilled observers who were eager to cast these intelligent and social pack hunters as class warriors striking a blow for the “common mammals” against the one percent. That turned out to be wishful thinking, according to guest Lori Marino, a biopsychologist who studies whale and dolphin intelligence. She told us that these six-ton whales were just having fun—if they wanted to harm the occupants of those boats, we’d know it.  Even so, these encounters are becoming a predictable seasonal occurrence between the months of May and August: A 50-foot charter vessel sank after its hull and rudder were damaged in an orca encounter near the Strait of Gibraltar on May 12. So here again is our episode on the perils of assigning human motives to wild animals, featuring Marino and Smithsonian assistant digital science editor Carlyn Kranking. This episode was originally released in September 2023.   Dr. Marino invites you to learn more about The Whale Sanctuary Project at their site. You can also see Dr. Marino in the documentary films Blackfish (2013), Unlocking the Cage (2016), and Long Gone Wild (2019). Find prior episodes of our show here. And read the transcript of this episode here. There’s More to That is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

    29 min
See All (29)

4.7
out of 5
105 Ratings

About

Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only it can — through a lens on the world that is insightful and grounded in richly reported stories. On There's More to That, meet the magazine's journalists and hear how they discover the forces behind the biggest issues of our time.  Every two weeks, There’s More to That will give curious listeners a fresh understanding of the world we all inhabit. Host and Smithsonian magazine editor Chris Klimek is a longtime public radio contributor and a frequent panelist on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. His substantive conversations with journalists and culture-makers will make There’s More to That an essential listen for anyone seeking to understand today’s most pressing issues.

Information

  • Creator
    Smithsonian Magazine
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2024
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2023 - 2025 Smithsonian Magazine
  • Show Website
    There's More to That

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