The Library of Congress is Full of Super Weir...

Naval legend Admiral Nelson died on October 21st, 1805 shortly after being shot by a French sniper while standing on the deck his ship, Victory. Following the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the survivors of the conflict were left with a dilemma -- how could they pres ...  Show more

Words are everywhere -- and we're grateful, because we can't do this show without them. But all words were, at some point, just made up. So how does society decide what counts as a "real" word? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the history of language, and the oddly ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, our audience loved Kristin O'Donnell Tubb’s wonderful story from her historical fiction book, John Lincoln Clem: Civil War Drummer Boy. So we asked if she would share another story wit ...

In 1966, just as the foundations of the Internet were being imagined, the federal government considered building a National Data Center. It would be a centralized federal facility to hold computer records from each federal agency, in the same way that the Library of Congress hold ...  Show more

Hello! Libraries are about far more than borrowing books. We’re exploring how libraries around the world serve their communities and are adapting to changing needs. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg explains why libraries help build social solidarity and should be a priority for govern ...  Show more

When a 200-year-old legal document anonymously arrived at his office, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives c ...