Thousand-year-old Peruvian queens and medieval murder victims may seem lost to time, but history “detectives” are on a mission to solve a mystery: What did those people look like? We hear from Oscar Nilsson, a forensic facial reconstructionist who uses a combination of science and art to re-create the faces of our ancestors.
For more information on this epis ... Show More
Jul 2023
Trapped in the icy waters of the Northwest Passage
For centuries, the Northwest Passage, the long-sought sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through northern Canada, was a holy grail of Arctic exploration. Even now, sailing through it isn’t guaranteed. Mark Synnott, a National Geographic Explorer, writer, and adv ... Show More
34m 16s
Jul 2023
Playback: Modern Lives, Ancient Caves
There’s a lost continent waiting to be explored, and it’s right below our feet. We’ll dig into the deep human relationship to the underground—and why we understand it from an instinctive point of view, but not so much from a physical one. (Hint: We’re afraid of the dark.) In an e ... Show More
28m 39s
Jun 2023
Playback: This Indigenous Practice Fights Fire with Fire
For decades, the U.S. government evangelized fire suppression, most famously through Smokey Bear’s wildfire prevention campaign. But as climate change continues to exacerbate wildfire seasons and a growing body of scientific research supports using fire to fight fire, Indigenous ... Show More
29m 8s
Apr 2023
Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)
In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: ... Show More
1h 4m
Jan 2023
Unearthed! Year-end 2022, Part 2
Part two of our Unearthed! wrap up of 2022 covers a potpourri of stuff that didn’t go together, books and letters, edibles and potables, and apparel, including more than one pair of blue jeans.
Research:
“Chemical clues to the mystery of what’s coating Stradivari’s violins.” 10/2 ... Show More
38m 52s
Jan 2023
Unearthed! Year-end 2022, Part 1
It's time to cover things and stories that were unearthed in the last quarter of 2022. Part one covers a whole bunch of updates, a whole bunch of shipwrecks, and a whole bunch of repatriations.
Research:
“Chemical clues to the mystery of what’s coating Stradivari’s violins.” 1 ... Show More
41m 49s
Jan 2022
Introducing: Into the Depths
Black scuba divers across the world are searching for buried shipwrecks from the transatlantic slave trade, when millions of enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas during the 15th to the 19th centuries. A new six-part podcast series, Into the Depths, follows National G ... Show More
2m 33s
Oct 2023
Unearthed! in Autumn 2023, Part 1
In part one of our Autumn 2023 edition of Unearthed!, we have some oldest things, books and letters, projects specifically related to gender, edibles and potables, and animals.
Research:
“Early humans deliberately made mysterious stone 'spheroids'.” PhysOrg. 9/10/2023. https:// ... Show More
40m 58s
Jan 2024
Unearthed! in Fall/Winter 2023, Part 2
Finishing out discussion of things literally and figuratively dug up in the last months of 2023, we're covering shipwrecks, art, animals, and the miscellaneous category we call potpourri.
Research:
Alberge, Dalya. “That’s not a potato: mystery of Egyptian treasures found buried ... Show More
40m 57s
Jun 2022
Celebrate Juneteenth with Into the Depths
In celebration of Juneteenth, we revisit the final episode of Into the Depths with National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts. Tara is inspired by the stories of the Clotilda, a ship that illegally arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in 1860, and of Africatown, created by those on the ves ... Show More
46m 29s
Oct 2023
Unearthed! in Autumn 2023, Part 2
Part two of our autumn 2023 edition of Unearthed! includes potpourri, repatriations, shipwrecks, art, and a few perfect October entries.
Research:
“Early humans deliberately made mysterious stone 'spheroids'.” PhysOrg. 9/10/2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-early-humans-delibe ... Show More
37m 14s