Stories from the Vaults - Episode Guide

Roughly 50,000 items are annually donated to the Smithsonian's collection. See Roosevelt's hunting trophies, Steinbeck's sea urchins, Phyllis Diller's joke file, and other gifts from famous patrons.

Tom is on a mission: to discover what it means to be the best, the tiniest, the coldest and the most misunderstood.

Host Tom Cavanagh tries to unravel the idea of "Home Sweet Home." He visits the National Air and Space Museum's collection of space suits, learns about Native American tipis at the National Museum of the American Indian, and finds an astonishing array of life in a thimble of sand.

Beauty isn't just in the eye of the beholder. Three Smithsonian curators offer their surprising perspectives on the elusive meaning of true beauty as it applies to their work with advertising, orchids and ants.

Enter the vaults of the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum in search of earth-shattering firsts. From a new collection of vintage planes to the very first videogame (hint: it wasn't Pong).

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Natural History, and the National Postal Museum all hold clues to the afterlife. Deep inside their vaults, the evidence for life after death has never been more convincing.

Dive into the very heart of the world's largest museum complex amidst more than 136 million objects. With such an incredible variety of things to see, there's nothing haphazard about the systematic collections at the Smithsonian. Host Tom Cavanagh visits the National Zoo and the National Museum of American History, showing us that breadth certainly doesn't equal randomness.

Join host Tom Cavanagh as he goes behind the scenes at the Smithsonian to cook Native American dishes with the executive chef of Mitsitam Cafe.

Spies, missiles and the Hope Diamond. Unlock the mysteries hidden inside the Smithsonian vaults with host Tom Cavanagh.

Tom Cavanagh takes you to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Follow him as he tracks sloths, searches for clues to the creation of the Panamanian Isthmus, and rises 16 stories in a crane to research bug life atop the rainforest.

Tom taps into the Smithsonian's vaults and labs to gaze into the future...as we envisioned it in the 1930s and as we look forward today. First, Tom visits the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to examine designers' visions of tomorrow via the 1939 World's Fair collection. Then, he heads to Panama to talk to scientists helping to preserve the future of the tropical rainforest.

Host Tom Cavanagh joins the Smithsonian on a mission of "extreme conservation" to protect the best aspects of our world for future generations. See the amazing amount of work that goes into saving animals from the brink of extinction, preserving a provocative work of art, or reviving a genre of music.

Research into sexuality is kicking at the Smithsonian. Explore the love letters of Jackson Pollock and Frida Kahlo, stories about "the birds and the bees," and laws of attraction between fiddler crabs.

Host Tom Cavanagh takes on the bad guys and digs up some pretty incriminating evidence from the Smithsonian vaults. His investigation unearths photographic evidence from the Crime of the Century, new details on America's first "Lone Gunman": John Wilkes Booth, and creepy facts about everyone's favorite natural villain, the snake.