Smithsonian's feature stories, read aloud by Rebecca Shore.
Smithsonian Magazine is the print magazine in audio form, voiced by Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, a reading service meant for people who are blind or find print difficult to read. The magazine's own text fills each episode, bylines included, ranging from the La Brea Tar Pits to a World War II radio deception.
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Smithsonian Magazine is, quite literally, the magazine read out loud. Rebecca Shore voices it for Radio Eye, a reading service intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities that make printed material hard to use. Episodes open with the same welcome, a note of which issue is being read, and a reminder of who the service is for. They close the same way too, with her name and a wish for a great day. What falls between is the writing itself: headline, subtitle, byline, then the article. Readings from the March 2026 and April-May 2026 issues cover a wide spread of subjects. Richard Conniff's piece on the La Brea Tar Pits explains that the asphalt never dragged animals underground, as Hollywood would have it; it held them fast until exposure, starvation or a predator finished them, and the predators and scavengers that followed often got stuck in turn. It also notes that Native Americans used the asphalt to waterproof baskets and boats. April White's World War II feature follows Agnes Bernauer, a 21-year-old German-Jewish refugee who, as 'Vicky with Three Kisses', sang and sweet-talked her way across the airwaves to German troops without meaning a word of it. As a teenager she had patrolled North London as an air raid warden during the Blitz, water pump in hand, feeling slightly foolish, as she recalled in her 1996 autobiography, The Fun Palace. Allied broadcasters, the reading notes, had information so accurate that Nazi leaders feared a mole among their closest advisers. Chris Pomorski's Central Texas story turns on ranchers losing animals to coyotes. One of them, Buchholz, bought five Great Pyrenees in the late 1970s and found almost nothing in libraries on how to put them to work. The same piece reaches back to Nineveh, where clay guard-dog figurines from around 650 BCE carried names such as 'Loud is his bark' and 'Don't think, bite'. Lighter material sits alongside. Rebecca Toy traces the hot dog from Coney Island carts to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Hyde Park residence in 1939, where George VI tried his first and went back for a second. Other readings take in autoworkers occupying their factories with Governor Murphy's guardsmen posted outside as a buffer, filling the hours with boxing, checkers and chess; Providence in its days as the jewelry capital of the world, when die-striking replaced handwork; petroglyphs in Chad showing the Sahara was not always barren; and the James Webb Space Telescope's hundreds of isolated objects smaller than Jupiter. Longer features are split across two episodes, and the second half begins with a short recap. For a complete story, 4.2.26 starts the Bernauer article and 4.9.26 carries its second part; 3.19.26 and 3.26.26 do the same for the Texas guardian dogs.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants Smithsonian Magazine's feature writing on fossils, wartime history, working animals and food lore read as written rather than summarised. Radio Eye presents the reading as intended for people who are blind or have other disabilities that make printed material hard to read.
What sets it apart: Rather than a conversation about the magazine, it is the magazine: one reader, Rebecca Shore, voicing articles with headlines, subtitles and bylines intact, and splitting longer features across two episodes that pick up with a brief recap.
Radio Eye is a reading service for people who are blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Smithsonian Magazine is a weekly half-hour reading of the magazine, broadcast on Thursdays. This is produced by Radio Eye under the Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Act which states that authorized entities that are governmental or nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is to provide copyrighted works in specialized formats to blind or disabled people. By continuing to listen, you verify you have an eligible print-reading disability.
One reading takes you from coyote-guarding dogs to a king's first hot dog.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Smithsonian reading links tar pits, Providence jewelry and planets without stars.
Smithsonian Magazine's April-May reading begins at the La Brea Tar Pits, where natural asphalt has preserved mammoths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, plants and insects across roughly 60,000 years.
A brisk reading links a wartime microphone and La Brea's asphalt bones through the evidence that reshapes familiar history.
Smithsonian Magazine's April-May 2026 reading pairs two kinds of survival story: wartime deception and the long record preserved at La Brea. Agnes Bernauer, a 21-year-old German-Jewish refugee, becomes an unlikely Allied weapon in World War II, using a microphone and scripted…
Agnes Bernauer's sultry radio persona turns wartime performance into a weapon of deception and unnerving truth.
Agnes Bernauer's wartime radio persona, Vicky with Three Kisses, makes flirtation feel like a tactic. At 21, Bernauer sang and sweet-talked German troops across Europe's airwaves, selling scripted lies through the fantasy of a sweetheart waiting at home.
From Texas ranches to Hyde Park hot dogs, Smithsonian finds sharp history in practical lives and odd appetites.
Smithsonian Magazine's March 2026 reading works best as a brisk tour of practical problems, old appetites, and the odd ways history keeps its traces. On Texas's Edwards Plateau, ranchers return to livestock guardian dogs after trapping, poisoning, and fencing fall short.
A Central Texas ranching story about replacing coyote killing with the old, patient work of livestock guardian dogs.
Smithsonian Magazine's March 2026 reading follows a change in Central Texas ranching, where a long push to eliminate coyotes gives way to an older, quieter tool: dogs bred to guard livestock.
Greek myth told with fatal momentum.
Ancient empire told in old public-domain voices.
Rebecca Shore reads the April-May 2026 Smithsonian Magazine issue for Radio Eye, opening with Richard Conniff’s Part 2 on the La Brea Tar Pits and the Ice Age fossil record preserved in asphalt.
Rebecca Shore reads Smithsonian Magazine's April-May 2026 issue for Radio Eye, opening with April White's account of Agnes Bernauer, a 21-year-old German-Jewish refugee used in Allied black propaganda during World War II.
Smithsonian Magazine's March 2026 reading follows Agnes Bernauer, a 21-year-old refugee performer who became "Vicky with Three Kisses" and sang lies to German troops over the airwaves.
Rebecca Shore reads Smithsonian Magazine's March 2026 issue for Radio Eye, opening with Chris Pomorski's Texas ranch report on Bob Buchholz, Robin Giles, and Grant and Misty Giles.
A March 2026 Smithsonian Magazine article read by Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye follows a Central Texas ranch family that lost more than 400 sheep and goats to coyotes.
Smithsonian Magazine's March 2026 reading examines evidence that the Sahara's last humid period ended around 6,000 years ago and considers whether warming may strengthen the West African monsoon.
Smithsonian Magazine’s March 2026 reading examines whether the Sahara Desert could be greening again after the Holocene North African Humid Period ended roughly 5,500 years ago.
Rebecca Shore reads four Smithsonian Magazine articles dated January-February 2026, covering Sherpa tea houses on Nepal's Mira Peak, Miles Davis's musical development, Brian Boitano's 1988 Olympic rivalry with Brian Orser, and historian Eve MacDonald's reassessment of Carthage.
Smithsonian Magazine's 2.19.26 reading follows Petra Quilfelt and other researchers studying southern rockhopper penguins in the Falkland Islands.
Smithsonian Magazine's January-February 2026 article examines NASA's approximately 10-day Artemis II mission, which will send Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen around the Moon without landing.
Smithsonian Magazine's January-February 2026 reading examines black soldier fly larvae as a protein and waste-processing technology, beginning with 128 million larvae consuming 16.5 tons of crop waste daily at Insectipro near Nairobi.
Smithsonian Magazine’s January-February 2026 reading examines the November 12, 1758 Friendly Fire Incident that nearly killed 26-year-old George Washington near Loyal Hanna.
Smithsonian Magazine’s January-February 2026 reading examines Fernando Wood’s January 1861 proposal for New York City to leave New York State and become a city-state.
Victor Luckerson’s Smithsonian Magazine article follows Samuel Green, a free Black Maryland farmer and preacher arrested in April 1857 after police found a Canada map, railroad schedules, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin in his home.
Smithsonian Magazine's December 2025 article follows Eva Pagling, Selena Smith, and other researchers working to restore California's kelp forests.
A narrated journey into Rome's hidden underground world, exploring ancient aqueducts and structures with a local spelio-archaeologist.
A reading service article about efforts to save rare native bee species from extinction through habitat restoration, education, and research.
This episode reads the second part of a Smithsonian article about archaeological discoveries in Lumbini, Nepal, the Buddha's legendary hometown.
This episode explores archaeological findings at the Buddha's legendary birthplace in Nepal, blending historical research with cultural context.
A reading of a Smithsonian Magazine article about a botanist's search for a rare coffee species that could save coffee from extinction due to climate change.