A Very Cold Case

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

African American History And Culture, American History, Exhibits, Dc, History, Science, Sidedoor, History Of The World, Society & Culture, The Smithsonian, Washington, Natural History, Pop Culture, Smithsonian, Exhibit, Tony Cohn, Zoo, National Museum, Air And Space, National Zoo, Art19, Museum, Postal Museum

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

American newspaper publisher and all-around eccentric, Charles Francis Hall, was an unlikely candidate to become an Arctic explorer. Nevertheless, he made three trips to the frozen north, until he died there under suspicious circumstances. Sharpen your powers of deduction and join us on Sidedoor for an epic frozen whodunit, featuring shipwreck, romance, and a social media darling with a dark secret. We’re resharing this longtime favorite from 2021 to bring you some wintry vibes.

Guests:
Stephen Loring, anthropologist and archeologist at the Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History
Heidi Moses, volunteer with the Smithsonian Transcription Center
Emily Niekrasz, social media manager, Smithsonian Institution

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.8	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:28.3	On a chilly day one spring, Emily Neckrish posted a photo on Facebook.
0:35.4	I made a lighthearted joke about wearing the same sweater every day of the week while working from home.
0:36.6	It was early in the pandemic's work-from-home days, and part of Emily's job as social media
0:41.0	manager for the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is to pull cool photos and documents from the
0:45.8	archives to post online. This one was an old-timey black-and-white picture of a guy in a fluffy
0:51.5	white coat. She called it Unidentified male models fur parka.
0:56.9	He's got this really long beard and perfectly manicured hair.
1:02.4	Kind of slick back, but with like a lot of volume.
1:04.7	Like, he's used some product.
1:05.9	That is so great.
1:06.9	And is he looking into the camera?
1:08.8	He's kind of gazing away.
1:10.7	Like he knows something that we do not.
1:16.3	Emily had posted this picture many times before because it always got a killer response.
1:22.5	So we've had Instagram followers call him a mixologist.
1:27.0	They said they've seen this man at Burning Man on the streets of Brooklyn. They've dropped fire emojis. They called him dreamy.
1:35.4	Oh, so he's hot. He's hunky. He's hunky. He looks like one of the guys that would wear a man bun.
1:45.7	Like a hipster? Yes. He looks like one of the guys that would wear a man bun. Like a hipster?
1:47.5	Yes, he looked like a hipster, exactly.
1:51.0	Heidi Moses was scrolling through Facebook when she saw the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives post.
	...

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