Stories from the Vaults

An insider's look at the homes of various cultures and species and how they've differed throughout history.

The backrooms of the Smithsonian hold clues to the afterlife. Tom Cavanagh goes inside its vaults, discovering that evidence for life after death has never been more convincing.

Tom dives into the heart of the world's largest museum complex amidst over 156 million artefacts and specimens. Any object may seem out of place, but there's nothing haphazard about the collection.

Actor Tom Cavanagh explores our sincerest love of all - food. He tries cooking Native American dishes, learns the origin of the coffee break, and visits the National Museum of Dentistry.

Tom Cavanagh tracks sloths, searches the Panama Canal, and rises sixteen storeys in a crane to research bug life atop the rainforest at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Tom Cavanagh takes an insider's tour of the backrooms, high-tech vaults, and cutting-edge labs of the Smithsonian to gaze into the future, as we envisaged it in the 1930s and today.