Here at Pop Omnivore, Top Chef gives us lots to discuss. Sustainability? That’s in our wheelhouse. Regional cuisine? We eat that up! So it was with great interest that we followed finalist and pig-lover (note his tattoo) Kevin Gillespie this season as he talked about southern cooking and environmentally-minded eating. The twenty-five-year-old owner and executive chef of Atlanta’s Woodfire Grill spoke to us about those things—and about pork, of course.

The audience explores the lush landscape through the eyes of Jake Scully, a mercenary flying in from an eco-devastated Earth now devoid of everything green. After a journey of five years, nine months, and 22 days, Jake and a troop of jarheads arrive in Pandora to help a soulless intergalactic company claw a rare mineral, unobtainium, from the ground. A glimpse of the strip-mining pit shows what’s at stake. If the company has its way, this alien world will become a hellish dustbowl just like Jake’s home planet.

In Veracruz, Mexico, the sound of the harp is part of the sound of the town. Players pluck a 36-string wooden instrument on street corners, in restaurants, and during Catholic Masses. Known as the Veracruz harp, it came to the New World in the 1500s from Spain. In the 2000s the harp is entering the vocabulary of American popular music. The California-based group Rey Fresco—Spanish for “king cool”—incorporates the assertive Veracruz pluck in its reggae-Caribbean-Latin fusion music.

The group’s harpist is Xocoyotzin Moraza, 28, who grew up in Ventura, California. Xocoyotzin is an Aztec name meaning “first born son,” “extension of a father,” and “something new or fresh.” In Moraza’s case, the definitions are all true. His dad, Antonio, made the harp. And Xocoyotzin is bringing its sound into a new musical environment via Rey Fresco, whose debut album, The People, was released this fall. (Although the name has its downside. “The first day of school was interesting,” says Xocoyotzin, who always had to explain how to say his name: sho-ko-yo-tsen. Maybe that’s why his nickname is Xoco (pronounced sho-ko.)

For starters, the plot is great: When a scapegrace fox runs afoul of three mean farmers, he endangers his family and friends. To save them, he hatches an elaborate plan that relies on interspecies cooperation.

The look and sound of the movie are even greater: Tactile sets and puppets, deadpan voiceovers, and a winsome score let you lose yourself in the quaint, handcrafted world.

But greatest of all—at least to us here at Pop Omnivore—are the assortment of dubious animal “facts” sprinkled throughout the movie. Just for the fun of it, we decided to ask some experts to weigh in on our three favorite whoppers.

Cracked Latin is a band that does—and doesn’t—live up to its name. The sound is Ricky Ricardo’s horn-driven cha-cha-chá meets psychedelic rock—definitely “cracked Latin.” The band members may be a bit offbeat as well, but they aren’t exactly Latin. Luis Accorsi (above, left) is an Italian who grew up in Venezuela and now lives in Buffalo. He performs with Jewish New Yorker Lane Steinberg (right). “Talk about cultural misplacement,” Steinberg jokes.<p>

The video for their song “International Accident” is a case of artistic misplacement. No one is quite sure where it came from. A “crazy Venezuelan friend,” says Steinberg, passed on the animated saga of a chalk-drawn figure who camps out in the wild, strolls along a sidewalk that lights up, and then finds itself hanging for dear life by a finger—images that turn out to be spot-on for a song about strange goings-on in the world today. And for capturing the band’s cracked quality.<p>

Kirshtein, 25, who had to pack his knives and go in this week's episode, is the executive chef at Eno, an Atlanta restaurant whose décor is Euro-farmhouse meets urban chic (meaning big paintings of dice on some walls). In case you’re wondering, we ate: superb barley risotto with truffle oil and fennel fritters, sumptuous moist chicken that married beautifully with an array of wild mushrooms, and … a beet parfait, which had earthy undercurrents of flavor but a texture that seemed a bit gelatinous.

The National Geographic Museum is the latest stop in the world tour of China’s terra-cotta warriors. The silent, life-size sentries were built more than 2,000 years ago to protect the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s throne in the afterlife. Their image projects the grandeur and mystery of ancient China—and clearly resonates in modern-day America. Advance ticket sales topped 90,000. But a visitor to the show won’t see all the terra-cotta warriors.

In China today, these stone soldiers have come to wear quite a few uniforms, and not what you would expect. In the warriors’ hometown of Xian, where I spent a year studying Mandarin, I saw statues recast with playful irreverence by the country’s youth, used as a marketing ploy to appeal to consumers, and displayed as a striking symbol of the “New China.” Clearly, the terra-cotta warriors prove you're never too old for a makeover.

This sometimes silly reinvention is actually part of a serious shift in China, as its leaders seek to shape a modern country capable of supporting 1.3 billion people without losing touch with the lessons of a 5,000-year-old history.

Of course, this would be child's play to Minnesota's Al Franken, who has wowed crowds and won renown with his cartographic renderings. Here's a video of him creating an outline map of the United States at the Minnesota State Fair:

Click to launch our interactive gallery Then grab a pencil and try it yourself.

—Brad Scriber

On movie screens around the country, the world is coming to an end.

Hollywood director Roland Emmerich, of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow notoriety, uses his skill with special effects to depict the end of the world in the new movie 2012.

The 2012 is a reference to the Maya lunar calendar, which allegedly comes to an end on December 21, 2012. Some people think the world will end with it. Maya experts do not agree.

In any case, this is not the first time in recent memory that the end of the world has been said to be nigh. We combed through past headlines to see how print journalism (which is facing its own “end is coming” scenario) announced the imminent demise of our planet. Here are our picks for the outstanding offerings. Let us know if you have any headlines to nominate, old or new.

In an early scene of the film, Army General Hopgood, played by Stephen Lang, attempts to walk through a wall. His effort fails. Big time. What is to blame: Bad teaching or real world physical forces? We asked physicist Jeffrey Hazboun, who studies nature’s fundamental forces at Utah State University, about the physical forces governing walls. Here are three things we learned.

Is it?

The November issue of National Geographic magazine features a moving photograph of chimpanzees watching as one of their own is wheeled to her burial. Since it was published, the picture and story have gone viral, turning up on websites and TV shows and in newspapers around the world. For readers who’d like to know more, here’s what I learned when I interviewed the photographer, Monica Szczupider.

On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.

To find out, we asked the folks at sortprice.com, a price-comparison site that covers merchants who sell Halloween costumes—and that has seen 1.2 million costume searches this month.

Here are the top animal costumes this year. And then for the heck of it, here are seven popular costumes for animals.

10. The number of featured musicians from the video kicking off a 23-date North American tour to promote “peace and community and mindful joy” through music.

6. The number of songs Mark Johnson, co-founder of Playing for Change, the grassroots organization behind the song and tour, listed when asked for his top five songs of all time.

On the eve of the tour I asked Johnson to talk about the group he founded in 2001 and how his effort differs from the time at camp when we all had to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.”

In the movie Amelia, famed aviator Amelia Earhart is depicted as a heroic woman with the adventurous spirit and fearlessness of a ten-year-old. But the nitty-gritty of her flights and her passion for adventure don't get nearly as much attention as her love affairs, ideas of open marriage, or her fame as a celebrity of the ‘30s.

The movie begins in 1937 with the breathtaking face of Earhart (Hilary Swank) sitting in the cockpit of her Electra, navigating her way around the world. It then flashes back to her childhood in Kansas, then forward to 1928, when she meets Mr. Putnam (Richard Gere). Gere asks Swank why she wants to fly, and she responds, “Why does a man ride a horse?” Of course, the answer is “to be free.” I hoped this answer would be the baseline of the film, but Earhart’s freedom is short-lived. Soon she is selling clothing, posing for pictures, and doing commercials for waffle irons.

Amelia, which earned mixed reviews and had a less-than-heroic opening weekend, also neglected to mention one part of Earhart’s extraordinary life: her strong connection with National Geographic. In May 1932  she was awarded the National Geographic Society’s gold medal, presented by President Herbert Hoover (photo, above). And three years later  she contributed an article to the magazine titled “My Flight From Hawaii.” Here are some excerpts that fill in several of the movie gaps and give a bit of insight into what it was like to be a pioneering flyer in the 1930s.

It began with a book. Not a famous book or a best seller but a science textbook, on the shelf of a community library in Malawi—one of 300,000 volumes donated to locations across Africa through the American Institutes for Research. Using Energy, by Professor Mary Atwater of the University of Georgia, had a picture on its cover that captured a 14-year-old William Kamkwanba's imagination, inspiring him to feats of invention. It was the image of a windmill.

In 2002 Kamkwamba had gone to the library in a stubborn attempt to continue his education. A drought had cut his family's food supply so he couldn't afford the fees necessary to enroll in secondary school. He knew little English and couldn't read most of Using Energy. But being the kind of guy who takes apart broken radios and fixes them, he was able to learn a great deal from the illustrations. He was sure he could build his own windmill using scrap from junkyards—an old bicycle frame, PVC pipes for blades. And he did.

To the amazement of fellow residents in the little town of Wimbe, when Kamkwamba hooked his windmill to a dynamo of the sort used to run a bicycle light off a rider's pedaling, his invention generated electricity.

Soon, Kamkwamba built another windmill to pump water from underground. A newspaper noticed. Then a blogger (although Wimbe did not have Internet access, and Kamkwamba had yet to learn the meaning of the world "Google"). Kamkwanba was invited to a TED conference and then himself became the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, written with journalist Bryan Mealer.

Angel the schnauzer strolled to the coffee table, stood up on his back legs, and pushed a nose toward the fruit platter. As dogs are known to do when food is left unattended. But this wasn’t just any dog—and his owner wasn’t just any owner. From across the room a sound rose, crisp and familiar to any fan of the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. PSSHHT. A hand, tensed into a claw, rose in the air. The dog froze. Again: PSSHHT. (A commanding sound! Grabs attention and shows who's the boss!) Slowly, Angel backed down to the floor, walked away from the table, and curled up silently near his master's feet.

I'm used to folding laundry and bills. But when I was working on "Fold Everything," a short article about innovative uses of origami, my fingers began itching to try the ancient art of paper folding.

After all, there are people creating not only fantastic paper animal sculptures but using the mathematical principles of origami to build foldable telescope lenses and heart stents and to better understand how proteins fold. Origami for art’s sake has also come a long way. The father of 20th century origami, Akira Yoshizawa (1911-2005), created more than 50,000 unique figures. The most modern folders have something Mr. Yoshizawa didn’t: mathematical principals and computer programs that help them transform flat into functional, or just plain phenomenal.

Rivers Cuomo, lead singer for the alt-rock group Weezer, was leafing through the August issue of National Geographic when he found it—the picture he wanted on the cover of the band’s new release, Raditude. The jumping dog was one of the “Your Shot” selections—those are photos submitted by our readers. His name is Sidney and he is a three-year-old mutt whose mom was a Labrador mix.

We spoke with the dog’s owner, 34-year-old Connecticut librarian Jason Neely, about America’s newest canine star. Sadly, Sidney himself was unavailable for comment. “He’s passed out on the floor right now,” Neely said. “We were up in Maine and just picked him up at the boarders. He’s been partying with his doggie friends.”

Here at National Geographic, we always strive to be rational. Yet it never occurred to us to copyright the phrase “Rational Geographic.” And now it’s too late!

Rational Geographic Volume II is the new release from rock musician Michael John Hancock’s group Awesome New Republic. The extended-play album is available free as a download and sold on iTunes and Amazon. We spoke to singer and guitarist Hancock, 27, about the origins of the phrase “Rational Geographic” and about his pop-inflected music, which he describes as sounding as if “the radio is having a panic attack.”

Fort Worth's Star-Telegram ran a story this week about butter. Deep-fried butter, that is. Apparently, it's the next big thing at the Texas state fair this year, and it's on the list of finalists for something called the Big Tex Choice Awards. Judging by last year's champion for Best Taste--chicken fried bacon--it seems like butter's worth betting on. While we wait for the winners to be announced on Monday, we thought we'd take a moment to ponder fried food. 

Fans of True Blood must wait until September 13 for the season finale of the vampire saga. In the meantime, they can get their platelet fix from Thirst, the newest movie from Korean "master of vengeance" Park Chan-wook. Like True Blood, this films goes into overdrive with blood spatter and bedroom scenes, earning its R rating.

The new movie Taking Woodstock tells the story of the classic rock festival through the eyes of Elliot Teichberg, the parent-pecked son of Catskill motel operators. The movie, directed by the great Ang Lee and based on a true story, is okay but a little dull at times and more than a little farfetched (Elliot keeps running into the same high school chum in the crowds of the weekend). Yet the film did make us curious to hear other true stories of the Woodstock weekend. Colleague Kathy Maher, a research editor, was happy to oblige with her memories. Film rights are available.



If we aren’t alone in the universe, how would we treat our intergalactic neighbors?

The new movie District 9 considers this question by envisioning a present-day Earth where humans and extraterrestrials coexist, albeit uneasily.

Two decades after a colossal spacecraft has stalled over Johannesburg, South Africa, its passengers—millions of confused, malnourished aliens called “prawns” by disparaging humans—have been ghettoized into a grimy, apartheid-echoing militarized zone known as District 9. Then an evil corporation called Multi-National United decides to relocate them to an even more bantustan-like tent city. The subsequent eviction process touches on a host of legal and ethical issues like: What would earthlings do to ET visitors? Kill them? Conduct medical experiments? Attempt to extract valuable weaponry? All of the above?

To aid in our speculation, Pop Omnivore talked to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the nonprofit SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and author of the new book Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

 
The good news: Scientists in Ottawa have a plan to deal with a zombie plague. The bad news: Things don't look good for humankind.

The newly published analysis, "When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection," (PDF, Adobe Acrobat required to view) concludes that "an outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead."

There's more to this marriage of silver screen and ivory tower than mere whimsy. Lead researcher Robert Smith? (who spells his otherwise common name with a diacritical question mark to help differentiate it) concedes that the world probably doesn't need a literal model of the spread of zombie-ism, but the principles it illustrates are being used to fight monstrous real-world diseases like swine flu and HIV.

Jack Epstein knows chocolates. In his San Francisco store, Chocolate Covered, he sells more than 350 gourmet varieties. Single origin. High cocoa content. Salted. Spiked with chili, bacon, or sake-soaked ginger. Made with goat’s milk or sheep’s milk. And now a brand based on camel’s milk—the only one of its kind in the world.

Epstein has just received his first shipment from the Al Nassma company in Dubai, which launched its confections in the United Arab Emirates last October. As it starts to expand to specialty stores abroad, general manager Martin van Almsick believes it’s on track to become the Godiva of the Middle East.

Food is, of course, a major theme in Julie & Julia, the new movie about Julia Child's life in France and modern-day New Yorker Julie Powell’s attempt to cook every recipe in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

But place also plays a part. The movie begins as the Childs move from Washington, D.C. to Paris in 1949. The city instantly captures Julia's heart (and obviously her appetite). I'm an incurable Francophile, and all I could think about was what life was like in 1950s Paris. How much did Julia pay for the eggs she needed to whip up meringue? Were apartment rents exorbitant? Why, before she made the pivotal decision to attend the Cordon Bleu, did Julia dabble in hat-making?

I turned to the National Geographic archives for answers. This magazine has covered the City of Light at least two dozen times over the last five decades, but one story caught my eye with a title so perfect I had to read it twice: "Home Life in Paris Today, July 1950."

To paraphrase Heidi Klum of Project Runway, in the world of dog breeds, one day you’re in, the next day you’re out. Or vice versa. In the sixth edition of the World Atlas of Dog Breeds, a three-years-in-the-making revision of the original 1989 volume, some canines are added to the mix. Some are still waiting for a spot, like the winsome labradoodle, pictured above. And others, sadly, get an arf wiedersehen.

Heather Russell-Revesz, a senior editor at TFH Publications and one of the book's three primary authors, gave us the rundown on four changes.

A Dog of Flanders tells the moving story of a boy in a funny hat and his faithful pooch, played by the star of Old Yeller.

Almost 50 years after it debuted in theaters, the 1960 version of A Dog of Flanders, starring Spike (of Old Yeller fame) as the rescued pet "Patrasche," is back as a digitally restored and remastered DVD. The question I asked myself as I began to watch with my five-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son: Would my 21st-century kids, who had just been watching a Malcolm in the Middle rerun, sit still for an earnest, heart-warming tale of a boy with a funny-looking cap (not the baseball kind) in a part of Europe they've never heard of? Answer: They would.

The new movie Moon is a sci-fi throwback—a simple, hermetic story of isolation, identity, and (in)sanity.

In a matter of minutes, the 2001-indebted scene is set: It’s the near future, and a guy named Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is toiling alone in a mining station on the moon, where he harvests a clean-energy substance called Helium-3 to power a depleted Earth. His only company is a HAL-like robot called GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). His only goal is to play out the last two weeks of his three-year contract.

Even though the film is set in the future, some things about the space station look familiar to children of the television age. When Sam gets a haircut, GERTY uses a gadget that looks a lot like a Flowbee.

Just to be clear, this blog post does not endorse the movie Bruno. In fact, this photo depicts a beloved (and now stufffed) German bear named Bruno so no one will think that we are in Bruno's camp—not that there's anything wrong with that.

Love him or loathe him, provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation arrives in American theaters this weekend with the subtlety of a (sequined) anvil tossed to the (well-coiffed) head. I found the movie to be utterly tasteless, offensive, vulgar, and completely cringe-inducing. Needless to say, I loved it. And as a National Geographic employee, I would be remiss to send those who wish/dare to see this film into it without a short geographic and cultural glossary. After the jump, we offer terms that highlight some of the film's finer/horrifying moments. 

While writing the June issue’s “Flashback” column on Automats, I was tickled to learn that a real live automat still exists in New York City-—not part of the original Horn & Hardart empire but a modern-day effort to re-create the joy of buying prepackaged food stored in tiny compartments.

Alas, BAMN! Automat, as it was called, is no more! Just as the issue came out, I discovered that New York’s only automat had served its last meal.

Automats do still thrive in Amsterdam. But that’s a long way to go for prefab food.

Yet there is a way that 21st-century American foodies can experience the taste sensations of the original Automat, if not the ambience. Marianne Hardart, great great-granddaughter of Automat co-founder Frank Hardart, shares some of the dishes in her book The Automat: the History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece.

In Year One, Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) traipse across Biblical history after fleeing their village, narrowly escaping death, slavery, and circumcision en route to discovering their destinies.

Their final destination—where the majority of the movie takes place—is Sodom, known as the sinful city destroyed by God in “fire and brimstone.” Pop Omnivore was interested: Did Sodom really exist? To find out, we interviewed Rupert Chapman, head librarian of the Middle East department at the British Museum and co-author of the book Archaeology and the Bible, which examines how the findings of archaeology have confirmed—or refuted—the Bible.

A scene from the documentary Act of God, part of the Silver Docs film festival this month in Silver Spring, Md.

Owlie Skywarn terrified me as a child. Mr. Skywarn was the shrieking, easily agitated, anthropormophized owl-star of Watch Out! Storms Ahead!, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The alarmist owl warned of me violent weather phenomenon that was hell bent on destroying me, my family, and my pet hamsters, Fred and Ginger. Within a few weeks of getting this treatise on "Weather As A Force of Pure Evil in Your Young, Easily Extinguished Life," I was frightening my church picnic into an early departure (“Funnel cloud! I think!”) and desperately planning for Biblical floods, blinding blizzards, and Category 5 hurricanes. Hurricanes. On my family's farm. In far west Texas.

Crossword-puzzle fans probably have at least two questions about the new Geopuzzle, which makes its debut in the July issue of the magazine:

1.    Do I use ink or pencil?
2.    Who thought up all those clever clues?

For question No. 1, we’d like to hear from you. Did you try ballpoint pen (our choice) or pencil? Or did you print the puzzle out from our website and leave your magazine in pristine condition?

As for the author, she is the formidable puzzler Cathy Allis (formerly published as Millhauser), a crossword constructor for over 20 years. Her puzzles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous crossword collections. A book of her original puzzles, Humorous Crosswords, has been in print since 2003.

If you can’t wait until next month’s Geopuzzle, you can try a 2007 crossword created by Allis and clued by former President Bill Clinton.

And of course, we'd love to hear your reaction to our Geopuzzle!

—Marc Silver

In the smash-hit movie The Hangover, some guys wake up in their hotel room after a night of debauchery. One of them goes to relieve himself. He hears a roar. There’s a tiger near the toilet tank! Turns out it’s Mike Tyson’s pet.

Naturally, Pop Omnivore wondered: What should you do if there is a tiger in the room? And, on a more serious note, do people really have pet tigers?

Here is what we learned from tiger experts Philip Nyhus, assistant professor of environmental studies at Colby College and co-editor of the forthcoming book Tigers of the World, and Louis Dorfman, animal behaviorist at the International Exotic Animal Sanctuary.

Rebel angels are cast into hell but weren't cast in the movie.

To Sartre, hell was other people. To Sam Raimi, it’s the usual Christian version: fire, brimstone, anguished wails of the eternally damned—you get the picture, or will if you catch Drag Me to Hell.

Raimi’s newest feature film is a crackerjack horror/comedy, a knowingly schlocky, visually inventive movie as creepy, disgusting, goofy, and hilarious as his seminal, psychotronic Evil Dead trilogy. If you liked those flicks, you’ll probably love this one. In it, a goodhearted loan officer gets on the bad side of an elderly Hungarian woman, who proceeds to curse the poor girl. For three days she’ll be stalked, scared, and totally grossed out by a vengeful demon. On the fourth day, she’ll be—you guessed it—dragged to hell.

At least Will Ferrell is wearing the right kind of vest to be a paleontologist.

The new movie Land of the Lost stars Will Ferrell as paleontologist Rick Marshall, who invents a time machine that takes him to an alternate Earth where dinosaurs still dwell. Pop Omnivore wants to know: Does this film, based on a 1970s children’s TV show, do justice to paleontologists, not to mention dinosaurs?

For an expert opinion, we spoke with Thomas R. Holtz Jr., dinosaur paleontologist at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology. (Warning: This interview contains spoilers—and references to poop and pee!)

Mark your maps: The finals of the National Geographic Bee take place on May 20 at NG headquarters in Washington, D.C. They’re also broadcast live on the National Geographic Channel, and subsequently on PBS (check your local station for details). As the contestants do their late-minute cramming, we asked the geographers and educators who come up with the questions for their insights. Here’s what we learned from Jo Erikson, Geoffrey Hatchard, and the rest of the Bee content team.

Where do you get ideas for the geography-bee questions?

We sit down to have a brainstorming session to come up with ideas. We get ideas from National Geographic products, our colleagues and peers at the Society, current events, and outside geographic sources.

But we at National Geographic wanted to know one thing: How green were they? We asked every star we met, "Did you do anything green this weekend?" A few of the leading lights did share their thoughts.

Every Star Trek fan knows that ye canna change the laws of physics. But if you're director J.J. Abrams, you can change the U.S.S. Enterprise.

For the new movie, designers wanted to give the original NCC-1701 a "hot rod" look. The sleek curves and stylized interior will no doubt raise a few pointy eyebrows. Abrams has said the revamped bridge—a blur of bright white walls, flashing lights, and broad expanses of chrome and glass—makes the modernistic Apple store look "uncool." (Apple store fans may not agree.)

We asked the film's designers and model-makers how they re-imagined the iconic starship, and talked to a NASA engineer about the ways the ship does and does not fit current standards of spacecraft design.

Meave and Louise Leakey. Photograph by Mike Hettwer.

Having a kid can open up previously unimagined worlds of discovery, so it’s fair to say that every mom is an explorer. Plus, every explorer has a mom and sometimes is a mom to boot. With Mother’s Day coming up in the U.S. on Sunday (dates vary in other countries), we asked a few of National Geographic’s best-known explorers their thoughts about this holiday.

And to think that I saw it on 17th Street!

With apologies to Dr. Seuss, I will say that nothing in his Mulberry Street children’s book can top the sight outside National Geographic’s windows last Friday afternoon in downtown Washington, D.C.

A groom was riding an elephant—in rush hour, yet!—to his wedding at the Mayflower Hotel. Indian music filled the air. Wedding guests and curious onlookers filled the streets. Commuters looked unhappy. A couple of government sharpshooters stood on the periphery, rifles at the ready.