Museums in Strange Places

Museums in Strange Places

I believe that museums are one of the best ways to discover a place, whether it’s your first time visiting or you’ve lived there your whole life. Join me on this adventure as I get to know the world….one museum as a time. I’m your host, Hannah Hethmon. In each episode, I visit a different museum to discover its stories, discuss challenges and triumphs with fascinating museum professionals (and volunteers), and get to places through their museums. Season 1 is all about museums in Iceland. Season 2 is all about museums in the state of Maryland. NOTE from the creator: This show is no longer active. I hope you enjoy all the past episodes. I produce lots of other museum (and museum-adjacent) podcasts. You can find them at BetterLemonAudio.com. Also check out We the Museum, my podcast for museum workers. Interested in starting a podcast at your organization? Find out more about my editing and production services at BetterLemonAudio.com.

Episodes

January 26, 2023 2 mins

I always meant to get back into doing Museum in Strange Places episodes, but producing professionally as Better Lemon Creative Audio and the pandemic got in the way. Now, I'm finally back with a brand new show for museum workers, WE THE MUSEUM. We the Museum is a podcast for museum workers who want to form a more perfect institution. Episodes will feature in-depth conversations with museum workers in the US and beyond. Exp...

Mark as Played

One of the many projects I've been working on through my new production company (Better Lemon Creative Audio) is a podcast for the Vagina Museum in London. I'm so passionate about the work this museum is doing, and I think you're going to LOVE this podcast. It's written and produced by me with research and narration by science communicator Alyssa Chafee. Guests include big names like Dr. Jen Gunter, Kate Lister, Emma Rees,...

Mark as Played
November 13, 2019 29 mins

[A pilot for a new show I developed about living in London. I'm really proud of how it turned out, but I just don't have the time to make more episodes, so it's going to live here on the Museum in Strange Places feed.

I meet up with escape room creator, museum professional, and self-proclaimed mermaid hunter Sacha Coward, who takes me somewhere that will inspire me a bit and help me see the beauty in London’s “layers of pu...

Mark as Played

Donald J. Trump has been active in business and media for fifty years, but his scandal-ridden presidency has overshadowed most of his history. Levi Fox's Pop-Up Atlantic City Trump Museum is an attempt to remedy this oversight for one specific chapter of the Trump story: his four Atlantic City casinos and the impact their short tenures and bankruptcies had on the gambling capitol of the East Coast. Together, we unpack the ...

Mark as Played

He’s the master of macabre, the man who created mystery fiction, the face on the socks and beer bottles of everyday Baltimoreans. He’s Edgar Allan Poe, and he belongs to Baltimore. Join me on a visit to the Poe House in Baltimore, the tiny house where his career began, to learn about Baltimore’s devotion to Poe, his tragic life, and the future of his legacy in the city where he died mysteriously. The Beatles/Poe mashup son...

Mark as Played

So much of Maryland was built on the back of enslaved Africans, yet it’s easy to avoid confronting the history of slavery in Maryland’s former plantation country. Historic Sotterley is trying to change that. The plantation was built in 1703 by a man who made his money off the slave trade, and the site was witness to 165 continuous years of slavery. Today, staff and descendants at Sotterley are committed to sharing the site...

Mark as Played

About half of all museums in the US are in small towns in rural America. Each of these museums holds stories and objects that are worth preserving and sharing, but they don’t always have the funding and infrastructure they need to operate and innovate. That’s where Museum on Main Street comes in. This Smithsonian program brings traveling exhibits to small towns for six weeks at a time. But the exhibit materials are just th...

Mark as Played

What do Baltimore, Russian Jews, the third oldest synagogue in America, Eastern European Catholics, seances, and Harry Houdini have in common? You’ll find out in this episode, a visit to the Jewish Museum of Maryland, an institution that prioritizes storytelling (and is pretty good at it). Join me for a tour of the historic Lloyd Street Synagogue, a journey back in history to the heyday of the Jewish market on Baltimore’s ...

Mark as Played

S02/E07: Located in a waterfront 1860s oyster cannery in the Baltimore Harbor, The Baltimore Museum of Industry is trying to inspire and engage their visitors around the concept of work by telling the stories of historical workers. But in order to better fulfill this mission, the museum has to be constantly re-evaluating themselves and their assumptions about work. In this episode, I talk to staffers Beth Maloney and Auni ...

Mark as Played

The Sandy Spring Museum describes itself as “community-activated.” They want to be a secular gathering places, where people of different backgrounds can come together and build a sense of place and belonging. I visit the museum to speak with Executive Director Allison Weiss about the museum’s radically community-driven programming, the Quaker principles built into the museum’s design, and how they are trying to serve a com...

Mark as Played

BONUS content from Episode 5, "The Lost City: Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland." 

Dr. Regina Faden and I head down to Historic St. Mary's City's Waterfront exhibit, where we board the Maryland Dove, a replica 17th century sailing ship. The ship's Boatswain, Jeremy, talks to us about what it's like working on a historic ship and why old boats are like classic cars.  

Music in this episode is by Hesperus, from their album ...

Mark as Played
January 28, 2019 5 mins

BONUS content from Episode 5, "The Lost City: Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland." 

A brief stop at the active dig site of Historic St. Mary's City's Archeology Field School, where Dr. Travis Parno is guiding students from St. Mary's College in a dig to investigate the site of Maryland's first State House. Dr. Parno also tells me about his ongoing research into early taverns, the powerful enslavers who ran them, and how th...

Mark as Played

In the early 17th century, 300 English settlers traveled to the new colony of Maryland in search of new opportunities and a place where they could practice their Catholic faith in peace. They built Maryland’s first capital, St. Mary’s City, and their city thrived...until its founders fell from power in England. Soon, St. Mary’s City was abandoned and it’s wooden structures rotted. The city lay hidden under farm fields and ...

Mark as Played
December 31, 2018 8 mins

BONUS CONTENT from Episode 4, “Museum Time Machine: The Peale Center.” The Peale Center’s Nancy Proctor shows me the museum’s Ring of Fire, explains the phenomenon of skeuomorphism, and tells me why gas lighting was such a game-changing technology in Baltimore.  

All the music in this episode is by Outcalls.

Find more information on the museum and photos on my website, hhethmon.com.

If you enjoy Museums in St...

Mark as Played

There’s a time machine in downtown Baltimore on Holliday Street. A time machine that will take you back to the origin of public collections of art, history, and science...and then zip you through the present and into the future of museums. The Peale Center, the oldest purpose-built museum space in the US, is starting its third century as a building and its third life as a museum after decades of sitting vacant. But histor...

Mark as Played

Prince George’s County, Maryland is one of the wealthiest African American communities in the US, a suburban enclave of Black excellence just outside Washington, D.C. But it wasn’t always that way. At the small (but mighty) Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center, the passionate young Executive Director, Maleke Glee, tells me about the history of the area, the museum’s far-reaching youth programs, and h...

Mark as Played

Tucked among other Maryland suburbs outside Washington, D.C., the cute little town of Greenbelt has a surprisingly radical history. It was one of three “green towns” built under the New Deal Era Resettlement Administration, and it was supposed to be a new way of living, a utopia. Was it really a utopia? And how did the model hold up over time? I discover this and more during my visit to the Greenbelt Museum, housed in one ...

Mark as Played

The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is monument to outsider art, the creative spirit, and the search for truth. Step inside this glittering temple to intuition and inspiration to experience the museum’s marvelous “shows,” each of which comes from the singular mind of the museum’s founder and envisioner, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger. Download Transcript.

This episode is sponsored by The Lyndhurst Group.

The...

Mark as Played
November 6, 2018 3 mins

In each season of this podcast, I explore a different country, state, or region through its museums. In Season 1, I traveled around Iceland. For season two, I decided to explore my native state of Maryland. I visited 22 of Maryland’s most interesting and unique museums, including America’s first purpose built museum, a historic synagogue, a black history wax museum, a New Deal public housing utopia, the house where Edgar A...

Mark as Played
August 21, 2018 29 mins

Iceland has a lot of weird traditional foods, but nothing compares to fermented shark meat. The family at Bjarnarhöfn has been hunting and fermenting shark meat for nearly 400 years, although today they only process bycatch Greenland sharks. Many years ago, the family opened a Shark Museum at the farm to share their traditions and introduce the world to “hákarl”. In this episode, I get an inside look at how one family cont...

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.

    Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman

    How do the smartest marketers and business entrepreneurs cut through the noise? And how do they manage to do it again and again? It's a combination of math—the strategy and analytics—and magic, the creative spark. Join iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman as he analyzes the Math and Magic of marketing—sitting down with today's most gifted disruptors and compelling storytellers.

    Crime Junkie

    If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.

    Stuff You Should Know

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce

    Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce from the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce from the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about their games and share unique perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. Plus, entertaining stories from a combined 21 years in the league, off-field interests, and engaging conversations with special guests. Watch and listen to new episodes every Wednesday during the NFL season & check us out on Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok for all the best moments from the show.

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2024 iHeartMedia, Inc.