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. Search for "The Vagina Museum" wherever you get your podcasts or use this link: https://pod.link/1488645205

I know it's been a long time since a new episode came out, but I have a good excuse! Don't unsubscribe yet, I promise new episodes are on their way. 

[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 puked-up history.”

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.

Hey Museums in Strange Place listeners! I’m excited to share a sneak peek of my new podcast, London is OK I Guess. Don’t worry, I’ve still got plenty of Museums in Strange Places episodes in  the pipeline for you to enjoy.  But first I want to invite you to listen to the first few minutes of the first episode of London is Ok I Guess, a show about finding your place….in a place you’d rather not be.

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.   This episode is sponsored by Grove History Consulting.

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. Today, staff and descendants at Sotterley are committed to sharing the site’s whole history and healing the legacy of trauma left by the violence of slavery with the ultimate goal of making their community and their world a better place. 

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 the catalyst for a much bigger experience.

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. 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 East Lombard Street, and a celebration of the life of Harry Houdini, the son of a rabbi. Music by Seth Kibel. Sponsored by Grove History Consulting.

S02/E07: The Baltimore Museum of Industry is trying to inspire their visitors around the concept of work by telling the stories of historical workers. In this episode, I talk to staffers Beth Maloney and Auni Gelles about how they are pushing the museum beyond more traditional education and interpretation methods. This episode is sponsored by Grove History Consulting. Featured songs are by The Bumper Jacksons.

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 community of incredible diversity.

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 An Early American Quilt, released on the Maggie’s Music Label.

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 they can shed light on the codification of slavery in Maryland and...

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 forests until archeological efforts led to the formation of Historic...

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.

There’s a time machine in downtown Baltimore on Holliday Street. 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 history isn’t repeating itself here. Director Nancy Proctor wants it to be a cultural commons, a storytelling platform, and an experimental lab for the art of the 21st Century museum. This episode is sponsored by The Lyndhurst Group. Music by Outcalls.

Prince George’s County, MD 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 & Cultural Center, Maleke Glee, tells me about the history of the area, the museum’s far-reaching youth programs, and his vision for a museum that’s truly community-led, inclusive, and relevant. This episode is sponsored by The...

Tucked among other Maryland suburbs outside DC, 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 of the original 1937 low-income row homes.   This episode is sponsored by The...

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. This episode is sponsored by The Lyndhurst Group. The featured songs in this episode are by The Preschoolers. 

On November 14, tune in to hear the first three episodes of Museums in Strange Places, “Season 2: Museums 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 Allan Poe published his first poem, one of the earliest nursing schools in the country, and so many more.

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”. This episode is sponsored by Locatify. Featured song by Baggalútur.

What would it look like if Indiana Jones was into volcanoes and created a museum in a small Icelandic village? The Volcano Museum in Stykkishólmur displays the art and geological specimens collected by volcanologist Haralður Sigurðsson from around the world. I speak to museum manager, Filip Polách about how an Icelandic eruption may have started the French Revolution and how the museum came to have an original Warhol. This episode is sponsored by Locatify. Songs in this episode are by Ceasetone.

Walk into the War and Peace Museum, a small building sitting on a fjord north of Reykjavík, Iceland, and you're instantly transported into another era. Covering every wall are carefully arranged artifacts, photographs, and documents from the WWII years in Iceland. This is Guðjón Sigmundsson's personal collection, and it's full of surprises and uncovered secrets. This episode is sponsored by Locatify. Songs in this episode are by Tómas R. Einarsson.

Bonus! I go behind-the-scenes with Locatify's Steinunn Anna Gunnlaugsdóttir to talk about the making of Eldheimar's location-aware audio guide app (E19: Memorial to an Eruption). We chat about how Locatify joined the Eldheimar project, the beacon technology used in Eldheimar, and their new hyper-precise ultra-wideband system for museum apps. Locatify is an Icelandic software company specializing in mobile apps that use location technologies.