THIS WEEK’S NEW EPISODE
This week’s guest is Rachel Lee, the executive director of the California Radio Historical Society! Rachel wasn’t always a radio expert, but when she was hired at the museum in 2023, she brought it some much-needed expertise in education and running a nonprofit business. Her challenge is to cultivate and grow a local community of radio lovers who appreciate the medium’s rich history and its continued relevance for life in 2026.
Find the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify — or find your favorite app here! A full transcript of this episode is available here.
BEHIND THE SCENES
📻 About my t-shirt
“Oh no,” I thought, when friend of the show Evan Phillippe told me about the CHRS.
I thought that because, as soon as he told me there was a local museum about the history of radio, I had to go. I owe my entire career to the radio.
In college, I expected to work at the campus newspaper, but instead fell into the world of commercial broadcasting in Providence, RI. I worked in the news department of the alt-rock station WBRU (at the time, 95.5 FM, although they have since sold their FM signal).
I’m still close with many of the friends I made at BRU, and the skills I learned there have been invaluable for my later work as a social media manager, and then a journalist, and then a podcast producer & host. In the video version of the interview, you’ll see I still have my “WBRU News” t-shirt; what you can’t see is on the back of the shirt, a reference to the movie Anchorman: “Kind of a big deal.”
To me, it still is.
— Eric
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IN MY INBOX
𓀠 The Rosicrucians, museum workers on strike, and smudging
Over on the Call ‘Em Like Museum TikTok page, the algorithm has sent a lot of people to this video of Evan Phillippe talking about his childhood visit to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. The comments are a mixture of nostalgia and arguments about whether the museum’s namesake founders are a cult. [@museum_podcast]
The museum is supposed to hurt, writes a scarily wise sophomore at Cornell: “When an artist or institution confronts us with an awkward truth or a painful historical reckoning, it cracks open the calcified shell that we build for ourselves. We can only grow and learn when we are forced to sit with ambiguity and question what we find to be valuable.” [Cornell Daily Sun]
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, meanwhile, is asking patrons to grow and learn from a new AI-infused sculpture: “Contemporary art museums are very good at creating space for tackling tough conversations about things we're not quite sure what we think about, and this artwork does a really great job providing fodder for those kinds of conversations.” [Channel 3000]
Unionized workers at three prominent New York City museums — the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Folk Art Museum — have voted to authorize a strike if they don’t receive new contracts from their employers. [Hyperallergic]
Fascinating story about a small room in a $107 million museum: “For members of Montana’s 13 sovereign tribal nations, some of the items in the museum’s galleries are living entities… Encountering them can surface joy or trauma in equal measure. To center themselves and enter that space safely, visitors smudge: burning materials like pine, sage, cedar and sweetgrass, then wafting the smoke over themselves as a form of blessing, cleansing and preparation.” [Smithsonian Magazine]
THE GIFT SHOP
🎁 Can I give you an (ear)ring?
I didn’t take a photo of the real earrings but they sort of look like this!
Everyone who subscribes to this newsletter before November 10 has been entered into our Gift Shop Giveaway! (Full rules here)
(Not subscribed yet? You can do that right here.)
One of the prize packages will include a set of earrings that look like vintage cathedral radios, like the one pictured above. The winner will also get stickers, postcards, and maybe some surprise goodies!
💪 How to help the podcast:
Tell a friend: Forward this email to a museum lover in your life
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Before we go … shoutout to the fine folks at Transom, who just celebrated their 25th anniversary of empowering & educating audio creators. I was with them for the celebration in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which is so pretty. Just look at this sunset:
Eric Johnson
My only regret from the trip is that I didn’t make time to visit the Small Boat Museum!! Next time.