RACHEL LEE: Our great room is beautiful. It's high cathedral-style ceilings and just all this space. And they walk in and they kind of go, "Wow."

ERIC JOHNSON: This is Rachel Lee. She's the executive director of the California Historical Radio Society.

RACHEL: And that's the most rewarding part of it too, is not only to bring it forward to people, but to see them engage with it and their eyes light up and, "Oh, that's so cool." That's such a gift.

ERIC: The CHRS has been around for more than 50 years. And when you visit its museum, you will see a lot of history. But Rachel wants you to know that the story of radio is not over.

RACHEL: When you think of 1909 to 1930 broadcasts to 1960s broadcasts — that expansion, that commercialization — to podcasts, it's just the next step. Streaming, all of these things are still radio.

ERIC: So how do you get people to think of radio that way? Like any good broadcaster, this museum is trying to build a community.

RACHEL: When you go to a museum, very few people go by themselves and hope not to talk to anyone until they leave. That is a service that museums provide far beyond the most obvious mandate.

ERIC: This is Call 'Em Like Museum, a podcast about how museums work and why we love them. I'm Eric Johnson. Today on the podcast, how does radio connect to life in 2026? Why do we need to preserve historical broadcasts? And why does this museum have a hamburger and French fries on display? Rachel Lee will answer all of that and more right after this.

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Radio is very important to me. The listeners can't see it, but I'm representing WBRU where I worked, my very first job. I love radio. I love the look of radios. I love the sound of radio. But your museum has a really interesting story in that it's a very modern example of a bunch of hobbyists, a bunch of geeks, turning their collection into a museum. Could tell us that story of how that happened?

RACHEL: Absolutely. So the California Historical Radio Society began in 1974 as groups — people, hobbyists, engineers — who were meeting and having swap meets in parking lots. So most of them were Bay Area, Silicon Valley, etc., coming and swapping parts and stories and information, schematics. So that was 1974. In 2003, they got their own building. So through some connections, the KRE building in Berkeley was made available to us and that's when that transition happened. So CHRS elevated, if you will, from being just swap meets and parking lots to being an actual collector's organization with a space. And that's when they started making it into a museum and telling stories and having exhibits and displays. Ten years later, ownership of that building changed and so we had to move out. As a part of that process, the organization said, "We don't really want to have to be subject to a lease and landlords and moving out." So they did a massive capital campaign and purchased the building that we're in now in Alameda.

What's really special about that is the building that we are in is the original Alameda Telephone Exchange. So CHRS is really about wireless communication, but it's in the building that is the ancestor of wireless communication with wired communication. History of communication is a very integral part of what CHRS does, and so our building embodies that fully. The building was built in 1900. It was the original Alameda Telephone Exchange. And after the telephone company moved out, it was a church and then a child care facility. And that's ... The child care facility is the people from whom we bought it.

ERIC: And when they first had that building in Berkeley, when they opened the first physical museum, what was the story they were telling then? What was the first iteration of the CHRS story?

RACHEL: So I think it definitely leaned into the technology to some extent, the design definitely, and just that thread of communication through the years. So what they had there was two-pronged then and is two-pronged now. We have the technology and artifacts, and then we also have the human side, which is of course the actual radio stations and the personalities that were on the radio stations. And that space was smaller than the space that we're currently in so it was a much more condensed version of that story. Now we can really expand it and we're growing and we're trying to tell this story through over a hundred years of digital communication, but that was the first step in that direction.

ERIC: Yeah. So now you have a lot more space. You have two levels of the building. How do you tell that story now? How do you use that physical space to tell that story now?

RACHEL: It's always a challenge because there are so many important parts of this history. There is how radio changed people's lives. I mean, it was absolutely life changing. Ship-to-shore communication, air-to-land communication. We're talking right at the advent when it was still the purview of hobbyists and governments. And then we get our first radio stations and there's content being played and arguably the first radio station comes out of San Jose. So the Bay Area and California's part in this history is absolutely integral. Doc Herrold's wife, Sybil, was spinning 78s, so on the West Coast, the first DJ was a woman. This history is just so far reaching and so important, and so many of the broadcasters that developed what is now absolutely commonplace on radio all happened on the West Coast. We have this history and it's local and it's here and that's what we're trying to tell, but a lot of these things were manufactured here.

So again, that technology and artifacts, you start with the spark gap generators, and that was the same technology that Doc Herrold was using to put voice out over the radio and make common broadcasts. And I'm saying common, but broadcasts for all the people.

ERIC: Not just for military or not just for specific audiences, for anyone who wanted to listen.

RACHEL: Anyone. And then you have that ... You get radio enters the home, right? Now there's something to listen to. These things are coming upstairs. Design becomes a really important part. This is the focal piece of the living room. It's how ... It's as absolutely integral to your life as your cellphone is today. It's how you get your information. It's how you get your entertainment. It's everything. And it becomes in so many ways the centerpiece of the home. Then you get to the '30s, which is the commercialization of radio, which is the golden age of radio. And then you've got wartime radio. So many leaps forward in technology happened through war. Then you've got post-war. Now you've got television, also broadcasting. It's just another form of communication. And that story continues. You get to the '60s and you've got transistors. Transistors paved the way for computers, of course. And I mean, computers preexist.

There's definitely tube computers, but that paved the way for the personal computer, which paved the way for cellphones, which use so much radio technology that dates back to the original things. So everybody today uses radio all the time. They just don't recognize that that's what that technology is.

ERIC: I think that's a really important distinction to draw because for some people who, especially younger folks now who may not have grown up listening to the radio in the car, maybe they're listening to their phones over Bluetooth or whatever else.

RACHEL: Podcasts.

ERIC: Exactly. Listening to podcasts. It could be tempting to assume that, right, these radios are in a museum because this is old technology, this is past technology. And the argument that you're putting forth in the museum is that this is present.

RACHEL: 100%.

ERIC: That this is directly connected to the present.

RACHEL: Absolutely. Your cellphone does not work without radio technology, period. Your Bluetooth, your GPS, all these things are RS signals. So it's this story that gets us to where we are today. It's ever-present and it's absolutely a part of what everybody uses. We just don't look at it in the same way. And I would posit that broadcasting has gone through the same transition. When you think of 1909 to 1930 broadcasts to 1960s broadcasts — that expansion, that commercialization — to podcasts, it's just the next step. Streaming, all of these things are still radio. They're just different. And it's interesting because especially with large radio corporations, they've in a lot of cases lost some of that local flavor, and that's what people want. So what are podcasts doing? They're coming in and they're bringing that back.

ERIC: When people come into the museum for the first time, if you could indulge me, I want you to kind of do a little mind palace and take us through what do they see? What do they hear when they walk in the front door of the CHRS?

RACHEL: Absolutely. So when you come in, the very first thing you're going to see and hear is a docent greeting you and welcoming you to the space.

ERIC: That's good.

RACHEL: Yeah, absolutely. And then as you look immediately to your left, we have just completely redone our museum store and we have all these beautiful radios that have been electronically refurbished and Bluetooth capability added. So they're not just radios, they're also Bluetooth speakers that are gorgeous vintage designs that are functional for everyday usage. And then on the other side, we start telling the story not only of CHRS, but of radio history. So we start with how we got into this building and what the building is because our story does start with landline telegraph, and we have a telephone booth from 1900 with a vintage working telephone inside so people can make a phone call in a real vintage 1900s telephone booth.

ERIC: It's a rotary phone, right?

RACHEL: It is. So the actual phone that's inside was from 1900, which predates rotary, but we've retrofitted it. You can open the panel and I have to teach the kids how to dial and why it's called dialing. And I teach them why it's called hanging up. And then once they got it, they're texting in one hand, "Hey mom and dad, pick up. I'm calling you," and then making a phone call with the other hand.

ERIC: That's so great. Yeah. So then you go deeper into the museum. As I recall, there's a series of radios from different eras on your right side.

RACHEL: Absolutely. So we start with 1900 to 1920, and that's where that rotary spark gap is. And we turn it on and people can press a telegraph key and they can see and hear the pulses. But then the really magical part is we turn on an AM radio and now RF signals make sense because they're coming and they're literally coming out of this radio that wasn't tuned, it's not special, there's nothing happening here. They're making a signal and it's being received and transmitted. That's kind of that first big moment. Then we hit the 1920s where one of the coolest parts of it is that we have a radio from the 1920s that is hooked up to about eight or nine different speakers also from the 1920s. So we have this whole 100-year-old setup. People can listen to a modern broadcast on how it sounded on eight or nine different speakers that were 100 years old as well.

See how the person who made the display says, yes, you can hear how they all sound really different and equally terrible by today's standards. [laugh] Then you move on to the 1930s and that is again that golden era of radio, the golden age of radio. It's the commercialization of radio. This is the era in which every single person had a radio. It was a necessity. It was not a luxury. We have some really cool top 1% radios in there that cost more than a brand new car at that time. And of course in the 1930s we're talking about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. People didn't have money. So any item that somebody actively purchased, they were going to care for, and especially when it was that level of expense. On the flip side, we do have people who purchased these, at the time, $750 radios, which, a new car was $500.

So the reason they could justify that, besides ego, is because a car was a luxury, but a radio was absolutely a necessity. You had to have a radio. You didn't have to have a car. So these were the centerpiece of people's homes and they wanted something beautiful and long-lasting and high quality.

ERIC: Makes perfect sense. Yeah. I think you were showing me one of them that was intended to be a status symbol.

RACHEL: Oh, absolutely.

ERIC: Can you remind me when that one was from?

RACHEL: Yes. So also 1930s, the E.H. Scott. When you look at it, the way the cabinet is set up, the top can lift just simply so that you can see the chassis inside. Why would you want to see the chassis inside? Well, because it's fully chromed.

ERIC: Yes.

RACHEL: So it's this incredible eye candy of chrome and these little canisters and all this stuff, just beautiful to look at, really fancy looking. But the chrome does nothing for the fidelity of the radio. It literally is just for looks.

ERIC: [laugh] I love that. Deeper into the museum, I know, so there's a wall of, was it novelty radios up against the back wall of the first room?

RACHEL: Yep. Yep. So we have a wall of beautiful radios, and then we also have a display of novelty radios. And the novelty radios are so fun because you go over there and you go, why is all this stuff stored here? There's a measuring tape. There's a can of WD-40. There's a California Raisin.What is all of this? And they're all radios. So it's one of those things. The joke is, what is it? Oh, it's a radio if it's in our museum.

ERIC: Yep. That's a good safe bet.

RACHEL: Yeah. Exactly. And one of my favorite displays, which you also, I believe, got to see, is in the kitchen.

ERIC: Yes.

RACHEL: So in the kitchen we have our food pantry, and it looks like we just have some really old, probably expired food up there, and all of them are radios. So there are no food products on that shelf. It's a fairly well-stocked radio bar, and then lots of food items. We have Tropicana Orange. We have Green Giant corn. We have Cokes and Pepsis and ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise and a hamburger and french fries, all these things because almost every company used these as promotional items.

ERIC: Basically, these were cheap radios that were given away.

RACHEL: Absolutely.

ERIC: As a loyalty thing.

RACHEL: Send in five [UPC] symbols and your $2.50 and get a Pepsi can radio. Yeah. And they're all transistor radios and battery powered, hold in your hand, take it with you. And it's fun because it's advertising and it's branding. And it's also fun to really look at these and see how some of these brands have changed over the years, but how so many of them are exactly the same. And some of these are as much as 50 years old, and it looks like they just came right off the grocery store shelf.

ERIC: Yeah, the Heinz Ketchup bottle. I was like —

RACHEL: Absolutely. No different.

ERIC: No way, that must just be ketchup.

RACHEL: Yeah, absolutely.

ERIC: Farther into the next room of the museum, you have some later eras of radios, and you also have a machine that I was a little obsessed with, the NBC chimes machine. Could you explain what that is and what that did?

RACHEL: When NBC went on the air, it was radio, and there was a person who would play the chimes. And over time, NBC wanted to standardize that sound. RCA was the equipment provider for NBC, so RCA reached out to the Ranger Corporation and said, essentially, we need a music box that does this. The Ranger Corporation made at least two, but we assume probably three of these music boxes. And so they were rack mounted, and at the top of the hour, it would go through and it plays the three tones that everybody knows, the NBC chimes. Serial number one went to New York City and Radio City, and then serial number two went here in San Francisco. So we have serial number two of these NBC chimes in our museum, so you can listen to them. And of course, my favorite part of the story is, if you're musically inclined, those three notes are G-E-C.

And the reason why is because, at that time, General Electric Corporation owned NBC. So very prosaic. I think it's really interesting.

ERIC: Great little Easter egg for the music nerds.

RACHEL: Absolutely. Yeah.

ERIC: I feel bad for all the xylophone players who lost their jobs probably after this.

RACHEL: I know. Yeah.

ERIC: But next to that room, as I recall, there's two more adjoining rooms. There's a broadcast studio in the back, which you were telling me before we started recording is actively being used for some projects, right?

RACHEL: Absolutely. So it is a working 1958 broadcast studio. It has a mono board and we can feed it into quarter-inch reel and record onto that or we can go straight to digital because we also have a digital setup in that room. When students come in, we have summer camps where we have a broadcasting summer camp that's a week long camp, but we also do field trips. So when we have field trips, oftentimes those students are also from a broadcasting program. So they'll pre-write either PSAs, short radio snippets, or their own radio play. They'll come in, they'll record on the vintage microphones. And we have microphones that are also early 1900s. So that's really fun because now they're getting the full experience. We'll record it to quarter-inch reel, then we'll digitize it and send it back to them for editing.

ERIC: Yeah. How do the kids react? I mean, if they're maybe already in a broadcasting program, maybe they're primed to —

RACHEL: Understand a little bit better. Absolutely.

ERIC: Understand more. But generally, when kids come through and you do educational programs in the museum, what do they say? How do they interact with the different things on display in the museum?

RACHEL: I'll tell you, specifically with this part of it, kids love talking into microphones.

ERIC: [laugh]

RACHEL: If you have a hot microphone, they are going to come talk into it. So in terms of the broadcasting stuff, they just think it's cool because they're looking at things like this and when they get to come in, they're getting to talk into these vintage ribbon microphones that they've probably only seen in pictures, or these box microphones, just really cool stuff to get to experience that. Most people don't get to have that experience.

ERIC: Even though the microphone in their phone is higher quality, there's something about the tactile nature of holding a microphone or of talking into a really visible microphone.

RACHEL: Absolutely. And it's sort of like the speakers. Yes, the quality is higher, but what comes out of the other has that warmer sound in that it sounds vintage. It sounds like you recorded it a number of years ago. So it does give that extra feeling.

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Well, on the topic of the tactile and vintage things, you've mentioned a couple times that you do refurbish old radios, and that's the next room, there's a repair shop where ... Is it volunteers? Who works in this repair shop?

RACHEL: It's volunteers. So everything that's in the museum for the most part is a donation, and our volunteers want these things to work. However, we receive far many more donations than we can actually display. So one of the things that we do is our volunteers will take these 1960s — I mean, really anything 1900 on up — radios, they'll electronically refurbish it. They'll go through it, they'll recap it if it needs it, make sure it's got good tubes in it, all the things. And then, as I said, if we can, we'll add an auxiliary cable that a Bluetooth component can be added to. So now it's a radio and it's also a Bluetooth speaker. And that has ... We will sell those. We sell them in our store, of course. We also, for really special nice ones, we have an auction once a year and we sell them there and then we also sell them at antiques fairs.

ERIC: I was this close to dropping $100 in your museum.

RACHEL: Come back! [laugh]

ERIC: You'll see me again, don't worry. The work that these volunteers do is so impressive, of keeping these things looking great and sounding good.

RACHEL: Absolutely. So it's not just making sure they're electronically sound, which we do. They also do a lot of cabinet work. Sometimes we get these plastic radios and they're chipped and our volunteers make sure that they look good, that they sound good. They run the radios through their paces before they will send them out. They make sure they've played for X number of hours and that it hasn't started humming or whatever. [laugh] So yeah.

ERIC: Absolutely. So before you took this job, you came into this role about a couple years ago, is that right?

RACHEL: September of 2023.

ERIC: Yeah. So before you took this role, what was your relationship with radio? How did radio kind of play into your life?

RACHEL: So I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, so music city. But my relationship with radio was, I think, really standard for that time. I was not a huge radio aficionado. I woke up to radio every morning, I had a clock radio on my bedside table, very '80s, and that was kind of it. And so when I interviewed for this role, I said to the board at the time, I just want to be perfectly clear. I don't know anything about radio. My background is nonprofits and business and education. And they said, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We have all that knowledge. What we need is what you have." So in the time that I've been there, I've really gotten to learn a lot about radio. And of course, when you learn about anything, you develop an appreciation for it.

ERIC: Absolutely. I mean, you're definitely going to learn on the job. There's no way to come in knowing everything you're going to need to know. But three years into being executive director of the museum, what's one thing you wish you had known at the start?

RACHEL: Oh gosh, that's a really good question. You can be told how amazing an organization is over and over and over again, but until you experience it, you can't know. But that is one of the things that is so special about CHRS. It is a community hub more than anything else. When you go in on a Wednesday or Saturday, what you're going to see is a whole bunch of volunteers, and it's alive. It is a hive of activity. It's a hive of activity in the shop. It's a hive of activity in our library. It's just everywhere. There's people and they're doing, and they are volunteers. These are not professional museum staff. These are people who are passionate, and the coolest part is they're willing to share that passion with you. If you have questions, if you want to learn how to do it yourself, all of these people have the desire and time to train you.

So if this interests you in any way, shape, or form, reach out to us. We'll connect you with the right people and you too can learn how to do any of this, because, we haven't gotten there yet, but we have a tube vault. We have people who are sorting tubes all the time. We have a ham shack. So that is an actual radio amateur radio station that is on air. If you're a ham, maybe where you live, you can't put up an antenna. You can come use HF-frequency equipment. You can do all these things in there. We have a hall of communications that is point to point rather than broadcast, including an SDR that people like to use. We have a television area, and then we also have the largest radio-related library west of the Mississippi, so we have lots of people in there archiving, digitizing.

And we have audio. We have thousands and thousands of reels of audio of Bay Area broadcasters. We are in the process of cataloging all of that, and then we're going to start digitizing it. And that is a massive undertaking but of critical importance. When radio stations changed ownership, a lot of times everything went into the dumpsters. There was really no thought to how are we going to keep this legacy? What is the history? It was, it's owned by someone else and they don't want that old stuff. So a lot of the things that we have, we have because broadcasters recorded and kept their own stuff or fans did. And so we get requests probably twice a week of people asking, "Do you have this broadcast from this era featuring this person or this commercial?" or whatever, and we are now able to start to go back in and say yes or no.

ERIC: Makes me think of there's TV shows that are considered ... These's whole seasons of shows that have been lost, right?

RACHEL: Yeah.

ERIC: Seasons of "Doctor Who" or early episodes of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" that are just considered lost media.

RACHEL: Yeah.

ERIC: Have you ever found anything in the archives that was presumed to be lost?

RACHEL: I wouldn't look at it that way because there's not enough people asking for these things.

ERIC: Makes sense.

RACHEL: But more what we have are occasionally found things. "My dad was interviewed on blah, blah, blah, thus and such a date," and we can give that back to the person. Or, "My dad owned a store and they did this jingle. Do you have it?" And we might!

JINGLE: Pepsi-Cola hits the spot / 12 full ounces, that’s a lot / Twice as much for a nickel, too / [bonk!] / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you

ERIC: So in terms of funding the operations of the museum, can you talk about where your funding comes from, the different sources, and how do you deploy that? Where are your priorities in terms of moving forward with the museum?

RACHEL: Yeah, absolutely. So the majority of our funding is from donations. I was the very first employee hired by CHRS. CHRS has been around 50 years, and for almost all of those 50 years, they were volunteer run. So the volunteers were the donors and they kept this thing in business. And when they needed something like a building, they rallied, gathered together, fundraised to make it happen, and made it happen. Hiring me is obviously a big leap forward. So there's absolute funding needed for that. And in the process of trying to transfer this place from a clubhouse to a true museum, we need a museum curator. We need all these pieces in place to professionalize it. So again, donations are our biggest form of revenue, but we also, we sell the radios, so that's helpful. That helps fund our programming. We have started summer camps, that's really helpful.

And those summer camps are amazing. We do the broadcasting and podcasting one, which I talked about. So students design and create their own podcast that they then get to record and edit, and we talk about how to do this. And even to the extent that we talk about maybe how you would market this if you had enough and wanted to do that. So that's a really fun one. And then we also have our electronics and wireless summer camp where students learn how to solder and learn some basic electronics. So yeah, really things that you won't get in the classroom.

ERIC: The hands-on experience that just is not practical to teach it out of a textbook.

RACHEL: Exactly, exactly. So it's really fun to see those programs start to develop. And although it is not revenue generating directly, we have our SoundBites program, which is Saturday programming for children, again, so that we can bring that thread across the line of "this is relevant to you." So our one that we're doing for tomorrow is a build your own radio kit. So that's going to be really, really fun. And we have a morse code one and we have a museum quest one. So we [have] all these different things, but what that does is it brings not just youth in, but it brings their parents in and their parents can see the space. And if their parents are interested, maybe they become volunteers, and so on. So it is really kind of a holistic view of how we're going to move this forward. Now, in terms of other funding, we occasionally get sponsorships, which is really helpful.

Our biggest event of the year is Radio Day by the Bay, which was just this past July, we have it every July, and we do get sponsorships for that. Our biggest supporter this past year was the city of Alameda, which is really lovely because again, it's right there at home. But ultimately long-term for the museum, we will probably need some form of corporate sponsorship. So we are looking ahead to that and we're hoping that maybe these ties that we're bringing through from where it started in 1900 to how it's still functional and in use today, maybe a wireless carrier or a technology company might go, "Oh, I didn't realize that was my story to be told," and want to be a part of it. That's our hope. So we're working on that.

ERIC: Absolutely. So, pie in the sky, you get the big corporate sponsor, you can finally achieve everything you want to do within the museum. What's the first project? What's the first thing you haven't been able to do yet that money would allow you to do?

RACHEL: Yes. So complete the great room. That would 100% be my top priority. We can only tell the story as far as we have the story, and right now that's the 1930s. We need to bring it all the way to today. We need to make sure that our story is not just blocks of wood hanging out in a room. So it's got to be interactive. We have to have multimedia. We have to be able to make this come alive for people because it was alive for the people who lived with this in the 1930s or the 1920s. It so closely mimics the story of computing. When you're talking about early 1920s, late 1910s, people in their garages or basements tinkering, putting stuff together, stealing grandma's breadboard and bolting it down. It's just such a good story. And so the onus is on us to tell that and make sure that people come away from this going, "Oh, I didn't think that would be so impactful and I've learned so much," and, "Wow, this is really great." And maybe, "How do I get involved?"

ERIC: What do museums mean to you? So not specifically the work that you do with the CHRS, but just what does the word "museum" connote?

RACHEL: Museums have an extreme responsibility because they're not only preserving things, they're educating. And how we preserve and how we educate is really important because that determines how you're going to let people know about what you're doing. If you're really boring, no one's going to take anything away from that. So you have to constantly be thinking about how people want to learn and how people want to engage and how people's attention spans are changing or how people want to interact with things. Is it more important to set this up as an Instagramable moment or is it more important to do something hands-on so that you're conveying this information in this way? So that is one of the most important things that museums need to do. But even beyond that, where we are currently as a society, that space that museums fill is acting as a community hub.

When you go to a museum, very few people go by themselves and hope not to talk to anyone until they leave.

ERIC: [laugh]

RACHEL: You go to maybe engage with a docent or to learn, or more likely you probably go with your family and friends and you talk about the thing that you're seeing and you maybe go and talk about it later. "Oh, that was so cool. I really liked ..." whatever. And that is a service that museums provide far beyond the most obvious mandate. So CHRS not only provides that because we are a museum. We are a docent-led museum. You don't come in and put headphones on in our space. You come in and you've got a person telling you about it. And if you have a question, they can answer it immediately. So that's really special and important and unique in this day and age. One of my favorite things that ... A person came to our museum, took a tour, was super interested in what they were doing, immediately signed on to be a volunteer, and now they're there very regularly.

And their comment about it was, "I love coming here. This place is just so alive." And it's that. You're getting to talk with other people. You're getting to work on a project that you may not have otherwise. You get to be creative about something. You get to have an idea and bring it to me and say, "Hey, this place would be improved if we did X." And I can say, "Yes, let's do X. Let's go do it."

ERIC: What was your first memory of going to a museum, your first experience with museums?

RACHEL: When I was in elementary school, we often took field trips to the children's museum in Nashville. And it was very much a doseum style: go in, everything was hands-on. Those were always my favorite trips because everything really was interactive. It really was aimed towards children. You can come and do all these unique things. So that definitely informs where I would like CHRS to be in terms of people coming in and having a favorite spot where they get to do a thing. I've also been to large museums where everything's four feet back and under glass. And that's an experience too when you're getting to see the Monet or Van Gogh or Seurrat, that's a wonderful experience too, but it's just different than what we're trying to provide. Radio was always interactive. You were always turning dials and listening and using your senses to tune into this program.

I mean, radio is often called theater of the mind. And so being able to picture it in your head as you listen to these stories on the radio, all of that, that multisensory feeling, we don't want that to disappear as a part of being our museum.

ERIC: Exactly, exactly. It's such an important point is that you're not just looking at the thing. For your visitors, interacting with the thing is a crucial part of understanding what made it special.

RACHEL: Absolutely. Absolutely. And some of that's design and that is mostly eyes, right? That is looking at it and saying, oh, there was this cool design shift at this point. Things going from these super science-fair-looking breadboards to a beautifully designed wood cabinet that's a piece of furniture. Between 1920 and 1930, one third of all furniture sales were radios. So knowing that that design element was so critical, that's an important story too. But what were people doing with it? They were tuning in. They were thinking about it. They were visualizing. It wasn't unidimensional.

ERIC: You mentioned that when you were growing up, you went to these doseums — which I had not heard that term before. I love that. What other museums have you been inspired by? What have you borrowed from other museums that you've been to as an adult?

RACHEL: Oh, that's a really great question. I think there's something that can be taken from every museum that you go to. I've been to the Exploratorium. It's amazing. I've been to the [USS] Hornet. It's amazing. I've been to the Met. It's amazing. So there's always something that you go in — I've been to the Smithsonian — and just the more you expose yourself to these things, the more you have that feeling of, oh, I love how they utilize the vertical space by hanging things from the ceiling and raising that up. We will be doing that. And that's something that I saw in the Smithsonian a lot. And then places like the Exploratorium where you want to be able to do a thing. Looking at it's fine, but doing is always going to be far more educational. Being able to go and make a phone call in a phone booth from the 1900s, right?

ERIC: There you go.

RACHEL: Being able to send a wireless telegraph signal across a small space, being able to receive a radio frequency. All of those things have to work together to tell our whole story. So it's definitely not one thing. It's always being open to everything around you and being willing to learn.

ERIC: Yeah. I mean, I've never regretted going to a museum.

RACHEL: Oh, of course not.

ERIC: No matter what the topic is, even if it's something that I don't think that I am personally interested in, going to one of these places, it changes your perspective on things. It just does that automatically.

RACHEL: For sure. I am so lucky. My mother is taking me on a trip to Egypt in September and I cannot wait to go visit some of the Egyptian museums.

ERIC: What is a small detail about the CHRS that you care about a lot, that you love, but that most people wouldn't notice?

RACHEL: It is the breadth of engagement of our volunteers. We have a woman who helps out in the tube vaults. She sorts tubes. She's technically minded, absolutely brilliant. And she also does the dishes on Saturdays. So the depth of involvement, the breadth of involvement, that our volunteers have, everybody works together to make this happen. One of the most influential volunteers is there six days a week. He is getting more trim around the edges. He's helping to compact a display to make more room for the next one. He laid all the flooring in the great room. I mean, things were done at CHRS by volunteers. And you can say that, but the impact is not immediately visible until you are there and you start to understand. One of the cool things that we do, and one of my favorite things, is on Saturdays, we have a volunteer who comes in and cooks lunch for people.

Wow.

ERIC: So everybody stops and they go and they have this community lunch together and they're friends and they're talking and they're maybe talking about CHRS stuff, but maybe not. They're enjoying each other's company. And again, providing that community is so incredibly important. And one of the reasons people like coming to CHRS is they get to learn about something and they get to be among a community of like-minded people. And that's just so valuable, especially today when people are so engrossed in their phones.

Yeah. How do you grow that community? Because I think there's a generational cliff coming at some point where people who just don't have the same childhood nostalgia for radio that you and I do.

RACHEL: For sure.

ERIC: It'd be a different mindset coming in.

RACHEL: It is and it isn't. I've noticed more younger ... A lot of our volunteers are retirees, so when I say younger, I mean still in the workforce but maybe aiming towards retirement. But a lot of them, just given our proximity to Silicon Valley, are potentially in or were in tech. And so they're doing something that's so cutting edge and so forward, to be able to backtrack and look at something with tubes and to see where it came from. And as a part of our education programs, that's where we're trying to also draw that line. So yes, you're using this thing and all the transistors are so tiny, you can't even see them anymore and they're on chipboards and whatever, but this is where it came from. So now your capacitor's this big, whereas on your chipboard, you can't even see it. It's microscopic maybe. But to be able to bring that forward, a lot of these people like to come back.

So one of our most popular things are beginning radio repair classes. People are so interested in learning this just because it's fascinating. And while it's still dangerous, we're dealing with high voltage, it's important. When we teach this, things are big. You're not having to do anything under a microscope. It's not tiny. You're not having to deal with a chipboard. It's a solid thing that you can literally cut out with wire clippers and put back in and solder, and now you have a new capacitor in place. So those kinds of experiences, so often we don't have that getting your hands in there experiences available to us. We've been thinking about fixing things. So many things are designed to be thrown away rather than repaired. And I think that's really attractive to people. Look at how many maker spaces there are around. And yes, maybe that's making in a different way, but you can also learn from this too.

And I think people really like the idea of being able to say, "Hey, I could just go take a junker radio and go completely redo it and now it's working again." And I think that sense of accomplishment in completing a project like that fully on your own is really valuable.

ERIC: It's making me think, I'm just realizing as we're talking, that the hands-on museums, like the ones you went to when you were growing up, those were almost always geared only at children. It's learn about basic physics lessons, things like that.

RACHEL: Absolutely.

ERIC: Hands-on museums for adults are few and far between. It doesn't mean that we should stop using our hands. We should stop building stuff. I think people are probably happier if they are using their full brains and using all of their creative skills throughout their life rather than just stopping after a certain grade of school.

RACHEL: Of course, of course. Most adults like to learn a new thing when it's not frustratingly hard, and maybe even when it's frustratingly hard up to a point. Most people want that feeling of accomplishment, of having done something by themselves. Think of all these crafting-type places that are really popular right now, the painting places and the fiber arts places that are ... People want to make something, and this, in a really unique way, is making something. And I think people crave those experiences. So it is something that we provide and enjoy providing and have all of these people with this knowledge who want to share it. They don't want this to die. And that was really their whole thought process on hiring an executive director. This is a really cool place. Most of the people here are older. How do we make it sustainable?

ERIC: I've got two more questions for you before we wrap up. One is about something that's been personally impactful for you. So not necessarily your favorite museum that you've been to, but do you have a memory or a story of a time you went to a museum that really left an impression on you in a profound way?

RACHEL: When I was in second grade, we took a trip to England — London, specifically — and there was a Viking exhibit. And the way it worked is you got in this little car and it turned you around backwards and you went back through time. So they had all these little vignettes that you went to, and then you got into the era of the Viking, and then it told you all of these ... It was a Disneyland ride but about the history of the Vikings. That was such a fun thing. And then you went upstairs to this different area and it really was your more standard museum display thing. But immersing yourself in that way made you so much more open to all the things that you were learning upstairs. What we want to do at CHRS, obviously we don't have space for little cars to —

ERIC: That's what you think!

RACHEL: I guess it could happen! I don't know.

ERIC: Stretch goal.

RACHEL: Exactly. Might have to add a third and a fourth floor.

ERIC: Last question I have for you, and this is the hardest question of the whole interview. When you are in a museum gift shop, what do you buy?

RACHEL: So oftentimes it is a book or an activity. So many of these museums have really cool museum-style activities. There was a great one that we got. There is a place in San Antonio called the DoSeum, and so that's kind of where I got that. But they had this pegboard and it's got gears on it. And so you have to place the gears in a certain way to make them all turn. And so that was just so fun to play with myself. So we had that for years with my kids because then you turn it and then they all turn and then you can set it up differently. It was just a very cool thing, and I love that mechanical kind of stuff.

ERIC: Honestly, I could imagine myself having that just as a little stress reliever.

RACHEL: Exactly.

ERIC: Stop looking at the screens, play with some gears for a little bit.

RACHEL: Well, and when you're 3, 5, whatever, and you put them in the wrong way and they bind, I mean that's education right there.

ERIC: There you go. There you go. Rachel, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

RACHEL: Thank you so much for having me.

ERIC: Thanks again to Rachel Lee for coming on the podcast. The California Historical Radio Society is open every Wednesday and Saturday from 10am to 3pm, and it's also available for private tours six days a week. For the first time in my life, I regret that my ears are not pierced because their gift shop sells earrings that look like cathedral-style radios from the 1930s. I'm giving away a pair of these earrings in our gift shop giveaway. To enter, sign up for our free email newsletter at likemuseum.com. Call 'Em Like Museum is hosted and edited by me, Eric Johnson. It's produced out of my podcast agency in San Francisco, LightningPod. Our marketing specialist is Julia Wilde, artwork by Rhe Civitello. Special thanks this week to Steve Kushman. Thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll see you at the museum.