"I consider ghost stories the clickbait of history," says Laura Fies, Executive Director of the USS Hornet Museum. While supernatural tales are a fun thrill for visitors, they also serve as a powerful accessory to historical education.

"We will teach them history... We'll inject it somehow and they'll walk away knowing something more," Laura explains. "And if we have to wrap it into a ghost story, so be it."

As a premier destination for history buffs, tourists, and paranormal investigators alike, the USS Hornet offers something for everybody: Spooky supernatural tours, massive military aircraft, carefully preserved World War II uniforms, and fascinating wartime artifacts—including the crew's original recipe for baking 7,000 donuts at sea.

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Laura discusses the unique challenges of running a “midsize museum in a big museum body.” She explains how the Hornet’s exhibits successfully put visitors into the mindset of ordinary enlisted men during World War II, and highlights the crucial role the legendary ship played in recovering astronauts during the Apollo 11 and 12 space missions.

Full transcript of this episode

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This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (04:49) - Boarding the USS Hornet Museum
• (08:55) - The Apollo 11 mobile quarantine facility
• (11:00) - Daily life for a WWII sailor
• (15:10) - Why the USS Hornet is considered haunted
• (24:16) - Maintaining an 894-foot aircraft carrier
• (34:39) - Operating the museum without federal funding
• (41:11) - Baking 7,000 donuts during battle stations
• (44:38) - Stealing ideas from other museums

Images:
Museum of Ice Cream
Exploratorium
Charles Schulz Museum
NASA Snoopy Poster

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If you learned about ancient Egypt in school, you likely heard a lot about pharaohs, tombs, and elaborate death rituals. A new exhibition at the de Young Museum juxtaposes this familiar royal history with the lives and afterlives of ordinary citizens. Here, you'll find golden jewelry and shining sarcophagi, but also everyday objects you have likely never seen before: a baby's rattle, a stone headrest, and a jar for cured meat.

"We are learning so much more about how people lived who were not royalty," says Renée Dreyfus, the curator in charge of ancient art at Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Renée oversaw the American debut of "Treasures of the Pharaohs," which expands our understanding of ancient Egyptian culture, fueled by archaeologist Zahi Hawass's recent excavation of the Golden City near Luxor.

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, we talk about how ordinary people lived, worked, and prepared for an afterlife in ancient Egypt; Renée's collaborative work with global institutions like the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Luxor Museum; and what she has learned during her remarkable 50 years working at FAMSF. Plus: Why the most interesting object in the whole exhibition might just be a wooden chair.

Full transcript of this episode

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This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (04:07) - What museums means to Renée
• (07:02) - Misconceptions about Ancient Egypt
• (13:37) - The Golden City & regular people
• (22:55) - Renée's favorite object in the exhibition
• (31:46) - Curating King Tut 30 years apart
• (37:34) - The Etruscans exhibit
• (40:29) - What to buy in a museum gift shop

Images:
Several images courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The de Young Museum
The Legion of Honor
Vincent Price
Brooklyn Museum
The Golden City of Aten
Amenhotep III
Zahi Hawass
Sitamun

Videos:
Video from Treasures of the Pharaohs, courtesy of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco