Call 'Em Like Museum with Eric Johnson

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The Haas-Lilienthal House is one of San Francisco’s most beautiful architectural landmarks, a gorgeous Queen Anne Victorian that stands out amid a modern landscape of grocery stores and car dealerships. Built in the 1880s in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, this beautifully preserved home offers a unique glimpse into the city's 19th-century history.

While many historic house museums are dedicated to diplomats or the incredibly wealthy, original inhabitants William and Bertha Haas were upper-middle-class merchants moving up in the world. As San Francisco Heritage CEO Woody LaBounty explains, their home's location was chosen carefully to be near the true locus of power just one block over on Van Ness Avenue, which was then a showplace boulevard of massive, elaborate estates.

Today on Call ‘Em Like Museum, Woody talks about why the Haas-Lilienthal House is now the headquarters of SF Heritage and how the organization uses it to tell the city’s story. We also discuss what makes this house museum different from so many others, why it’s so important to preserve historic architecture, and why his favorite room in the house is the bathroom.

Visit the Haas-Lilienthal House: https://www.haas-lilienthalhouse.org/
The Halloween Experience, House of Weird: https://www.haas-lilienthalhouse.org/halloween

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

Chapters
Music: www.purple-planet.com

Images:
House exterior
The Ashe-Hobart Residence
Residence of Mr. Charles Holbrook
Claus Spreckel's residence (which also survived the fire!)
1906 firefighters
The burning of the Mission District
The dining room chandelier
The house in 1975
The dining room
Golden Gate Park, c. 1925
De Young Museum, 1921
San Francisco burning
The Haas-Lilienthal House entrance
The bathroom
100 McAllister Street in the 1930s
Castro Camera
Queer Arts Featured
Salvador Dalí Museum
Salvador Dalí, 1939

Vote for Call 'Em Like Museum in the 2026 Signal Awards

When you visit a museum, do you see it as just a collection of artifacts from the past? The California Historical Radio Society (CHRS) is hoping you don't. 

Although their museum in Alameda, California has a great collection of preserved & restored vintage radios, their work is really about the present, the future, and building a vibrant community of audio enthusiasts.

For Executive Director Rachel Lee, the real goal of the CHRS is to create a dynamic space where different generations can connect and engage. This welcoming environment often turns casual visitors into dedicated volunteers. As Lee notes, the most rewarding part of her work is watching visitors' eyes light up when they discover a historical space that feels incredibly "alive."

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Rachel talks about how different generations of visitors respond to the history of radio; why it’s so important to preserve the medium’s roots; and why radio matters a lot more for life in 2026 than you probably realize. Plus: The story of the huge “music box” machines that replaced live xylophone players at NBC.

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

Music: www.purple-planet.com

Vote for Call 'Em Like Museum in the 2026 Signal Awards

Museums already do a lot: they educate the public, preserve important works of art and culture, and inspire people to create art of their own. But they have the potential to do even more. By adopting principles of urban design, museums can transform into essential "third places"—vibrant social spaces where communities gather, friendships are formed, and societies grow stronger.

"The third place is essential to being healthy and happy because you need to have a place where you can just relax, be yourself, have fun, connect with friends, and meet new people," explains urbanist and psychologist Dr. Tayana Panova.

How we experience a space depends entirely on its design, she says. An engaging environment filled with life makes time fly, whether you are walking down a vibrant city street or exploring a beautiful museum gallery.

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Dr. Panova—co-host of The Perfect City podcast and a popular creator exploring how urban design affects our brains—discusses what museums can learn from the design of cities, and vice versa. We also explore the vital, real-world stimulation we get from third places that our screens simply cannot replicate, the right way to integrate technology into an exhibit, and what modern cultural institutions might want to borrow from American shopping malls.

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

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction

Follow Tayana on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube @dr.tpanova

The KunstHausWien in Vienna

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The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco faces a unique challenge: How do you tell the story of one of history's most important storytellers? When Diane Disney Miller founded the museum, her goal was to let her father tell his own story. To achieve this, she amassed 30,000 artifacts and extensive archival media to create a deeply personal look at the man behind the magic.

"She really wanted to debunk these myths that he was not a family man, not committed to his friends and family," says Kirsten Komoroske, the executive director of the museum. "She wanted to tell the truth about all of the challenges, the failures, the setbacks."

Those challenges include the devastating loss of his first hit character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; a polarizing animators' strike that led to Walt testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and the lifelong smoking habit that ultimately ended his life at age 65.

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Kirsten shares how the Walt Disney Family Museum stays fresh as a single-subject institution, the importance of a "good, hard failure," and why there is a plaque next to one of the museum's benches explicitly telling visitors to sit down.

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

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction

Images:
The museum exterior
Walt Disney
Narcissa Niblack Thorne
Thorne's "English Cottage Kitchen of the Queen Anne Period"
Gates of Hell
River of Stone
Faultline
Wood Line
Spire

Earth Wall

Videos:
Walt Disney Testifies at HUAC (1947)

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At the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, California, there are very few "don't touch" signs. In fact, this unique collection actually relies on visitors' touch to keep things running smoothly.

"They actually function better when they're getting played a lot," says Evan Phillippe, the museum's executive director. "They seize up and they freeze when they don't ... The more they get played, the happier they are."

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Evan talks about the myriad challenges of maintaining the world's largest playable pinball collection, including what to do with the 1,200 machines that don't fit in the current space. He explains how the museum educates visitors through rooms like "Beyond the Backglass," the first exhibit to celebrate women's contributions to pinball engineering, art, and software. Plus: The small army of volunteers that keeps the games working, what kids who grew up with iPads think of pinball, and the downsides of being thrifty as a nonprofit museum operator.

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

Listen to "Buzzers and Bells," my original short audio story about the Pacific Pinball Museum, on Twenty Thousand Hertz

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:01 Evan's First Museum Memory
07:12 A Tour of the Pacific Pinball Museum
11:46 Why It's a Museum, Not an Arcade
15:27 Fix-It Nights & Pinball Maintenance
21:46 Getting New Generations Into Pinball
27:19 Visitor Reactions & Pinball Nostalgia
33:17 Investing in the Museum's Future
40:50 Museum Inspiration & Tiny Details of Joy

Music: www.purple-planet.com

Images:
Museum exterior

Videos:
Suzanne Ciani on Omni: The New Frontier

Vote for Call 'Em Like Museum in the 2026 Signal Awards

Did you know the Mona Lisa only got world-famous after it was stolen from the Louvre? In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece was just another portrait in the Salon Carré, shoved between a bunch of other Renaissance paintings. But when a former museum worker stole it, the public flocked to the museum to stare at "nothing," the blank space on the wall.

This phenomenon fascinated Susan Crane, a history professor at the University of Arizona and author of "Nothing Happened: A History."

In 2026, the Mona Lisa's status could not be more different: It has a wall entirely to itself behind bulletproof glass, drawing millions of visitors who wait behind stanchions to catch a glimpse & maybe take a selfie.

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Susan questions our relationship to famous works of art in museums, and explains how to cultivate genuine surprise as a visitor. She also explores how museums have been reshaped by technology and politics, the ongoing debate of the Smithsonian versus the White House, and whether school field trips are actually worth the effort. Plus: The absolutely wild way the literary elite used to experience museums in the 19th century.

Full transcript of this episode

Susan’s book: Nothing Happened: A History

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

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction

Images:

Stealing Mona Lisa
Vincenzo Peruggia and “Daily Scene in the Louvre”

The blank space

La “Joconde” a disparu

Mona returns

Mona Lisa in the Louvre

Excelsior newspaper

Galeries Des Antiques

French Crown Jewels

Allegory of Marriage

Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine

Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee

Videos:

Photo Museum

Benjamin Banneker

Call 'Em Like Museum is a weekly podcast exploring how museums really work, and why we love them. Host Eric Johnson talks with museum directors, curators, experts, and passionate fans about what drives them, from homegrown passion projects to world-famous institutions. Each episode digs into museum curation, exhibit design, and the visitor experience — plus the essential question: What's actually worth buying in the gift shop? Season One spotlights museums in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Walt Disney Family Museum, the deYoung Museum, and the USS Hornet Museum.

Subscribe to the newsletter: https://www.callemlikemuseum.com/

Music: www.purple-planet.com

This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod: https://lightningpod.fm/