This episode is about a three week visit to the museum. It’s about working towards a museum exhibit. It’s about working with one of our collections and looking at specimens to find more specimens. It’s about why this research is important to all of us. Our visitors were biologist and University of Washington Associate Professor Chelsea Wood, Research Technologist and Lab Manager, Katie Leslie, and graduate student, Diana Perales-Macedo. And what exactly they came to UAMN to do, we’re going to...
May 26
1 hr 15 min
Not long ago, we broadcast another episode with the museum’s Birds collection. There, Roger Topp spoke with five of the students about working with the collection, and he spoke with the Curator Kevin Winker and Collections Manager Jack Withrow about the dimensions of the collection. And during that conversation, when Roger asked them to pick their highlights from the collection, Jack challenged him to pick ten birds, by number, at random from the 60,000 specimens on hand, saying that they cou...
May 12
50 min
In 2025, the museum held its first open call for artists and community curated shows in the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery. The jury selected 6 shows to be exhibited, and Kevin Carroll’s The Sick, is the first in the series, opening April 11th, 2026. Kevin stopped by the museum in March to drop off the work for the show and to talk about the art, this project, and the parts of his life that led him to create 45 pieces from 45 stories of addiction in the Fairbanks community. As he wrote in the ...
Apr 14
50 min
The UA Museum of the North now has a planetarium, and as planetarian Omega Smith said when she first came to the museum in the fall of 2025, “We can move the stars.” In this episode we discuss the new facility with Omega Smith, Director of the new Walt and Marita Babula Planetarium, about coming on board, building partnerships, and designing programs. We speak with museum director, Pat Druckenmiller and Senior Director of Principle Gifts for the UA Foundation, Emily Drygas about fierce vision...
Mar 31
50 min
Welcome to the museum’s Birds Collection. In this episode Curator Kevin Winker and Collections manager Jack Withrow discuss the dimensions of the collection, and the way it grows. We talk about Super Pato and remember the stories that come with interacting with specimens. We stop by the Birds preparation lab, where museum graduate students Laney Cardenas, Estephan Fortela, Sarah Le, Morgan Lynn, and Nick Ramsey are busy at work on some very different birds. The More You Look is a production o...
Mar 10
50 min
The Native Art Center at UAF has been a cornerstone for the study and preservation of Alaska Native art since its establishment in 1965. Founded by Iñupiaq artist Ronald Senungetuk, the Center was created to bring together artists from rural communities, providing them with opportunities for studying new materials and techniques to incorporate into their work. The exhibition Creative Continuum, 60 Years of the Native Art Center, celebrates artistic excellence, mentorship, and community at the...
Feb 24
50 min
In planning to exhibit Bus 142 at the UA Museum of the North, we’ve spoken with many people about their experiences with the bus, their perspectives on the story of Chris McCandless, their connections to the bus that go back into the 70s and 80s. In 2022, writer, reporter, and NOLS instructor, Diana Saverin visited the museum and shared some of her stories. She talked about her crazy, what-are-odds-visit in 2011, and her extended stay in Healy in 2013 as she spoke with Alaskans and with the p...
Feb 10
50 min
As the UA Museum of the North approaches its centennial anniversary, we thought we might talk to each collection about that collection, the collection’s history, and what objects might be in a top ten list to include in a celebratory exhibit. This is the Earth Sciences Collection, and here are museum Director and Curator of Earth Sciences, Patrick Druckenmiller, and UAF professor and paleoecologist, Matt Wooller, recorded in the museum’s media lab and collections range in December of 2025. Th...
Jan 27
50 min
The museum’s latest exhibit in the Rose Berry Alaska Art Gallery, Threshold 32 Fahrenheit, is a collaboration between visual Artist Klara Maisch, writer Debbie Moderow, and ecologist Rebecca Hewitt. The exhibit is a multidisciplinary narrative about change in the boreal forest. It is as much about the process of collaboration and the development of community as it is the observance of the world and creation of art. Klara, Debbie, and Rebecca have worked together before, and began their collab...
Jul 1, 2025
50 min
The museum’s latest special exhibit, Observing Our Dynamic Planet, showcases how synthetic aperture radar data allow us to study earth from space. To follow our last episode, which looked at the Alaska Satellite Facility’s Ground Station, this episode comes from the 20 or so interviews we conducted with ASF scientists and engineers in the process of developing the exhibition. Joining us from various points in 2024, are Heidi Kristenson, Joe Kennedy, Simon Zwiebeck, Forest Williams, Andrew Joh...
Jun 17, 2025
49 min
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