50 episodes listed below
Maine history, widened through public talks.
Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast turns recorded public programs into careful history sessions. Its lectures and book talks connect Maine places to larger stories of slavery, vegetarian reform, Portland history, Longfellow, Joni Mitchell, and Wabanaki homelands.
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Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast is a public-history archive built from talks, book events, and curator conversations. Its center of gravity is Maine, but the episodes keep showing how local stories open into regional and national history. A talk on Black sailors moves through whaling, free Black mariners in Portland, benevolent societies, and the Abyssinian Meeting House. A book discussion on A Plausible Man links an escaped slave’s life to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the domestic and professional world around Harriet Beecher Stowe. Other episodes follow vegetarian reformers, the Graham riot in Portland, and an exhibit on Maine’s untold vegetarian history. The show also has room for literary and cultural biography. Longfellow’s friendships with Concord writers, Joni Mitchell’s travels, and Portland’s connections across time all sit beside more explicitly Maine-focused subjects. The format is direct and event-like. A speaker is introduced, the historical frame is set, and the talk proceeds through documents, places, people, and questions from the audience. It is not built around banter. Its appeal comes from patient explanation, archival specificity, and the feeling of sitting in on a serious museum program. The recurring Wabanaki land acknowledgment matters to the show’s sense of place. It signals that Maine history here is not treated as a single inheritance or a narrow civic timeline. The recordings can include references to slides, books, exhibits, and online versions of the programs. That gives the audio a slightly institutional texture, but also a strong sense of provenance. The best moments come when a familiar subject becomes stranger and more detailed: a graham cracker leads to riots and reform politics, a meeting house becomes an anchor for maritime community, and Portland becomes a map of overlapping eras. The show is best for listeners who prefer researched talks over polished studio storytelling. It rewards attention.
Made for: For listeners interested in Maine, New England, American history, public humanities, literary biography, reform movements, and museum-style lectures. It especially suits people who enjoy book talks and archival context more than conversational history shows.
What sets it apart: The show preserves real Maine Historical Society programs, so the audio keeps the structure of lectures, curator talks, audience questions, and references to exhibits or visuals. Its strength is the bridge between Maine-specific places and broader histories of slavery, maritime work, literature, food reform, and Wabanaki homelands.
Listen to recordings of lectures, book talks, panels, and other programs on Maine, New England, American history from Maine Historical Society. These podcasts allow everyone to enjoy, learn from, and reflect on history and its relevance today.
Black sailors' earnings reached Portland's Abyssinian Meeting House; your history lesson gets off the boat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Black sailors' maritime earnings come ashore through Portland homes, worship, and the Abyssinian Meeting House.
Black Salts centers Black sailors in a Portland history shaped by maritime earnings, home ownership, benevolent societies, houses of worship, and the Abyssinian Meeting House.
A Maine book talk connects Uncle Tom's Cabin to fugitive-slave history, local memory, and archival uncertainty.
A Plausible Man centers on a Maine Historical Society book talk with Susanna Ashton, tracing the story of an escaped slave connected to the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
A sharp look at how vegetarian reformers connected diet with pacifism, politics, and social change.
The Maine Historical Society's Food of the Future follows Adam Spritzen into a reform culture that treated vegetarianism as an "Archimedean lever" for social change.
A Portland riot makes Maine's vegetarian history a study in public memory and historical neglect.
Maine's vegetarian past emerges here as a surprisingly durable thread, with Maine Historical Society's John Babin and Avery Yale Camilla presenting the exhibit as a departure for the institution.
A Maine Historical Society book talk follows Joni Mitchell through travel, early career ties, and the move toward jazz fusion.
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell traces Mitchell through New York, Florida, Los Angeles, Laurel Canyon, and Greece, then follows the turn from her folk period toward jazz fusion.
Black Hills history, told on location.
Vegas history with a barstool pulse.
Connecticut history with national echoes.
Texas history, sourced and road-tested.
Scottish folklore with mud, wit, and memory.
Maine Historical Society's "Black Salts" follows Seth Goldstein through Black sailors in Maine and New England, from West African boating traditions to Portland's Munjoy Hill waterfront.
Maine Historical Society's January 23, 2025 virtual book talk centers on Susanna Ashton's A Plausible Man and the life of John Andrew Jackson, an escaped man from Sumter, South Carolina.
["Maine Historical Society's Food of the Future tracks vegetarianism in the United States from the Bible Christians of 1817 to Battle Creek's pro-toast era.", "Kathleen Newman hosts Adam Spritzen, an assistant professor at Marywood University in Scranton and author of The Vegetarian Crusade, on the history of vegetarianism in the United States.", "He contrasts the 1860 'Julia Beef Eater' Vanity Fair letter, which mocked a 'cabbage-headed husband,' with a 1902 Gilman Lowe profile that praised a vegetarian bodybuilder lifting 1.6 million pounds in 35 minutes.", "The episode traces the Bible Christians' 1817 arrival from Liverpool to Philadelphia, Sylvester Graham's cholera-era diet crusade, and the American Vegetarian Society's 1850 definition of vegetarianism as an 'art and science.'"]
["Maine\u2019s vegetarian history reaches back to Father Sebastian Rall\u2019s 1722 letter from Nanran Soak, where he describes cornmeal porridge, maple sugar, roots, and nuts.", "Maine Historical Society\u2019s September 30, 2024 curator talk brings together John Babin and Avery Yale Camilla, who built the exhibit Maine\u2019s Untold Vegetarian History from Brown Library research.", "Avery Yale Camilla traces Dr.
Ann Powers frames Joni Mitchell as an artist shaped by movement, not a fixed persona, and ties that idea to the line 'I am on a lonely road and I am traveling.' At Maine Historical Society's October 7, 2024 program, Kathleen Newman introduces Powers, a music critic of more than 30 years for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.
A book talk on 'When the Island Had Fish' by Jaina Smith, exploring Maine history and Wabanaki homelands.
A book talk by author Paul Ledman discussing his book 'Portland, Maine: Connections Across Time' at the Maine Historical Society.
A lecture about a book uncovering a lost rural tradition of winter lyceums in Maine, featuring author Joan Radner.
A curator talk at Maine Historical Society discussing the history of Maine Red, with land acknowledgment of Wabanaki homelands.