Grating The Nutmeg

  Have you ever discovered that one of your favorite places is being renovated? Like your grandmother’s kitchen, your favorite restaurant, or even a museum, and you worry that the charm or the appeal of the place might be gone after the renovation? Podcast editor Patrick O’Sullivan and Producer Mary Donohue went to just such a place, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale in New Haven. We had both been to the museum many times before the pandemic. But, the newly-reopened Peabody Museum is not just better, it’s fantastic!   The massive dinosaur and prehistoric fossil collections in the Burke Hall of Dinosaurs are what every schoolchild remembers from a fieldtrip.  The renovation has created new space for exhibiting more of its cultural, anthropological, and other scientific collections, including never-before displayed artifacts and contemporary art. For example, one intriguing  new area was the History of Science and Technology gallery that included Yale’s first microscope — purchased in 1734. Just th