Hidden treasures at the heart of history’s most incredible triumphs, sensational crimes and bizarre encounters are what Don Wildman unravels — all through exhibits in museums across the United States. Discovery Channel brings studio-fresh seasons of Wildman’s long-running show Mysteries of the Museum, in which he talks about the Skull Valley of Utah, where thousands of sheep lay dead after being stricken by a mysterious plague, investigates the appearance of a devilish feline that only shows up before major tragedies of national consequence, like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Great Depression, and probes the story of the selfless baker who served hope on board the Titanic in the face of disaster. As the show premieres in India on Mondays at 10pm, Wildman chats with The Telegraph over phone from his New York home.

Are there so many museums in the US for your show to run for 23 seasons and still be continuing?

(Laughs) Indeed there are. There’s an organisation called the American Alliance of Museums which has 36,000 registered with it. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This show does any size museum. It doesn’t have to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It can also be a Historical Society in Iowa. Therefore it is unlimited. Every episode has six stories. Each story is seven or eight minutes long. Each season has 13 episodes. So you do the math, there are hundreds of stories in each season. We can keep going for the rest of my life.

How long back did you start?

We started doing the show in 2011. We produced two seasons at the same time. In a matter of eight years, we’ve produced 20-plus seasons of television. And I am still doing it. Now I narrate from the basement of my house because of Covid. (Laughs)

Do you already have enough footage in stock?

Yes. We can mix and match these stories and change the theme of the show. There’s a lot of flexibility in how they repackage a show for each country. We’ve done versions of science fiction stories or murder stories. They can always change it by cherry picking the content and figuring out how to rebuild the show. The pandemic affected the television as much as any other industry. We have not been able to travel or send crew anywhere. Everything shut down. The big question is when will it begin again and when can we travel again, because that is what I do for a living.

On display at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, the sword is just like the one French writer Alexandre Dumas used during his infamous duel. It’s a reminder of a bumbling bout that inspired one of the greatest adventure novels of all time, The Three Musketeers. Sourced by the Telegraph

When were the three seasons we will see in India shot?

All of it was shot before the pandemic. What I am doing in my basement is renarrating old shows. Here’s how it worked. We had three crews that constantly travelled and shot the footage at the museums. I would do the specials on the big stuff — John F. Kennedy or the Nasa mission on the moon. Those specials would require me to report from the museum. Otherwise, it was a narration show that I hosted from New York. There’s no way for me to go to all of the museums.

What is the nature of the show?

It’s a mixed bag of entertainment — there’s a mysterious one, a crime story, a history stone, an adventure story…. My favourite thing about Mysteries of the Museum is that parents and children watch it together. So few shows on television allow them to do that. It gives the older person a chance to explain the world as they knew it to the younger person. Every story begins with an object in the museum and then tells the human story behind it.

Tell us about a few of those objects that feature in the seasons that we will watch.

There’s a famous artefact of a mermaid that was supposedly found near the Fiji islands. It was kept in the PT Barnum Museum in New York City. Of course it’s a fish that has been made to look like a mermaid. But it has an interesting story.
In Washington DC, there was a terrible smell that would overtake the White House. Washington DC was a filthy city with its sewers. In summer, the heat made it worse. We call the story ‘the Presidential stench’.

This statue at Michael C Carlos Museum in Atlanta, represents one of the greatest military leaders in history, Alexander III. The artefact is more than 2,000 years old. Sourced by the Telegraph

When was the first time you stepped into a museum and where?

I grew up in Philadelphia which has a proud legacy of museums. I went to the Benjamin Franklin Museum, called the Franklin Institute, which is designed to make it fun for kids to learn about science. They have a famous artefact in that museum called The Human Heart. You walk through the heart, with the tunnels being the ventricles. I remember the walls inside were squeashy. As a child, it was a thrilling experience. My father was a school teacher. He loved museums. We went to many museums as a child. We need to remember how invaluable museums are to all cultures in the world.

Many of the museums are going virtual because of the pandemic. Do you think the online experience is enough to captivate youngsters?

No. I don’t think virtual is enough. Children get a lot from walking to a specific place that heightens the perception of history. The problem with virtual is that it brings everything down to our own level. Everything is where we are. That’s not healthy in the long run. We need to be in environments that are educational and special. That being said, Covid has been a tragedy, it has also had this effect of moving along a process that was already happening. All American museums were dropping in attendance already before Covid. Covid has made the issue of addressing that problem a more urgent one. That might be a healthy thing in the long run. Everyone will have to open up, thinking of the world completely differently. Thank God for the Internet, otherwise this would have been a huge disaster. But we have also learnt its shortcomings. Nobody wants to live online. We want to live in the real world.

If the show were ever to go international, which museums would top your wish list and why?

As I’ve grown older, Asian cultures have become more fascinating to me. Generally speaking, Americans (especially those who look like me) focus on European travel and don’t realise our deep reliance and cultural connection to Asia. Guilty as charged but I’m trying to change, perhaps starting with a trip to India, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve never visited. But you asked for a favourite! Indeed, it would have to be the Natural History Museum in London simply because of the entrance hall which is so extraordinary, never mind the global collection. Same goes for the US Library of Congress for more bookish reasons — but that lobby! I’m as interested in the experience of the museum’s building as its artefacts inside, maybe more!

On a lighter note, have you seen the movie Night at The Museum? What if you ever got trapped in such a situation?

In fact, it was the success of Night at the Museum which inspired our show! When new projects are pitched to television networks they are often more interested if the subject matter is in the cultural zeitgeist already. Such was the case when the first NATM sequel came out in 2009. As for me, I’m very persuadable that at night strange things happen in a museum. I just don’t believe the dinosaur skeletons can walk. That seems like a stretch.

(Mysteries of the Museum airs every Monday at 10pm on Discovery Channel and Discovery Channel HD. Viewers can also stream the show on Discovery Plus.)