A museum director who still gets asked “What’s your favorite dinosaur?” might sound like a dream job, but Jason Cryan’s story is more surprising than that. Jason leads the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City, and his path runs from a Vermont childhood shaped by the outdoors, to tropical entomology, to building genetics labs and advocating for teams of scientists inside major natural history museums. The throughline is curiosity, and the willingness to change course when the “right” career ladder stops feeling right.

We talk about what makes NHMU a true science museum: two million plus specimens, real research programs, and exhibitions grounded in evidence. Jason shares how systematics works in plain language, from taxonomy and biodiversity discovery to phylogenetics and DNA sequencing, and why asking better questions matters more than having fast answers. Then we zoom out to museum leadership, grants, public trust, and why informal science education can be one of the highest-impact forms of STEM learning.

You’ll also get a tour of what makes the Natural History Museum of Utah unique in the Intermountain West, from dinosaurs through time to the Great Salt Lake gallery, plus the strategy behind rotating special exhibitions like the immersive Bug World collaboration. We close with behind-the-scenes research happening right now, and a reminder that discovery can happen anywhere, even in a Salt Lake City backyard.

If you enjoy conversations about science, museums, Utah history, and how curiosity shapes a life, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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