AILSA CHANG, HOST:
OK, not many kids can claim the title of museum curator. But 11-year-old Anderson Taylor sure can. He opened a natural history museum in Cambridge, Illinois, in 2024 when he was only 9 years old. And now Anderson can add youngest male museum curator to his list of already impressive accomplishments. And he joins us now. Welcome, and congrats on winning a Guinness World Record.
ANDERSON TAYLOR: Yeah, thanks for having me in. Yeah.
CHANG: (Laughter) So wait - OK, Anderson, I just want to start by going back to the very beginning of things. Tell me how you even got the idea to start the Cambridge Natural History Museum.
ANDERSON: So yeah, when I was about 7 years old, we went on, like, a family trip to Scotland. We were looking for some dinosaur footprints on a beach.
CHANG: Yeah.
ANDERSON: And they told us about this fun museum called Staffin Dinosaur Museum, and it was really cool. It was, like, a little one-room museum.
CHANG: Wow.
ANDERSON: So when we got home, I told my dad that I wanted to start a museum.
CHANG: OK, so you get inspired to open a museum all those years ago, and now you have your very own museum. What does it look like on the inside?
ANDERSON: Well, it looks - it's a - again, like, a little one-room museum. And it's got a whole bunch of, like, about 13 display cases.
CHANG: Wow.
ANDERSON: And most of them are in a big, like, circle, essentially, around the room.
CHANG: And what sorts of artifacts are on display?
ANDERSON: We've got seashells, minerals, gemstones, dinosaur fossils, some replicas, Native American artifacts and - yeah, stuff like that, yeah.
CHANG: Wait, so, Anderson, help me picture this. How do you go about regularly finding artifacts for your museum?
ANDERSON: So - actually, so a lot of the collection's donated fossils. But when we do go out and find fossils, most of the time, surprisingly, I find them in my driveway.
CHANG: What?
ANDERSON: Yeah.
CHANG: What happened in your driveway many, many, many, many eons ago?
ANDERSON: So the gravel that's in our driveway is limestone, and limestone is legitimately just fossils. And that's actually how my first fossil was found. It had this little corkscrew-looking thing in it. It's called a crinoid. They were very cool animals that looked like plants, surprisingly. And we also had some coral pieces in there.
CHANG: That's amazing. So just give me an idea of what it's like to be a curator day to day. What does a day in your life look like?
ANDERSON: So usually, I wake up around, like, 6 o'clock in the morning, and I grab the keys or - depending on if it's open or not - my special signature hat, go up there, open it up, and then I - essentially for the rest of the day, depending on if there's people or not, I will just look at the rocks and kind of study them, see if I can find anything new about them, or if there are people in there, I just give them a tour of the entire museum.
CHANG: What happens to the museum while you're at school?
ANDERSON: So usually at school, nothing really happens there, except for the few times that I get pulled out of school to open up 'cause someone wants me to open up.
CHANG: Your teachers are cool with that?
ANDERSON: Sometimes.
CHANG: Uh-oh.
ANDERSON: It's like somebody reserved to go to the museum, then yeah, they're fine with it.
CHANG: I mean, you have a job to do, right?
ANDERSON: Yeah.
CHANG: Exactly. Do you still have as much time to go fossil hunting on your driveway (laughter)?
ANDERSON: Yeah. Whenever I have the free time to, I sometimes do.
CHANG: So awesome. So, Anderson, what is your ultimate dream, if you have a professional dream yet at your age? Do you think that museum curation is something you will always be involved with?
ANDERSON: Yeah, I think it will be. Like, museum curating is just going to be my thing. It's really fun.
CHANG: (Laughter) Well, is there a famous museum out there in the world that you would love to one day be a curator for?
ANDERSON: Oh, the American Museum of Natural History would be a fun one to curate.
CHANG: Oh, right here in Washington, D.C.?
ANDERSON: Yeah.
CHANG: Oh, I could totally see you there. (Laughter) Well, it was so fun talking to you, Anderson. Thank you so much.
ANDERSON: Yeah, you're welcome.
CHANG: That is Anderson Taylor, curator of the Cambridge Natural History Museum in Cambridge, Illinois, and the youngest male curator in the world. Maybe I can get you to cut class and let me into your museum one day.
ANDERSON: All right, I'd be fine with that.
CHANG: (Laughter).
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