Who Is This Now?

Maggie Ryan Sandford (they/she) is “a wicked cool anomaly“: naturalist, author, media maker, and museum exhibit developer who uses science and art to educate the masses.

They’re a writer/researcher/producer/reformed comedian on a mission to make the world more equitable and scientifically literate through creative, research-based media projects. They research how humans learn about and engage with science, and work to empower more humans do so. They develop and execute work for big screens, little screens, museums, radio, and stage. More specifically…

They develop museum exhibitions and visitor experiences, science and otherwise, including the recently revamped “Discover Wolves” exhibition at the International Wolf Center, the Saint Paul Saint’s “City of Baseball Museum,” Victoria the T. rex, and Where Do We Go from Here?, a COVID-19 exhibition at the Gates Foundation Discovery Center. Whether the job calls for humanizing complex science or helping humans tell their own stories, Maggie’s on it.

They have worked in a variety of TV and film media. Their NASA-funded planetarium show addresses issues of accessibility and inclusion by teaching about the biology of humans in space. Their video work for Nature magazine explores how emotions can get in the way of scientific understanding. They wrote and directed the award-winning exhibition film Victoria the T. rex. Other production credits include Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, The Onion News Network, Diners/Drive-Ins/and Dives, The Writer’s Almanac, A Prairie Home Companion, and an interactive, multimedia documentary for Twin Cities Public Television, the Association for Independents in Radio (AIR), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

They are the author of a book about evolution and genetics, Consider the Platypus: Evolution through Biology’s Most Baffling Beasts (Black Dog & Leventhal/Hachette, 2019), which is a hit among folks ages four to 104, got great reviews by the Wall Street Journal and Ars Tecnica, and was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award in the category of General Nonfiction.

More of their science writing has appeared in Smithsonian, Slate, Nature, National Geographic, ComedyCentral.com, the Onion/A.V. Club, mental_floss, and on TV and radio. Their fiction has a appeared in publications including Paper Darts, Revolver, the Indiana Review, McSweeney’s Book of Politics and Musicals, and earned the semi-annual Richard Hugo House Founders’ Award and first place in Literary Death Match 100 and Write Fight #1.

They have performed their work at Joe’s Pub, the Guthrie Theatre, People’s Improv Theater, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, Rififi, the Seattle Poetry Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Wheeler Centre’s “Interrobang: A Festival of Questions”, Rockstar Storytellers, and for All Things Considered, A Beautiful World, College Humor, Kevin Kling’s Storycraft, NPR’s Story Forms, and various podcasts including Stephen Dubner’s Tell Me Something I Don’t Know and Regret Labs.

Previously, they were a research and evaluation associate at the Science Museum of Minnesota, doing science about how people learn about science. Research affiliations include the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame, and the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE).

Maggie would love to talk to you, any time, about so many things but especially your relationship with science. And/or evolution. And/or cetaceans. Please drop a line.