The following is an original production of AZPM News.

The only thing that you really need to have like a career in science or a career in almost anything is to just want to do it.

People get pushed out by a variety of things.

All of those people are wrong and jerks and like really all that matters is like "Do you like the subject "Are you interested in it?"

"Do you like the work?"

If the answer is yes, then like that's what you should do.

This is "Speaking Personally" filmed on location at the Paul and Alice Baker Center for Public Media.

Hi and welcome I'm Tom McNamara, along with our guest Dr.

Erika Hamden, who is a colleague of ours.

You're the host of "New Frontiers" on Arizona Public Media a science-oriented show.

You are also a very accomplished person Erika.

I'll do your your mini resume right here.

Ast you're the Professor and Director of the U of A Space Institute.

You're involved in a number of telescope projects here at the U. Many followers on Instagram and you have a book called "Weird Universe" that we need to know a lot more about.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me it's s You and I have something in common we both have New Jersey roots and I want you to start off by taking us back in time to when you were five, six, seven years old.

- Yeah.

Living in Montclair, New Jersey with four sisters.

Mom was a science teacher.

Biology?

- Yeah.

Dad was a science teacher.

(Tom) Chemistry?

- Physics.

Physics.

So you had it covered.

[ ERIKA LAUGHS ] How did this little girl from Montclair, New Jersey segue from the 'All-American Life' with a great family, all the way up to My parents are both really smart and like also because there were so many of us they were kind of like, "You got to figure your own stuff out like we don't have any time."

So it [ LAUGHS ] So it was like I spent a lot of time as a kid like in my own head and like just like thinking about things or like daydreaming and you know they would take us to the library.

I was always trying to like get more books to read once I learned how to read and it was also like a weirdly I think a golden age of like public television ironically.

Maybe not ironically, but I used to watch all these shows on PBS and I like learned how to program the VCR as like a you know eight-year-old so that I could record my space shows.

There was one that was narrated really loved and there was this other show that was like originally from on the BBC that got rebroadcast on PBS in the 80s that was about kind That was about kind of like technology and I don't know what it was exactly it just like drew me in and my mom there was it was just like a random day and I was like actually I was like sitting in in our TV room watching PBS probably and she came in and she said, "Oh there's a a news story that scientists want a better name for the Big Bang and there's a contest like you should enter the contest" and I was like "What's the Big Bang?"

And she was like "I'm cooking dinner go look it up."

So I went upstairs to our encyclopedia because it was the 80s like everything was in physical form.

- Right, that's right.

So I looked up the Big Bang and then I like looked up other stuff about space and then the last book in the encyclopedia was an atlas and it had like you know maps of the US and the world, but then it had at the very back of the atlas there was a map of the solar system and then the next page was a map of the galaxy and then the next page was a map of the known universe.

And I remember like looking at the map of the known universe and I was like "oh my god this is the best thing I've ever seen" and like, and from then on I used to tell people like oh I'm going to be an astronaut or I'm going to be a chef.

I remember when Hubble launched and like the Voyager flybys of the outer solar system planets and like all these like particular events in my childhood I like remember through what space thing was happening.

And I just feel like I'm so fortunate that my you know family was like okay do whatever "Okay do whatever you want."

[ LAUGHS ] You know as I went through school I was really good at math and science it just like was how my brain kind of worked and I also was fortunate because I had so many sisters and the teachers in school would see the last name on the roster.

And they'd be like, "Oh you're a Hamden," and so I never had a teacher that was like "Oh maybe you wouldn't be good at this or maybe you're not smart."

They just had already had my sisters.

We were a smart, diligent family.

- Stamp of approval.

- Yeah and so like you know I talk to people now and they're like "Oh I loved- I love but then I had a teacher that told me I should do something else" or they kind of got like pushed off their interest and I think that I just was lucky to have not had that and to actually have a really supportive like the school system in Montclair, New Jersey is was like really lovely and supportive and like really interested in like the students as whole people and so that was also a really nice kind of very-very nurturing environment to grow up in.

(Tom) This burning desire to become an astronaut led you to MIT for a while.

Yeah so, so I you know like also in my childhood like I remember Apollo 13 came out and that was the soundtrack to Apollo 13 was the first CD that I bought.

It wasn't like Backstreet Boys, [ LAUGHS ] - Okay okay.

(Erika) I actually had, like, a whole plan.

I was like, I'm gonna go to MIT, in aerospace engineering, I'm gonna be an astronaut, then I will like run for Senate because like you know even back in the 80s there were astronauts who would run for office and I was like oh I'm gonna-- (Tom) Even today.

- Yeah, yes exactly like we love Mark Kelly.

And so I-I, because I knew that MIT had the most astronauts for a non-military institution.

A lot of astronauts actually go to like the Naval Academy or the Air Force Academy but I was like oh MIT like that's the place and so so I like you know worked really hard in high school.

I got into MIT and Caltech.

I was the first person from my high school to get into Caltech and my parents were like "Don't go to California it's too far away."

[ CHUCKLES ] So I went to MIT and then actually I hated it.

And I just had like a really difficult time going from this like very close-knit family and like a really supportive school environment to like kind of a harsh like 'you're on your own' university environment and I I really need like when I think about it now I like I'm like oh I really need to kind of grow up and like take agency of my own choices and activities and-and it just took a while for me to kind of figure that out.

So I ended up leaving.

It was the Monday after Thanksgi that I basically--and like MIT they might be better now but at the time they didn't really have the capacity to deal with someone that was--I was having like anxiety and just like a lot of like issues that I'd never had before.

And their solution was like "why and like we'll take your name off everything give you your money back" like as a kid I had felt like my part like partly how I stood out among my sisters was to be like oh I'm like achieving all this stuff and I had really felt like people love me for my achievements and not just because like I'm a person who deserves love.

And so that experience of droppi out of MIT and then being like oh all these people still love me my parents like you know still love me, the sun rises in the morning and the universe like continues on you know indifferent to like this little tragedy.

Um but that was it was a super important growth experience for me because I kind of felt like oh I had to like rebuild myself in a way that was like it doesn't matter what I do or if I never do anything that like you know I'm-I'm like a valuable important person, as-as is everybody.

(Tom) Well before we segue to th that you moved into right after MIT, were you letting go of the astronaut dream at that point or was there any despondency about that or were you just-- (Erika) I mean it was more of just like oh I'm like I just felt really sad about being like a college dropout.

- Yeah.

- And like not like the the cool kinds that are like doing a startup or whatever I was just like oh I just couldn't hack.

It-it was the best thing that I' Like it-it was was such a founda time for me and it made me think a lot about like why um, you know, why did I go to MIT, why did I make these choices, like, why did I think I needed to be in certain classes or act a certain way or like um you know not do things my own way?

And so then afterwards I've tried to make choices that's like what do I actually want and like what is interesting to me and like and what will be fun and engaging and and--and not really thinking necessarily about like oh what is this going to lead me to 10 years from now, but more like what am I going to like right at this moment?

(Tom) And you sought solace in the moment in food, - Yes.

- In that moment in life right?

[ LAUGHS ] Tell us about that.

- Well so that so I um after I dropped out of MIT I actually worked at a Borders bookstore and I like worked in the cafe and learned how to make like lattes and coffee drinks and stuff but my cooking came after after I went back to college.

And then after I finished my undergrad degree then I--I went to cooking school and then I worked as a chef for a while.

(Tom) Right you finished Harvard - Yeah.

- And then you went to not just any cooking school you did it up right.

(Erika) Yeah, I went to La Cordo I thought about going to the one Julia Child went um and I that summer when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do I knew I didn't want to go straight into grad school.

And you know back when I was a kid I would tell people I'll be an astronaut or a chef so I was like okay let's give the other the other career path a try.

And I read this bio this autobiography of Julia Child that was called "My Life in France."

And she talks about um going to the cooking school and like learning because she didn't know how to cook until she was in her 40s.

So I enrolled in the kind of basic the first term course on cooking.

I found a family an American family that was living in London that wanted an au pair so I like lived with this family and and watched their two kids and it was convenient because one of the kids went to school like down the street from where the cooking school was so we'd ride the bus together I'd drop him off, go to cooking school, and then come back, go home make dinner for the family, and like it worked out really nicely yeah.

(Tom) Well before we go further have you given up on that broader dream of of being in space, preparing great food in space?

Does that astronaut dream still live inside?

- Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- Being pursued?

So I've applied four times to be an astronaut.

Um I-- like it's it used to be back in the 80s when the space shuttle was like really going they would ask for applications every year and the class would be like 30 people accepted per year.

And now it's every four years, s opportunity I put an application in.

But the flip side is like I've made if I if my whole life were centered around being an astronaut I probably would have made slightly different choices like.

You know the astronaut program um wants people who have like been to Antarctica, or who you know fly jets for a living or who are like who do like kind of more high stakes things and sometimes I think that they don't necessarily like science PhDs because we can tend to be difficult people.

[ LAUGHS ] Or can be difficult people.

Because like you you like you want to think through like why am I doing all these things and like what's the you know what's the right way to do this or what's the best decision here and like sometimes when you're an astronaut you just need to like do the thing that you're told to do.

And like like there was a there was a mission in the 80s, maybe it was the 70s, where there were inadvertently there were three astronauts on this little space station they were all PhDs and they unionized while they were up there.

(Tom) Seriously?

- Yes, because they were like "You're working us too hard we need breaks we need--" [ LAUGHS ] We want tenure, yeah, up here.

[ ERIKA LAUGHS ] I got a pilot's license a couple years ago.

And actually that the time that I applied after that, this most recent time, my references were checked, for the first time, so I like made the first cut of highly qualified people.

So um and I like have a scuba license, um, but I know people who people who have made it all the way to kind of the final round or close to the final round where they're like deciding between 50 people.

All of those people who were astronomers they went to Antarctica and spent a year in Antarctica like a winter.

Which is really a big commitment and and partly I like love my job building telescopes and like the work that I do that I'm like I don't want to spend a year in Antarctica.

Even if it would mean that I would make it farther in the process I'm like I got to do what I love and I can't I would like to go to Antarctica because it seems really cool but I don't want to live there for a year and like put my whole life on hold.

Antarctica's number one on my bu list just to interject, but I picture more of a cruise ship experience than a winter.

- Not like a winter in the south pole.

- Yeah.

- Where you don't see the sun.

[ LAUGHS ] So I won't try for astronaut but but will you try again?

(Erika) Oh yeah, for sure.

- Okay, keep trying and trying.

There's no age limit yeah and it's um it's something that I want to like even the first time that I applied, I-I just felt like I just want to do the best that I can give it a try and like, the outcome, and I've learned that this applies to a lot of other things where it's like I can only control the things that I'm doing.

Like what I write in the applica my free time and then then you send it out into the world and like after that you just have to be like well yeah see what right see what happens but like I like try not to be too wedded to the outcome and instead just want to be like I'm going to make the best thing that I can.

- So in your professional life you focused on telescopes no pun intended or maybe a little bit, but that's that's your bailiwick and and it's it's no small feat.

And in conjunction with that that's sort of the means to the end of an astrophysicist if I understand it right.

An astrophysicist wants to know not so much where something is way up there in space but what it is.

-Yes.

Tell us about that fascination.

Part of why I like cooking and telescopes is because you are dealing with like a physical object and you're you're like making a thing.

In a lot of other parts of astronomy or just like other scientific fields you're you're like dealing with data that's just like a grid of numbers on a you know in a file on a computer or like simulations which is just a different grid of numbers in a file on a computer.

And but I actually like the like I want to like touch something and like put something together and like have something that I can like see and manipulate.

So when I was in college you know there's there's the degree program and you take certain classes and for our senior year the last year of the degree you have to do some type of like senior thesis project.

um and so I I had only And so I-I had only recently discovered that you know there's a person who builds the telescope, or who builds the instrument, or the spectrograph, or the camera or whatever.

Which like now I'm like of course there has to be a person that does it.

My very first like telescope trip was to go to uh the MMT which is on a mountain that's south of Tucson um that Harvard has like a partial share on the time.

And um and I was like oh this is great I like love you know they're these huge machines and they have they're like actually in some sense they're simple like the optics itself.

You know it's not powered it it is just big pieces of glass and you're just like manipulating the light.

But the rest of it like how you balance it how you make sure that it's pointing correctly how you know where you're looking like all that stuff is is all these like little problems to be solved and I um I just think it's so fun.

It was actually a very smart career move because a lot of people in in astronomy they're like theorists they do simulations they do calculations or they're observers and they like you use the data to figure out like what the object is made out of or what what the process is that's happening.

But there's actually very few people that build the thing and that's basically why I'm here at the University of Arizona because the astronomy department here is one of the best in the world maybe the best in the world?

- Yeah.

At hardware, at building telescopes, that either are on the ground or go to space um and so when I was applying for faculty positions this was by far the best place that I got a job and and um and it's been really nice to be in a department of people who kind of get the importance of actually building the telescope.

(Tom) Some scientists will work their entire lives on a project on finding out about something up there or you know out way out in space or a galaxy or what have you and they may not live long enough to reach a finish line are you--if it all went away tomorrow do you have that sort of professional satisfaction deep in your soul?

(Erika) Yeah, so and that that actually comes out of my experience at MIT where I felt like oh that the end is never promised like you know I could get hit by a bus tomorrow yeah but I would feel like oh well I had a great day today and yesterday and the day before and like I did work that was interesting and and um and I also think that um you know it's hard to know what's going to matter in 50 years or 20 years.

And-and so I also think about it as like the work that I do now maybe someone will find it and be like oh this this little thing I want to take that and put it in something bigger or like expand on it or add to it.

- This is not another pun as far as you know but you know women in certain fields shatter the glass ceiling.

In your fields you know shatter the stratosphere.

Tell us about being a woman that in what has been I have to imagine traditionally male, achieving the success you have and and being in that galaxy of elite scientists.

I've been able to find mentors and like supporters who aren't really concerned about whether I'm a woman or a man or like I'm I'm just like a person that they care about.

And also for me I like I take a certain attitude of um I'm taking all your comments at face value when I'm like just out in the world like um like if you want me to get some like subtle beneath the surface point you're going to have to say it out loud to me and if you don't then I'm just going to like keep operating the way that I want to do things.

So that's actually been very helpful because a lot of the um now a lot of the sexism is a lot more like under the surface or like oh she's difficult or whatever and I'm just like I'm gonna do exactly what I want to do all the time and like if you don't like it you'll have to like really be explicit about that.

I do a very specific type of wor that is pretty rare and like and I know that and I also know there's lots of other jobs I could have.

And so in that kind of bigger context I'm like oh I can get away with whatever I want I like don't have to follow the rules that some other person is trying to get me to do I can just do things as I want to.

And yeah now I like try to apply like to teach that to the people that work with me or to like be supportive of the people that are kind of coming up behind me and if we lived in like a perfectly egalitarian society like what would I be doing but honestly I'm like pretty happy with, with how things are right now.

[ CHUCKLES ] (Tom) You're easy to talk with a intimidating title astrophysicis that something you have to work at or is it just natural for you?

When I was younger like I'd be on airplanes and and sometimes people want to talk to you and I'm on the airplane, I'm just want to like yeah read my book.

[ LAUGHS ] But if the person seemed nice I astronomer and if I didn't want to talk to them I would tell them I was an astrophysicist because astrophysicist is like like ends the conversation but astronomer they're like oh what are you studying what do you look at and like... But I also as I've gotten like more farther along in my career I feel like as a scientist I actually have this intense obligation to the rest of society and first I want people to know that scientists are also people and that like and people think like all scientists are Einstein or like, they have this idea of like a solitary genius.

- Lofty solitary-- (Erika) Coming up with something and that's never how it works and like even with Einstein that wasn't how it worked.

Like Einstein was very much in a community in a time and a place where all these ideas were like bubbling up and and if it hadn't been him there would have been someone else.

And and so I want people to know like oh the people that do this work were just like ordinary people and and you know we can be smart at something but that doesn't actually make us smart at other things.

And that and so I think it's important to kind of make it feel accessible.

And now as I like as I have more of like kind of an active social media one of the things that I want to teach people is that I really believe that anybody can learn anything if they want to.

And if they have a teacher that is willing to like explain it to them.

(Tom) Yeah.

- So much of the kind of body of knowledge that we've accumulated as humans can feel like shut to an average person and I hate that you know society suffers that scientists like have kind of retreated into the lab or like aren't really out there talking to people and and showing that like hey it's awesome.

It doesn't have to be like a slog it could be great.

But they they are you have 125 followers on Instagram at last count.

- 125,000.

Thousand did I say 125?

125,000 and a book called "Weird Universe."

- Yes.

What's so weird about it and what should we know about it?

- Everything everything is weird about the universe so as I make these videos on social media I'm trying to explain you know like a black hole in 90 seconds to the general public which is a fun challenge I really like doing it.

But I realized like you know as humans we want things to be familiar and we kind of take what we know about how like stuff works on the surface of the earth and throughout the history of astronomy we're always like what if this thing in space is exactly like the earth.

Like for thousands of years we thought that the sun was made out of the same material as the earth except it was just on fire.

Why?

We don't know.

(Tom) Why aren't we on fire?

[ LAUGHS ] (Erika) Of course the sun is not made out of the same stuff as the Earth it's like mostly hydrogen and helium but but I just noticed that like in all these kind of times where we discovered something new our first thought would be like oh maybe this is exactly like the Earth.

And instead I think it's great that the universe is is so weird and different and unusual and surprising and like and part of that story also is one of you know if like you build a telescope, like Galileo, looking through a telescope was the first person to like point it up at the sky and then you're like oh the Earth isn't the center of the universe.

And in fact the sun is the center of the solar system but the sun isn't even the center of the universe and that the universe is gigantic and it's full of all these different types of stars and all this strange stuff and and um so I really wanted to convey that.

That like I think the universe is really funny and and you know weird and so that so it like seemed like a really obvious title.

- It's it's weird to those of us who weren't science majors yeah which is most people yes it's - Yes, it's weird it should be weird to the science majors too like if you really think about like the concept of how like there's nothing in space for the most part like just a vacuum with like one particle.

Like like how on you how unusual really the title should be like "Ordinary Universe, Weird Earth" because like everything here is is what is right out of the ordinary.

- Yeah.

- What's left now what keeps you awake at night what's that what's burning in your soul still as far as what you want to accomplish?

[ LAUGHS ] So many things yeah um yeah like like professionally I still have you know telescopes that I want to build and and really it's it's observations that I want to make and like things that I want to know.

I like want to know the sun formed out of this big cloud of hydrogen and we have like a nice story about like how stars form in in a galaxy anywhere.

But actually, like all the detai story are unknown.

Like how does the cloud condense like what are the conditions like why does one cloud make stars and one cloud doesn't.

So there's stuff like that or like how galaxies form out of the kind of hydrogen formed in the Big Bang.

And I like I find I have all these questions about like the formation of things like I like a star I like the galaxy they're very beautiful but I actually don't care once they're made I like want to know how they got to be.

So that question of like how do you make a galaxy how do you make our galaxy an our star like you know if 40 years from now we have even half of an answer I'll be like oh great great we did it!

[ LAUGHS ] (Erika) Or we're doing it.

So that the scientific questions are still really there's still a lot of them and the more that you know the more questions like bubble up so that's uh I'm expecting that to never go away.

And then on the more kind of lik like talking to people like I-I think about the shows that really inspired me as a kid um and the kind of like-like that that accessibility of like being able to just turn on my television and see something, um, I like want to give that to other people.

And um and I and I also want to kind of help maybe all of my goals are just like totally gigantic but I like want, I want society as a whole to understand like a little bit more about how science works and-and the process of like discovering something and figuring it out and like the the kind of highly fallible nature of it that you know people usually only hear about the end product that like oh something has been discovered they don't hear about the like five years of time where the person was messing things up and figuring things out and talking to other people and like doing this and that.

And-and so I would like people to know a little bit more of just like the process of science because that's what gives them like the modern world.

And-and I think people I like want people to better be able to connect like this, this process that feels like it happens somewhere else you know in a lab hidden away somewhere but but to have them like really under understand a little bit more about how it works and not be so suspicious of it.

Erika is there anything else you life or your career before we part today?

- I want to give you know people that might be watching this like a little bit of advice um and I and I tell everyone like all advice is bad.

Like you-- - But it's free.

- Yeah it's free, you could but like take this or leave it if it resonates.

The only thing that you really need to have like a career in science or a career in almost anything is to just want to do it and especially in science and like the kind of more technical fields like people get pushed out by a variety of things and like you just have to like all of those people are wrong and jerks and like really all that matters is like do you like the subject are you interested in it do you like the work?

And that um and if that's if the answer is yes then like that's what you should do.

And like you know whether you're like smart enough or whatever is like almost irreleva not really part of it.

It's like are you willing to put in the time?

Um and yeah I like talk to my students and especially the undergrads who are kind of trying to figure out what their, what their lives are going to be and I tell them to like think about like what's really in their heart.

Like what gets them up in the morning that they're excited about and like that's the thing even if it's not going to make you money necessarily or like you feel like you don't know how to get there, but that like really being honest about like what is the thing in your brain that like excites it.

And then going for that and not not letting yourself be diverted from it.

(Tom) Passion, passion leads the - Yeah.

- You know?

Yeah.

Some people think it's money some people think it's fame, the passion.

(Erika) It's the passion.

- Gets you down the yellow brick Erika you've been terrific we've loved chatting with you and congratulations on all of your successes.

- Thank you it's been great to b And thank you for joining us her We'll see you next time.