Know What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

I Always Wanted To

My guest, Annie Handmer, is a final year PhD Candidate at the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science, in the School of History and Philosophy of Science. Her research traces the social history of Australian space science projects in order to better understand international and interdisciplinary cooperation, the social construction of achievement, and the nature of the military-industrial-academic complex in Australian space science.

In addition, she is on the Advisory Council for the Space Industry Association of Australia, a member of the Space Generation Advisory Council ‘Ethics and Human Rights in Space’ Project Group, the Space Law Council of Australia and New Zealand, program consultant to the Australian Youth Aerospace Association ASTRA Committee, and is also the host and creator of the Space Junk Podcast.

In Spring 2021 (southern hemisphere), Annie will be undertaking a residency at the Sydney Observatory.

Twitter / Instagram: @anniehandmer

Space Junk Podcast: https://play.acast.com/s/space-junk-podcast/

Space Junk Video: https://www.youtube.com/c/spacejunkpodcast/

Space Ethics Library: https://spaceethicslibrary.wordpress.com/

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Opening Remarks

Hi Everyone,

I’m so glad to have Annie Handmer as my guest on the podcast again. I love the way she sees the world and everything she thinks about.

In this conversation Annie and I turned things around. Instead of looking backwards to what we always wanted, we ponder the question of what do you want to be when you grow up. What effect does that question have on kids when they hear it? And what’s really the point of asking when the jobs available will be completely different in 20 years.

For example the work Annie does now was inconceivable when I was growing up. Annie actually teaches Space Law, she advises the United Nations on Space Ethics, and works for her state government predicting the future in order to come up with better policy. Wow.

If you haven’t yet listened to our previous conversation, do check out I Always Wanted to Go Into Outer Space from September 2020. She proposes some great alternatives to Space Tourism for those of us who are not billionaires. It’s not a prerequisite for this episode but it’s well worth a listen.

In today’s conversation we talk about better questions to ask children than what do you want to be, and discuss how our differences influence our point of view. Annie speaks on behalf of all millennials and I speak for all boomers and together we make sweeping generalizations that are absolutely sure to be true.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here’s the interview.

(Full transcript at https://ialwayswantedto.net)