Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy CENTRALOW Hey, what's up? Ears Edition listener,
Speaker 1: It's Roy Wood, junior correspondent for The Daily Show. You're
Speaker 1: about to hear an episode of one of our original
Speaker 1: Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes, hosted by Yours Truly.
Speaker 1: It's the show where we dive deeper into segments and
Speaker 1: topics from the show with the show's writers, producers and experts.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're talking about phenomenal and forgotten women
Speaker 1: in STEM. I'm joined by Daily Show writer Nicole Conlin
Speaker 1: and hosted the podcast Lost Women of Science Katie Haffner
Speaker 1: to take a closer look at the historic contributions women
Speaker 1: have made to science, the discouragement women facing the male
Speaker 1: dominated field, and how we can encourage more young girls
Speaker 1: to embark on STEM careers. Hope you enjoyed and if
Speaker 1: you like the show, check out the Beyond the Scenes podcast.
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Speaker 1: where you can get that podcast, We'll get more podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stop tripping. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that
Speaker 1: goes deeferent to topics that we talk about on the
Speaker 1: Daily Show. This is what you gotta think of this
Speaker 1: podcast is the Daily Show is the football game. This
Speaker 1: podcast is the tailgate. It's the barbecue, It's the partying
Speaker 1: outside the stadium. It's the liquor that you snuck into
Speaker 1: the stadium because it wasn't in a glass bottle with
Speaker 1: a metal top, which we all know metal detectors can detect.
Speaker 1: You gotta put that liquor in a plastic ziplock bag
Speaker 1: and sip it through the little yellow and green seals.
Speaker 1: It's Women's History Month, and so we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about a segment we did on
Speaker 1: the show recently about women that have been forgotten in
Speaker 1: stem and the ways history overlooks them. This originated based
Speaker 1: on a schedule we did when Sarah Silverman was guest
Speaker 1: hosting and she took on the role of mad scientists
Speaker 1: Doctor Insidia. Give me the clip.
Speaker 2: When you ask people about the greatest female scientist of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, they'll give you the same names Mary Currie, Jangodall,
Speaker 2: Octavius Spencer, but they always leave out the most important person,
Speaker 2: Doctor Raquel Incidia, the world's first female.
Speaker 3: Mad scientist.
Speaker 4: In the field of evil.
Speaker 5: Doctor in Sidia was a relentless pioneer she put Genghis
Speaker 5: Khan's brain into a chimp. She made Kentucky disappear all
Speaker 5: of it for three years. No Kentucky. She put a
Speaker 5: man on the moon as punishment. His body's still up there.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, in the nineteen fifties, the mad sciences were dominated
Speaker 2: by men, so doctor Incidia faced a lot of sexism.
Speaker 5: One time she shrunk the Prime Minister of Latvia and
Speaker 5: trapped him in a jar. They gave her a two
Speaker 5: million dollar rant. The next week, a mail mad scientist
Speaker 5: kidnaps the same prime minister. They give him four million
Speaker 5: dollars and a guest spa on at solid same prime minister,
Speaker 5: same jar. You tell me how that's not sexism.
Speaker 1: To help us get deeper into the weeds on this conversation,
Speaker 1: we're joined by Daily show writer Nicole Conlin. Nicole, how
Speaker 1: are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm good?
Speaker 1: How are you Welcome inside the wonderful podcast studios here
Speaker 1: at our multimillion dollar, undisclosed location. I'm not allowed to
Speaker 1: say legal department, Start tripping. We're also joined today by
Speaker 1: journalists and host of the podcast Lost Women of Science,
Speaker 1: Katie Haffner. Katie, welcome to beyond the Scenes. How do
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 4: Oh, how do you do? Thank you so much for
Speaker 4: having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're over here in New York. I know you're
Speaker 1: over there in California. I'm not sure if it's mud, slight, snow,
Speaker 1: or forest fire week over there, but whichever week it is,
Speaker 1: I hope you're being safe.
Speaker 6: I'm actually in my rowboat this morning because it's bringing
Speaker 6: in biblical ways.
Speaker 1: Okay, so floodweek it is. Let's dive right into this topic.
Speaker 1: You've spent, you know, almost all of your career covering
Speaker 1: technology and women who work in this dim field. What
Speaker 1: are some of the disparities that stick out for you,
Speaker 1: you know that you've seen in your coverage, because you know,
Speaker 1: we really think about erasure and then there's also bias
Speaker 1: on top of that. Just talk a little bit about,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of the erasure that you've seen.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, so when I so I used to cover this,
Speaker 6: I've covered I mean, the only advantage of being superannuated,
Speaker 6: which is a fancy word for old, is that I've
Speaker 6: had a lot of time, like a lot of time
Speaker 6: to get mad. Like, So what we say at Lost
Speaker 6: Women of Science is we're not mad, We're curious.
Speaker 4: Okay, we are a little mad.
Speaker 6: So when I was working on this topic for the
Speaker 6: New York Times, which I did for years, I wrote
Speaker 6: about thirty years ago, I wrote story that was called
Speaker 6: Women Computer Nerd and Proud, and I looked at what
Speaker 6: it was among these three young women at MIT who
Speaker 6: were computer scientists, Like where did they get their moxie?
Speaker 6: Like how did they get beyond all that macho crap
Speaker 6: that MIT throws at you, And a lot of it
Speaker 6: had to do with the support they were getting. And
Speaker 6: then I did a follow up because I was at
Speaker 6: the Times forever ten years later and then ten years
Speaker 6: later again. Anyway, I won't even tell you how how
Speaker 6: long I did these follow ups for. But what you
Speaker 6: find is that this pipeline, this famous pipeline, is real.
Speaker 6: You know, along the way they bump into obstacles, and.
Speaker 4: Especially in fields like.
Speaker 6: Computer science and physics, the science is like biology and
Speaker 6: are easier for women. But there's just something about out
Speaker 6: this feeling. This it's partly imposter syndrome, it's partly just
Speaker 6: plain being told you can't do it. So that's the discouraging,
Speaker 6: that's the discourage part, and then the erasure part is
Speaker 6: what we do at Lost women of science. I mean
Speaker 6: these women, rory, these women have been absolutely obliterated from history.
Speaker 6: In fact, I say my husband, Honey, you.
Speaker 4: Empty the dishwasher.
Speaker 6: I am busy snatching women from the jaws of historical obscurity.
Speaker 4: And then guy, he's got a job.
Speaker 6: So there are I brought clinics and start in case
Speaker 6: I start to cry because I'm kidding. I don't usually
Speaker 6: cry about this. So, however, we have this database. I
Speaker 6: mean enough already with Marie Curie, like I'm done with her.
Speaker 6: I mean, great, great job, thank you very much. But
Speaker 6: Russell and Franklin, there are so many more. I mean
Speaker 6: for every Marie Curie, there are hundreds. We have this database.
Speaker 6: We have binders full of women who have not been
Speaker 6: given the uh, the recognition they deserve through history. And
Speaker 6: it is it's uh it pisces me off. And that's
Speaker 6: what we do at Lost Women as Science.
Speaker 1: What was it about seeing those women at MIT that
Speaker 1: made you go wow? How did they get there? What
Speaker 1: were the hurdles that you believe they had to overcome?
Speaker 1: And how early in a woman's matriculation through life do
Speaker 1: those hurdles start to present themselves?
Speaker 6: Wow? I love that A woman's matriculation through life. Can
Speaker 6: we start using that?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 7: Okay, well you start using that, as long as I
Speaker 7: can start using super annuated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna go home sday.
Speaker 7: I'd be like sweeter, I think we need to throw
Speaker 7: away the milk. It's super annuated.
Speaker 4: Isn't that a great word?
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't usually use expensive words, but my gosh,
Speaker 6: that's a good one.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: So okay, Yeah, your question was the origins. It's just
Speaker 6: from time immemorial. I mean think so, women, for some reason,
Speaker 6: you know, have been screwed since the very beginning, and
Speaker 6: especially when it comes to natural curiosity about the world
Speaker 6: around us. And a lot of times it was the
Speaker 6: women doing the let's just kind of call it the
Speaker 6: secretarial work, where they were actually doing the science itself.
Speaker 6: There are a lot of couples, famous men who were
Speaker 6: married to women who actually did the work, and the
Speaker 6: men took credit for it. I don't know, you tell
Speaker 6: me why you've got the Y chromosome?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: We got to put y'all in y'all place, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know, right, I mean that was our place
Speaker 6: and we were not support to be curious, and that's
Speaker 6: what science is all about.
Speaker 3: Didn't Watson and Krick have Wasn't there also a woman that's.
Speaker 4: The Rosalind Franklin.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know, right, so that's the only one you
Speaker 6: can think of.
Speaker 1: But break that down for the people who aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with that story, right, Okay.
Speaker 6: So there were Watson and Krik, and they are the
Speaker 6: ones who discovered the structure of DNA in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 6: They got the Nobel Prize, just saying and she was
Speaker 6: a chemist, an.
Speaker 4: X ray crystallographer, and so she.
Speaker 6: Had these images, these actual images of the double helix,
Speaker 6: and she just got shunted aside and then she died,
Speaker 6: you know, not that that was her fault, but you
Speaker 6: can't actually award a Nobel Prize posthumously. So she was dead,
Speaker 6: but there was no credit given to her at the time.
Speaker 6: It's a little bit controversial about whether she actually deserved it.
Speaker 6: But the point is that Nicole is making two important things. Nicole,
Speaker 6: That's what comes to mind is the whole Watson Crick thing.
Speaker 6: But do we know any other examples, Well we should,
Speaker 6: We should know dozens and dozens and dozens, and you know,
Speaker 6: shame on us that we don't, but I would be
Speaker 6: happy to like list a bunch. We could be here
Speaker 6: for days.
Speaker 1: Where does unfaired snack? We need to do a two
Speaker 1: part episode where does unfair compensation and sexual harassment come
Speaker 1: into play as well? Because you also, I would imagine
Speaker 1: you have to persevere like you're doing work you're not
Speaker 1: getting credited for. Also while doing the work, somebody's trying
Speaker 1: to grab your booty and then they're also paying your
Speaker 1: thirty cent on the dollar? What is it about it?
Speaker 6: Did?
Speaker 4: Should we talk about the booty first or the dollar?
Speaker 1: Well, here's the bigger question is in your study of
Speaker 1: all of these women that stayed dedicated to these jobs
Speaker 1: in spite of all of those hurdles, what do you
Speaker 1: think it was that kept them there? Why did the
Speaker 1: MIT women remain? Why did they keep doing the work?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Well, not to like rag on MIT, but while we're
Speaker 6: at it, we might might as well. So this amazing
Speaker 6: book it just came out, called The Exceptions by Kate Sernicke,
Speaker 6: is all about MIT and a lawsuit that was brought
Speaker 6: against MIT by a bunch of women in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 6: which is relatively recent I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: So the lawsuit.
Speaker 6: Was brought in the nineties, but this was happening to
Speaker 6: them in the seventies at MIT. What Kate says in
Speaker 6: the book is that women felt lucky. They felt lucky
Speaker 6: women who were doing basically the shit jobs.
Speaker 1: Can I say sit, Oh, yeah, saw.
Speaker 4: The women who are doing these shit crap jobs.
Speaker 6: As base basically glorified secretaries, but doing the science. They
Speaker 6: felt lucky to have any job.
Speaker 4: At all in the sciences. So just to be oh,
Speaker 4: and they were hit on. Did I mention that yet?
Speaker 1: Yea, So then it's the price of it. They looked
Speaker 1: at the harassment and the lack of conversation and the
Speaker 1: lack of credit as the price of being a trailblazer
Speaker 1: into these fields.
Speaker 6: I don't even think that, you know, that's such a
Speaker 6: good question. I don't even know if they considered themselves
Speaker 6: trail blazers. They just loved doing the science. I don't
Speaker 6: even know if they were resentful that they were doing
Speaker 6: a lot of the basic science that went into some
Speaker 6: really important discoveries.
Speaker 1: So, Nicole, as best you can in this building, you
Speaker 1: take something that's sad, where you know, you got to
Speaker 1: have a tissue on deck at all times in case
Speaker 1: you cry about it. In talking with Sarah Silmen about
Speaker 1: this piece, which ironically here's a funny Daily Show story,
Speaker 1: first time I saw Sarah Silverman in the building was
Speaker 1: when she was in character for The Man Sketch Good
Speaker 1: and the Doctor Frankenstein Wig. She had that big electrified
Speaker 1: Afro situation going on, because Katie, if you're not on
Speaker 1: a piece, you're generally not in the loop on what
Speaker 1: else is happening.
Speaker 4: You're like, what is going on?
Speaker 1: It's not even your weaknack? But why how did you
Speaker 1: all settle on a sketch? Because in the sketch she
Speaker 1: plays a doctor whose work is stolen and credit a
Speaker 1: man gets credit for it. Yeah, why sketch versus say,
Speaker 1: a phil piece, versus having Sarah just talk about it
Speaker 1: at the desk.
Speaker 7: I used to write for the Late Show of Stephen Colbert,
Speaker 7: and originally this was a piece that I had pitched there,
Speaker 7: and I had I would love to say it's because
Speaker 7: I'm an incredible feminist, but really what what happened is
Speaker 7: I was like, oh shit, I need something to pitch today,
Speaker 7: and that day it happens to be National Women and
Speaker 7: Girls in Stem Day so I was like, why can
Speaker 7: I pitch for this? And everything, like there's so many
Speaker 7: like really sad issues about women in STEM and I
Speaker 7: was like, I don't know how to make any of
Speaker 7: this funny. But the idea of like what's like a
Speaker 7: kind of science that we don't talk about a lot,
Speaker 7: and I was like, well, there's no female mad scientists.
Speaker 7: And so originally I had written it for a character
Speaker 7: to talk to Stephen. So the way that it appeared
Speaker 7: in the Daily Show is it's kind of like a
Speaker 7: ken Burn style documentary about this fictional character, whereas the
Speaker 7: original version I wrote would be for her to be
Speaker 7: in studio talking to the host. And then I pitched
Speaker 7: it in twenty nineteen, and as you know, this was
Speaker 7: the height of the Trump administration, where it was like
Speaker 7: every day was like we don't.
Speaker 3: Have time for anything else.
Speaker 7: Every day at three pm, he would do the craziest
Speaker 7: thing you've ever doized here, and they'd be like, yes,
Speaker 7: we can't. We have to get rid of everything that
Speaker 7: we've written and write something new. So I've had this
Speaker 7: sketch on deck for a long time, and every time
Speaker 7: we've read it in address.
Speaker 3: Or her well, it's.
Speaker 7: Always gone so well, and I've always believed in this
Speaker 7: sketch because even though it's never been on air, I'm like,
Speaker 7: I know it's funny.
Speaker 3: And so I pitched it again here.
Speaker 7: I know everybody's saying it's not funny, but I know
Speaker 7: it's funny.
Speaker 4: Don't go it's funny. It's funny.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 7: And then so we got here and I sent it
Speaker 7: into like our pitch email list with the caveat of like,
Speaker 7: I know this is like not we don't really do
Speaker 7: character interviews on our show, but I have this sketch.
Speaker 3: Do you guys want it? And then Sarah saw the
Speaker 3: pitch and she.
Speaker 7: Really wanted to do it as a that ken Burn
Speaker 7: style documentary, which makes sense one for her sensibility as
Speaker 7: like a former sketch performer, and it makes more sense
Speaker 7: for a show. And so I did like a full
Speaker 7: revamp of the sketch and it ended up being really
Speaker 7: fun because then we got a lot of funny visual
Speaker 7: gags that we couldn't have gotten before.
Speaker 1: See years later vindicated. That's how you do. You never
Speaker 1: let because I know that it had to feel good.
Speaker 1: I feel good to finally get your shit on the air.
Speaker 1: I've got a pitch that was approved in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get it on DV roach and.
Speaker 1: It's still it's still on the courtboard in my office.
Speaker 1: It's called white Baseball, and it's just listen. I know
Speaker 1: that's not what we're here to talk about, but it's
Speaker 1: a piece about how a lot of predominantly black colleges
Speaker 1: have predominantly white baseball teams and the reasons why, the
Speaker 1: lack of minority whatever whatever, It was approved to go
Speaker 1: out the door, Katie. Two weeks later, Trump was elected.
Speaker 7: He has ruined so many of my sketches, aside from
Speaker 7: what he's done to America, Katie, I have a question
Speaker 7: for you, and you may not know the answer to this,
Speaker 7: but as we're trying to like improve and get more
Speaker 7: women into the sciences and and engineering, what are the
Speaker 7: metrics by which we've decided we're succeeding or failing at that?
Speaker 7: Is it simply numbers of people you know graduating from
Speaker 7: college or who you know make a living in stem
Speaker 7: or are there other Because like I, you know, as
Speaker 7: a woman in comedy, it's certainly much easier now than
Speaker 7: it used to be, and I think it's way easier
Speaker 7: than it is an the sciences.
Speaker 3: But I know that, like now there's more women in
Speaker 3: comedy than.
Speaker 7: Ever, but a lot of the issues they face are
Speaker 7: no longer things that are they're like a little bit
Speaker 7: trickier to tease out, and like we're so much further
Speaker 7: than we were, but now it's harder to get over
Speaker 7: that last hurdle because it's little insidious things that it's
Speaker 7: more hidden, it's more hidden, and it's it's more of
Speaker 7: like microaggressions that aren't like you know, working here is
Speaker 7: very good, but elsewhere. So the shorter version of that is,
Speaker 7: how are we deciding that we're making progress and succeeding
Speaker 7: it getting more women into science.
Speaker 6: So yeah, the numbers speak for themselves, and those are
Speaker 6: followed pretty closely, and so we know we're making progress
Speaker 6: in a lot of the different STEM stuff. By the way,
Speaker 6: could we just say what STEM stands where nobody knows anymore.
Speaker 6: It's science, technology, engineering.
Speaker 1: And mathics math.
Speaker 4: Yes, keep thinking it's medicine, but it's not.
Speaker 1: But it's not men. It's definitely not nith Okay, science, blogy, okay,
Speaker 1: engineering and math okay, cantin you can tell.
Speaker 6: And so the numbers are creeping up, and that's really good.
Speaker 6: But some of the places where the numbers are not
Speaker 6: are staying stagnant, and very frustratingly, so are is computer science,
Speaker 6: which is what I've been covering forever, and I don't
Speaker 6: know what it is, but they just stay at like
Speaker 6: twenty percent of graduates. And so there's there's a wonderful
Speaker 6: program at Northeastern called the Center for Inclusive Computing, which
Speaker 6: really looks at kind of the root cause of all
Speaker 6: of this and what it is that's actually happening in
Speaker 6: the classroom where women or the actual programming languages that
Speaker 6: get taught, you know, really trying to, as you say,
Speaker 6: tease apart some of the nuances here as early as
Speaker 6: elementary school teachers, because a lot of computer science is math,
Speaker 6: teachers get video recorded because they swear they call on
Speaker 6: the girls just as much. But when you do the
Speaker 6: video of them and show them the video, they're calling
Speaker 6: on the boys and they and then they are shocked.
Speaker 1: Everything you're talking about is so extensive, to the point
Speaker 1: that now there's a term for it, Like if you're
Speaker 1: a woman and your work is erased by a man,
Speaker 1: it's called the Matilda effect. I think that putting a
Speaker 1: name to it helps to make people believe that it
Speaker 1: is a real thing. I don't know what it is
Speaker 1: about humans, but we have to No, it's the causation
Speaker 1: and thus therefore and we have the data, and then
Speaker 1: people go, oh, you're right, I am unconsciously sexist. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Thank you for that. So break down
Speaker 1: the Matilda effect a little bit for everyone and exactly
Speaker 1: what that is and how that came to be.
Speaker 6: This is this wonderful woman named Margaret Rossiter. She's been
Speaker 6: studying the history of women in science and has generated
Speaker 6: these two huge volumes of women in science. And she's
Speaker 6: she's at Cornell and she is the one who coined
Speaker 6: the term the Matilda effect. Matilda was Matilda Joscelyn Gage,
Speaker 6: who was a suffragist in the eighteen hundreds who wrote
Speaker 6: a pamphlet actually about women as inventors and so this
Speaker 6: think about it.
Speaker 4: This was in the eighteen hundreds. She wrote this pretty amazing.
Speaker 6: And women as inventors who get kind of overshadowed, shunted aside,
Speaker 6: whatever you want to say, by men. And so what
Speaker 6: doctor Rossiter decided was to put a name to the
Speaker 6: phenomenon of when a discovery happens, and the man takes credit,
Speaker 6: but a woman played as large, if not a larger,
Speaker 6: role than the man. This Matilda effect is it's everywhere,
Speaker 6: and it's throughout history, and it still happens today.
Speaker 1: How receptive are people to this new information when you
Speaker 1: present it? You know, we live in it. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: live in an age of trying to write a lot
Speaker 1: of history that was written by biased people, you know,
Speaker 1: And we also live in an age now where they're
Speaker 1: trying to undo anything new you try and put in
Speaker 1: a history book, don't you dare? What we've been learning
Speaker 1: is right. I can't learn new shit. Please stop. So
Speaker 1: how receptive are people when you bring this new information?
Speaker 1: You know? And I stopped short of calling it revision?
Speaker 1: Is history? It's history, Like it's.
Speaker 6: Just yeah we say we're we don't say we're we
Speaker 6: are correcting the historical record. We say we are revisiting.
Speaker 3: The historical record.
Speaker 6: I know.
Speaker 4: Isn't that smart? I wonder if I thought of that?
Speaker 3: I know?
Speaker 6: So, Yeah, people are incredibly receptive. In fact, we have
Speaker 6: a lost Women of Science hotline, the emergency line emergency
Speaker 6: are you No? No, They're dead? All are women are dead?
Speaker 6: By the way, so they can't speak for themselves. So
Speaker 6: it's people who call in the hotline and say, you
Speaker 6: have to know about this woman.
Speaker 4: Who got screwed by history.
Speaker 6: And amazingly enough, a lot of them are men, which
Speaker 6: is who call in, which is.
Speaker 1: Great relatives, co workers of the like. What is their
Speaker 1: relation to the people they're calling about.
Speaker 6: People in the field who know that it was a
Speaker 6: woman who did this? I know, doesn't that restore your
Speaker 6: faith in men?
Speaker 3: In some men?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of men, and I don't have
Speaker 1: faith in all of them. After the break, I want
Speaker 1: to get a little bit more into the roots of
Speaker 1: this and how you two ladies are experiencing life now
Speaker 1: as women's in your field. That's a word I just
Speaker 1: made up. It's not as eloquent as your word, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use it as Women's Month. On Beyond the Scenes.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back beyond the scenes, welcome back. We
Speaker 1: are talking about the erasure of women in STEM and
Speaker 1: Katie and Nicole have been walking me through all of
Speaker 1: this and showing me all the ways that men take
Speaker 1: credit for the shit that women been doing at the job.
Speaker 1: I dare you stop it now? You two are very
Speaker 1: interesting to me in the sense that you all have
Speaker 1: figured out outlets for change in the issues that you've identified.
Speaker 1: You know, Katie, you have your podcast where you talk
Speaker 1: about this very issue a lot. But Nicole, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to start with you first, and because
Speaker 1: it's interesting because as a comedian, it's oh, that's that's sad.
Speaker 1: How can I make that funny? How can I make
Speaker 1: people laugh at it so they can then figure out
Speaker 1: the truth and how you're laughing? Gotcha, motherfucker, you just
Speaker 1: learn how do you face the stark reality of women
Speaker 1: in science getting overlooked and then going, ah, I know
Speaker 1: how to make that funny because I delving that all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, when I'm not writing for The Daily Show, I
Speaker 7: work a lot in the climate space. And I'm not
Speaker 7: a scientist, but I like I write for my friends
Speaker 7: like educational climate YouTube channel, and I I know, right, surprise.
Speaker 1: On the side, just what the talking about?
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so like when you're in the climate space,
Speaker 7: like it's all bad news, it's just it's all just
Speaker 7: a bummer and we have to make uh for my
Speaker 7: friend's channel, climate Town. Unfortunately my friends and man, I'm
Speaker 7: so sorry but we have to make it funny. It's
Speaker 7: a comedy YouTube channel. And I think the best piece
Speaker 7: of advice that I ever got about that was from
Speaker 7: Tom Purcell, an executive producer at Colbert, and his advice
Speaker 7: was there's a story about mister Rogers where after nine
Speaker 7: to eleven, kids were coming to him and they were like,
Speaker 7: how can we handle this? You know, this is like
Speaker 7: like how can we continue going in the world when
Speaker 7: this has happened?
Speaker 3: And mister Rogers advice was like, look for the helpers. Children,
Speaker 3: Look for the helpers.
Speaker 7: And Tom Purcell's like, when we're writing about something that's
Speaker 7: a bummer, look for the non helpers. Look for the
Speaker 7: people who are making it worse. Look for the people
Speaker 7: who are doing something stupid or bad or wrong, and
Speaker 7: like that's what you direct your anger at. So so
Speaker 7: when that comes to climate it's like obviously people who
Speaker 7: are like passing bad legislation or like starting misinformation campaigns,
Speaker 7: and with women in stem it's you know, this sketch
Speaker 7: is sort of the exception because the sketch was just like,
Speaker 7: what is the silliest possible version that I can do
Speaker 7: of this?
Speaker 3: But in the area of a little bit It's a little.
Speaker 7: Bit like when you know there's some other a woman
Speaker 7: commits some other major crime and everybody is like, she
Speaker 7: gets prosecuted, and everybody's like, well, the woman gets prosecuted
Speaker 7: and not not the men.
Speaker 3: This is classic sexism.
Speaker 7: It's like, I don't think the woman should not be
Speaker 7: prosecuted for like, you know, shooting, murdering somebody.
Speaker 3: I think the issue is that the men don't.
Speaker 7: And so I wanted to play in that area of
Speaker 7: like a woman who has committed horrible crimes facing sexism,
Speaker 7: but like, like we shoul pay attend it to her
Speaker 7: crimes also. But when we're I'm communicating broader, hard issues,
Speaker 7: what I try to think about is like who are
Speaker 7: the bad guys and how can I make fun of
Speaker 7: those people as opposed to like thinking about like who
Speaker 7: has been victimized by that bad issue?
Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So then I would say
Speaker 1: to the converse, Katie, then your work is about finding
Speaker 1: the helpers or helping the helpers posthumously. When we talk
Speaker 1: about you know a lot of the names that you've
Speaker 1: discovered from the thirties and the four in the fifties,
Speaker 1: and you know, the good old days of women's rights,
Speaker 1: as I liked to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when they were called women's slippers.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh no, that was that didn't even start till
Speaker 6: the sevenies, so there.
Speaker 4: Was no word. Oh there were the suffragists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So during that time where you know, women were
Speaker 1: definitely had not yet reached a lot of the legislation
Speaker 1: that we have today. Who were some of the names
Speaker 1: and people that you discover, you know that surprised you,
Speaker 1: you know, during that time, who were some of those helpers?
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, I don't even know if I
Speaker 6: want to call them helpers. I want to call them
Speaker 6: the doers. So one of the most moving women we
Speaker 6: found was this woman named Dorothy Anderson, who is the
Speaker 6: subject of our first season. A physician in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 6: she wanted to go into surgery, but surgery was closed
Speaker 6: to women. Let me just stop her a sick do
Speaker 6: you get? Are you surprised by anything I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 6: when I tell you things like surgery was closed to women,
Speaker 6: are you just yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, this all this all tracks. I've read
Speaker 1: enough about racism to believe that there are other horrible
Speaker 1: forms of oppression. Well, yeah, just racism happened and everything
Speaker 1: else was gravy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I know.
Speaker 6: And our hero in season three, just to digress for
Speaker 6: one second, is this amazing black engineer named yy Clark
Speaker 6: who I just love her, so we just fell so
Speaker 6: in love with her. So she had a whole you know,
Speaker 6: double whammy being a black scientist in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 6: But anyway back to Dorothy. So Dorothy Anderson couldn't get
Speaker 6: into surgery because she was a woman. She ended up
Speaker 6: becoming a pathologist because in fact, patience people didn't want
Speaker 6: to see a female doctor. So women, female physicians back
Speaker 6: then tended to work behind the scenes. They could deliver babies,
Speaker 6: and they did things like pathology and radiology, which is
Speaker 6: you don't see the doctor. So she became a pathologist
Speaker 6: at Columbia Baby's Hospital, and she was doing an autopsy,
Speaker 6: which is what pathologists do. And this baby had been
Speaker 6: diagnosed with celiac and so it was very common for
Speaker 6: celiac to be the diagnosis when it was actually something
Speaker 6: very different, and she figured out what it was and
Speaker 6: it was cystic fibrosis. So she is the one who
Speaker 6: first discovered cystic fibrosis and named it and was completely
Speaker 6: forgotten and some guy.
Speaker 4: Uh is thought to be the one who discovered it.
Speaker 1: He wrote the journal.
Speaker 4: The whole thing. So she is our I guess, our prototype.
Speaker 6: She's our you know, she's the one we hold up
Speaker 6: as and we didn't even you know, we found an
Speaker 6: old biography, a manuscript in somebody's basement in Connecticut that
Speaker 6: had never been published, and we use that as our guide.
Speaker 6: And it was really it was an amazing, uh, an
Speaker 6: amazing season to put together. And then there's let me
Speaker 6: just tell you this one other thing about that is
Speaker 6: that there was a portrait of her that was painted
Speaker 6: and commissioned by either Columbia or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation,
Speaker 6: which was hanging in the lobby of Baby's Hospital for
Speaker 6: years and disappeared. And so we did an entire episode
Speaker 6: called the Dude Wall, which is actually Rachel Madows. She
Speaker 6: coined the term the dude Wall when she was giving
Speaker 6: a talk at Rockefeller University and she's going into the
Speaker 6: auditorium and she's like, what's what the dude wall? And
Speaker 6: so it's all these you know, old white men on
Speaker 6: these walls. And Dorothy's portrait was never found. We never ever.
Speaker 1: Was it replaced.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was taken down at some point and up
Speaker 6: went the dude wall and Dorothy's portrait is gone, and
Speaker 6: it's beautiful.
Speaker 4: It's we have a photo of it.
Speaker 1: We can at least print a jpeg replica and put that.
Speaker 6: No we have I know, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I'm good, Katie. I need some good news. What my tissue?
Speaker 1: What's interesting about what you do? So I did an
Speaker 1: episode of Finding Your Roots shout out to doctor Henry
Speaker 1: Lewis Gates. What I discovered on that show is how
Speaker 1: extensive it is to find out shit about people. Like
Speaker 1: it's one thing to tray your family's history, but you're
Speaker 1: trying to trace the employment history and accomplishments of people
Speaker 1: for which there's even less paperwork, like.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, and they thought so they had such
Speaker 6: low self esteem. They never they didn't leave their papers too,
Speaker 6: so that we had we can't find their papers.
Speaker 1: So this journey of finding all of these interesting one
Speaker 1: that someone calls the hotline gives you the name, and
Speaker 1: to do a podcast, you have to do extensive research
Speaker 1: on these people. This isn't just you plug in a
Speaker 1: mic and go, let me tell you about this shit
Speaker 1: I heard yesterda.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, that's what we do, right, No, no,
Speaker 4: we yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay. So then within that process, how do you stumble
Speaker 1: on the fact that one of your blood relatives who
Speaker 1: you descended from is one of the people that you're
Speaker 1: fighting for. How did you discover that?
Speaker 4: Oh, you mean my grandmother?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: How did you get to that place?
Speaker 6: So last summer I was just, you know, hanging around
Speaker 6: twiddling my and I thought, what if what about my grandmother?
Speaker 6: I think she did something, and so I googled her
Speaker 6: name and I saw that the Leona Zacharias papers are
Speaker 6: held in a special collection at MITN Harvard, which is
Speaker 6: the two places where she worked.
Speaker 4: I thought, what did she do?
Speaker 6: And so I got in touch with the archivists. Bless
Speaker 6: their hearts, these women. So a lot of these institutions
Speaker 6: are actually going back and looking for women. And I said,
Speaker 6: you know, I want to know what's in the files
Speaker 6: of my grandmother Leona Zacharias. And they started to tell me,
Speaker 6: and I'm like, holy shit, she was really smart. So
Speaker 6: she got her PhD from Colombian Biology in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 6: which is a long time ago. My grandfather, who was
Speaker 6: a famous physicist, got all the attention, so the only
Speaker 6: career we ever heard about growing up was his. She
Speaker 6: worked on something called retrolental fibroplasia, which was this mystery
Speaker 6: in the nineteen forties where babies born with perfectly fine
Speaker 6: eyesight then went blind and the question is what's causing it.
Speaker 6: Stevie Wonders maybe the most famous example of that. And
Speaker 6: she was one of the team trying to figure out
Speaker 6: the cause. And nobody knew this that she was, that
Speaker 6: she was instrumental in this. And when I was at
Speaker 6: the AR, I went to visit the archives and I'm
Speaker 6: sitting there with the papers and I come across this
Speaker 6: one paper and on the front of the paper it
Speaker 6: was one of the men on the paper wrote to Leona,
Speaker 6: the real author of this paper.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, oh my god, and I know.
Speaker 6: And so it's now called retinopathy of prematurity. It's a problem,
Speaker 6: but for different reasons. But yeah, and the cause, well,
Speaker 6: I'm not even going to tell you the cause of this.
Speaker 6: Steven Wonder can tell you the kupas.
Speaker 1: When we talk about the stereotypes that you know, women
Speaker 1: like your grandmother had to deal with back then, how
Speaker 1: much of a difference would you say there is between
Speaker 1: the stereotypes in those thirties, forties and fifties versus the
Speaker 1: MIT the three MIT women that you wrote about Stephanie
Speaker 1: Wynn Or Ellen spurg Is, Magan Smith, the stereotypes from
Speaker 1: the thirties to the nineties to now that you know,
Speaker 1: and would love for both of you to speak on that.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk a little bit about things being
Speaker 1: a little more covert, but I would love to drill
Speaker 1: down a little bit more and just what you have
Speaker 1: seen in your research, Katie versus Nicole, what you experience
Speaker 1: now in the workplace, because I'm sure, like especially the comedy,
Speaker 1: it's easy to just throw out a joke and then
Speaker 1: someone else throws out the same joke an hour later
Speaker 1: and they go, oh, that a brilliant joke. We're going
Speaker 1: to do the joke, and like, motherfucker, I.
Speaker 7: Just I saw that problem by never writing brilliant jokes. No,
Speaker 7: we wants to seal them. It's it's well, I mean,
Speaker 7: it's extra tricky in this environment because we're specifically writing
Speaker 7: jokes for somebody else for you know, until I started
Speaker 7: working here and we've had guest hosts for a man,
Speaker 7: so part of literally my job is to write jokes
Speaker 7: that I will never get credit for. I was pretty
Speaker 7: lucky that I came up in an era where like
Speaker 7: a lot of the really overt sexism at least wasn't
Speaker 7: directed at me. I think, honestly, I just have the
Speaker 7: advantage of being pretty tall and pretty confident, so.
Speaker 1: That goes into the looks and stereotype thing.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 7: But one thing that that, at least in comedy, I
Speaker 7: would hope that the supply of the science is so
Speaker 7: much is a lot of times for women, like being
Speaker 7: a good comedian is equated with being like raunchier and
Speaker 7: like more willing to like talk about taboo topics, which
Speaker 7: is great, and I love the comedians who can do that.
Speaker 7: I personally am more of a goofball, and so I
Speaker 7: feel like the opportunities that that I get shut out
Speaker 7: of more for being a woman are are weirdly the
Speaker 7: like ones that you think of as being less sexist,
Speaker 7: because because they're just silly and it's and it's again
Speaker 7: now we're into that area where it's like I can't
Speaker 7: point to an example of a man pointing at a beginnion
Speaker 7: being like, you can't do this because women aren't funny,
Speaker 7: but I can. I you know, every once in a while,
Speaker 7: I'll there will be a situation where I'm like, I
Speaker 7: think you're I think you're not laughing at this because
Speaker 7: I because you're not taking me seriously.
Speaker 3: But I can't ever know for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 7: One thing that I've noticed is if I'm on stage
Speaker 7: telling jokes, I can't look to.
Speaker 3: Polished.
Speaker 7: If I look really done up, then I get fewer
Speaker 7: laughs than if I look like a little crummy. If
Speaker 7: I wear a hoodie I wear, I get more jokes
Speaker 7: than if I were or more laughs than if I
Speaker 7: wear a dress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't know.
Speaker 7: Why, because it's also I don't know that that's true
Speaker 7: for every woman, but for me specifically.
Speaker 3: That's what I've noticed.
Speaker 1: I think that's true across the board and stand up,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I think as a woman performer, you're
Speaker 1: also dealing with the stereotypes and insecurities of the women
Speaker 1: in the audience as well as the men. Like you're
Speaker 1: being judged by two different groups for two different reasons concurrently,
Speaker 1: and then if you get past that stereotypical gauntlet, is
Speaker 1: the joke funny?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Katie, what are some of the differences in the
Speaker 1: stereotypes that you think earlier erased women had to overcome
Speaker 1: versus some of the more modern day erasure or is
Speaker 1: there even a difference.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, what we were saying earlier about the it's
Speaker 6: more subtle than it used to be. It used to
Speaker 6: be just a foregone conclusion that, you know, women didn't
Speaker 6: belong in the lab, and women like going out on
Speaker 6: ocean research vessels were not allowed to go. There's a
Speaker 6: famous woman, luckily she's her name is beginning to crop
Speaker 6: up more and more, Marie Tharp, who actually mapped the
Speaker 6: ocean floor, but she wasn't allowed out on the research
Speaker 6: vessels because she was a woman. That has changed, you know,
Speaker 6: that is now a non issue. The issues however, so
Speaker 6: one of you you talked about the women, and thank
Speaker 6: you for saying their names. Megan Smith who went onto
Speaker 6: a big job at Google and then became like chief
Speaker 6: Technology Officer of the United States, and she a really
Speaker 6: brilliant mechanical engineer.
Speaker 1: You know, I having spoken to these three women, what
Speaker 1: do you think lit the fire for them to decide
Speaker 1: to go through that gauntlet, to walk over those coals
Speaker 1: as inequality loved it.
Speaker 4: They just loved it.
Speaker 6: You know, when you talk about women and write about women.
Speaker 6: There's a famous thing called the fink Biner Test. Have
Speaker 6: you heard of it. It's a science journalist named Anne
Speaker 6: Finkbiner who one day had been writing about women and
Speaker 6: science for so long. One day she said, I'm just
Speaker 6: so sick of having to write about how they, you know,
Speaker 6: managed to do you know, strike a work life balance,
Speaker 6: or that's the obstacles they had to overcome, or even
Speaker 6: talk about, you know, what their husband does for a living,
Speaker 6: or all the sexism that they've that they've experienced. And
Speaker 6: she said, from now on, I am never putting that
Speaker 6: in a profile of a woman.
Speaker 4: I'm not even going to say she's a woman. And
Speaker 4: I know, right. And so we at Lost Women of
Speaker 4: Science decided.
Speaker 6: We were going to take her on and we were
Speaker 6: gonna uh so we did a whole episode called the
Speaker 6: Finkbiner Test, because at Lost Women of Science we flunk
Speaker 6: it all the time, because the test is, if you
Speaker 6: do any of these things, you've flunked our test. And
Speaker 6: so we interviewed her for the episode and we pushed
Speaker 6: back on that. I said, it's absolutely instrumental what it
Speaker 6: is that these women through history had to deal with
Speaker 6: It's completely relevant, and she ended up kind of a
Speaker 6: agreeing with us. But the way that the flinkbinder test
Speaker 6: got put on the map was at the New York Times.
Speaker 6: And I actually still do this for the Times. I
Speaker 6: write obituaries and advance obituaries. And one of the o
Speaker 6: bits of a famous scientist, an actual rocket scientist. The
Speaker 6: lead are you ready for this? The lead on that
Speaker 6: piece was she made a mean beef strogan off.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I know I cook.
Speaker 7: I have also chosen to be a bad cook, because
Speaker 7: then nobody can remember me for that.
Speaker 6: So there was this outcry and the public editor at
Speaker 6: the paper had to get involved and they revised that lead.
Speaker 6: I mean, that was pretty outrageous, but it's like it
Speaker 6: was not that long ago.
Speaker 4: It was just a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Well, after the break, we're going to bring it home
Speaker 1: this wonderful to discussion. I want to talk with you
Speaker 1: about possible solutions to this issue. Also, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about how representation of women in the classroom is
Speaker 1: being an inspiration so that young women can see themselves
Speaker 1: already doing the thing that they want to do, and
Speaker 1: how that matters and what men can do to finally
Speaker 1: be a part of the solution.
Speaker 4: This is called the tip line.
Speaker 1: Should this is beyond the scenes, We'll be right back
Speaker 1: beyond the scenes. We're bringing home this wonderful conversation about
Speaker 1: women in stem and the contributions they've made, and how
Speaker 1: they are somehow oddly left out of the history books
Speaker 1: and then the credit is taken for by men. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about men for a second, Katie and Nicole, Katie,
Speaker 1: if we must, Yeah, I know we don't want to,
Speaker 1: but we must. What do you think keeps men from
Speaker 1: men in these spaces from fighting for more gender equity? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think the pushback is? Is it not being
Speaker 1: called cool by your friends or is it just a
Speaker 1: boys club?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think men in general are a little bit back
Speaker 6: on their heels these days, especially white men. In fact,
Speaker 6: one thing that women say about what's happening these days
Speaker 6: is that as you see more and more women filling
Speaker 6: the ranks of scientists around the world, women report that
Speaker 6: they get these subtle and not so subtle suggestions that
Speaker 6: the only reason they got the job was that they
Speaker 6: were a woman, at the expense of a more qualified
Speaker 6: white man.
Speaker 3: One thing that I will say is.
Speaker 7: I think it's much easier for men or any dominant
Speaker 7: group to help any non dominant group when they're simply
Speaker 7: around them more. You know, my friend who I mentioned
Speaker 7: is a YouTube channel Rally Williams. He also does like
Speaker 7: live Climate common shows, and he's really good about bringing
Speaker 7: on female scientists because one it's important to him and
Speaker 7: two he just he knows them, so it's easy for
Speaker 7: him to call them up and text him. I met
Speaker 7: doctor Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, who's a marine biologist who does
Speaker 7: a lot of work in conservation.
Speaker 3: She's great.
Speaker 7: I met her through his show because he went to
Speaker 7: Columbia and studied climate policy there, and so, like I think,
Speaker 7: just on like a very basic social level, there's still, right.
Speaker 3: You know, not a lot of mixing between groups, and
Speaker 3: it makes.
Speaker 7: It hard to you know, if your if your lab
Speaker 7: is hiring, if you like don't know anybody and women
Speaker 7: to text to be like, hey, are you available to lead?
Speaker 7: I don't know enough about science to say.
Speaker 4: To be like you guy. This is why this is
Speaker 4: This is why I took up golf because it's like this.
Speaker 6: I have these golf balls and I had them custom made,
Speaker 6: uh with RBG A quote from RB. Women belong where
Speaker 6: decisions are made. I mean, this is where these this
Speaker 6: stuff gets decided.
Speaker 3: Now here's the thing.
Speaker 7: I've played golf since I was five years old, and
Speaker 7: when you were playing golf, the only thing you're thinking
Speaker 7: is going the stupid I don't have time to network.
Speaker 6: Okay, stupid, well so, but I want to do a
Speaker 6: big shout out actually to my husband, whose name is
Speaker 6: Bob Walker, who runs he's Chair of Medicine at UCSF,
Speaker 6: which is University of California, San Francisco for those of
Speaker 6: you on the East coast. He runs this huge department,
Speaker 6: the Department of Medicine is huge, and he without ever thinking,
Speaker 6: he hires women who It's really amazing how many women
Speaker 6: work for work for him and consider him basically the
Speaker 6: best boss they've ever had. And it's just because he's
Speaker 6: so good at seeing.
Speaker 4: Good people and hiring wisely.
Speaker 6: And it's an amazing department at UCSF.
Speaker 4: Run.
Speaker 6: I have to say, mostly with the exception of him
Speaker 6: by a bunch of women.
Speaker 1: Give us, give us more of this because I'm feeling
Speaker 1: optimism now, I'm feeling the need to not cry as much.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to try to extract a little more
Speaker 1: optimism out of you right now? Now, will we talk
Speaker 1: about representation towards young people so that they don't have
Speaker 1: the same stereotypical beliefs where I need to be a
Speaker 1: woman and I just need to be quiet and make
Speaker 1: cast roles. The Integrated post Secondary Education Data System statistics
Speaker 1: from them forty five percent of the people majoring in
Speaker 1: STAM in twenty twenty. Women Barbie on International Women's Day,
Speaker 1: drop the women in STEM, doll excuse me, a whole
Speaker 1: set of women in STEM. And then you have and
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm mispronouncing this. It's Carly Clausus code
Speaker 1: in which it helps young people learn code. Correct with
Speaker 1: the k Carli Class's code, which is the good KKK.
Speaker 7: I think it's Carli Klaus's code with classy. Okay, four
Speaker 7: k okay?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I see that. The team just send us
Speaker 1: a note. Okay, it's called code with classy. Just cod KWK.
Speaker 1: That's fine, keeping up with Kardashian, that's fine. I got
Speaker 1: it wrong, Claus if you're watching, I apologize. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to briefly call you to do three k's and
Speaker 1: then four ks. It is code with class So what
Speaker 1: are some other things that you're seeing that help fight
Speaker 1: the battle with regards to representation, so that the young
Speaker 1: women coming up don't have the same hurdles to overcome
Speaker 1: from all the people that you've researched.
Speaker 4: It's just what you say.
Speaker 6: It's like every single day you see women doing it and.
Speaker 4: It's just not a question. It's just not even a
Speaker 4: question in.
Speaker 6: Your mind that you, as a little girl, could do
Speaker 6: that too.
Speaker 1: Katie. We can end here with your podcast, and I
Speaker 1: want you to tell us. You know, you've talked about
Speaker 1: the men who call in, but tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about the women who call in. Tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about the listeners and how your podcast helps
Speaker 1: helps you connect with women, helps educate women about the
Speaker 1: forgotten women of history.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So we're full five oh one C three nonprofit initiative
Speaker 6: where we're also doing children's books. We're just starting on that.
Speaker 6: We're pulling together a huge resource center where anyone and
Speaker 6: we're going to integrate that with classrooms we hope, uh
Speaker 6: where uh And we're partnering with higher ed institutions all
Speaker 6: over the place, uh to go do these archaeological digs
Speaker 6: through their archives to find that to unearth the Carolyn
Speaker 6: Parkers of the world. And it's going to take some real,
Speaker 6: you know, human power to do it it. This is
Speaker 6: not something Chad gp T can do.
Speaker 1: Cool and taking shots at the AI, I like it.
Speaker 6: Keep going, Yeah, so we're only a couple of years old,
Speaker 6: but we're really growing, which is which is nice. And
Speaker 6: we get a lot of people I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm used to having people excited when I
Speaker 6: show up to report a story that I'm from the
Speaker 6: New York Times.
Speaker 4: But when I went to m I T, they said,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, Lost Women of Science is here.
Speaker 6: Hell yeah, Oh and we beat We were a Jeopardy clue, which,
Speaker 6: like you've hate it when you're a Jeopardy clue.
Speaker 4: It wasn't us. It was Dorothy Anderson and cystic fibrosis.
Speaker 4: But but there's no way those.
Speaker 6: Clue that clue team would have known about her if
Speaker 6: it hadn't been for us.
Speaker 7: What I think is really important about what you're doing
Speaker 7: is that to your point about women not not hyping
Speaker 7: themselves up enough, You know, I don't know a lot
Speaker 7: of mathematicians who love to like do the kind of
Speaker 7: work that you're doing, but communicating about science is so important,
Speaker 7: and especially if you want, you know, young women to
Speaker 7: see women in science, it's important to do that work
Speaker 7: because a lot of the scientists either don't have you know,
Speaker 7: the time between lab work, or do mathematicians work in
Speaker 7: a lab the math lab work. They don't have the
Speaker 7: time or necessarily the not math lab. No, not math mathage. Yeah,
Speaker 7: those kind of women in STEM don't necessarily have the
Speaker 7: time or the inclination to do that work.
Speaker 3: But we can't.
Speaker 7: We can't communicate their work without people who are willing
Speaker 7: to do the research and put it in terms that
Speaker 7: young girls who might want to go into sciences can understand.
Speaker 3: So tell those stories isn't important just posthumously or for
Speaker 3: the people who are still alive, but for the next
Speaker 3: generation of scientists.
Speaker 4: Well exactly.
Speaker 6: And I like to say, let's end with a Joan
Speaker 6: Didion quote, which is one of my favorite quotes. We
Speaker 6: tell ourselves stories in order to live. And I think
Speaker 6: that's it. We tell these stories in order for these
Speaker 6: girls to live and do the work they love to do.
Speaker 1: Well, that's as good a place to end as any. Nicole.
Speaker 1: I thank you, thank you, Katie, We thank you, and
Speaker 1: thank you all for going beyond the scenes with us,
Speaker 1: see you.
Speaker 4: Thank you. It was fun.
Speaker 1: Technically, a meth lab is.
Speaker 7: Stim I was gonna say we could.
Speaker 4: Have gotten into that. That would have been so much fun,
Speaker 4: But maybe not.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you want to research those pioneers yet, not got
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Speaker 5: Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central
Speaker 5: on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmouth Plus.
Speaker 1: This has been a Comedy Central podcast