March 21, 2023 • 51 mins
The Matilda Effect was coined in 1993 and explains the phenomenon of women’s historical contributions to science getting forgotten over time. These women are not only left out of history books, but also subjected to men taking credit for their work. Daily Show writer Nicole Conlan and host of the podcast Lost Women of Science, Katie Hafner, join Roy Wood Jr. to uncover why women and girls get overlooked in the sciences and how this can be improved through representation and exposure.
Watch the original segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmoMm7JSHbY&t=6s
Listen to The Lost Women of Science podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-women-of-science/id1590670779
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into topics that we talk about on The Daily Show.
This is what you gotta think of this podcast is
The Daily Show is the football game. This podcast is
the tailgate. It's the barbecue, it's the party, and outside
the stadium, it's the liquor that you snuck into the
stadium because it wasn't in a glass bottle with a
metal top, which we all know metal detectives can detect.
(00:29):
You gotta put that liquor in a plastic zip black
bag and sip it through the little griller and green seals.
It's Women's History Month, and so we're going to be
talking a little bit about a segment we did on
the show recently about women that have been forgotten in
stem and the way it's history overlooks them. This originated
(00:50):
based on a sketch that we did when Sarah Silverman
was guest hosting and she took on the role of
mad scientists doctor Insidia. Give it a clip. When you
ask people about the greatest female scientists of the twentieth century,
they'll give you the same names Marie Curry, Jangodall, Octavia Spencer,
(01:12):
but they always leave out the most important person, Doctor
Raquel and Sidi, the world's first female mad scientist in
the field of evil, Doctor Insidia was a relentless pioneer.
(01:33):
She put Genghis Khan's brain into a chimp. She made
Kentucky disappear, all of it for three years. No Kentucky.
She put a man on the moon as punishment. His
body's still up there. Unfortunately, in the nineteen fifties, the
mad sciences were dominated by men, so doctor Insidia faced
(01:55):
a lot of sexism. One time, she shrunk the prime
Minister of Lafia and trapped him in a jar. They
give her a two million dollar ransom. The next week,
a male Matt scientist kidnaps the same prime minister. They
give him four million dollars and a guest spawn at salt,
same prime minister, same jar. You tell me how that's
(02:17):
not sexism. To help us get deeper into the weeds
on this conversation, we're joined by Daily Show writer Nicole Conlin. Nicole,
how are you doing? I'm good? How are you welcome
inside the wonderful podcast studios here at a multimillion dollars
undisclosed location. I'm not allowed to say in Legal Department
star Tripping. We're also joined today by journalists and host
(02:40):
of the podcast Lost Women of Science, Katie Haffner. Katie,
welcome to be on the scene. How do you do? Oh,
how do you do? Thank you so much for having me. Yeah,
we're over here in New York. I know you're over
there in California. I'm not sure if it's mud slide
snow a forest fire week over there, but whichever week
it is, I hope you're being safe. I'm actually in
(03:02):
my roboat this morning in biblical ways. Okay, so flood
week it is. Let's dive right into this topic. You've spent,
you know, almost all of your career covering technology and
women who work in this dim field. What are some
of the disparities that stick out for you, you know
that you've seen in your coverage, because you know, when
(03:23):
you really think about erasure, and then there's also bias
on top of that. Just talk a little bit about,
you know, a little bit of the erasure that you've seen. Yeah. Well,
so when I so I used to cover this, I've
covered I mean, the only advantage of being superannuated, which
is a fancy word for old, is that I've had
(03:45):
a lot of time, like a lot of time to
get mad. Like, so what we say at lost Women
of Science is we're not mad, We're curious. Okay, we
are a little mad. So so when I was working
on this topic for the New York Times, which I
did for years, I wrote about thirty years ago, I
wrote a story that was called woman Computer Nerd and Proud,
(04:08):
And I looked at what it was among these three
young women at MIT who were computer scientists, Like where
did they get their moxie? Like how did they get
beyond all that macho crap that mite throws at you.
And a lot of it had to do with the
support they were getting. And then I did a follow
(04:31):
up because I was at the Times forever ten years
later and then ten years later again. Anyway, I won't
even tell you how how long I did these follow
ups for. But what you find is that this pipeline,
this famous pipeline, is real. You know, along the way
they bump into obstacles, and especially in fields like computer
(04:53):
science and physics, the science is like biology and are
easy for women. But there's just something about this feeling.
This it's partly imposter syndrome. It's partly just plain being
told you can't do it. So so that's the discouraging.
(05:16):
That's the discourage part. And then the erasure part is
what we do at Lost Women of Science. I mean,
these women Roy, these women have been absolutely obliterated from history.
In fact, I say my husband, Honey, you empty the dishwasher.
I am busy snatching women from the jaws of historical obscurity.
(05:38):
And that guy, he's got a job. So there are
I brought clinics and start in case I start to
cry because I'm kidding. I don't usually cry about this. So, however,
we have this database. I mean enough already with Marie Curie,
like I'm done with her. I mean, great, great job,
(06:01):
thank you very much. But U and Rosalind Franklin, there
are so many more. I mean for every Marie Cury,
there are hundreds. We have this database. We have binders
full of women who have not been given the recognition
they deserve through history. And it is it pisses me off.
(06:22):
And that's what we do at Lost Women as Science.
What was it about seeing those women at MIT that
made you go, wow? How did they get there? What
were the hurdles that you believe they had to overcome.
And how early in a woman's matriculation through life do
those hurdles start to present themselves? Wow? I love that
(06:43):
a woman's matriculation through life. Can we start using that?
Is it okaying that? As long as I can start
using superannuated? Yeah, I'm gonna go home today, I'd be like, sweetheart,
I think we need to throw away the milk. It's superannuation.
Isn't it a great word? I mean, I don't usually
use expensive words, but my gosh, that's a good one.
I'm sorry. So okay, Yeah, your question was the origins.
(07:07):
It's just from time immemorial. I mean think so women,
for some reason, you know, have been screwed since the
very beginning, and especially when it comes to natural curiosity
about the world around us. And a lot of times
(07:28):
it was the women doing them. Let's just kind of
call it the secretarial work, where they were actually doing
the science itself. There are a lot of couples, famous
men who were married to women who actually did the work,
and and the men took credit for it. I don't know.
(07:51):
You tell me where you've got the Y chromosome? What
is it? You know? We got to put jall in place,
you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know, right, I
mean that was our place and we were not supposed
to be curious, and that's what science is all about.
Didn't Watson and Crick have? Wasn't there also a woman
that's the rusalind Franklin? So yeah, I know, right. So
(08:17):
that's the only one you can think of. Break that
down for the people who aren't familiar with that story, right, Okay,
So there were Watson and Crick and they are the
ones who discovered the structure of DNA in the nineteen fifties.
They got the Nobel Prize, just saying and she was
a chemist, an X ray crystallographer, and so she had
(08:41):
these images, these actual images of the double helix, and
she just got shunted aside and then she died, you know,
not that that was her fault, but you can't actually
award a Nobel Prize posthumously. So she was dead, but
there was no credit given to her at the time.
(09:05):
It's a little bit controversial about whether she actually deserved it.
The point is that Nicole is making two important things. Nicole.
That's what comes to mind is the whole Watson Creek thing.
But do we know any other examples? Well we should,
We should know dozens and dozens and dozens, and you know,
shame on us that we don't. But I would be
(09:26):
happy to list a bunch. We could be here for days.
Where does unfair snack? We need to do a two
part episode where does unfair compensation and sexual harassment come
into play as well? Because you also, I would imagine
you have to persevere like you're doing work you're not
(09:46):
getting credited for. Also while doing the work, somebody's trying
to grab your booty and then they're also paying your
thirty cent on the dollar. What is it about? Should
we talk about the booty first or the dollars? Well,
here's the bigger question is in your study of all
of these women that stay dedicated to these jobs in
spite of all of those hurdles, what do you think
(10:09):
it was that kept them there? Why did the MT
women remain? Why did they keep doing the work? Yeah? Well,
not to like rag on MT book. While we're at it,
we might might as well. So this amazing book it
just came out, called The Exceptions by Kate SERNICKI is
all about MIT and a lawsuit that was brought against
(10:32):
MIT by a bunch of women in the nineteen seventies,
which is relatively recent. I'm sorry, so the lawsuit was
brought brought in the nineties, but this was happening to
them in the seventies. MT. What Kate says in the
book is that women felt lucky. They felt lucky women
who were doing basically the shit jobs. Can I say, ship,
(10:55):
Oh yeah, the women who are doing these shit crap
jobs as basically glorified secretaries, but doing the science. They
felt lucky to have any job at all in the sciences,
so just to be oh, and they were hit on.
(11:16):
Did I mention that yet? Yea, So then it's the
price of it. They looked at the harassment and the
lack of conversation and the lack of credit as the
price of being a trailblazer into these fields. I don't
even think that, you know, it's such a good question.
I don't even know if they considered themselves trailblazers. They
just loved doing the science. I don't even know if
(11:38):
they were resentful that they were doing a lot of
the a lot of the basic science that went into
some really important discoveries. So Nicole as best you can.
In this building, you take something ness at where you
know you got to have a tissue on deck at
(11:59):
all times in case you cray about it. In talking
with Sarah Silverman about this piece, which ironically here's a
funny Daily Show story, first time I saw Sarah Silverman
in the building was when she was in character for
the Mad Side of the Sketch Good and She's got
the doctor Frankenstein Wig. She had that big electrified Afro
(12:23):
situation going on, because Katie, if you're not on a piece,
you're generally not in the loop on what else is happening.
You're like, what is going on? It's not even your week?
Why are you? But why how did you all settle
on a sketch? Because in the sketch she plays a
(12:43):
doctor whose work is stolen and credit a man gets
credit for it. Yeah, why sketch versus sayah, phil piece
versus having Sarah just talked about it at the desk.
I used to write for the Like Show Stephen Colbert,
and originally this was a piece that I had pitched
there um and I had I would love to say
it's because I'm an incredible feminist, but really what happened
is I was like, oh shit, I need something to
(13:04):
pitch today, and that day it happens to be National
Women and Girls in STEM Day, So I was like,
why can I pitch for this? And everything like there's
so many like really saddish he's about women in STEM
and I was like, I don't know how to make
any of this funny. But the idea of like what's
like a kind of science that we don't talk about
a lot? And I was like, well, there's no fe
about mad scientists. And so originally I had written it
(13:26):
for a character to talk to Stephen. So the way
that it appeared in the Daily Show is it's kind
of like a ken Burn style documentary about this fictional character,
whereas the original version I wrote would be for her
to be in studio talking to the host. And then
I pitched it in twenty nineteen, and as you know,
this was the height of the Trump administration where it
(13:48):
was like every day it was like, we don't have
time for anything else. Every day at three pm, he
would do the craziest thing you've ever us be like, yes,
we can't. We have to get rid of everything that
we've written and write something New So I've had the
sketch on deck for a long time, and every time
we've read it and address rehearsal, it's always gone so well.
And I've always believed in this sketch because even though
(14:08):
it's never been on air, I'm like, I know it's funny.
And so I pitched it again here. I know everybody's
saying it's not funny, but I know it's funny. It's funny,
it's thank you, thank you. And then so we got
here and I sent it into like our pitch email
list with the caveat of like, I know this is
like not we don't really do character interviews on our show,
(14:30):
but I have the sketch. Do you guys want it?
And then Sarah saw the pitch and she really wanted
to do it as a that Ken Vernon style documentary,
which makes sense one for her sensibility as like a
former sketch performer, and it makes more sense for a show.
And so I did like a full revamp of the
sketch and it ended up being really fun because then
we got a lot of funny visual gags that we
couldn't have gotten before. See years later vindicated. That's how
(14:52):
you do you never like because I know that had
to feel good. I feel good to finally get your
shit on the air. I've got a pitch that was
a proved in twenty fifteen. We're gonna get it on
and it's still it's still on the courtboard in my office.
It's called white Baseball, and it's just listen. I know
that's not what we're here to talk about, but it's
(15:14):
a piece about how a lot of predominantly black colleges
have predominantly white baseball teams and the reasons why, the
lack of minority whatever whatever, it was approved to go
out the door, Katie. Two weeks later, Trump was elected.
He has ruined so many of my sketches, aside from
what he's done to America, Katie, I have a question
(15:35):
for you, and you may not know the answer to this,
but as we're trying to like improve and get more
women into the sciences and talents and engineering, what are
the metrics by which we've decided we're succeeding or failing
at that? Is it simply numbers of people you know
graduating from college or who you know make a living
in stem or are there other Because like I you know,
(15:58):
as a woman in comedy, it's it's certainly much easier
now than it used to be, and I think it's
way easier than it is in the sciences. But I
know that, like now there's more women in comedy than ever,
but a lot of the issues they face are no
longer things that are they're like a little bit trickier
to tease out, and like we're so much further than
we were, but now it's harder to get over that
(16:19):
last hurdle because it's little insidious things that it's more hidden. Yeah,
it's more hidden, and it's it's more of like microaggressions
that aren't like you know, he working here is very good,
but elsewhere. So the shorter version of that is, how
are we deciding that we're making progress and succeeding it
getting more women into science. So yeah, the numbers speak
for themselves, and those are followed pretty closely, and so
(16:44):
we know we're making progress in a lot of the
different STEM I stuff. Get by the way, could we
just say what STEM stands where nobody knows anywhere. It's science, technology, engineering,
and math. Yes, keep thinking it's medicine, but it's not.
But it's not men. It's definitely not men. Okay, Engineering
(17:09):
and math okay. And so the numbers are creeping up
and that's really good. Uh And but some of the
places where the numbers are not are stagnant and very frustratingly.
So are is a computer science which is what I've
been covering forever and uh, I don't know what it is,
but they just stay at like twenty percent of graduates.
(17:34):
And so there's there's a wonderful program at Northeastern called
the Center for Inclusive Computing, which really looks at kind
of the root cause of all of this and what
it is it's actually happening in the classroom where women
or the actual programming languages that get taught, you know,
really trying to as you say, tease apart some of
(17:56):
the nuances here, uh as as early as elementary school teachers,
because a lot of computer sciences math teachers get video
recorded because they swear they call on the girls just
as much. But when you do the video of them
(18:18):
and show them the video, they're calling on the boys
and they and then they are shocked. Everything you're talking
about is so extensive, to the point that now there's
a term for it. Like, if you're a woman and
your work is erased by a man, it's called the
Matilda effect. I think that having putting a name to
it helps to make people believe that it is a
(18:39):
real thing. I don't know what it is about humans,
but we have to know what's the causation and thus
therefore and we have the data. And then people go, oh,
you're right, I am unconsciously sexist. I didn't know that.
Thank you for that. So break down the Matilda affect
a little bit for everyone and exactly what that is
and how that came to be. This is this wonderful
woman named Margaret Rossiter. She's been studying the history of
(19:03):
women in science and has generated these two huge volumes
of women in science, and she's she's at Cornell and
she is the one who coined the term the Matilda effect.
Matilda was Matilda Joscelyn Engage, who was a suffragist in
the eighteen hundreds, who wrote a pamphlet actually about women
(19:25):
as inventors, and so this think about it. This was
in the eighteen hundreds. She wrote this pretty amazing, and
women as inventors who get kind of overshadowed. Shanta decide
whatever you want to say by men. And so what
doctor Rossiter decided was to put a name to the
(19:45):
phenomenon of when a discovery happens and the man takes credit,
and but a woman played as large, if not a larger,
role than the man. This Matilda effect is it's everywhere,
(20:09):
and it's throughout history, and it still happens today. How
receptive are people to this new information when you present it?
You know, we live in a good Yeah, we live
in an age of trying to write a lot of
history that was written by biased people, you know. And
(20:30):
we also live in an age now where they're trying
to undo anything new you try and put in a
history book, don't you dare? We we've been learning this, right,
I can't learn new shit? Please stop? So how receptive
are people when you bring this new information? You know?
And I stopped short of calling it revisionist history, it's history,
(20:52):
like it's just yeah, we say we're we don't say
were we are correcting the historical record. We say we
are revisiting historical record. I know, isn't that smart? I
wonder if I thought of that? I know? So, um, yeah,
people are incredibly receptive. In fact, we have a lost
(21:16):
women of science hotline, the emergency line emergency No, No,
they're dead. All our women are dead, by the way,
so they can't speak for themselves. So it's people who
call in the hot line and say, you have to
know about this woman who got screwed by history, and um,
(21:38):
amazingly enough, a lot of them are men, which is
who call in, which is great relatives, co workers of Like,
what is their relation to the people they're calling about?
People in the field who know that it was a
woman who did this? I know? Doesn't that story your
(22:00):
faith in men? In some men? I don't know. I
know a lot of men, and I don't have I
don't have faith in all of them. After the break,
I want to get a little bit more into the
roots of this and how you two ladies are experiencing
life now as women's in your field. That's the word
(22:20):
I just made up. It's not as eloquent as your word,
but I'm gonna use it as women's mouth On beyond
the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes, welcome back.
We're talking about the erasure of women in stem and
Katie and Nicole have been walking me through all of
this and showing me all the ways that men take
(22:44):
credit for the shit that women been doing at the job.
I'll dare you stop it now. You two are very
interesting to me in the sense that you all have
figured out outlets for for change in the issues that
you've identified. You know, Katie, you have your podcast where
you talk about this very issue a lot. But Nicole,
(23:07):
I want I'm gonna start with you first, and because
it's interesting because as a comedian, it's, oh, that's that's sad.
How can I make that funny? How can I make
people laugh at it so they can then figure out
the truth and how you're laughing? Got your motherfuck you
just learning? How do you face the stark reality of
(23:29):
women in science getting overlooked and then going, I know
how to make that funny? Because I Delvin that all
the time. Yeah. Well, when I'm not writing for The
Daily Show, I work a lot in the climate space.
And I'm not a scientist, but I like I write
for my friends, UM like educational climate YouTube channel, UM
and I UM, I know, right surprise on the side
(23:51):
talk about yeah, and so like when you're in the
climate space, like it's all bad news, it's just it's
all just a bummer, and we have to make for
my friend's channel, Climatetown. Unfortunately my friends a man, I'm
so sorry, um, but we have to make it funny.
It's a comedy YouTube channel. And I think the best
piece of advice that I ever got about that was
from Tom Purcell, an executive producer at Colbert, and his
(24:14):
advice was, there's a there's a story about mister Rogers
where after nine to eleven kids were coming to him
and they were like, how can we handle this? You know,
this is like like how can we continue going in
the world when this has happened? And mister Rogers advice
it's like, look for the helpers, children, and look for
the helpers. And Tom Purcell, it's like, what we're writing
about something that's a bummer, look for the non helpers.
(24:36):
Look for the people who are making it worse. Look
for the people who are doing something stupid or bad
or wrong, and like that's what you direct your anger at.
So so when that comes to climate, it's like, obviously
people who are like passing bad legislation or are like um,
starting misinformation campaigns, and with women and stem it's you
(24:58):
know this sketch is sort of the exception, because the
sketch was just like, what is the silliest possible version
that I can do of this? But it plays in
the area of a little bit. It's a little bit
like when you know there's some other a woman commits
some other major crime and everybody's like, she gets prosecuted,
and everybody's like, well, the woman gets prosecuted and not
not the men. This is classic sexism. It's like, I
(25:20):
don't think the woman should not be prosecuted for like,
you know, shooting murdering somebody. I think the issue is
that the men don't. And so I wanted to play
in that area of like a woman who has committed
horrible crimes facing sexism, but like maybe we like we
should pay at touch it to her crimes also, But
when we're I'm communicating broad her heart issues, what I
try to think about is like who are the who
are the bad guys? And how can I make fun
(25:42):
of those people as opposed to like thinking about like
who has been victimized by that bad issue? Does that
make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So Dan, I
would say to the converse, Katie, then your work is
about finding the helpers or helping the helpers posthumously when
we talk about you know, a lot of the names
(26:02):
that you've discovered from the thirties and the forties and
the fifties, and you know, the good old days of
women's rights. As I liked when they were called women's lippers. Yeah,
oh no, that was that didn't even start till the sevenies.
There was no word. Oh there were the suffragists. Yeah,
So during that time where you know, women were definitely
(26:26):
had not yet breached a lot of the legislation that
we have today. Who were some of the names and
people that you discover, you know that surprised you, you know,
during that time, who were some of those helpers? Well,
first of all, I don't even know if I want
to call them helpers. I want to call them the doers.
So one of the most moving women we found was
(26:50):
this woman named Dorothy Anderson, who is the subject of
our first season. A physician in the nineteen thirties. She
wanted to go into surgery, but surgery was closed to women.
Let me just stop her a sex. Do you are
you surprised by anything I'm saying, Like when I tell
you things like surgery was closed to women. Are you
(27:12):
just yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this this all tracks. I've
read enough about racism to believe that there are other
horrible forms of oppression. Well yeah, racism happening, and everything
else was gravy. Yeah, well I know. And our hero
in season three, just to digress for one sec is
(27:33):
Um is this amazing black engineer named Hyy Clark who
I just love her. So we just fell so in
love with her. So she had a whole you know,
double whammy being a black scientist in the nineteen forties.
But anyway back to Dorothy. So Dorothy Anderson couldn't get
(27:56):
into surgery because she was a woman. She ended up
becoming a pathologist because in fact, patients people didn't want
to see a female doctor. So women, female physicians back
then tended to work behind the scenes. They could deliver babies,
and they did things like pathology and radiology, which is
(28:18):
you don't see the doctor. So she became a pathologist
at Columbia Baby's Hospital, and she was doing an autopsy,
which is what pathologists do. And this baby had been
diagnosed with celiac and so it was very common for
(28:39):
celiac to be the diagnosis when it was actually something
very different, and she figured out what it was and
it was cystic fibrosis. So she is the one who
first discovered cystic fibrosis and named it and was come
(29:00):
completely forgotten and some guy is thought to be the
one who discovered it. Oh, the whole thing. So she
is our I guess, our prototype, she's our you know,
she's the one we hold up as and we didn't
(29:22):
even you know, we found an old biography, a manuscript
in somebody's basement in Connecticut that had never been published,
and we used that as our guide and it was
really it was an amazing uh, an amazing season to
put together. And then there's let me just tell you this.
One other thing about that is that there was a
(29:43):
portrait of her that was painted and commissioned by either
Columbia or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which was hanging in
the lobby of Babies Hospital for years and disappeared. And
so we did an entire episode called The Dude Wall,
which is actually Rachel Maddows. She coined the term the
(30:07):
Dude Wall when she was giving a talk at Rockefeller
University and she's going into the auditorium and she's like
what's with the dude wall? And so it's all these
you know, old white men on these walls. And Dorothy's
portrait was never found. We never ever has it replaced. Yeah,
it was taken down at some point and up went
(30:29):
the dude wall. And Dorothy's portrait is gone. And it's beautiful.
It's we have a photo of it. We can't at
least print a jpeg replica that we have, we I know, right, yeah,
I know, I'm good, Katie. I need some good news.
Where my tissue? What's interesting about what you do? So
(30:50):
I did an episode of Finding Your Roots shout out
to doctor Henry Lewis Gates. What I discovered on that
show is how extensive it is to find out shit
about people, Like it's one thing to trace your family's history,
but you're trying to trace the employment history and accomplishments
of people for which there's even less paperwork, like oh
(31:13):
my gosh, and they thought so they had such low
self esteem. They never they didn't leave their papers too,
so that we have, we can't find their papers. So
this journey of finding all of these interesting one someone
calls the hotline, gives you the name and to do
a podcast. You have to do extensive research on these people.
This isn't just you plug in a mic and go,
(31:34):
let me tell you about this shit. I heard, yes, no, no, no, no,
that's what we do, right, No, no, we yeah. Okay.
So then within that process, how do you stumble on
the fact that one of your blood relatives who you
descended from is one of the people that you're fighting for.
How did you discover that? Oh, you mean my grandmother? Yes,
(31:57):
how did you get to that place? So? Well, summer,
I was just, you know, hanging around twiddling my thumbs,
and I thought, what if what about my grandmother? I
think she did something, And so I googled her name
and I saw that the Leona Zacharias papers are held
in a special collection at MIT and Harvard, which is
(32:19):
the two places where she worked. I thought, what did
she do? And so I got in touch with the archivists.
Bless their hearts, these women. So a lot of these
institutions are actually going back and looking for women. And
I said, you know, I want to know what's in
the files of my grandmother Leona Zacharias. And they started
(32:40):
to tell me, and I'm like, holy shit, she was
really smart. So she got her PhD from Columbia in
biology in nineteen thirty seven, which is a long time ago.
My grandfather, who was a famous physicist, got all the attention,
so the only career we ever heard about growing up
(33:01):
was his. She worked on something called retrolental fibroplasia, which
was this mystery in the nineteen forties where babies born
with perfectly fine eyesight then went blind and the question
is what's causing it. Stevie Wonders maybe the most famous
example of that. And she was one of the team
(33:27):
trying to figure out the cause. And nobody knew this
that she was, that she was instrumental in this. And
when I was at the art I went to visit
the archives and I'm sitting there with the papers, and
I come across this one paper and on the front
of the paper it was one of the men on
(33:50):
the paper wrote to Leona, the real author of this paper,
and I'm like, oh my god, and I now. And
so it's now called rattinopathy of prematurity. It's still a problem,
but for different reasons. But yeah, and the cause, well,
I'm not even going to tell you the cause of this.
(34:12):
Stephen wonder can tell you the couples. Wouldn't we talk
about the stereotypes that you know, women like your grandmother
had to deal with back then. How much of a
difference would you say there is between the stereotypes in
those thirties, forties and fifties versus the MT the three
MT women that you wrote about Stephanie Winner Ellen spirit
(34:34):
is making smith the stereotypes from the thirties to the
nineties to now that you know, it would love for
both of you to speak on that. You know, we
talk a little bit about things being a little more covert,
but I would love to drill down a little bit
more and just what you have seen in your research
Katie versus Nicole what you experience now in the workplace,
(34:54):
because I'm sure, like especially the comedy, it's easy to
just throw out a joke and then someone else throws
out the same joke an hour later, they go, oh,
that's a brilliant joke. We're gonna do the joke, and like, motherfucker,
I just I solve that problem by never writing brilliant jokes.
We want to see them. It's it's well, I mean,
it's extra quicky in this environment because we're specifically writing
(35:18):
jokes for somebody else for you know, until I started
working here and we've had guest hosts for a man,
So part of literally my job is to write jokes
that I will never get credit for. Um. I was
pretty lucky that I came up in an era where
like a lot of the really overt sexism at least
(35:41):
wasn't directed at me. I think, honestly, I just have
the advantage of being pretty tall and pretty confident, so
people that goes into the looks and stereotype thing. It does.
But one thing that that at least in comedy, I
would hope that the supply of the science is so
much is a lot of times for women, like being
a good comedian is equated with being like raunchier and
(36:04):
like more willing to like talk about taboo topics, which
is great and I love the comedians who can do that.
I personally am more of a goofball and so I
feel like the opportunities that that I get shut out
of more for being a woman are are weirdly the
like ones that you think of as being less sexist,
because because they're just silly and it's and it's again
(36:26):
now we're into that area where it's like, I can't
point to an example of a man pointing a union
being like, you can't do this because women aren't funny,
But I can. I. You know, every once in a while,
I'll there will be a situation where I'm like, I
think you're I think you're not laughing at this because
I because you're not taking me seriously. But I can't
ever know for sure I can prove. Yeah. One thing
(36:47):
that I've noticed is if I'm on stage telling jokes,
I can't look to polished. If I look really done up,
then I get fewer laughs than if I look like
a little chrummy. If I wear a hoodie I wear,
I get more jokes than if I or more laughs
than if I were directing. Yeah, And I don't know
why because it's also I don't know that that's true
for every woman, but for me specifically, that's what I've noticed.
(37:09):
I think that's true across the board and stand up,
and it's interesting. I think as a woman performer, you're
also dealing with the stereotypes and insecurities of the women
in the audience as well as the men, like you're
being judged by two different groups for two different reasons concurrently,
and then if you get past that stereotypical gauntlet, is
(37:29):
the joke funny? Yeah, yeah, Katie. What are some of
the differences in the stereotypes that you think earlier erased
women had to overcome versus some of the more modern
day erasure or is there even a difference? Yeah, Well,
what we were saying earlier about the it's more subtle
than it used to be. It used to be just
(37:50):
a you know, foregone conclusion that you know, women didn't
belong in the lab and women like going out on
ocean research vessels were not allowed to go. There's a
famous woman, luckily she's her name is beginning to crop
up more and more, Marie Tharpe, who actually mapped the
ocean floor, but she wasn't allowed out on the research
(38:13):
vessels because she was a woman. That has changed, you know,
that is now a non issue. The issues however, so
one of you you talked about the women, and thank
you for saying their names. Megan Smith who went on
to a big job at Google and then became like
chief Technology Officer of the United States, and she really
(38:34):
brilliant mechanical engineer, you know, having spoken to these three women,
what do you think lit the fire for them to
decide to go through that gauntlet, to walk over those
coals of inequality. Loved it, They just loved it. You know,
when you talk about women and write about women. There's
a famous thing called the Finkbiner Test. Have you heard
(38:57):
of it? Where it's as Science Journal US named Anne Finkbiner,
who one day had been writing about women and science
for Song. One day she said, I'm just so sick
of having to write about how they, you know, managed
to do you know, strike a work life balance, or
that's the obstacles they had to overcome, or even talk about,
(39:17):
you know, what their husband does for a living, or
all the sexism that they've that they've experienced. And she said,
from now on, I am never putting that in a
profile of a woman. I'm not even gonna say she's
a woman. And I know, right, And so we at
Lost Women of Science decided we were going to take
her on and we were gonna so we did a
(39:37):
whole episode called the Finkbiner Test because that Lost Women
of Science we flunk it all the time. Because the
test is, if you do any of these things you've
flunked our test. And so we interviewed her for the
episode and we pushed back on that. I said, it's
absolutely instrumental what it is that these women through history
had to deal with. It's completely elephant. And she ended
(40:01):
up um kind of agreeing with us. But the but
want to make the way that the Finkbinder tests got
put on the map was at the New York Times,
And I actually still do this for the Times. I
write um obituaries and advanced obituaries and and one of
the oh bits of a famous scientist, an actual rocket scientist.
(40:25):
The lead are you ready for this? The lead on
that piece was she made a mean beef stroke and off,
Oh boy, I know I I have also chosen to
be a bad cook because they remember me for that.
So there was this outcry and the public editor at
(40:49):
the paper had to get involved and they revised that lead.
I mean, that was pretty outrageous. But it's like it
was not that long ago. It was just a few
years ago. Well after the break, Um, we're gonna bring
it home this wonderful discussion. I want to talk with
you about possible solutions to this issue. Also, I want
to talk about how representation of women in the classroom
(41:12):
as being an inspiration so that young women can see
themselves are already doing the thing that they want to do,
and how that matters, and what men can do to
finally be a part of the solution is the lost woman. Yeah,
this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond
(41:34):
the scenes. We're bringing home this wonderful conversation about women
in stem and the contributions they've made and how they
are somehow oddly left out of the history books and
then the credit is taken forth by men. Let's talk
about men for a second, Katie and the Katie if
we must, Yeah, I know we don't want to, but
(41:56):
we must. What do you think keeps men from men
in these spaces from fighting for more gender equity? Like,
what do you think the pushback is? Is it not
being called cool by your friends or is it just
a boys club? Yeah? I think men in general are
a little bit back on their heels these days, especially
(42:19):
white men. In fact, one thing that women say about
what's happening these days is that as as you see
more and more women filling the ranks of scientists around
the world, women report that they get these subtle and
not so subtle suggestions that the only reason they got
(42:44):
the job was that they were a woman at the
expense of a more qualified white man. One thing that
I will say is I think it's much easier for
men or any dominant group to help any non dominant
group when they're simply around them more. You know my
friend who I mentioned as a YouTube channel, Rally Williams,
he also does like live climate comedy shows, and he's
(43:05):
really good about bringing on female scientists because one it's
important to him, and too he just he knows them
so it's easy for him to call them up and
text him. I met UM doctor Ayan Elizabeth Johnson, who's
a marine biologist who does a lot of work in conservation.
She's great UM. I met her through his show UM
because he went to Columbia and studied UM climate policy there,
(43:25):
and so, like, I think, just on like UM a
very basic social level, there's still right, you know, not
a lot of mixing between groups, and it makes it
hard to you know, if your if your lab is hiring,
if you like don't know anybody and women to text
(43:46):
to be like, hey are you available to lead? I
don't know enough about science to say, don't be like
you guys. This is this is why I took up golf.
So because it's like this. I have these golf balls
and I had them custom made with RBG. A quote
from RBG. Women belong where decisions are made. I mean,
(44:07):
this is where these this stuff gets decided. Now here's
the thing I've I've played golf since I was five
years old, and when you were playing golf, the only
thing you're thinking is going the stupid I don't have
time to network, okay, so but I want to do
(44:27):
a big shout out actually to my husband, whose name
is Bob Walter, who runs UM. He's Chair of Medicine
UM at UCSF, which is University of California, San Francisco
for those of you on the East coast. He runs
this huge department, the Department of Medicine is huge, and
he without ever thinking UM, he hires women. Who's really amazing.
(44:54):
How many women work for work for him and consider
him basedically the best boss they've ever had. And it's
just because he's so good at seeing good people and
hiring wisely. And it's an amazing department at UCSF. Run.
(45:20):
I have to say mostly with the exception of him
by a bunch of women. Give us, give us more
of this, because I'm feeling optimism now, I'm feeling the
need to not cry as much. So I'm gonna try
to extract a little more optimism out of you right now.
Now we talk about representation towards young people so that
(45:43):
they don't have the same stereotypical beliefs where I need
to be a woman and I just need to be
quiet and make castle roles. The Integrated post Secondary Education
Data SISTANT statistics from them forty five people majoring in
STAM in twenty twenty women Barbie on International Women's Day,
I drop the women in STEM, doll, excuse me, a
(46:07):
whole set of women in STEM. And then you have
correct me if from mispronouncing this. It's Carly Class's code
in which it helps young people learn code. Correct. Yeah,
with the K Carly Class's code, which is the good KKK.
(46:28):
I think if Carly Class's code with class okay four
k's Oh no, I see that the team just sent
us a note. Okay, it's called code with class, just
code with c k w K. That's fine, keeping up
with Kardashi, that's fine. I got it wrong class if
you're watching, I apologize. I didn't mean to briefly call
(46:50):
you three k's and in four k's it is code
with closse. So what are some other things that you're
seeing that help fight the attle with regards to representation
so that the young women coming up don't have the
same hurdles to overcome from all the people that you've researched.
It's just what you say. It's like every single day
(47:10):
you see women doing it and it's just not a question.
It's just not even a question in your mind that you,
as a little girl could do that too. Katie. We
can end here with your podcasts, and I want you
to tell us. You know, you've talked about the men
who call in, but tell us a little bit about
(47:31):
the women who call in. Tell us a little bit
about the listeners and how your podcasts helps helps you
connect with women, helps educate women about the forgotten women
of history. Yeah. So we're a full five or one
c three nonprofit initiative where we're also doing children's books.
(47:54):
We're just starting on that. We're pulling together a huge
resource center where anyone and we're going to integrate that
with classrooms we hope, uh, we're uh. And we're partnering
with higher ed institutions all over the place to go
do these archaeological digs through their archives to find that
(48:15):
to unearthed the Caroline Parkers of the world. And it's
going to take some real, you know, human power to
do it. Um, this is not something chat GPT can do.
And taking shots at the AI I like it. Keep going. Yeah,
so we're only a couple of years old, but we're
really growing, which is which is nice. And we get
(48:38):
a lot of people. I couldn't believe it. I mean,
I'm used to having people excited when I show up
to report a story that I'm from the New York Times.
But when I went to m I T they said,
oh my gosh, Lost Women of Science is here. Hell yeah,
Oh and we were a Jeopardy clue, which like you've
(48:59):
made it, You're Jeopardy clear. It wasn't us. It was
Dorothy Anderson and cystic fibrosis. But there's no way those
clue that clue team would have known about her if
it hadn't been for us. What I think it's really
important about what you're doing is that, Um, to your
point about women not not hyping themselves up enough. You know,
I don't know a lot of mathematicians who love to
(49:20):
like do the kind of work that you're doing. But
communicating about science is so important, and especially if you want,
you know, young women to see women in science, it's
important to do that work because a lot of the
scientists either don't have you know, the time between lab work,
or do mathematicians work in a lab the math lab
work of they don't have the time or necessarily the
(49:44):
not meth lab math. And yeah, those kind of women
in STEM don't necessarily have the time or the inclination
to do that work. But we can't. We can't communicate
their work without people who are willing to do the
research and put it into that young girls who might
want to go into sciences can understand. So telling those
stories isn't important just posthumistly or for the people who
(50:08):
are still alive, but for the next generation of scientists.
Well exactly. And I like to say, let's end with
a Joan Didion quote, which is one of my favorite quotes.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and I
think that's it. We tell these stories in order for
these girls to live and do the work they love
(50:29):
to do. Well. That's as good a place to end
as any. Nicole, thank you, thank you, Katie, We thank you,
and thank you all for going beyond the scenes with us.
Thank you. It was fun. Technically a meth lab is
stim it is still. I wasn't gonna say we could
have gotten into that. That would have been so much fun,
(50:50):
But maybe not. I don't know. If you want to
research those pioneers yet knock out your three hundred first,
listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, wherever,
(51:11):
it don't matter. We're there.
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into topics that we talk about on The Daily Show.
This is what you gotta think of this podcast is
The Daily Show is the football game. This podcast is
the tailgate. It's the barbecue, it's the party, and outside
the stadium, it's the liquor that you snuck into the
stadium because it wasn't in a glass bottle with a
metal top, which we all know metal detectives can detect.
(00:29):
You gotta put that liquor in a plastic zip black
bag and sip it through the little griller and green seals.
It's Women's History Month, and so we're going to be
talking a little bit about a segment we did on
the show recently about women that have been forgotten in
stem and the way it's history overlooks them. This originated
(00:50):
based on a sketch that we did when Sarah Silverman
was guest hosting and she took on the role of
mad scientists doctor Insidia. Give it a clip. When you
ask people about the greatest female scientists of the twentieth century,
they'll give you the same names Marie Curry, Jangodall, Octavia Spencer,
(01:12):
but they always leave out the most important person, Doctor
Raquel and Sidi, the world's first female mad scientist in
the field of evil, Doctor Insidia was a relentless pioneer.
(01:33):
She put Genghis Khan's brain into a chimp. She made
Kentucky disappear, all of it for three years. No Kentucky.
She put a man on the moon as punishment. His
body's still up there. Unfortunately, in the nineteen fifties, the
mad sciences were dominated by men, so doctor Insidia faced
(01:55):
a lot of sexism. One time, she shrunk the prime
Minister of Lafia and trapped him in a jar. They
give her a two million dollar ransom. The next week,
a male Matt scientist kidnaps the same prime minister. They
give him four million dollars and a guest spawn at salt,
same prime minister, same jar. You tell me how that's
(02:17):
not sexism. To help us get deeper into the weeds
on this conversation, we're joined by Daily Show writer Nicole Conlin. Nicole,
how are you doing? I'm good? How are you welcome
inside the wonderful podcast studios here at a multimillion dollars
undisclosed location. I'm not allowed to say in Legal Department
star Tripping. We're also joined today by journalists and host
(02:40):
of the podcast Lost Women of Science, Katie Haffner. Katie,
welcome to be on the scene. How do you do? Oh,
how do you do? Thank you so much for having me. Yeah,
we're over here in New York. I know you're over
there in California. I'm not sure if it's mud slide
snow a forest fire week over there, but whichever week
it is, I hope you're being safe. I'm actually in
(03:02):
my roboat this morning in biblical ways. Okay, so flood
week it is. Let's dive right into this topic. You've spent,
you know, almost all of your career covering technology and
women who work in this dim field. What are some
of the disparities that stick out for you, you know
that you've seen in your coverage, because you know, when
(03:23):
you really think about erasure, and then there's also bias
on top of that. Just talk a little bit about,
you know, a little bit of the erasure that you've seen. Yeah. Well,
so when I so I used to cover this, I've
covered I mean, the only advantage of being superannuated, which
is a fancy word for old, is that I've had
(03:45):
a lot of time, like a lot of time to
get mad. Like, so what we say at lost Women
of Science is we're not mad, We're curious. Okay, we
are a little mad. So so when I was working
on this topic for the New York Times, which I
did for years, I wrote about thirty years ago, I
wrote a story that was called woman Computer Nerd and Proud,
(04:08):
And I looked at what it was among these three
young women at MIT who were computer scientists, Like where
did they get their moxie? Like how did they get
beyond all that macho crap that mite throws at you.
And a lot of it had to do with the
support they were getting. And then I did a follow
(04:31):
up because I was at the Times forever ten years
later and then ten years later again. Anyway, I won't
even tell you how how long I did these follow
ups for. But what you find is that this pipeline,
this famous pipeline, is real. You know, along the way
they bump into obstacles, and especially in fields like computer
(04:53):
science and physics, the science is like biology and are
easy for women. But there's just something about this feeling.
This it's partly imposter syndrome. It's partly just plain being
told you can't do it. So so that's the discouraging.
(05:16):
That's the discourage part. And then the erasure part is
what we do at Lost Women of Science. I mean,
these women Roy, these women have been absolutely obliterated from history.
In fact, I say my husband, Honey, you empty the dishwasher.
I am busy snatching women from the jaws of historical obscurity.
(05:38):
And that guy, he's got a job. So there are
I brought clinics and start in case I start to
cry because I'm kidding. I don't usually cry about this. So, however,
we have this database. I mean enough already with Marie Curie,
like I'm done with her. I mean, great, great job,
(06:01):
thank you very much. But U and Rosalind Franklin, there
are so many more. I mean for every Marie Cury,
there are hundreds. We have this database. We have binders
full of women who have not been given the recognition
they deserve through history. And it is it pisses me off.
(06:22):
And that's what we do at Lost Women as Science.
What was it about seeing those women at MIT that
made you go, wow? How did they get there? What
were the hurdles that you believe they had to overcome.
And how early in a woman's matriculation through life do
those hurdles start to present themselves? Wow? I love that
(06:43):
a woman's matriculation through life. Can we start using that?
Is it okaying that? As long as I can start
using superannuated? Yeah, I'm gonna go home today, I'd be like, sweetheart,
I think we need to throw away the milk. It's superannuation.
Isn't it a great word? I mean, I don't usually
use expensive words, but my gosh, that's a good one.
I'm sorry. So okay, Yeah, your question was the origins.
(07:07):
It's just from time immemorial. I mean think so women,
for some reason, you know, have been screwed since the
very beginning, and especially when it comes to natural curiosity
about the world around us. And a lot of times
(07:28):
it was the women doing them. Let's just kind of
call it the secretarial work, where they were actually doing
the science itself. There are a lot of couples, famous
men who were married to women who actually did the work,
and and the men took credit for it. I don't know.
(07:51):
You tell me where you've got the Y chromosome? What
is it? You know? We got to put jall in place,
you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I know, right, I
mean that was our place and we were not supposed
to be curious, and that's what science is all about.
Didn't Watson and Crick have? Wasn't there also a woman
that's the rusalind Franklin? So yeah, I know, right. So
(08:17):
that's the only one you can think of. Break that
down for the people who aren't familiar with that story, right, Okay,
So there were Watson and Crick and they are the
ones who discovered the structure of DNA in the nineteen fifties.
They got the Nobel Prize, just saying and she was
a chemist, an X ray crystallographer, and so she had
(08:41):
these images, these actual images of the double helix, and
she just got shunted aside and then she died, you know,
not that that was her fault, but you can't actually
award a Nobel Prize posthumously. So she was dead, but
there was no credit given to her at the time.
(09:05):
It's a little bit controversial about whether she actually deserved it.
The point is that Nicole is making two important things. Nicole.
That's what comes to mind is the whole Watson Creek thing.
But do we know any other examples? Well we should,
We should know dozens and dozens and dozens, and you know,
shame on us that we don't. But I would be
(09:26):
happy to list a bunch. We could be here for days.
Where does unfair snack? We need to do a two
part episode where does unfair compensation and sexual harassment come
into play as well? Because you also, I would imagine
you have to persevere like you're doing work you're not
(09:46):
getting credited for. Also while doing the work, somebody's trying
to grab your booty and then they're also paying your
thirty cent on the dollar. What is it about? Should
we talk about the booty first or the dollars? Well,
here's the bigger question is in your study of all
of these women that stay dedicated to these jobs in
spite of all of those hurdles, what do you think
(10:09):
it was that kept them there? Why did the MT
women remain? Why did they keep doing the work? Yeah? Well,
not to like rag on MT book. While we're at it,
we might might as well. So this amazing book it
just came out, called The Exceptions by Kate SERNICKI is
all about MIT and a lawsuit that was brought against
(10:32):
MIT by a bunch of women in the nineteen seventies,
which is relatively recent. I'm sorry, so the lawsuit was
brought brought in the nineties, but this was happening to
them in the seventies. MT. What Kate says in the
book is that women felt lucky. They felt lucky women
who were doing basically the shit jobs. Can I say, ship,
(10:55):
Oh yeah, the women who are doing these shit crap
jobs as basically glorified secretaries, but doing the science. They
felt lucky to have any job at all in the sciences,
so just to be oh, and they were hit on.
(11:16):
Did I mention that yet? Yea, So then it's the
price of it. They looked at the harassment and the
lack of conversation and the lack of credit as the
price of being a trailblazer into these fields. I don't
even think that, you know, it's such a good question.
I don't even know if they considered themselves trailblazers. They
just loved doing the science. I don't even know if
(11:38):
they were resentful that they were doing a lot of
the a lot of the basic science that went into
some really important discoveries. So Nicole as best you can.
In this building, you take something ness at where you
know you got to have a tissue on deck at
(11:59):
all times in case you cray about it. In talking
with Sarah Silverman about this piece, which ironically here's a
funny Daily Show story, first time I saw Sarah Silverman
in the building was when she was in character for
the Mad Side of the Sketch Good and She's got
the doctor Frankenstein Wig. She had that big electrified Afro
(12:23):
situation going on, because Katie, if you're not on a piece,
you're generally not in the loop on what else is happening.
You're like, what is going on? It's not even your week?
Why are you? But why how did you all settle
on a sketch? Because in the sketch she plays a
(12:43):
doctor whose work is stolen and credit a man gets
credit for it. Yeah, why sketch versus sayah, phil piece
versus having Sarah just talked about it at the desk.
I used to write for the Like Show Stephen Colbert,
and originally this was a piece that I had pitched
there um and I had I would love to say
it's because I'm an incredible feminist, but really what happened
is I was like, oh shit, I need something to
(13:04):
pitch today, and that day it happens to be National
Women and Girls in STEM Day, So I was like,
why can I pitch for this? And everything like there's
so many like really saddish he's about women in STEM
and I was like, I don't know how to make
any of this funny. But the idea of like what's
like a kind of science that we don't talk about
a lot? And I was like, well, there's no fe
about mad scientists. And so originally I had written it
(13:26):
for a character to talk to Stephen. So the way
that it appeared in the Daily Show is it's kind
of like a ken Burn style documentary about this fictional character,
whereas the original version I wrote would be for her
to be in studio talking to the host. And then
I pitched it in twenty nineteen, and as you know,
this was the height of the Trump administration where it
(13:48):
was like every day it was like, we don't have
time for anything else. Every day at three pm, he
would do the craziest thing you've ever us be like, yes,
we can't. We have to get rid of everything that
we've written and write something New So I've had the
sketch on deck for a long time, and every time
we've read it and address rehearsal, it's always gone so well.
And I've always believed in this sketch because even though
(14:08):
it's never been on air, I'm like, I know it's funny.
And so I pitched it again here. I know everybody's
saying it's not funny, but I know it's funny. It's funny,
it's thank you, thank you. And then so we got
here and I sent it into like our pitch email
list with the caveat of like, I know this is
like not we don't really do character interviews on our show,
(14:30):
but I have the sketch. Do you guys want it?
And then Sarah saw the pitch and she really wanted
to do it as a that Ken Vernon style documentary,
which makes sense one for her sensibility as like a
former sketch performer, and it makes more sense for a show.
And so I did like a full revamp of the
sketch and it ended up being really fun because then
we got a lot of funny visual gags that we
couldn't have gotten before. See years later vindicated. That's how
(14:52):
you do you never like because I know that had
to feel good. I feel good to finally get your
shit on the air. I've got a pitch that was
a proved in twenty fifteen. We're gonna get it on
and it's still it's still on the courtboard in my office.
It's called white Baseball, and it's just listen. I know
that's not what we're here to talk about, but it's
(15:14):
a piece about how a lot of predominantly black colleges
have predominantly white baseball teams and the reasons why, the
lack of minority whatever whatever, it was approved to go
out the door, Katie. Two weeks later, Trump was elected.
He has ruined so many of my sketches, aside from
what he's done to America, Katie, I have a question
(15:35):
for you, and you may not know the answer to this,
but as we're trying to like improve and get more
women into the sciences and talents and engineering, what are
the metrics by which we've decided we're succeeding or failing
at that? Is it simply numbers of people you know
graduating from college or who you know make a living
in stem or are there other Because like I you know,
(15:58):
as a woman in comedy, it's it's certainly much easier
now than it used to be, and I think it's
way easier than it is in the sciences. But I
know that, like now there's more women in comedy than ever,
but a lot of the issues they face are no
longer things that are they're like a little bit trickier
to tease out, and like we're so much further than
we were, but now it's harder to get over that
(16:19):
last hurdle because it's little insidious things that it's more hidden. Yeah,
it's more hidden, and it's it's more of like microaggressions
that aren't like you know, he working here is very good,
but elsewhere. So the shorter version of that is, how
are we deciding that we're making progress and succeeding it
getting more women into science. So yeah, the numbers speak
for themselves, and those are followed pretty closely, and so
(16:44):
we know we're making progress in a lot of the
different STEM I stuff. Get by the way, could we
just say what STEM stands where nobody knows anywhere. It's science, technology, engineering,
and math. Yes, keep thinking it's medicine, but it's not.
But it's not men. It's definitely not men. Okay, Engineering
(17:09):
and math okay. And so the numbers are creeping up
and that's really good. Uh And but some of the
places where the numbers are not are stagnant and very frustratingly.
So are is a computer science which is what I've
been covering forever and uh, I don't know what it is,
but they just stay at like twenty percent of graduates.
(17:34):
And so there's there's a wonderful program at Northeastern called
the Center for Inclusive Computing, which really looks at kind
of the root cause of all of this and what
it is it's actually happening in the classroom where women
or the actual programming languages that get taught, you know,
really trying to as you say, tease apart some of
(17:56):
the nuances here, uh as as early as elementary school teachers,
because a lot of computer sciences math teachers get video
recorded because they swear they call on the girls just
as much. But when you do the video of them
(18:18):
and show them the video, they're calling on the boys
and they and then they are shocked. Everything you're talking
about is so extensive, to the point that now there's
a term for it. Like, if you're a woman and
your work is erased by a man, it's called the
Matilda effect. I think that having putting a name to
it helps to make people believe that it is a
(18:39):
real thing. I don't know what it is about humans,
but we have to know what's the causation and thus
therefore and we have the data. And then people go, oh,
you're right, I am unconsciously sexist. I didn't know that.
Thank you for that. So break down the Matilda affect
a little bit for everyone and exactly what that is
and how that came to be. This is this wonderful
woman named Margaret Rossiter. She's been studying the history of
(19:03):
women in science and has generated these two huge volumes
of women in science, and she's she's at Cornell and
she is the one who coined the term the Matilda effect.
Matilda was Matilda Joscelyn Engage, who was a suffragist in
the eighteen hundreds, who wrote a pamphlet actually about women
(19:25):
as inventors, and so this think about it. This was
in the eighteen hundreds. She wrote this pretty amazing, and
women as inventors who get kind of overshadowed. Shanta decide
whatever you want to say by men. And so what
doctor Rossiter decided was to put a name to the
(19:45):
phenomenon of when a discovery happens and the man takes credit,
and but a woman played as large, if not a larger,
role than the man. This Matilda effect is it's everywhere,
(20:09):
and it's throughout history, and it still happens today. How
receptive are people to this new information when you present it?
You know, we live in a good Yeah, we live
in an age of trying to write a lot of
history that was written by biased people, you know. And
(20:30):
we also live in an age now where they're trying
to undo anything new you try and put in a
history book, don't you dare? We we've been learning this, right,
I can't learn new shit? Please stop? So how receptive
are people when you bring this new information? You know?
And I stopped short of calling it revisionist history, it's history,
(20:52):
like it's just yeah, we say we're we don't say
were we are correcting the historical record. We say we
are revisiting historical record. I know, isn't that smart? I
wonder if I thought of that? I know? So, um, yeah,
people are incredibly receptive. In fact, we have a lost
(21:16):
women of science hotline, the emergency line emergency No, No,
they're dead. All our women are dead, by the way,
so they can't speak for themselves. So it's people who
call in the hot line and say, you have to
know about this woman who got screwed by history, and um,
(21:38):
amazingly enough, a lot of them are men, which is
who call in, which is great relatives, co workers of Like,
what is their relation to the people they're calling about?
People in the field who know that it was a
woman who did this? I know? Doesn't that story your
(22:00):
faith in men? In some men? I don't know. I
know a lot of men, and I don't have I
don't have faith in all of them. After the break,
I want to get a little bit more into the
roots of this and how you two ladies are experiencing
life now as women's in your field. That's the word
(22:20):
I just made up. It's not as eloquent as your word,
but I'm gonna use it as women's mouth On beyond
the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes, welcome back.
We're talking about the erasure of women in stem and
Katie and Nicole have been walking me through all of
this and showing me all the ways that men take
(22:44):
credit for the shit that women been doing at the job.
I'll dare you stop it now. You two are very
interesting to me in the sense that you all have
figured out outlets for for change in the issues that
you've identified. You know, Katie, you have your podcast where
you talk about this very issue a lot. But Nicole,
(23:07):
I want I'm gonna start with you first, and because
it's interesting because as a comedian, it's, oh, that's that's sad.
How can I make that funny? How can I make
people laugh at it so they can then figure out
the truth and how you're laughing? Got your motherfuck you
just learning? How do you face the stark reality of
(23:29):
women in science getting overlooked and then going, I know
how to make that funny? Because I Delvin that all
the time. Yeah. Well, when I'm not writing for The
Daily Show, I work a lot in the climate space.
And I'm not a scientist, but I like I write
for my friends, UM like educational climate YouTube channel, UM
and I UM, I know, right surprise on the side
(23:51):
talk about yeah, and so like when you're in the
climate space, like it's all bad news, it's just it's
all just a bummer, and we have to make for
my friend's channel, Climatetown. Unfortunately my friends a man, I'm
so sorry, um, but we have to make it funny.
It's a comedy YouTube channel. And I think the best
piece of advice that I ever got about that was
from Tom Purcell, an executive producer at Colbert, and his
(24:14):
advice was, there's a there's a story about mister Rogers
where after nine to eleven kids were coming to him
and they were like, how can we handle this? You know,
this is like like how can we continue going in
the world when this has happened? And mister Rogers advice
it's like, look for the helpers, children, and look for
the helpers. And Tom Purcell, it's like, what we're writing
about something that's a bummer, look for the non helpers.
(24:36):
Look for the people who are making it worse. Look
for the people who are doing something stupid or bad
or wrong, and like that's what you direct your anger at.
So so when that comes to climate, it's like, obviously
people who are like passing bad legislation or are like um,
starting misinformation campaigns, and with women and stem it's you
(24:58):
know this sketch is sort of the exception, because the
sketch was just like, what is the silliest possible version
that I can do of this? But it plays in
the area of a little bit. It's a little bit
like when you know there's some other a woman commits
some other major crime and everybody's like, she gets prosecuted,
and everybody's like, well, the woman gets prosecuted and not
not the men. This is classic sexism. It's like, I
(25:20):
don't think the woman should not be prosecuted for like,
you know, shooting murdering somebody. I think the issue is
that the men don't. And so I wanted to play
in that area of like a woman who has committed
horrible crimes facing sexism, but like maybe we like we
should pay at touch it to her crimes also, But
when we're I'm communicating broad her heart issues, what I
try to think about is like who are the who
are the bad guys? And how can I make fun
(25:42):
of those people as opposed to like thinking about like
who has been victimized by that bad issue? Does that
make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So Dan, I
would say to the converse, Katie, then your work is
about finding the helpers or helping the helpers posthumously when
we talk about you know, a lot of the names
(26:02):
that you've discovered from the thirties and the forties and
the fifties, and you know, the good old days of
women's rights. As I liked when they were called women's lippers. Yeah,
oh no, that was that didn't even start till the sevenies.
There was no word. Oh there were the suffragists. Yeah,
So during that time where you know, women were definitely
(26:26):
had not yet breached a lot of the legislation that
we have today. Who were some of the names and
people that you discover, you know that surprised you, you know,
during that time, who were some of those helpers? Well,
first of all, I don't even know if I want
to call them helpers. I want to call them the doers.
So one of the most moving women we found was
(26:50):
this woman named Dorothy Anderson, who is the subject of
our first season. A physician in the nineteen thirties. She
wanted to go into surgery, but surgery was closed to women.
Let me just stop her a sex. Do you are
you surprised by anything I'm saying, Like when I tell
you things like surgery was closed to women. Are you
(27:12):
just yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this this all tracks. I've
read enough about racism to believe that there are other
horrible forms of oppression. Well yeah, racism happening, and everything
else was gravy. Yeah, well I know. And our hero
in season three, just to digress for one sec is
(27:33):
Um is this amazing black engineer named Hyy Clark who
I just love her. So we just fell so in
love with her. So she had a whole you know,
double whammy being a black scientist in the nineteen forties.
But anyway back to Dorothy. So Dorothy Anderson couldn't get
(27:56):
into surgery because she was a woman. She ended up
becoming a pathologist because in fact, patients people didn't want
to see a female doctor. So women, female physicians back
then tended to work behind the scenes. They could deliver babies,
and they did things like pathology and radiology, which is
(28:18):
you don't see the doctor. So she became a pathologist
at Columbia Baby's Hospital, and she was doing an autopsy,
which is what pathologists do. And this baby had been
diagnosed with celiac and so it was very common for
(28:39):
celiac to be the diagnosis when it was actually something
very different, and she figured out what it was and
it was cystic fibrosis. So she is the one who
first discovered cystic fibrosis and named it and was come
(29:00):
completely forgotten and some guy is thought to be the
one who discovered it. Oh, the whole thing. So she
is our I guess, our prototype, she's our you know,
she's the one we hold up as and we didn't
(29:22):
even you know, we found an old biography, a manuscript
in somebody's basement in Connecticut that had never been published,
and we used that as our guide and it was
really it was an amazing uh, an amazing season to
put together. And then there's let me just tell you this.
One other thing about that is that there was a
(29:43):
portrait of her that was painted and commissioned by either
Columbia or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which was hanging in
the lobby of Babies Hospital for years and disappeared. And
so we did an entire episode called The Dude Wall,
which is actually Rachel Maddows. She coined the term the
(30:07):
Dude Wall when she was giving a talk at Rockefeller
University and she's going into the auditorium and she's like
what's with the dude wall? And so it's all these
you know, old white men on these walls. And Dorothy's
portrait was never found. We never ever has it replaced. Yeah,
it was taken down at some point and up went
(30:29):
the dude wall. And Dorothy's portrait is gone. And it's beautiful.
It's we have a photo of it. We can't at
least print a jpeg replica that we have, we I know, right, yeah,
I know, I'm good, Katie. I need some good news.
Where my tissue? What's interesting about what you do? So
(30:50):
I did an episode of Finding Your Roots shout out
to doctor Henry Lewis Gates. What I discovered on that
show is how extensive it is to find out shit
about people, Like it's one thing to trace your family's history,
but you're trying to trace the employment history and accomplishments
of people for which there's even less paperwork, like oh
(31:13):
my gosh, and they thought so they had such low
self esteem. They never they didn't leave their papers too,
so that we have, we can't find their papers. So
this journey of finding all of these interesting one someone
calls the hotline, gives you the name and to do
a podcast. You have to do extensive research on these people.
This isn't just you plug in a mic and go,
(31:34):
let me tell you about this shit. I heard, yes, no, no, no, no,
that's what we do, right, No, no, we yeah. Okay.
So then within that process, how do you stumble on
the fact that one of your blood relatives who you
descended from is one of the people that you're fighting for.
How did you discover that? Oh, you mean my grandmother? Yes,
(31:57):
how did you get to that place? So? Well, summer,
I was just, you know, hanging around twiddling my thumbs,
and I thought, what if what about my grandmother? I
think she did something, And so I googled her name
and I saw that the Leona Zacharias papers are held
in a special collection at MIT and Harvard, which is
(32:19):
the two places where she worked. I thought, what did
she do? And so I got in touch with the archivists.
Bless their hearts, these women. So a lot of these
institutions are actually going back and looking for women. And
I said, you know, I want to know what's in
the files of my grandmother Leona Zacharias. And they started
(32:40):
to tell me, and I'm like, holy shit, she was
really smart. So she got her PhD from Columbia in
biology in nineteen thirty seven, which is a long time ago.
My grandfather, who was a famous physicist, got all the attention,
so the only career we ever heard about growing up
(33:01):
was his. She worked on something called retrolental fibroplasia, which
was this mystery in the nineteen forties where babies born
with perfectly fine eyesight then went blind and the question
is what's causing it. Stevie Wonders maybe the most famous
example of that. And she was one of the team
(33:27):
trying to figure out the cause. And nobody knew this
that she was, that she was instrumental in this. And
when I was at the art I went to visit
the archives and I'm sitting there with the papers, and
I come across this one paper and on the front
of the paper it was one of the men on
(33:50):
the paper wrote to Leona, the real author of this paper,
and I'm like, oh my god, and I now. And
so it's now called rattinopathy of prematurity. It's still a problem,
but for different reasons. But yeah, and the cause, well,
I'm not even going to tell you the cause of this.
(34:12):
Stephen wonder can tell you the couples. Wouldn't we talk
about the stereotypes that you know, women like your grandmother
had to deal with back then. How much of a
difference would you say there is between the stereotypes in
those thirties, forties and fifties versus the MT the three
MT women that you wrote about Stephanie Winner Ellen spirit
(34:34):
is making smith the stereotypes from the thirties to the
nineties to now that you know, it would love for
both of you to speak on that. You know, we
talk a little bit about things being a little more covert,
but I would love to drill down a little bit
more and just what you have seen in your research
Katie versus Nicole what you experience now in the workplace,
(34:54):
because I'm sure, like especially the comedy, it's easy to
just throw out a joke and then someone else throws
out the same joke an hour later, they go, oh,
that's a brilliant joke. We're gonna do the joke, and like, motherfucker,
I just I solve that problem by never writing brilliant jokes.
We want to see them. It's it's well, I mean,
it's extra quicky in this environment because we're specifically writing
(35:18):
jokes for somebody else for you know, until I started
working here and we've had guest hosts for a man,
So part of literally my job is to write jokes
that I will never get credit for. Um. I was
pretty lucky that I came up in an era where
like a lot of the really overt sexism at least
(35:41):
wasn't directed at me. I think, honestly, I just have
the advantage of being pretty tall and pretty confident, so
people that goes into the looks and stereotype thing. It does.
But one thing that that at least in comedy, I
would hope that the supply of the science is so
much is a lot of times for women, like being
a good comedian is equated with being like raunchier and
(36:04):
like more willing to like talk about taboo topics, which
is great and I love the comedians who can do that.
I personally am more of a goofball and so I
feel like the opportunities that that I get shut out
of more for being a woman are are weirdly the
like ones that you think of as being less sexist,
because because they're just silly and it's and it's again
(36:26):
now we're into that area where it's like, I can't
point to an example of a man pointing a union
being like, you can't do this because women aren't funny,
But I can. I. You know, every once in a while,
I'll there will be a situation where I'm like, I
think you're I think you're not laughing at this because
I because you're not taking me seriously. But I can't
ever know for sure I can prove. Yeah. One thing
(36:47):
that I've noticed is if I'm on stage telling jokes,
I can't look to polished. If I look really done up,
then I get fewer laughs than if I look like
a little chrummy. If I wear a hoodie I wear,
I get more jokes than if I or more laughs
than if I were directing. Yeah, And I don't know
why because it's also I don't know that that's true
for every woman, but for me specifically, that's what I've noticed.
(37:09):
I think that's true across the board and stand up,
and it's interesting. I think as a woman performer, you're
also dealing with the stereotypes and insecurities of the women
in the audience as well as the men, like you're
being judged by two different groups for two different reasons concurrently,
and then if you get past that stereotypical gauntlet, is
(37:29):
the joke funny? Yeah, yeah, Katie. What are some of
the differences in the stereotypes that you think earlier erased
women had to overcome versus some of the more modern
day erasure or is there even a difference? Yeah, Well,
what we were saying earlier about the it's more subtle
than it used to be. It used to be just
(37:50):
a you know, foregone conclusion that you know, women didn't
belong in the lab and women like going out on
ocean research vessels were not allowed to go. There's a
famous woman, luckily she's her name is beginning to crop
up more and more, Marie Tharpe, who actually mapped the
ocean floor, but she wasn't allowed out on the research
(38:13):
vessels because she was a woman. That has changed, you know,
that is now a non issue. The issues however, so
one of you you talked about the women, and thank
you for saying their names. Megan Smith who went on
to a big job at Google and then became like
chief Technology Officer of the United States, and she really
(38:34):
brilliant mechanical engineer, you know, having spoken to these three women,
what do you think lit the fire for them to
decide to go through that gauntlet, to walk over those
coals of inequality. Loved it, They just loved it. You know,
when you talk about women and write about women. There's
a famous thing called the Finkbiner Test. Have you heard
(38:57):
of it? Where it's as Science Journal US named Anne Finkbiner,
who one day had been writing about women and science
for Song. One day she said, I'm just so sick
of having to write about how they, you know, managed
to do you know, strike a work life balance, or
that's the obstacles they had to overcome, or even talk about,
(39:17):
you know, what their husband does for a living, or
all the sexism that they've that they've experienced. And she said,
from now on, I am never putting that in a
profile of a woman. I'm not even gonna say she's
a woman. And I know, right, And so we at
Lost Women of Science decided we were going to take
her on and we were gonna so we did a
(39:37):
whole episode called the Finkbiner Test because that Lost Women
of Science we flunk it all the time. Because the
test is, if you do any of these things you've
flunked our test. And so we interviewed her for the
episode and we pushed back on that. I said, it's
absolutely instrumental what it is that these women through history
had to deal with. It's completely elephant. And she ended
(40:01):
up um kind of agreeing with us. But the but
want to make the way that the Finkbinder tests got
put on the map was at the New York Times,
And I actually still do this for the Times. I
write um obituaries and advanced obituaries and and one of
the oh bits of a famous scientist, an actual rocket scientist.
(40:25):
The lead are you ready for this? The lead on
that piece was she made a mean beef stroke and off,
Oh boy, I know I I have also chosen to
be a bad cook because they remember me for that.
So there was this outcry and the public editor at
(40:49):
the paper had to get involved and they revised that lead.
I mean, that was pretty outrageous. But it's like it
was not that long ago. It was just a few
years ago. Well after the break, Um, we're gonna bring
it home this wonderful discussion. I want to talk with
you about possible solutions to this issue. Also, I want
to talk about how representation of women in the classroom
(41:12):
as being an inspiration so that young women can see
themselves are already doing the thing that they want to do,
and how that matters, and what men can do to
finally be a part of the solution is the lost woman. Yeah,
this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond
(41:34):
the scenes. We're bringing home this wonderful conversation about women
in stem and the contributions they've made and how they
are somehow oddly left out of the history books and
then the credit is taken forth by men. Let's talk
about men for a second, Katie and the Katie if
we must, Yeah, I know we don't want to, but
(41:56):
we must. What do you think keeps men from men
in these spaces from fighting for more gender equity? Like,
what do you think the pushback is? Is it not
being called cool by your friends or is it just
a boys club? Yeah? I think men in general are
a little bit back on their heels these days, especially
(42:19):
white men. In fact, one thing that women say about
what's happening these days is that as as you see
more and more women filling the ranks of scientists around
the world, women report that they get these subtle and
not so subtle suggestions that the only reason they got
(42:44):
the job was that they were a woman at the
expense of a more qualified white man. One thing that
I will say is I think it's much easier for
men or any dominant group to help any non dominant
group when they're simply around them more. You know my
friend who I mentioned as a YouTube channel, Rally Williams,
he also does like live climate comedy shows, and he's
(43:05):
really good about bringing on female scientists because one it's
important to him, and too he just he knows them
so it's easy for him to call them up and
text him. I met UM doctor Ayan Elizabeth Johnson, who's
a marine biologist who does a lot of work in conservation.
She's great UM. I met her through his show UM
because he went to Columbia and studied UM climate policy there,
(43:25):
and so, like, I think, just on like UM a
very basic social level, there's still right, you know, not
a lot of mixing between groups, and it makes it
hard to you know, if your if your lab is hiring,
if you like don't know anybody and women to text
(43:46):
to be like, hey are you available to lead? I
don't know enough about science to say, don't be like
you guys. This is this is why I took up golf.
So because it's like this. I have these golf balls
and I had them custom made with RBG. A quote
from RBG. Women belong where decisions are made. I mean,
(44:07):
this is where these this stuff gets decided. Now here's
the thing I've I've played golf since I was five
years old, and when you were playing golf, the only
thing you're thinking is going the stupid I don't have
time to network, okay, so but I want to do
(44:27):
a big shout out actually to my husband, whose name
is Bob Walter, who runs UM. He's Chair of Medicine
UM at UCSF, which is University of California, San Francisco
for those of you on the East coast. He runs
this huge department, the Department of Medicine is huge, and
he without ever thinking UM, he hires women. Who's really amazing.
(44:54):
How many women work for work for him and consider
him basedically the best boss they've ever had. And it's
just because he's so good at seeing good people and
hiring wisely. And it's an amazing department at UCSF. Run.
(45:20):
I have to say mostly with the exception of him
by a bunch of women. Give us, give us more
of this, because I'm feeling optimism now, I'm feeling the
need to not cry as much. So I'm gonna try
to extract a little more optimism out of you right now.
Now we talk about representation towards young people so that
(45:43):
they don't have the same stereotypical beliefs where I need
to be a woman and I just need to be
quiet and make castle roles. The Integrated post Secondary Education
Data SISTANT statistics from them forty five people majoring in
STAM in twenty twenty women Barbie on International Women's Day,
I drop the women in STEM, doll, excuse me, a
(46:07):
whole set of women in STEM. And then you have
correct me if from mispronouncing this. It's Carly Class's code
in which it helps young people learn code. Correct. Yeah,
with the K Carly Class's code, which is the good KKK.
(46:28):
I think if Carly Class's code with class okay four
k's Oh no, I see that the team just sent
us a note. Okay, it's called code with class, just
code with c k w K. That's fine, keeping up
with Kardashi, that's fine. I got it wrong class if
you're watching, I apologize. I didn't mean to briefly call
(46:50):
you three k's and in four k's it is code
with closse. So what are some other things that you're
seeing that help fight the attle with regards to representation
so that the young women coming up don't have the
same hurdles to overcome from all the people that you've researched.
It's just what you say. It's like every single day
(47:10):
you see women doing it and it's just not a question.
It's just not even a question in your mind that you,
as a little girl could do that too. Katie. We
can end here with your podcasts, and I want you
to tell us. You know, you've talked about the men
who call in, but tell us a little bit about
(47:31):
the women who call in. Tell us a little bit
about the listeners and how your podcasts helps helps you
connect with women, helps educate women about the forgotten women
of history. Yeah. So we're a full five or one
c three nonprofit initiative where we're also doing children's books.
(47:54):
We're just starting on that. We're pulling together a huge
resource center where anyone and we're going to integrate that
with classrooms we hope, uh, we're uh. And we're partnering
with higher ed institutions all over the place to go
do these archaeological digs through their archives to find that
(48:15):
to unearthed the Caroline Parkers of the world. And it's
going to take some real, you know, human power to
do it. Um, this is not something chat GPT can do.
And taking shots at the AI I like it. Keep going. Yeah,
so we're only a couple of years old, but we're
really growing, which is which is nice. And we get
(48:38):
a lot of people. I couldn't believe it. I mean,
I'm used to having people excited when I show up
to report a story that I'm from the New York Times.
But when I went to m I T they said,
oh my gosh, Lost Women of Science is here. Hell yeah,
Oh and we were a Jeopardy clue, which like you've
(48:59):
made it, You're Jeopardy clear. It wasn't us. It was
Dorothy Anderson and cystic fibrosis. But there's no way those
clue that clue team would have known about her if
it hadn't been for us. What I think it's really
important about what you're doing is that, Um, to your
point about women not not hyping themselves up enough. You know,
I don't know a lot of mathematicians who love to
(49:20):
like do the kind of work that you're doing. But
communicating about science is so important, and especially if you want,
you know, young women to see women in science, it's
important to do that work because a lot of the
scientists either don't have you know, the time between lab work,
or do mathematicians work in a lab the math lab
work of they don't have the time or necessarily the
(49:44):
not meth lab math. And yeah, those kind of women
in STEM don't necessarily have the time or the inclination
to do that work. But we can't. We can't communicate
their work without people who are willing to do the
research and put it into that young girls who might
want to go into sciences can understand. So telling those
stories isn't important just posthumistly or for the people who
(50:08):
are still alive, but for the next generation of scientists.
Well exactly. And I like to say, let's end with
a Joan Didion quote, which is one of my favorite quotes.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and I
think that's it. We tell these stories in order for
these girls to live and do the work they love
(50:29):
to do. Well. That's as good a place to end
as any. Nicole, thank you, thank you, Katie, We thank you,
and thank you all for going beyond the scenes with us.
Thank you. It was fun. Technically a meth lab is
stim it is still. I wasn't gonna say we could
have gotten into that. That would have been so much fun,
(50:50):
But maybe not. I don't know. If you want to
research those pioneers yet knock out your three hundred first,
listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts, wherever,
(51:11):
it don't matter. We're there.
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