You're listening to Comedy CENTRALOW Hey, what's up? Ears Edition listener, It's Roy Wood, junior correspondent for The Daily Show. You're about to hear an episode of one of our original Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes, hosted by Yours Truly. It's the show where we dive deeper into segments and topics from the show with the show's writers, producers and experts. In this episode, we're talking about phenomenal and forgotten women
in STEM. I'm joined by Daily Show writer Nicole Conlin and hosted the podcast Lost Women of Science Katie Haffner to take a closer look at the historic contributions women have made to science, the discouragement women facing the male dominated field, and how we can encourage more young girls to embark on STEM careers. Hope you enjoyed and if you like the show, check out the Beyond the Scenes podcast.
Wherever you get your podcasts, Wherever you got this podcast, where you can get that podcast, We'll get more podcasts. Stop tripping. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeferent to 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 partying
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 detectors can detect. You gotta put that liquor in a plastic ziplock bag and sip it through the little yellow 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 ways history overlooks them. This originated based on a schedule we did when Sarah Silverman was guest hosting and she took on the role of mad scientists Doctor Insidia. Give me the clip.
When you ask people about the greatest female scientist of the twentieth century, they'll give you the same names Mary Currie, Jangodall, Octavius Spencer, but they always leave out the most important person, Doctor Raquel Incidia, the world's first female.
Mad scientist.
In the field of evil.
Doctor in Sidia was a relentless pioneer 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 Incidia faced a lot of sexism.
One time she shrunk the Prime Minister of Latvia and trapped him in a jar. They gave her a two million dollar rant. The next week, a mail mad scientist kidnaps the same prime minister. They give him four million dollars and a guest spa on at solid same prime minister, same jar. You tell me how that's 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 our multimillion dollar, undisclosed location. I'm not allowed to say legal department, Start tripping. We're also joined today by journalists and host of the podcast Lost Women of Science, Katie Haffner. Katie, welcome to beyond the Scenes. 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, slight, snow, or forest fire week over there, but whichever week it is, I hope you're being safe.
I'm actually in my rowboat this morning because it's bringing in biblical ways.
Okay, so floodweek 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, we 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 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 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 story that was called Women Computer Nerd and Proud, 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 MIT throws at you, And a lot of it
had to do with the support they were getting. And then I did a follow 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 science and physics, the science is like biology and are easier for women. But there's just something about out this feeling. This it's partly imposter syndrome, it's partly just plain being told you can't do it. So that's the discouraging, that's the discourage part, and then the erasure part is what we do at Lost women of science. I mean these women, rory, 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.
And then 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, thank you very much. But Russell and Franklin, there are so many more. I mean for every Marie Curie, there are hundreds. We have this database. We have binders full of women who have not been given the uh, the recognition they deserve through history. And
it is it's uh it pisces me off. 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 A woman's matriculation through life. Can we start using that?
Is that?
Okay, well you start using that, as long as I can start using super annuated.
Yeah, I'm gonna go home sday.
I'd be like sweeter, I think we need to throw away the milk. It's super annuated.
Isn't that 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. 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 it was the women doing the 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 the
men took credit for it. I don't know, you tell me why you've got the Y chromosome?
What is it?
You know?
We got to put y'all in y'all place, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, I know, right, I mean that was our place and we were not support to be curious, and that's what science is all about.
Didn't Watson and Krick have Wasn't there also a woman that's.
The Rosalind Franklin.
Yeah, I know, right, so that's the only one you can think of.
But break that down for the people who aren't familiar with that story, right, Okay.
So there were Watson and Krik, 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 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. It's a little bit controversial about whether she actually deserved it. But the point is that Nicole is making two important things. Nicole, That's what comes to mind is the whole Watson Crick 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 happy to like list a bunch. We could be here for days.
Where does unfaired 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 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 it?
Did?
Should we talk about the booty first or the dollar?
Well, here's the bigger question is in your study of all of these women that stayed dedicated to these jobs in spite of all of those hurdles, what do you think it was that kept them there? Why did the MIT women remain? Why did they keep doing the work?
Yeah?
Well, not to like rag on MIT, but while we're at it, we might might as well. So this amazing book it just came out, called The Exceptions by Kate Sernicke, is all about MIT and a lawsuit that was brought against MIT by a bunch of women in the nineteen seventies, which is relatively recent I'm sorry.
So the lawsuit.
Was brought in the nineties, but this was happening to them in the seventies at MIT. 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 sit, Oh, yeah, saw.
The women who are doing these shit crap jobs.
As base 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. 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, that's such a good question. I don't even know if they considered themselves trail blazers. They just loved doing the science. I don't even know if they were resentful that they were doing 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 that's sad, where you know, you got to have a tissue on deck at all times in case you cry about it. In talking with Sarah Silmen 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 Man Sketch Good
and the Doctor Frankenstein Wig. She had that big electrified Afro 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 weaknack? But why how did you all settle on a sketch? Because in the sketch she plays a doctor whose work is stolen and credit a man gets credit for it. Yeah, why sketch versus say, a phil piece, versus having Sarah just talk about it at the desk.
I used to write for the Late Show of Stephen Colbert, and originally this was a piece that I had pitched there, and I had I would love to say it's because I'm an incredible feminist, but really what what happened is I was like, oh shit, I need something to 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 sad issues 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 female mad scientists. And so originally I had written it 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 was like every day was like we don't.
Have time for anything else.
Every day at three pm, he would do the craziest thing you've ever doized here, and they'd 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 this sketch on deck for a long time, and every time we've read it in address.
Or her well, it's.
Always gone so well, and I've always believed in this sketch because even though 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.
Don't go it's funny. It's funny.
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, but I have this sketch.
Do you guys want it? And then Sarah saw the pitch and she.
Really wanted to do it as a that ken Burn 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 you do. You never let because I know that it had to feel good. I feel good to finally get your shit on the air. I've got a pitch that was approved in twenty fifteen.
We're gonna get it on DV roach 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 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 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 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, as a woman in comedy, it's certainly much easier now than it used to be, and I think it's way easier than it is an 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 last hurdle because it's little insidious things that it's more hidden, it's more hidden, and it's it's more of like microaggressions that aren't like you know, 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 we know we're making progress in a lot of the different STEM stuff. By the way, could we just say what STEM stands where nobody knows anymore. It's science, technology, engineering.
And mathics math.
Yes, keep thinking it's medicine, but it's not.
But it's not men. It's definitely not nith Okay, science, blogy, okay, engineering and math okay, cantin you can tell.
And so the numbers are creeping up, and that's really good. But some of the places where the numbers are not are staying stagnant, and very frustratingly, so are is computer science, which is what I've been covering forever, and I don't know what it is, but they just stay at like
twenty percent of graduates. 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 that'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 the nuances here as early as elementary school teachers, because a lot of computer science is math,
teachers get video recorded because they swear they call on the girls just as much. But when you do the video of them 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 putting a name to it helps to make people believe that it is a real thing. I don't know what it is about humans, but we have to No, it'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 effect 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 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 Gage, who was a suffragist in the eighteen hundreds who wrote a pamphlet actually about women 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, shunted aside, whatever you want to say, by men. And so what doctor Rossiter decided was to put a name to the phenomenon of when a discovery happens, and the man takes credit, but a woman played as large, if not a larger, role than the man. This Matilda effect is it's everywhere, 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 it. Yeah, we live in an age of trying to write a lot of history that was written by biased people, you know, And 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? What we've been learning is 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 revision? Is history? It's history, Like it's.
Just yeah we say we're we don't say we're we are correcting the historical record. We say we are revisiting.
The historical record.
I know.
Isn't that smart? I wonder if I thought of that?
I know?
So, Yeah, people are incredibly receptive. In fact, we have a lost Women of Science hotline, the emergency line emergency are you No? No, They're dead? All are women are dead? By the way, so they can't speak for themselves. So it's people who call in the hotline and say, you have to know about this woman.
Who got screwed by history.
And amazingly enough, a lot of them are men, which is who call in, which is.
Great relatives, co workers of the 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 restore your faith in men?
In some men?
I don't know.
I know a lot of men, and 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 a word I just made up. It's not as eloquent as your word, but I'm gonna use it as Women's Month. On Beyond the Scenes.
We'll be right back beyond the scenes, welcome back. We are 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 credit for the shit that women been doing at the job. I dare you stop it now? You two are very interesting to me in the sense that you all have figured out outlets 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, I want to I want to 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? Gotcha, motherfucker, you just learn how do you face the stark reality of women in science getting overlooked and then going, ah, I know how to make that funny because I delving 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 like educational climate YouTube channel, and I I know, right, surprise.
On the side, just what the talking 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 uh for my friend's channel, climate Town. Unfortunately my friends and man, I'm so sorry 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 advice was 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 was like, look for the helpers. Children, Look for the helpers.
And Tom Purcell's like, when we're writing about something that's a bummer, look for the non helpers. 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 like starting misinformation campaigns, and with women in stem it's you 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 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 is 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 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, like we shoul pay attend it to her crimes also. But when we're I'm communicating broader, hard issues, what I try to think about is like who are the bad guys and how can I make fun of those people as opposed to like thinking about like who has been victimized by that bad issue?
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So then 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 that you've discovered from the thirties and the four in the fifties, and you know, the good old days of women's rights, as I liked to do.
Yeah, when they were called women's slippers.
Yeah, oh no, that was that didn't even start till the sevenies, so there.
Was no word. Oh there were the suffragists.
Yeah, So during that time where you know, women were definitely had not yet reached 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 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 sick do you get? Are you surprised by anything I'm saying, Like, when I tell you things like surgery was closed to women, are you just yeah.
Yeah, no, no, this all this all tracks. I've read enough about racism to believe that there are other horrible forms of oppression. Well, yeah, just racism happened and everything else was gravy.
Yeah, well I know.
And our hero in season three, just to digress for one second, is this amazing black engineer named yy 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 into surgery because she was a woman. She ended up becoming a pathologist because in fact, patience 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 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 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 completely forgotten and some guy.
Uh is thought to be the one who discovered it.
He wrote the journal.
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 even you know, we found an old biography, a manuscript in somebody's basement in Connecticut that had never been published, and we use 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 portrait of her that was painted and commissioned by either Columbia or the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which was hanging in the lobby of Baby's Hospital for years and disappeared. And so we did an entire episode
called the Dude Wall, which is actually Rachel Madows. She coined the term the dude Wall when she was giving a talk at Rockefeller University and she's going into the auditorium and she's like, what's what 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.
Was it replaced.
Yeah, it was taken down at some point and up went the dude wall and Dorothy's portrait is gone, and it's beautiful.
It's we have a photo of it.
We can at least print a jpeg replica and put that.
No we have I know, right, yeah.
I know, I know.
I'm good, Katie. I need some good news. What my tissue? What's interesting about what you do? So 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 tray 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 my gosh, and they thought so they had such low self esteem. They never they didn't leave their papers too, so that we had we can't find their papers.
So this journey of finding all of these interesting one that 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, let me tell you about this shit I heard yesterda.
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?
How did you get to that place?
So last summer I was just, you know, hanging around twiddling my 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 MITN Harvard, which is 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 to tell me, and I'm like, holy shit, she was really smart. So she got her PhD from Colombian 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 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 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 AR, 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 the paper wrote to Leona, the real author of this paper.
And I'm like, oh my god, and I know.
And so it's now called retinopathy of prematurity. It's a problem, but for different reasons. But yeah, and the cause, well, I'm not even going to tell you the cause of this. Steven Wonder can tell you the kupas.
When 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 MIT the three MIT women that you wrote about Stephanie Wynn Or Ellen spurg Is, Magan Smith, the stereotypes from the thirties to the nineties to now that you know, and 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, 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 and they go, oh, that a brilliant joke. We're going to do the joke, and like, motherfucker, I.
Just I saw that problem by never writing brilliant jokes. No, we wants to seal them. It's it's well, I mean, it's extra tricky in this environment because we're specifically writing 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. I was pretty lucky that I came up in an era where like a lot of the really overt sexism at least wasn't
directed at me. I think, honestly, I just have the advantage of being pretty tall and pretty confident, so.
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 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 now we're into that area where it's like I can't point to an example of a man pointing at a beginnion 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. Yeah.
One thing 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 crummy. If I wear a hoodie I wear, I get more jokes than if I were or more laughs than if I wear a dress.
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.
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 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 a 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 Tharp, who actually mapped the ocean floor, but she wasn't allowed out on the research 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 onto a big job at Google and then became like chief Technology Officer of the United States, and she a really brilliant mechanical engineer.
You know, I 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 as 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 fink Biner Test. Have you heard of it. It's a science journalist named Anne Finkbiner who one day had been writing about women and science for so long. 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, 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 going to 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 uh so we did a whole episode called the Finkbiner Test, because at 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 relevant, and she ended up kind of a
agreeing with us. But the way that the flinkbinder test got put on the map was at the New York Times. And I actually still do this for the Times. I write obituaries and advance obituaries. And one of the o bits of a famous scientist, an actual rocket scientist. The lead are you ready for this? The lead on that piece was she made a mean beef strogan off.
Oh boy, I know I cook.
I have also chosen to be a bad cook, because then nobody can remember me for that.
So there was this outcry and the public editor at 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, we're going to bring it home this wonderful to 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 is being an inspiration so that young women can see themselves 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.
This is called the tip line.
Should this is beyond the scenes, We'll be right back beyond 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 for by men. Let's talk about men for a second, Katie and Nicole, Katie, if we must, Yeah, I know we don't want to, but 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 white men. In fact, one thing that women say about what's happening these days is that 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 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 is a YouTube channel Rally Williams. He also does like live Climate common shows, and he's really good about bringing on female scientists because one it's important to him and two he just he knows them, so it's easy for
him to call them up and text him. I met doctor Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, who's a marine biologist who does a lot of work in conservation.
She's great.
I met her through his show because he went to Columbia and studied climate policy there, and so, like I think, just on like 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 to be like, hey, are you available to lead? I don't know enough about science to say.
To be like you guy. This is why this is This is why I took up golf because it's like this.
I have these golf balls and I had them custom made, uh with RBG A quote from RB. Women belong where decisions are made. I mean, this is where these this stuff gets decided.
Now here's the thing.
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, stupid, well so, but I want to do a big shout out actually to my husband, whose name is Bob Walker, who runs he's Chair of Medicine 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, he hires women who It's really amazing how many women work for work for him and consider him basically 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.
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 going to try to extract a little more optimism out of you right now? Now, will we talk about representation towards young people so that they don't have the same stereotypical beliefs where I need to be a woman and I just need to be quiet and make cast roles. The Integrated post Secondary Education Data System statistics from them forty five percent of the people majoring in
STAM in twenty twenty. Women Barbie on International Women's Day, drop the women in STEM, doll excuse me, a whole set of women in STEM. And then you have and correct me if I'm mispronouncing this. It's Carly Clausus code in which it helps young people learn code. Correct with the k Carli Class's code, which is the good KKK.
I think it's Carli Klaus's code with classy. Okay, four k okay?
Oh no, I see that. The team just send us a note. Okay, it's called code with classy. Just cod KWK. That's fine, keeping up with Kardashian, that's fine. I got it wrong, Claus if you're watching, I apologize. I didn't mean to briefly call you to do three k's and
then four ks. It is code with class So what are some other things that you're seeing that help fight the battle 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 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 podcast, 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 the women who call in. Tell us a little bit about the listeners and how your podcast helps helps you connect with women, helps educate women about the forgotten women of history.
Yeah.
So we're full five oh one C three nonprofit initiative where we're also doing children's books. 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 where uh And we're partnering with higher ed institutions all over the place, uh to go do these archaeological digs through their archives to find that to unearth the Carolyn Parkers of the world. And it's going to take some real,
you know, human power to do it it. This is not something Chad gp T can do.
Cool 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 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 beat We were a Jeopardy clue, which, like you've hate it when you're a Jeopardy clue.
It wasn't us. It was Dorothy Anderson and cystic fibrosis. But 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 is really important about what you're doing is that to your point about women not not hyping themselves up enough, You know, I don't know a lot of mathematicians who love to 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. They don't have the time or necessarily the not math lab. No, not math mathage. 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 in terms that young girls who might want to go into sciences can understand.
So tell those stories isn't important just posthumously or for the people who 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 to do.
Well, that's as good a place to end as any. Nicole. I thank you, thank you, Katie, We thank you, and thank you all for going beyond the scenes with us, see you.
Thank you. It was fun.
Technically, a meth lab is.
Stim I was gonna say we could.
Have gotten into that. That would have been so much fun, But maybe not.
I don't know.
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