[inaudible conversations] may i have your attention, please. Please take your seats, the presentations about to begin. Before we get started, id like you to be aware there will be, most likely, a question and answer period at the end of the presentation. When its time, youll be able to go to one of the two microphones on either side of the stage. Id like to introduce a tv critic for npr. [applause] how you doing . Thanks so much for joining us here. We really appreciate it. As was said, my names eric, and im tv critic for National Public radio so, of course, i should be talking to an author. [laughter] actually, ive written a lot about race and media and also have, i interviewed taraji p. Henson for the smithsonian, so weve got a little bit many common here. [applause] so our esteemed guest, the daughter of a nasa scientist and english professor . Yes. Virginia native. You worked in Investment Banking . That was my first job. Wow. Out of high school. And also had a magazine for expats in mexico. Inside mexico . Yeah. Started working on Hidden Figures in 2010. Wow. And became a New York Times number one best seller, spawned a movie that was oscarnominated. Margot lee shetterly, everyone. [cheers and applause] so i heard that you gave an amazing speech last night where you talked a little bit about charlottesville and race. Could you give us just a little taste of what you talked about there and how it compares to what you talk about in the book. Yeah. You know, the thing that we talked a little bit about what i started out doing, which was working in Investment Banking out of school. And really when i was growing up, that seemed like progress and the future and very protagonist ways. Lifes, you know, career to have, like, very powerful. And history, more me, it was something that always for me, it was something that always felt, you know, i think as an africanamerican always so heavy and connected to this past which is usually taught in schools as, you know, slavery, Martin Luther king and, obvious, now theres obama thats very, you know [laughter] long but extremely narrow arc of history. And so during the course of writing Hidden Figures, what i really came to understand was how powerful it is to be able to tell a story and to write a story and to tell your own story. And to be the protagonist in your own story as opposed to the telling a story where you are kind of the passive recipient of history. And so, you know, i live in charlottesville, virginia. I went to the university of virginia but recently moved there. And, you know, this entire, you know, issue of the statues and the white supremacist marches, all of that stuff has been happening since ive moved there. And, you know, i think for me were very focused on the presence of the statues and the meaning of the statues, you know, what they have come to symbolize. But i think part of the issue also is that those, those statues, they also represent an absence of a counternarrative. That there is this slavery narrative, there are these confederate statues, but in terms of a diversity and a richness of africanamerican stories, there are very few, and there are very few in which africanamericans are protagonists, you know . And these stories in which you are allowed to be a protagonist matter. I mean, each of us is the protagonist in our own life. You know, we see ourselves as people with agency, you know . And i think thats why we love stories about superheroes and kings and, you know, i mean, these stories make us feel powerful. And so, you know, i think that it is really, it is about the presence of the apartheid and the presence of the racial terror and of slavery, but its also about the absence of the counternarrative. I really see that one of the jobs of bringing, bridging some of these divides is bringing forward these stories that have always been there. The people have been there. The history is there. The stories are what we need to tell now. Right. Well, for people who may have been under a rock for the last year or so [laughter] Hidden Figures, this amazing book about these black women who served as Human Computers working for both the agency before, that preceded nasa, and for nasa; crunching all of this complex math, these complex numbers that were used first to develop the aerodynamics for planes and then, later, to for space flight and the moon shot. Now, i saw in the book you said this isnt hidden history, its unseen history. And i know you say everybody asks you why dont we know this, but im going to ask you, why dont we know this . [laughter] and why is it unseen, you know . Are we afraid to look at it . Are we were we too busy lionizing nasa and john glenn and people like that . Why was it unseen . I think the primary reason why this history has been unseen is because this work was womens work, and, you know, and not just at nasa. So there was this cadre of africanamerican women working at nasalangley. They were part of a much larger cohort of women from all backgrounds doing the work at all of the different nasa centers. There were women Computers Working in the army, in the navy, they were working at bell labs which many of you may know is the precursor to at t and, basically, founded the communications revolution, cell phones and things like that. I mean, virtually everywhere you found Technological Progress that required number crunching and, you know, reduction of data, there were women. There were rooms full of women kind of like a living excel spread sheet. [laughter] wow. Doing math. And i, this work was considered subprofessional work, you know . It was very necessary but, literally, the women at nasa were, they were classified as subprofessionals which meant they were above clerical employees. They were not as high in the hierarchy as men who were engineers, who were considered professional employees. And so i think that thats a large reason why this work was invisible. They were kind of the equivalent of our computers sitting on our desk doing the work today, and yet without them, you know, all of these advances would not have been possible. Now, im interested in how you decided to focus on this, because i know, of course, you were surrounded by these people when you were growing up. And, you know, ive done panels where ive talked to people, and they go, well, i had this idea, and then i made it a reality by doing x, y and z. And i think to myself, wait a minute, i want to hear about how you had the idea. Because that, to me, is the key. Deciding i mean there were plenty of people who were growing up around these stories. What made you decide this was worth a book . Well, you know, ive told this story, its interesting. Theres a very specific moment when Hidden Figures came into existence. And interestingly, it came out of a moment between the two most important men in my life, my father and my husband. And so my husband and i had gone back to hampton, and we were visiting my parents for christmas seven years ago now, and we had run into a woman who had worked at nasa many years as a computer. And, you know, so that sort of sparked this conversation of my dad sort of, you know, going into this, you know, speech about what she had done and the other women and, you know, Katherine Johnson who, you know, she calculated the launch window for the astronauts in this very casual way. [laughter] youre like, wait a minute yeah. That moment where the needle slips off the record. Yeah. But i didnt have that moment. I didnt hear the needle slip off the record because i had heard a lot of those stories before, and i had grown up there, and i had known these women. But i had known them as my parents colleagues and friends. But the needle definitely slipped off the record for my husband who is not from hampton and was like, wait a minute, you know . Can you please replay that for me, and why havent i heard that story before. So for me, it was a moment of looking at the community, the people, nasa, this very extraordinary kind of place that i had grown up and that was also extremely normal and ordinary. But looking, being able to see past what was so normal to me and say, wow, that is pretty remarkable yeah. And whats amazing to me about the book is the level of detail that youre able to bring forth about these peoples lives. I mean, i feel like, you know, when Dorothy Vaughn is walking to teach at the high school, im walking right along with her because youre able to describe what that journey was like. How did you get that level of desnail howd you find the research desnail howd you find the research to say what the place smelled like or the landmarks she passed walking to the high school . You know, doing the research, i loved it. I mean, i loved it. And i really, the kind of book that i wanted to write was the kind of book that i love reading, which is really detailed, narrative nonfiction where, you know, you are so immersed in this dream and this life that you lose yourself, you know . You go into this time machine. And so, i mean, the sources were there were so many different kinds of sources, you know . First of all, interviews with people, you know . Katherine johnson, who just turned 99 years old, really amazing. I was very taraji p. Henson. Yes. [laughter] for the audience that didnt read book. So i got to spend a a lot of time with her and talk to her not just about her life, but also Dorothy Vaughn, for example, and the relationship between Dorothy Vaughn and the women who worked for her. There were employee newsletters starting in 1942 for the Langley Research center which was called the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory back then. Black newspapers, amazing source of information. Mary the description of Mary Jacksons Wedding Dress in the book came from an article in the norfolk journal and guide. Telling our own stories. Yeah, it is amazing, absolutely extraordinary. The Nasa History Office and the Langley Research center has done a spectacular job in preserving wind tunnel records, research reports, phonebooks, seating charts, photos of offices and work groups, you know, teams of people. It was, you know, so i really, i loved that part of it. And, you know, i if i didnt have to eventually turn in a book, i probably would still be doing that research. [laughter] now, i heard that you already, that you sold the rights to this to be made into a movie while you were writing it . Man, im scared of you. [laughter] i am scared of you. Howd you convince somebody to buy the movie rights to a book you hadnt even finished writing yet . That i hadnt actually even started writing, is the [laughter] i want her agent. Whos your agent . [laughter] [applause] yeah, i will tell you i have a very good literary agent, her name is Mckenzie Brady watson, very young excuse me. [laughter] she was the one who represented my book proposal, you know, and sold it to harpercollins. She was the one who basically facilitated the, getting it into the hands of donna yes ge locks tti gelotti. She immediately felt a sense of mission, i think, you know . She really made her job championing this story as a movie. Like, she made it her mission. And but, i mean, it is not a usual or it was sort of a Lightning Strike set of circumstances that happened with the book and the movie. Wow. Well, now what i love about the book, in addition to all the great detail that we get about these wonderful women, is that youre able to talk about so many Different Things within that narrative. One example is the way in which weve always had these periods where theres been progress on civil rights in america often because america is threatened; world war i, world war ii, the cold war. And then these periods of backlash where black soldiers are coming back from the war and they get beat up, this attempt to put people back in their place. Talk a little bit about how those themes work in Hidden Figures and why it was so important to make sure that we had a sense of this sweep of history in that way. Yeah. I think again, you know, a lot of it came from my interest and my preference for these epic narratives, you know . And i wanted that these women had that epic narrative. So it wasnt enough to, either to show their lives or simply to show the history. I wanted their lives directly connected to the sweep of history. And the thing about these women is that they, in so many ways, their lives were connected to the big history. And you know, not just for them working at nasa starting in world war ii, but like, for example, Katherine Johnson was one of three black students to integrate the graduate schools in west virginia. Dorothy vaughn worked at, as a math teacher before she went to nasa. She worked at a school in farmville, virginia, that filed the lawsuit that was eventually incorporated into the brown v. Board of education suit, and that School System was shut down by the state of virginia rather than comply with the board decision and integrate. So it was, it really was fascinating to me to look at these sweeps of history and to see how, this opening for all of these women happened during world war ii and because of the need for labor. And because of the external threat. And that we would see, you know, these periods of backlash, for example, when after brown when virginia closed its schools. So, you know, i wanted to understand how the big picture circumstances affected the individual lives of these people and how they responded to those circumstances. Yeah, yeah. I also love this idea of looking at, for example, during the cold war when all of these countries were fighting off their colonial oppressors and the pressure that it brought on america to show that, hey, were not really that bad, hey, well strike down segregation. Please join us instead of going with the communists, india, liberia or cuba. And you were also able to show how that fit into their stories too, which i thought was amazing. Yeah. This time of sputnik, you know, 1957, when the soviets put sputnik, their satellite, into space that really kicked off the space race version of the cold war, you know, that was a fascinating time. You know, this is a time of mccarthyism, its the time of, you know, the sputnik, obviously, the excitement of going into space, the fear of that maybe the russians are spying on us. Its the time that little rock happened, in 1957. So one of the most, i mean, just unbelievable documents that i found that i put in the book that sort of connected those two things is that the russians would always publish a timetable of where the sputnik satellite was overflying, you know . [laughter] during its sort of orbit around the earth. Wow, wow. And so i found this Washington Post article that showed that the russians published when it was flying over little rock, arkansas. So, you know, very direct connections between the domestic turmoil in the United States and this international, global battle between the United States and soviet union. And this idea that because of segregation and because people were oppressed, that america was holding itself back. Like maybe one reason the russians got sputnik up earlier is because they gave women more agency as engineers in the soviet union. Yeah. There were many, many more female engineers in Engineering School there than there were here in the United States where women were still having problems even getting admitted to engineering programs. So, yeah. No, i mean, i think one of the things that was very clear doing the research into Hidden Figures is that the story is so important. The stories that we tell ourselves, the stories that we, that we disseminate inside the country, outside of the country, you know, all of these things affected the decisions that people made in a very real way, and the government was involved in shaping those stories both internally and, you know, externally. Now, your book covers a wide swath of history. It starts in 1943, comes all the way through to the end of the Space Program. Hidden figures, the movie, doesnt do that. Now, i went through the whole book looking for ken costner, i didnt see [laughter] no Kevin Costner. Laugh so, and i know you said you enjoyed the movie and didnt have a problem with it, but were you surprised how they chose to tell the story . It seems like they kind of conflated a lot of things and crunched a lot of circumstances together to make the narrative more compelling. Yeah. I mean, it was a really interesting experience of this whole Hidden Figures thing, you know . While i was writing my first book and learning how to do that your first book. [laughter] her first book [applause] oh, my gosh. [applause] you know, i was always getting a crash course in what it takes to adapt a book for film and how you tell a story through film and how you tell a story sort of the difference between fact and truth, you know . So there are a lot of facts that are conflated in the movie. But what i really appreciated about the final product of the movie is that its very true. Its very true to the nature of the women, it is very true to the circumstances, its very true to nasa and that sense of what it was like, you know, during those early days of the space race. But it was really hard for me because, you know, first of all, i wrote this book from 1943 to 19, you know, 69. I was, like, why cant you make a movie that goes from 1943 to 1969 . Or a tv show you know . That was hard. I think it was very much the right decision to make a compact narrative focused around this very dramatic moment in Katherine Johnsons life where she calculates the trajectory for john glenns flight. Yeah. And it was, you know, it was difficult to see certain elements of the story, you know, shifted from one character to the other or see things that were creative like, you know, im sure anyone whos seen the movie, you probably did figure this out. Yes, there was no Kevin Costner character who sledgehammered the coloreds sign in langley [laughter] i was looking. I was in the index, wheres yeah. [laughter] but, you know, so it was there are moments when, you know, i struggled with some of the decisions well, one of the things that struck me, for example, was in your book you say that they basically ended segregation in nasa in 58 . Is. Yeah. So, basically, when so time that a theyre portray anything the movie where portraying in the movie where there still seems to be segregation, they had already stopped that. Yes. So, yeah, the department wasnt segregated during the time that the movie exactly. But in order to bring together these two very dramatic things which is john glenns orbital flight and Katherine Johnson doing the calculation and the end of segregation, they were, you know, conflated in terms of timeline. Was there ever a moment when they had to break that to you . [laughter] you know what . I have to say i know a lot of people who have written books and have them made into movies have different opinions. But i had a very positive experience with this. And the, the producer in particular, donna gelotti, who was the producer, really kept me in the loop. Every once in a while its 3 00 in the morning and id be up working to try and finish this draft so i can turn it in, and then the scripts would pop up, you know . [laughter] like, the latest version of the script. And is they really did an amazing job, i think, of keeping me in the loop, of honoring my suggestions, you know, really listening to me and doing all they could to understand and preserve the authenticity of the story, which i was very happy with. Right. So, so the movie comes out, and its very successful. I think it was the highest grossing movie amongst all the movies that were nominated for best picture the year that it came out. Your book was a New York Times best seller, and then a year later we have White Supremacists marching through virginia who feel like theyve been supported by president of United States. What do you think . I mean, on the one hand, theres this sense that this story comes out, and people are so hungry for this history, and they are so worried about how people have been oppressed and how this historys been oppressed, and then a year later we have people who would be right at home with the birds, you know, upholding White Supremacy marching down the middle of a street in the town that you live in. What do you think of that . You know, i mean, this is i think this is america, you know . And i think a lot of, theres been a lot of commentary after charlottesville that, you know, the town and the state and the country, that this is not who we are. It is who we are, you know . I mean, america is a complicated you can clap for that, go ahead. [applause] but what i mean is its a complicated place. Its been a complicated place from the beginning, you know this and we you know . And we have some of the most admired and beautiful and worthy ideals, you know . I mean, we hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men and people are created equal. I mean, this is something that we navigate by and that we believe in here fundamentally. And we are always at war with the ideal and the reality of the implementation, you know . And that, that is and when i say this is america, that struggle is, you know, that is the struggle that were always facing. And so it is, you know, i think that we are, this is a part of that struggle for living up to those ideals and saying, well, what does it take to really support and allow everyone into those ideals. And believing in those ideals, doing what we can to enforce them and, you know, to spread them. And i, you know, for me i live, you know, 12 minutes driving from month cello. Monticello. And i think monticello, its a fascinating place. Thomas jefferson was an absolutely rivetting person who, you know, owned people, humans yep. You know . Something that today we find objectionable. And who wrote some of the most amazing and insightful ask and beautiful words and beautiful words about the nature of human freedom. And so that dichotomy is, that is sort of the core, i think, in a lot of ways, that struggle of america. And i think particularly for me, you know, anyway as an africanamerican really trying to unite those two things, to say i, you know, both acknowledge the circumstances of slavery in the past and all of the heaviness that comes with that, and i also embrace and, you know, love the beautiful parts of those ideals of our country and the best of our country. So its complicated, you know . You know, humans are complicated, and this is a complicated place, but i, you know, i think the fact that we are living in a moment that it feels like we are living anything the history right now. Living in the history right now. You know, its terrifying, its fascinating, its all these things at the same time. And i think its a moment where, where the american ideals are calling to us, you know . And its sort of like saying can we take these from ideals to putting them into practice in our everyday lives. Now, we are going to take a few questions, so im going to ask if you have a question to line up at one of these two musics, and i will point to you two mics, and i will point to you and ask you to state your question. And please make it a question, okay . [laughter] [applause] please. I always feel like the stories of black folks and especially black women in the south get at that, what you just talked about so effectively, you know . The wonderful things about our country and also the things that we struggle with, you know . The duality of all these popular figures, you know, we live that. As black folks in the south. Do you think . Yeah, you know, i am a native virginian. I am a native of the south. I love the south. The south is a complicated place. I think people from, you know, a lot of these issues that exist everywhere in america are maybe closer to the surface in the south. So i do, you know, and southerners have a, you know, i guess a reputation of being great lovers of history, you know . [laughter] and i think, you know, this embracing even the hard things, like really trying to face those hard things and make them also part of who we are as a country and who we are as individuals. And maybe its the individual. I think for me, like, trying to do that work as an individual and embrace all of those things, even the painful things as part of my heritage as an american, you know, i think, i think within me thats sort of like the fusing of all of these, the conflict, you know . I want those things to be able to coexist even as they are difficult things. Yeah. All right. Lets start over here. If you could just tell us your name and your question. Hello. My name is debbie greenberg. I loved your movie. It gave me insight into my uncle and cousins who grew up in hampton. He worked at langley as well. Oh, wow. [inaudible] now i understand, thank you. You should read the book, theres more about it there. [laughter] my question to you as somebody who group there just a few years after what you portray, what was the cultural environment, the racial environment, the interfaith environment, and how has that influenced you in your outlook . I consider myself as having grown up in a very, in a very interesting place at a very wonderful time. So until i started doing the research for this book, i didnt realize just how close i was to kind of the tail end of this period of desegregation of the schools in virginia. Because virginia really dragged its feet for a long time. But when i went to school, i went to integrated schools, you know, black kids and white kids. There were actually a lot of vietnamese people who lived in the community, so we were heavily, as you know maybe, hampton was this very heavily military area, defense industry. So in addition to nasa there, you know, are any number of army, navy bases, air force base. So it really does get a lot of people from a lot of different places. And i think there was, it was a period that was, you know, the space thing had just happened, like, people were still very optimistic about that. And so i feel like i grew up in what, to me, was like sort of still riding a lot of the optimism for progress and change from the civil rights movement, from, you know, the space race there in hampton. And i went to a very kind of norm, i dont know, american norm whatever that is in the imagination Public School with a lot of different backgrounds. Socioeconomic backgrounds. I mean, i think this is something that has changed since i was in school, that i went to school with kids who were on public assistance, and i went to school with kids whose parents were quite affluent. And i think growing up with this very diverse and not just ethnicity, but i mean in terms of economics, nationality even was a real privilege. And so i feel very, very fortunate to have, you know, gone to the hampton Public Schools, got a great education and very much love my hometown. [applause] over here. Your name and your question. Hi, im katie gansler, and i was wondering if youd considered writing sort of a follow up, maybe following the story of the mercury 13 . Yeah. So just, so the mercury 13 was a group of women who were being recruited with the idea that they could also be part of the astronaut corps. And ed dwight is an africanamerican who was also, you know, recruited into the astronaut corps. Those are amazing stories. I mean, the thing about Hidden Figures is that i, you know, there were so many different fascinating stories and people involved. You know, those are i think somebody, those are very worthy. I am actually working on a next book that doesnt have to do with nasa. But those, you know, i spend so much time even now reading about people who were in some way involved with this spine to have Hidden Figures story. So i dont have those plans but, i mean, i think that those are stories that we definitely perhaps you could write that book. [laughter] and you did mention ed in the book. Your name and your story and your question. Hello, my name is stephen. Excuse me, im a little nervous. Thomas. I saw the movie, and it was in an audience like this, diverse like this. Predominantly white. But when it was over, people applauded. And people were crying. My wife was crying, the white man next to her was crying [laughter] the asian woman next to him was crying. [laughter] and i was, i was wondering what you felt about what it evoked, that deep emotion; tears of joy, tears of hope, tears of sadness . Whats your thinking on the emotional impact of that story . You know, that is a great question, because ive seen the movie, like, ten times in different settings, very different settings, and it has been the same. You know, ive seen it in hampton where Everybody Knows the people, you know . Ive seep it in ive seen it with the people who made the movie, just so many different settings, and it has been that. I think that it is, there are these ideals, you know . There are these things that we want to believe about who we are, about who we can be, and i think that maybe what that movie does is it shows us an instance of closing the gap between who we are when we fall short and who we are when we stand up and go up to our highest level. And its optimistic. It doesnt shy away from the difficult things, but it doesnt take away the hope. And you need to look the difficult things squarely in the eye, but you can never take away the hope, and you cant deny the progress. And, you know, even in a moment like now when people, you know, were saying, well, there are many challenges facing this country. Well, you know, there have always been challenges facing this country. We have made a lot of progress, and i feel like we need to, you know, we need to acknowledge that. And, you know, even as we look squarely at very difficult things, you know, were humans. We need help. We need happy stories to get up in the morning and give us meaning. And i think, i think that is maybe it. It shows the hard things. We have to see those things. We have to acknowledge them. But we need the hope as well. And its a very hopeful movie. And its a movie about people who love what theyre doing and who, for whom that becomes a bond, you know . They come from all these different backgrounds, but these people are passionate about the Space Program and numbers and math. And that is very true to who these people are. And it enables them to transcend and become very close. I think thats a also very positive. Keep hope alive. Thank you very much. [applause] your name and your question. My name, my names [inaudible] i wrote down my question because im nervous too, thomas. [laughter] at the beginning of this talk, you talked about how history was not hidden, but up seen. And the book you but unseen. And the book you wrote and was produced was one way of making the story seen and visible to much of the american and interNational Public. What are other ways you see unseen or counternarratives being brought to light . And how do you think the awareness of these stories will have an effect on actions that we as america take and on the Global Community . You know, when i growing up, i always thought of history as the history of politics and president s and, you know, i mean, this sort of very big picture history. But history is really what all of us, each of us does. And history is about communities, its about people, and, you know, and how our lives fit into this, the great course of human events. And i think that the, maybe sort of in the same way that i think science is always seen as the great individual scientists, you know, einstein and, you know, all of these great people who, you know, have been mostly men in the past, but we dont see how much of that scientific progress and work is based on the, you know, the teamwork and people coming together to create something, a great, a giant leap. I think in the same way we see these great individuals, and we dont look at the people around us. And i think that, i mean, that sounds is really simplistic, but i think, you know, just looking at the people around us, you know, the grandparents, people who live down the street, you know, why is this monument here, and its been there for so long and how did it get there and, you know, i mean, asking these questions about things in our, in our surroundings and saying that, you know, were going to start looking at the history from the ground up as opposed to the history from the top down. I mean, i love those stories because i think those are sort of very humanlevel stories. And i think that those, that very humanlevel view of why things, why things happen is something people are really hungry for. I mean, i was dying to go and see the presentation of j. D. Vance who i think is also, you know, writing about people in our country from a point of view that we dont always get and that, you know, people are hungry for, you know . And i think theres a lot of Similar Energy between why people are very interested in Hidden Figures and very interested in hill billy elegy. And i think maybe people see that as a contradiction, but i think theres quite a lot of similarity between what people are looking for. So i think maybe looking from the bottom up as opposed to the top down in terms of history is a great start. Okay. This will be our last question from the field. So better be good. Well, im honored to be the last question. [laughter] my name is alan weinstein. Not quite einstein, but [laughter] now youre really raising the bar. [laughter] but in my own way, i like to think i made a contribution to the emergence of Computer Technology in science, in my field in particular. So id like to thank you for your contribution from the Vantage Point of a white male, not an africanamerican female. But what actually is my question is how did the book differ from the movie in any significant way, and what was your role in that, if there was a difference between the book and the movie, what was your role in that difference . So, well, biggest difference between the book and the movie, the book starts in 1943 and ends in 1969, and the movie is just a sliver, basically, you know, takes place from 19571962. And because of that, as we talked about, a lot of the timelines and things were conflated. So i was a consultant on the movie. They would ask me questions, i would give them a lot of research. But one just sort of to speak a little bit to the math and the computer part of it, so the book nasa is an engineering organization, and a lot of this was about building planes and building spaceships. And the book Hidden Figures is very much about that. But because Katherine Johnson, as a mathematician in that full hierarchy, was the central character, they really created a plot in the movie that that hinged on math. And her viewpoint it was really, and this was something that i didnt even really learn until after the movie was produced and had all these questions about, you know, how particular part of the script had come together. But they made this very interesting decision to really make it a movie about math as opposed to about the engineering right. Which the book is a lot more about engineering than the minutiae of the of the math, yeah. Yeah. And about their lives. And about their lives. You detail their lives a lot more than the specific projects that they worked on. I wanted to ask you real quickly to talk about the human computer project that youre work on. This is something you have continued past the life of the book. Could you talk a little bit about what youre doing there and how its succeeded since the book and the movie have come out . So. Yeah so, yeah, the human computer project. Essentially, what i was so surprised to discover doing the research for Hidden Figures is how many women were involved in computing, as i talked about before. Not just at nasa, but at all of these other organizations. And so this is really a way to try and catalog all of the women who were involved in doing this work in the early days of computing and really understand, you know, what kind of work they were doing and also to get a snapshot of women in these fields and see if theres something that we might learn from those early pioneers that we can apply to women working in these fields today. So if people want to participate, they can find it onlinesome. Yep. The humancomputerproject. Com, or you can reach out to me at margo lee margot lee shetterly. Com. Thanks a lot, guys. We appreciate your questions. We ran out of time [applause] no, we ran out of time, ive got to wrap it up. I do want to thank our esteemed guest, margot lee shetterly, author of Hidden Figures. Please enjoy the rest of the festival. Thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]
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