Transcripts For CSPAN2 Janice Kaplan The Genius Of Women 20240713

This is going to be an illuminating evening so ill tell you that right now. I want to thank our venue part of the drexel theatre, fantastic friend, and our wonderful committee partners, the womens fund and all these organizations that help us get the word out. I will introduce janice and kelley in in the moment butro e ask you to silence your phones or any other noisemakers you might have with you tonight so we can share everything. I hope many of you have visited gramercy books. Write down the street we invite any of you who have not been there before to come and browse. We have beenav open for just ovr three years and we have hosted 300 book related events during that period. [applause] besides being a curated fullservice independent bookstore for central high winds, our mission is connect the community with talented authors launch important books and thats exactly what were doing tonight. You received a program when you came in and of what to quickly give a shout out to three Upcoming Events that are listed. We produced eight event of the month. First, e literary legend james mcbride, hes been called a modern day mark twain by the New York Times. His latest novel, when the last novel in the National Book award for fiction, is also the author of the 1995 really classic, the color of water, a black mans tribute to his white mother, one of the m best memoirs in a generation. Its a hollers tapestry of late 60s brooklyn featuring eclectic group of english that bear witness to the shooting. Thursday march 5 at 7 p. M. At the arts complex. Then we featurehr wonderful memr by writer elise on monday march march 9. Really an intimate look at her rust belt child of the people that she sees as the unsung act bone of our country. She will be in conversation that night with united ways michael and to be held down the street and gramercy books. Finally, i want to do a shout out for march 30. Were really thrilled to feature Jerry Mitchell to hear about his courageous story bringing to justice that claims been responsible for some of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era. He will share his memoir race against time, reporter reopens the unsolved murder cases of the civil rights era. He will be in conversation with Ohio State University historian and expert and that will be held at king arts. Onto tonight. You will be hearing about women, geniuses. Time of rethinking womenses roles, we define genis almost exclusively through male achievement. When asked to name a genius, most people mention Albert Einstein or steve jobs. Janice coppin decided to find out why why has the extraordinary work of so many women been brushed aside . The result is a remarkable book, the genius of women with her unique mix of memoir narratives and inspiration janice make surprising discoveries about women geniuses, now and throughout history in fields from musicm to robotics. Our research is extensive. She conducted interviews with neuroscientist, psychologists, and dozens of women geniuses at work in the world today. Our insights will be at the center of two nights program. Janice kaplan has enjoyed wide success as a magazine editor, television producer, writer and journalist. She former editorinchief of parade magazine, the most widely read publication in america. She work with Major Political figures including president barack obama and she interviewed also stars likeer barbra streisand. She was Deputy Editor of Tv Guide Magazine and executive producer of the Tv Guide Television group where she created more than 30 Television Shows that aired prime time on Major Networks that she began her career as an awardwinning producer at abctv good morning america. She has authored or coauthored decides the genius of women 14 books including New York Times bestseller. Janice kaplann is clearly a womn genius. Joining janice in conversation is Kelley Griesmer come herself a woman genius as well. She is president and ceo of the womens fund of central ohio, a Public Foundation that is fiercely committed to igniting social change for the sake of gender equity. Kelley is deeply committed to this work having been involved with the womens fund to volunteer for many of while use worked as a partner with jones day as chief operating officer of pellet telling you, it is Senior Vice President of the columbus foundation. After their conversation you will be rolled ask janice some questions and those wishing to ask questions can do so by lining up right here to my right, to your left, and we will bring the microphone and you will light up in this file so we can answer questions afterwards. After the question and answer if you havent received a copy of the book you can purchase one then and janice will also sign copies. So now please give a warm welcome to Janice Kaplan and Kelley Griesmer. [applause] [applause] do we need this one or this one cracks do we need this one at all . Here we go. Welcome janice. Thank you. Its nice to be here. [applause] is hard to imagine someone who thinks about the bias and gender norms as much as i do so you can imagine what a fan woman i am of this author for having spent the time and the vulnerability to write this book thank you again for being here tonight and i want to do justice to the one thing i think we all have to realize sitting here today i said to genesis we were coming up here, today marks the passing of Katharine Johnson at 101 years old. For those of you who that name doesnt ring a bell i hope it will from this day forward. She is the hidden figure that was at the center of the movie Hidden Figures and helped our own john glenn go into space. My for today has been no more hidden fingers and i think janice shares a map. So thank you kathryn for everything she did to pave the way for all of us. So Janice Hughes spent a lot of time thinking about people like kathryn johnson. What inspired you to take on the genius of women as a topic of this 15th book . Ive been thinking about womens issues for a long time in my career but the particular for this was a survey done by a friend of mine. He was a strategist and he did a survey where he found 90 of americans think geniuses tend to be men. You dont get 90 of americans say they like so we went out to lunch and mike presented his findings to me and he said what do you think is going on . I really had no idea. Mike paid for lunch and i spent the next two years trying to come up with an answer. There was another part of your but the said they asked people what it took to be a genius and 15 of men said i might be a genius. How many women said so . Zero. There was not a single woman in the survey who said she might be a genius. Lets admit 15 of men who said they were geniuses are possibly delusional. But thats okay because you have to think you can do something before you can actually do it. I actually think its much better and i would like to hear a lot more women say well, yeah abim. And its stunning. Im just going to play little game. I want someone to be very brave quickly. Name a woman genius right now. Madam curie. Isnt that the number one answer . In that same survey mike found when asked to name a female genius the only one anybody could name was madam curie and there were a couple of others thrown in there. Why is that . Why do we not know these names and why have we never heard of Katharine Johnson until somebody did a movie about her . Part of the excitement for me in doing this book was uncovering some of these people from the past and looking at the people from the president. Different geniuses and learn from them. Instead you opened up this thought process for me over the course of the various chapters about what is a genius . How has the definition of genius been shaped by society so share with us a little bit theres exceptional intellectual or Creative Power or other natural ability. What do you think about that . I try to change the definition of genius and to rethink what we think of genius. I started my research in london and i spoke to a professor at cambridge named Charles Jones here we also went to lunch. You get a lot of good lunches when youre a writer. I told him i i was thinking abt genius and whatni that meant. He sort of took a couple of steps of his chardonnay and in a very english accent what you will try to imitate he said, genius, that would be where extraordinary talent meets celebrity. Celebrity. I was really taken aback by that. Meets celebrity . This is a cambridge professor this guy is whitehaired academic he did not mean celebrity in the kardashian sort of way. He has never seen reality tv, believe me, but as i thought about it i realized what he meant was getting your work noticed. Getting your work recognized. Whether you are in corporation academia science and the arts there are a lot of people who do great works but if its not noticed if its not recognized if nobody is paying attention to it, it cant have an impact on the current generation or future generations. I think for too much of history and even probably up until this very moment women have had half of the equation. Theyve had the extraordinary talent and they havent had the notice. The celebrity the recognition. We will talk about why people dont notice that in a minute. I know that there has been a little bit of that equation that has to do with the nurturer side of things, the encouragement. Talk a little bit about how i guess genius is born. We tend to think of genius as a natural state, either you are or you arent. As i did this research i realize its not true. Being genius is not like being class president murray name appears in the yearbook forever. Who we consider genius changes over time. Genius needs to be nurtured. Genius doesnt appear fullblown. I tell about the story in the book of mozart and mozart sister his sister was great genius also. When they were young she was equally a child prodigy and when they were young they toured together and some people said she was a better musician than she was. Once she hit her early teens her father told her it was time to go home it would be scandalous for her to continue being a musician in public and she had to go home and be married, which was the only proper thing for an early teenager of the time in the 1600s. Mozart got to go on his talent was nurtured he most met composers and conductors of people who helped him put them into great positions. If mozart had been sent home and only got to play his music in his living room would we consider him a genius . If you never got to compose because it was scandalous for a mans work to be played in public we wouldnt consider him a genius either. Genius needs to be the two points of genius are not that its natural but that it needs to be nurtured and it needs to be recognized. What we call in the Dictionary Company as well. [laughter] please. You just said it, its not a zerosum game. I think whenever we get into the organization i work we spent a lot of time talking about gender norms a lot of times the first thing people want to say to us is, i hate men, i hate men. People, why are there not more men in this room because its intimidating we are going to be upset with them . I think what we all realize is that this biased, this is a generations old problem. This started with the beginning of time you cited to an early socrates time that was just as talented as everyone else. So lets talk a little bit about implicit bias which we know i think we all have to be vulnerable in the beginning to say we all have about certain things but there is something a way about the way that biases have affected a womans ability to be a genius. As he looked at that when did you become aware of the bias issue . Was it something you are already thinking about before you wrote the book or something you thought even more deeply about what you got into it . First to say what you are saying about the angry man, its not an angry book. My husband assures you, men come you can read this book you will not get upset by it. I think a lot of women who know about womens issues are surprised when they read the book because it brings out a lot of things they hadnt expected before. Implicit bias is really important. Another way i started to think of it is as confirmation bias. Psychologists refer to confirmation bias to say that when you have an idea about something when you have a belief when there is something you already think, its really hard to change that idea. I wont give a political example, i will give an example about cars. If you just bought a new car because you think its the very best car out there, once you get it you start looking for all the articles and advertisements and the friends who bought the same car to tell you its the best car. If somebody tells you its not a good car, you are pretty sure they are wrong and you dont pay too much attention to them. We do the same thing with men and women. We have our ideas about what they are so the new stereotype, which i think is as damaging as the old one, is that women are collegial and cooperative, and men are leaders. Is that true . Of course its not true. We all know women who are leaders and women who are collegial and women who are loners and men who are exactly the same. Because that becomes a belief when you see a woman whos collegial or you see a man who is a leader even when you see it in yourself you immediately start to notice that when you discard all the others. It becomes a selffulfilling prophecy what we expect to see becomes what we do become in many ways. I noted when you said that in the book that women do have learned behaviors to succeed in many ways i dont know many of us a better choice but to be legal. When we are not thats really a problem. Of course its a learned behavior. Shirley tolman, the former president of princeton, a microbiologist, told me that when she was younger and a scientist, she used to close her eyes and tried to imagine a scientist and when she was able to picture a man as often as she could picture a woman she knew she was okay. I told that story to another woman scientist who was interviewing later and she said thats amazing because when i close my eyes i cant even picture myself. I think thats what happens i think the external messages become very deeply embedded in terms of your question also about women being collegial, i think women have always had to do the great work around, if youre not in power and somebody else is in power and control your life, you got to figure out how to make it work. Sometimes that does mean by playing by somebody elses rules and i dont think thats a bad thing. I think women throughout history have done it, they figured out ways around obstacles and you got to do that. I dont have a problem with that. To speak about another genius you cover in your book that many of us are so culturally now a piece of our lives, ruth Bader Ginsburg, rgb, a lot of people, i think you use her as an example in the book as someone who has allowed herself in some ways to become, you said the carly goat because abthe qaeda league guilt because she knows in a way that she is getting what she needs by becoming endearing to people and her story becoming what it is about a man who wanted to tend to his mother the idea of caretaking the first case had to do with men not women. Can you talk a little bit about her and how she participates . Ruth Bader Ginsburg did have to do the great work around also. While she was at harvard law school, one of the very few women in the class her husband was also there. She was applying and she was asked why she wanted to go to law school. Im sure she wanted to throw up when she said that because of course its not why she wanted to go to law school so she could understand what her husband was doing she wanted to be a lawyer. And she wanted to become Supreme Court justice. She knew thats what she needed to say. She knew thats what she needed to say to get into law school. If youre able to do Something Like that and it leads to your being the powerful person you are, i think you have to recognize the times. Its interesting to see i think the ways we can think about biased and how people interact on a daily basis but theres the unwritten ways i think things that saturate our lives. You point out at one point in the book some examples, i think at the very beginning, that Something Like wikipedia only has like 15 percent of it focuses on women or in the New York Times obituaries i think it was Something Like 10 of them have ever been about women. These are things that are embedded in our culture as the marker by which we judge whats important and i dont think anyone thinks that none of us are realizing that by reading New York Times obituaries we are reinforcing the bias that women are an important but thats exactly what it does, doesnt it . Absolutely. The times to the credit the New York Times started something a couple years ago called overlooked. Which is a column of all the people who should have had obituaries in the times and didnt. They started with i think five women to launch this column and when you look at those women who were there you are stunned. It was charlotte brontc who wrote jane eyre and sylvia plass, famous for the bell jar. Dorothy elaine who was a great photographer. You go, what were they thinking . How was it that charlotte brontc died with this fabulously successful book even at the time nobody thought she deserved an obituary at the times. It was simply because theres nothing else to say shes a woman and so she just wasnt seen. They wouldnt even think of it. There was also a story early in the book about a woman who won the nobel prize a couple years ago in chemistry and thats kind of a big deal when you win the nobel prize. You might have wanted to look her up and get more information on her but she didnt have a Wikipedia Page. It wasnt because she had somebody had submitted one for her but the gatekeepers at wikipedia who for various reasons tend to be mostly men just ignored her and headed thought this could possibly be important. She won the nobel prize and got a Wikipedia Page. That is a very high bar for a woman. To get a Wikipedia Page when you win the nobel prize. If you think who else is on wikipedia. Its run by a woman. It is. She wrote beautifully about the incident and explained and she said, this is not meant to be a criticism of wikipedia, i love wikipedia. She pointed out that wikipedia is not setting the rules its representing what society thinks is important. Sometimes we want to say wikipedia is causing this problem when really i think what she said is its a reflection of whats in all of us. I think thats the easy game we play. Lets put wikipedia out of business. Really thats not gonna solve everything because everyone thinks the same after its gone. Its absolutely good point these are reflections. In the times or wikipedia or whatever else is reflecting what we all think and what we all expect or what we expect at the time. Times start to change and we expect some things. Lets talk about the brain. There have been people who said there is a difference you talk a lot in the book about people have written about the difference between women and men and some people made a lot of money thinking they can describe this and i think its lee elliott and she study this and what did she find about the difference between men and womens brains . She started out wanting to do the book about the difference between men and women because its always in the headlines. You hear over and over again, as i said to her, people always tend to you i treat my children exactly the same and the boys and girls clubs behave differently this must be hardwired. She buried her head when i said this. She said the only thing thats hardwired is the brainstem. Which is what controls our instincts. Everything else when the baby is born it struck me after i spoke to her that why is it we only use the phrase hardwired when we are talking about gender issues. If i told you by the time children are 18 months some of them speak german and some of them speak spanish and some speak italian so that must be proof its hardwired you would say janice, dont be ridiculous, theyre picking up from what their parents speak. So why do we understand that . We dont understand that liking pink or liking blue or liking barbie dolls versus liking legos why would we think thats hardwired. Its a lot harder to pick up the social cues to learn how to speak spanish or french or italian then it is to pick up social cues that tell you you look so darn cute in that little pink outfit. Is interesting because we see marketers trying to have the same things for boys and girls but if the chemistry kit to create beauty tools. Its not just the chemistry kit, its lets make perfume or so that is still that bias coming out. If you try to get a toy that is not male or female, its really hard to find. People talk a lot about the progress we are making and i think we are making huge progress. Thats an area i think we will go hugely backwards. The toys are becoming more and more and clothes are becoming more and more divided by gender. Thats not terribly helpful. We could gender reveal parties. What is that about . [laughter] other than saying, this is the most important thing about this child and this announces what my child is going to become a guess what, maybe you will have a boy who likes poetry and maybe a girl who wants to play rugby so that gender reveal party is only saying, heres how im going to stereotype my child from birth. [laughter] i tried to buy a pair of white pants for a boy in a play one time and it was impossible. There are no white pants for boys. A couple years ago the gap had a tshirt, a toddler tshirt which was really cute and spell that genius. Each letter of genius was one of the boxes from the periodic table. It only came in blue and you can only find it under boys clothes, toddler boys clothes. They couldve had the same tshirt and blue and you couldve found it if you are searching under toddler girls but it was not there. Lets talk even though i know its not a book about profiles, there are some Amazing Stories of women we should know about and i think you and i talked about a few that we like to talk about and i was excited because kind of you get some favorites. Tell us about lisa meitner and what she did and how shes being honored in the rear view as you would put it. Lisa meisner was this amazing woman in the 1930s who discovered Nuclear Fission. The first person to understand that when you split and adam the nucleus of an atom of uranium it was a big explosion of energy. That led to nuclear energy, and led unfortunately to Nuclear Weapons which she was not willing to have part of. It was also something that turned physics on its head. It won the nobel prize i said it won the nobel prize because lisa meisner did not win it. It went to a lab partner, he was a very nice man, a very good chemist, and maybe he even deserved the nobel prize for Something Else but he sure didnt deserve it for Nuclear Fission because he didnt understand Nuclear Fission. But the men and of course they were men on the Nobel Committee, couldnt wrap their heads around the idea that couldve been a woman responsible for this enormous likebreakthrough. They gave the nobel prize to the man. Many years later the proceedings of the Nobel Committee were released a certain number of years the nobel proceedings are released. A group of physicists looked at that and called it the most egregious and indefensible oversight ever. Believe me, for egregious and indefensible oversight there is a lot of competition. [laughter] but what kelly was referring to is that many physicists sense have tried to make it up to lees meisner and others an asteroid named for her. There are statues of her all over berlin where she did her work. My favorite the periodic table, as i mentioned before, there is now an element on the periodic table named a but she will never know that. You will never know that. Is important because we talk i think later when youre talking about what helps women geniuses succeed, is that they need to have seen something that gives them the confidence to keep pressing on and there were so few of them that even even though they will never know but theres something important about us actually seeing these women even today. I interviewed maia beyond the actress who had been the star blossom when she was a teenager. And amy on the Big Bang Theory. In between those two shows she got her phd in neuroscience. Funny story when she went to do her audition for the Big Bang Theory, she had been out of acting for very long time, she spent the last seven years getting her phd in neuroscience. She turned in her headshot, the sheet that has your picture and resume on it, she didnt know where to put that she was a phd in neuroscience so she put it under other. Where you would say, good at skateboarding. [laughter] the producers knowing this was for the Big Bang Theory they said is this a joke . She said no its true. They made the character a neuroscientist so she could correct any mistakes but what is going to say is that when we spoke, she talked about how important it is to her that she has this role. And that she can present a neuroscientist as being somebody who can have a full life and she gets married on the show. It starts to get images of different kinds of lives that women can have and to say that there are Different Things that are in Popular Culture that its okay to be. Its interesting when you bring up the issue about marriage and family because i think you noted that as you met a lot of these women, very many of them have families, children that they are juggling, partners, and recently was introducing someone at ohio state a fellowship in the name of the first head of surgery. Someone looked at the wall and said why is there a picture of everyone else and not her . When i was talking about the importance of us seeing her and why its important to have a fellowship in her name, someone in the back would work with her stood up and said she wouldve never wanted this. She never saw herself, she married surgery. I thought, thats another one of those biases that if you are a woman genius and succeeded you mustve given up everything else. All the things that our body is made to do, you give that up to actually focus on your brain because you couldnt possibly do both. You think thats a little bit of that may be sensitivity on the other side that we can do both . You never want to focus on the fact that we managed to pull it off. I had it gone out looking for women married and had children but i did turn out that almost all of the genius women the modern genius woman i spoke to did have these multidimensional lives. Many had toddler children, some had gross children obviously depending on the women themselves. See on by like the president of Barnard College told me she thinks its really important for women to have many ashe didnt need it and three faces of many months suggesting schizophrenia. She mentioned you have many different roles. Shes a psychology researcher. The president of the university. A mom, shes a wife. Shes a collie, shes a friend. She said some days she thinks shes the most important psychology researcher in making these great breakthroughs and some days she thinks shes just the worst mom in the world because she forgot to pack her daughters lunch. Thats okay and its really helpful when you have these many different roles she says if you slip up in one you can always fall back into the other. Weve always assumed that men are going to have careers and families and lives and i think that women find great richness to their lives when they recognize that its okay to have many parts to your life. One of our other favorites i think because even of the introduction we all think i think i tested it today i looked up wikipedia and the photo of the genius next to the click on this with Albert Einstein so it turns out, i may have i started telling this Albert Einsteins first wife i think its important i dont we should hear her name and not as einsteins first wife. Shee was important to some of te things that he discovered. Right. She was a great scientist and a great mathematician in her own right before they got married. I did a lot of research. A lot of discussion over the years as to how much she contributed to his greatest greatest discoveries. There is some suggestion that they were True Partners in this. For example, he had written her letters talking about when our discovery gets known and when we win the nobel prize for this. Various other suggestions that they worked very closely together. I am unable to make a determination on exactly how much she contributed. I do not know whether they were colleagues, partners or whether theyey discuss it in bed at nig. What i found really fascinating was how upset people get at the suggestion that she may have participated in the discovery of relativity. There are people that our Team Einstein all the way. He did this alone. Everybody knows that einstein was not actually a great mathematician and that he turned to some wellknown mathematicians of the time to help with some of the things within other great discoveries that he could not do. Ov that is what scientists feel. That is what academics deal. The fact it was so shocking that it may be his wife, i find kind of funny, actually. Given sort of the cultural confirmation bias that exists, i did think that it seems remarkable that he would be so open about our discovery if she was not a little bit involved. The confirmation was not give half your credit to wife. That was not really the natural thing. He did give her half the money. They did become divorced. He did give her half the nobel prize money. He m did. He promised her that early on. He would give her half the money if you want. That is, yeah. Not to be ignored. We dont know. I will go with it. [laughter] so many great examples. I know we only have so much time tonight. I know a few more will probably come up. We talked a little bit, maybe just tell me a little bit, i did not get dimension are yet, but you and i talked about her, what was the realization you had while meeting. A lot of other people in the book. A tenured professor of physics at princeton. He would be hired away from oxford. A 10 year professor of physics at oxford. I was going down early in my research to interview her. I studied really hard for this interview. You are talking to this great physicist. Quite famous for some of the think she has done including putting an age on the universe. I really wanted to be prepared. 13. 8 billionca years. In case you were wondering. I wanted to be prepared for this interview. I go down. I am all set. I knock on her door. This very pretty woman in her late 30s opens the door. She has a big smile. She is wearing a pretty floral dress. Come in, may i get you some tea. We sat down and we talked about her two toddler daughters. Maybe whento i said to you thati was going to interview a tenured professor of physics at princeton, that is exactly the image that you had, if so, you are a better person than i am. I was working on this subject. This is what i was doing and i realized when i open the door somewhere in the back of my head i did expect to see Albert Einstein. I think that is the importance of the vulnerability of us. I shared some similar examples. You can think about these things all the time. When we are thinking about our coworkers, the people that we meet that were just chatting with in all of a sudden they dont understand what we are talking about, we have to remember if we think hard, weve too. It, the patriarch he lives in us. And all of us. That vulnerability can maybe help us break the i. C. E. That is right. It is very hard to stand up against society. High tell the story in the book about being a little girl. I was nine years old. I went with my mom to our family doctor. He told my mom that he thought i was reading too much. She got a little worried. She said something wrong with her eyes. The eyes are fine, but a girl could get too smart for her own good. Yes, you grow now. My mom seems to understand exactly what he meant. She just sort of nodded. Those are the kinds of things that stay in your mind for a very long time. I think what probably hopefully wising up that we dont say things like that to girls directly anymore. We live at a time of 1000 nudges we have a few minutes left to talk about,ft how do we help moe women see their genius or even if you are thinking about your own genius, what can you do to bring itou out . One of the things before we get to the end of the book, one thing, sorry if this is a spoiler alert for hamilton, but its been out for a minute. I watched the whole thing. I loved it. My 50th birthday trip. This is what im going to do. There is this part of the story thatto is about who tells your story. Hamilton would not be who hamilton is in history, perhaps, had the woman in his life not told a story. That is how i read it. I quote that in the book. Who tells your story really matters. That is why i wrote this book. I wanted to be able to tell the story. I wanted to be able to hear the stories a little bit differently. An one of the things that i realized so much as i was writing this is the real difference between genius men and genius women is not natural ability. It is not talent. It is not even hard work. Its being in the position to set the rules. Men have always been able to do that in women have not. Men have had that power and women have not. Naturally, as you were suggesting before, you look at people who are like you and you think that they must be the talented ones. You anoint them as a great artist. We were talking just before about the fact that when you go into so many museums, almost no Women Artists on the wall. Been painting for a long time. I talk about some of the genius women painters of the renaissance whose work was spectacular. There was a wonderful story about a woman that was discovered. So excited about that. I saw some of her work. It kind of makes you wonder if her work is great now, if it deserves a solo show in a museum hasnt it been great for thehe last 400 years . A question of who gets to say its great. I think that is where it is really important for us, too. It even complicates this so much more. I think it is even harder for a woman of color to be recognized because of the inability to nurture and perhaps no that you have run into examples of that as well. Maybe its even harder because there are stories. My sonoo took a class in one of the authors was a woman who was living at a slave and wrote a book and Brown University managed to find a buck and had toto verify that it was her wor. It actually exists and was being studied in an 11th grade class out there somewhere. Have you thought a little bitin about even the intersection about how all of these come together. I did. I did write extensively about that. I did interview a wonderful woman named Carol Anderson who was the head of the studies of emory university. I hope you will read about her in the book. I was so struck by her in our conversation. I met her actually by chance at an evening event. I liked her so much, we had such a fabulous conversation we agreed to talk the next day. I quickly read one of her books. We sat down the next day i said to her, i love your book, it is amazing. I also noticed you had 15 footnotes. She said, i am a black woman. I am not allowed to make any mistakes. Nobody believes what i say anyway. Everything i say has to be completely backed up and completely supported. She tells many more stories like that, but i was very struck with that. Being a white woman, that would not have occurred to me. I tried to take readers along with me while i make what are may be very discoveries. Maybe i should have known that before. Hearing that from her and hearing someal of those specifis really moved me enormously. Realizing the stuff we are missing. You do at the end of the book come up with, about six things that you think women, geniuses, what will help them flourish. You said one supportive person. What kind of person does not have to be . Way back in history, often times it was a father or a brother. They had no place to paint unless they had a father or brother that led them into the studio. Often a parent or individual mentor or teacher. I was struck by the fact that was just one person. The whole world is not going to be on your side. Sometimes just having that one person is enough. That does not mean ignorance. No. A lot of obstacles that everybody faces. I found over and over again to my surprise that so many of the women, they were on their way out. They just did not see the problems. They told themselves there were no problems. They got to a position where they could actually make some change did they do so. A lot of structural problems that need to be changed. We all recognize that. One person cannot do it alone. Sometimes if you encourage them or encourage yourselves to have that passion, to have that focus, it does help a little bit to push obstacles away until someone can push them for you. For women, a woman that has all this talent also have to have aal rubble heart. We dont. At least may be seeing the others is helpful. Who we were just talking about, the physics professor at princeton, she was at oxford as an undergraduate. She never went to the womens and physics program. She did not see yourself as a woman and physics. She just saw herself as a physicist. Now that she is in a position where she can do something, she does. If you are able to succeed, doesnt that mean all women r should be able to do what you didab and just ignore it. No. Youno should not have to have my personality to be a great scientist. It has nothing to do with being ait great scientist. I have been in many realms, i think this comes up in the legal field, i dont understand. I dont see it. Sometimes the success makes you think, if we are all in the same profession, we must all be the same, and a we are not. What you just said. Thinking well are all the same. A w wonderful broadway director. Told me she never likes to be called a woman director. She has a woman who directs. It is a very big one. As soon as you say woman director, you are lumping all women together you. You are saying all women direct the same. It is great. I love being a woman. I am a director. I love that, too. They have pretty much nothing to do with each other. Things do not always go together. There is a fascinating chapter in the book that i will not talk about. Beautyy chapter. The question was whether beauty and genius are connected. I was making the case that they are. One of the people i spoke to said they have nothing to do with each other. It comes down to shoes sometimes. [laughter] a positive approach. Right. I wrote the gratitude diaries. I look for positivity everywhere. I have never met a group of women more positive or have a more wonderful outlook. A nobel prize in chemistry a couple years ago. P came up with an incredibly new way of designing enzymes. It takes a really long time to win the nobel prize. She started as two or three decades ago. She was a young woman. Everyone told her she was crazy. Everyone toldhe her this would t work. W how did she have the courage to go ahead and do it anyway. She said i did not doubt myself. That kind of gives me chills. I think you win the nobel prize just for being a woman and saying i did not doubt myself. That positivity, that core belief that you are okay and things will be okay, i heard it again and again from these genius women. One of the other things you talked about, we will not do it again with the issue of multitude and what you mentioned about women being willing to have a multifaceted life, the last one was one that really struck me. It is because, you know, we know that women who are geniuses have to be willing to be outliers, to a certain extent. The world is not ready for them in some ways. Is on the other side, a core belief that they belong. Iy believe we all really want o belong. What does that mean when these women tend to have a belief that they belong . I think it is a sense that you have as much of a right to be a part of your field as anybody else does or a part of this world as much as anybody else does. Women do not always feel that way. One of the worlds experts in Artificial Intelligence. Creating a new way to teach computers for things like driverless cars. When she started out people were telling her that this could not work. She does not have that greatis confidence that arnold does. She grew up in a small town in china. Extraordinary brilliant. She listened to what everyone wasnt telling her. Sheli thought, i think i am rig. If i am not right, what is the worst that can happen. I will just go on and try Something Else. That again to me was that wonderful sense of i am part of this community discovering Artificial Intelligence and i have as much of a right as anyone else to come up with my own ideas. I think that if we can anyway impart that sense to our children that it is okay sometimes to be a little bit different. It is okay to be not the exact same as everybody in your class, but do care about what you are doing and be passionate about it. I think weit are about done with our time. I will say there is one quoteat that if i were to say should stick with you in this book, she says historically womens potential weathered because nobody was willing to recognize or encourage it. Social change brings powerful results. And so as an organization, very interested in social change for women and girls, i want to thank you for saying that. I think that what you all may be heard tonight was that you need to tell the stories of these women that you know or the ones you are hearing about and think about the stories of the women around you in your own life. If you cannot will name a woman genius that you currently know, you probably are not looking very hard. Any closing topics that you have . Thank you for the great work you are doing with your organization and bringing these topics to peoples attention. Talking about them and recognizing them. [applause] we will pass it to the next person. [laughter] [cheering and applause] thank you so much for being here. It is so often talked about the conversations we had with the gentleman. Equal part something in equal parts celebrity. It struck me that in our times it is monetizing your genius. Running across a spot to monetize your genius in the same way that the men do. That is a great question, which i have not heard before. I do not think that most of the geniuses necessarily think about their work in terms of monetizing it. I think they are often passionate about their work and that is almost a side effect of it. I did speak with one woman in business in the book. Her name is monica. She was a managing director at Goldman Sachs and is now at kkr, the big private equity firm. Finance remains one of the areas of really one of the hardest for women. She did talk about one of the think shef finds herself doing much of her time is just encouraging young woman and telling them it is okay. Recognize you are amazing. Recognize you can do good work. Dont let anybody stop you. It may well be that you are right that infield that are very highpaying, there is even a higher bar for women. [inaudible] we are having a hard time cooperating with the definition as it relates to your book in your perspective and in the broader perspective. I think it is a lot widernk than we have understood before. My definition here was simply extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. People that have had great breakthroughs and done something extraordinary and interesting. Because who we defined as a genius saying who is a genius, i got to say that the women in this book are geniuses. I dont think anyone would disagree with me. One of the things that was particularly delightful for me was as i was finishing the book and word of the book started getting out, i started getting emails and calls of people all over saying here is somebody you should include. Do you know the story of this woman . Would you like to include her . Yes. I would have liked to include everybody. I hope in some ways i did include everybody. I think that by using these women of course it is not inclusive. It cannot possibly be. I hope that by using these women as examples we all start to do exactly what you are saying. She is a genius too. She is doing extraordinary work. Why has nobody paid attention to her before . The book inspires that feeling. That is exactly what i hope it will deal. Thank you. [applause] as a nonauthor, i would only say, too,sa what i found very interesting about this, if you read the book, even the society has defined it as iq. When you think about einstein, we have all decided he was the smartest person on the earth. It actually shows he is not that great at math. What we assume is a genius is not whatat it is. Ied pulled a list of the 50 greatest geniuses. It was according to who cares. On the list of 50 today there was eight women and this list included michael jordan, tony hawk [laughter] my point is, it is not just us broadening the definition to include women. There are plenty of people to say tony hawk, a scoreboard writer who sells tshirts and hats is a genius. Lets think. Lets not broaden the definition for him and find 42 of them and only eight women. [applause] either way, i do talk in the book about some of the standard ways we have had over the years. Mostly all of them turn out to be just wrong. There used to be an idea that you could measure the size of somebodys head and the bigger the head, the more likely they were to be a genius. This one professor said that whales are the geniuses. Iq continues to be proven over and over again to be only a measure of how good you are at taking iq tests. Git has nothing to do with gens genius. There is no absolute measure for it. [inaudible] my dad was a stayathome parent [inaudible] a stayathome dad. That was a first time i realized it was not normal. I dont think we are just taught these things. What practical things you think we need to do to stop this. It sounds like you have had a great upbringing. Congratulations on that. I think one of the things that is really important is we can start integrating boys and girls much earlier than we do. Go watch her a business place that men and women are going to be able to be colleagues. A young friend of mine was telling me that she just enrolled her son who is three years old and day camp. She wrote to the director a couple of friends she would like to be in his group. They cannot be in his group, they arey, girls. You separate the boys and girls club why are we separating boys and girls at age three . Assuming that age 30 they will be able to get along. I have a question relative to helping our boys. I have a son my son came home one day and said, you know, mom, i dont get it. The girls are targeted for their dress code. Their skirts are measured, i dont care if their booty shorts or whatever, they need the boys to not care. I dont care what they wear. That is a huge shift. Fifteen17yearold boys. He knows that this is important. It starts with him. I know that that is a rarity. How to help them because there are so many angry men in general how do we help foster that grouping orib that kind of environment that helps our boys evolve with the rest of us . You have obviously done it. You have obviously done it if your son was able to say that and recognize that. I think raising boys come out the old line used to be raise your sons to be the man you wanted to marry. Having those conversations with boys and not just girls is really important. Some of the things we may be naturally talking to girls about, lets talk to boys about them, too. You are clearly on the right track. Keep doing that with your son and hopefully others will follow. I think that is the best example thank you. [inaudible] i heard collegial. A couple of my friends in the process of writing a book as well about women. Talking in your interviewing, have those women had each others back . Where haveve they helped other women Going Forward . What i mean by that is, where you helping those other women . My experiences there has been a huge awareness that we need to help other women and that women are doing that. As i said, sometimes not necessarily doing it on their rway up, but in a position when they can. The legal and cooperative, not necessarily to other women. That is what the new stereotype is of women. It is meant to be a positive. It is used in politics and its used in boards. That is why we need to have them. That is the diversity. I think it is a danger. As soon as you announce that women are not something, you they are not Something Else. Almost by it means that they are not leaders. They like to work together, but they do not lead. I think we start to lose the distinctiveness of what we are. What we can each deal. We start lumping people together as a woman versus man lets stop doing that. Lets stop recognizing our individual abilities, our individual talents and start recognizing it is time to start telling people what matters is what each of us can do in the power we can bring to the world that way. Thank you both so much. [applause] [inaudible] we encourage you to read it ibyourself. Thank you all for being here. Read it. [laughter] okay. Weeknight this week we are featuring book tv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight, books on apalachee. First historian matthew chronicles Robert Kennedys visit in the winter of 196768. How it fueled his interest to run for president. Then cassie chambers looks back at her grandmother, aunt and mother who grew up poverty. The decisions to remain or leave jd vance recalls his childhood in a town in ohio at the 17th annual book festival in washington, d. C. Watch book tv this weekend every weekend on cspan2. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago. Our mission continues. An unfiltered view of government. We have brought your primary election coverage. The president ial impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all cspan Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen for free on our radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspan daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media. Cspan, created by private industry. Americans cable industry as a Public Service brought to you today by your television provider. Welcome to books and books. Maybe not so beautiful tonight. Wait five minutes. We appreciate you being here. Ring out or seeing out. We would appreciate it. Go to our webpage. Books and books. Com. 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