And i were expecting my first baby and we were just having a real difficult time coming up with names, my husband suggested Eleanor Francis. There was this boom picture of her black and white, nasa in 1960s where shoes accepting an award and i was stunned by this picture because i had no idea that women worked at nasa at that time much less a scientists. I really wanted to learn more. There was a large group of women who worked at this laboratory starting in 1940s and they were known as computers so at the time a digital device we have today. Host how did this group of women come together at a time when engineering that was done at jpl was a rarity . An allwomen group because a woman named macy roberts. Macy roberts started very near inception and in 1942 she was made supervisor of the computers and while she had men that applied for the job, she decided that she wanted to make it all women. Her thinking is that she we wanted to make it a Cohesive Group, but she also was worried that if she hired men they would have difficultly listening to her because she was a woman. Host interesting. So what did this group of computers do and why did this job end up primarily filled by woman . Yes, so this group of women was pretty unique to jpl in that they had a women supervisor or powerful sort of group at jpl and they spent their days. In the beginning they did a lot of traject ours and they calculated the potential of different rocket propellants and trajectory of early missiles. They ended up become the lab computer programmers and had long careers, some of them work at nasa today. Shes been there for 58 years. Their careers are very unique among nasa centers, although there were other woman who were working at computers at other nasa centers, their jobs were quite special and the careers they had. Quite unique. Host now, you mentioned a moment ago Eleanor Francis while looking for a name for your children, im wondering because you have the wonderful story about her in the production or preface of your book. Im wondering how did you choose the particular pub set of women that you speak about in the book because you do so in such wonderful detail . Personal detail, how did you choose which ones to focus on and why. There arent easy because there so many women who had contribution and held a variety of roles at the jet proportion lab and at nasa for that matter but i tend to focus on this group of women because they were there from the very beginning and their careers were so long and, you know, hayed the good fortune of being able to meet many of these women in person and get the to hear the stories from them. They are still friends today and i really had had a wonderful time hearing stories from them and vivid memories of what life was like in 1950s and 1960s at nasa and, yeah, thats how i i ended up choosing this one group of women and focused my story on a few women that had an influential role. Host okay, were you mostly going off of interviews or also working with archival sources, what was source of story . They were just wonderful in helping me find the historral documents they needed. I was lucky to be able to spend in archives and get their assistance but in terms of actually getting the stories from the women, this really proved essential while archives were very helpful in photographs and having the documents, there were so much of the story that really had been lost because no one had documented the womans role in this part of history and i was fortunate to be able to do interviews with the women themselves. Oar so often you see voices of women and women of colored are subdued and i think its incredibly important and extra benefit for you writing this book, so thank you for doing that. Im curious, one of the unsung characters is the data, their daytoday lives are entwine with interpretation of data and you have this wonderful in your preface and i was wonder if you could speak about the data itself, what kinds of data these women were working with and how it contributed to the Overall Mission of jpl and how it had changed over the course of the half century or so that you cover in this book . Well, theres certainly a lot of data to cover. You know, it starts out in a very simple way where we are learning about early missiles. A lot of the calculation that is were done on missile developed in the 50s, i found very interesting because if that missile ended up being not that important in military important but ends up being important later on in 1958 when we see explore one launched. So it was interesting to see how the womens calculations on early missiles and early fuels end up being very important when we get to the space race. And then, of course, the data changes. We go from calculating trajectories of missiles and propellant and then looking at spacecraft and theres so many wonderful stories about early probes, moon and into the planet, one of my favorite pieces is for voyagers because of the way it was done. In early 70s, at jpl they were planning a grand tour of the solar system and because of funding reasons that ended up getting cut and what one of the computers or jpl did came in the weekend and ended up finding a way to allow them to take this one mission to jupiter and extend it so that all of the so the solar system could be included and it was fascinating to me how they were able to calculate the use of good afternoonty gravity and they kept it hush, hush because there were so many concerns about nasa about going over budget. Its hard to focus on one data when theres data and fantastic missions. Host sure, i think its relevant current debate about crude and uncrude and military science and orbit research. I think this speaks to a current debate very well. In looking at in one of my favorite parts of the book in looking at these women who virtue themselves as computers, you sign posttheir stories with moments in the history of computing leading up to the modern electronic computer. I wonder if you can tell me about how you see your book sitting into the larger history of computing in the 20th century guest yes, its interest to go me because when i first started researching the story i assumed that it would be the computers that outlasted the women and it certainly happened at other nasa centers, you see that the parttime held jobs at computers lost their jobs when computers. It didnt happen at jpl. It was the women that stayed constant and what i really loved were some of the relationships they had with these devices. I was surprise today learn how much mistrust there was of ibms in the early days of nasa, many of the engineers i spoke with told me how they just didnt trust these machines. They felt that they were too prone to flairups, that they really didnt want to use them on missions and its because of that that you have the opportunity that jpl where they became the first computer programmers and have the fun relationships. One of my favorite is with an ibm1620 that the women decide to name cora and kind of becomes one one of the women of the group and gets her name plate outside of the room along with the name plate that has all of the other women in the room, that relationship that they have with technology is very interesting and it was fun to see that evolved through the decades. Thats specially interested given the focus in sort of the trust required in technology in order to send something out, obviously we werent going to send people to jupiter or the Voyager Mission but given the kind of distrust of the ibm machines and the devices that were on crew, i wonder if you saw any tension there the way that people at jpl, both women and men thought about ibm computers as robotic spacecraft that they were sending in the universe . Guest yes, i did find that interesting. It was such a long process for ibm to gain their place at jpl, that dynamic between the spacecraft that they are building and that the engineers are watching be built at jpl where theres so much trust thats going on and so much attention into every detail and yet they still want to make sure there are humans behind it that are doing all of the calculation s. Its funny that it took as long as as it did for machines to take precedents over humans in calculations and i would say theres still an interesting dynamic thats happening today at jpl, its still i think we tend to think of Space Exploration as something that is detached from humanity and something done by machines or by computers but its interesting to see how important people are to that process. Host i love the story about cor and given a womans name, i thought it was a wonderful detail. Did did the women ever have any anxiety that the computers, that the ibm computers might replace them, that the labor might be sub planted or how was their labor divided . Yes, there was a lot of fear and for good reason. You know, they actually had several supervisors that would tell the women that were working as computers, oh, your jobs are going to be gone soon, ibms are going to replace you, we are not going to need you anymore. So this was a real fear that they would be losing their jobs to technology and it certainly was something that happened in many places, it happened at nasa centers all over. The fact that they were able to persist is quite amazing. Host it is quite amazing and beyond the presence of Electronic Computers that may have an alternate universe have taken over their job, the fact that many of the women were able to persist in a time period when the expectation that women would leave their jobs upon marriage or childbirth, the fact that so many of them did continue to work for decades both in the midst of being married and having children is remarkable. During the exact same time period, many women were being barred from working in the space industry, in particular in early 1960s when a group of women considered to be astronauts, were written off largely because of expectation that investing in them would be a waste because they would eventually leave for marriage or childbirth. So i wondered why this why the story is so different . You have a few women who are forced to leave or choose to leave upon getting pregnant, why did these women persist and why jpls history is different in this period . There are several drinks why. At that time there was a small percentage, in 1960, only 25 of mothers worked outside the home, of course, there was no Maternity Leave then. So when the women got pregnant, they were often forced off the lab and what i found is that it was because they were a Cohesive Group of women and had supervisor. She provided this very strong example of a working mother because she had two children and she was able to use her Vacation Time and use that in order to substitute for Maternity Leave and come back and then what she did that wasnt happening at other places is pretty simple, she just made phone calls, she would call a women after they had a child and asked them if they wanted to come back and she had a very high success rate of getting women back after they had children and then the lab itself provided an environment that was very friendly for them because the you know, unlike other nasa centers that tended to be a bit more strict and have military atmosphere, jpl had a great Academic Field to the lab and still does and at other nasa centers people that work as computers often had to work a very, very strict 8hour day. Basically adjust their hours in a way thats common but was unusual then and, of course, they were still working very long hours. They often had to work all night when there was a launch, their hours did get long and had wonderful families and, yeah, theres lots of different reasons, but i definitely think one reason that stands out is the friendships they had and the fact that you had helen lang trying to make a wonderful environment for the working mothers. Host i think its im sure a lot of women today, a lot of working women specially working mothers might read the story and see a lot of common thread, flex time aside, a lot of trouble in balancing their work and their family lives. And i know that you are a microbiologist and a mother, i wonder how much of your own experience in the balance you dont have a lot of women in their 80s and 90s, but i really found myself relating with their experiences and sharing much of what they went through at this time. I found their stories very inspiring, the way that they handled family and work was very familiar to me and i i enjoyed that part. That part was very surprising to me and many times when ive i was having trouble balancing things, i would just think barbara did this in 1959 so surely i can do this today. [laughter] host you in addition to these uplifting moments where you can point to to the women at jpl who managed to overcome either internal or external pressures to persist in their careers, you also have a few moments of saddens or failure, moments when that strange, unusual setup at jpl fails to support the computers. You know, for instance you have one of the computer ice boyfriends that compels her to go to therapy, why is she not married and dedicate today dedicated to their careers. So im wondering if you could maybe go over some of the other external pressures that in impad the jpl computers beyond expectation of their workplace . Yeah, there certainly with your a lot of expectations that were put on women at the time. I found that one of the most dramatic, she was the first africanamerican hired at a technical position at jpl and she had an incredible background, very bright young woman, she graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from ucla and if it was today she would have just gotten a job as an engineer but because of the limitations of her race and gender she was a computer and she ended up getting incredible advantages for jpl and from Macey Roberts and ended up becoming an engineer eventually but the external pressures of geography and that put on her were quite difficult and i found that i found it quite sad when i learned about her background and yet still inspiring that she was able to overcome that and realizing the dream of becoming an engineer. Host im glad you brought up janet lawson, i thought that her story was the compelling as one of the few women of color among the jpl computer group, when you mentioned the struggles that she came up against, one of them that you write about in the book is that even mutually she has to leave jpl because shes commuting because she doesnt feel comfortable settling in pasadena which is predominantly white and therefore to leave and being closer to home where she feels comfortable with her husband and raising her family. Janet lawson, were there other women of color at jpl during this time and how did their stories differ from their predominantly white counterparts . Yes, so helen lang once she was made supervisor, she we wanted to bring many more women as engineers to jpl and so in the late 60s she basically started this campaign where she would find women where she thought were very bright that had a lot of potential and who didnt necessarily have degrees to be hired as engineer and she would bring them into a group and encourage them to go tonight school and she found many women who had bachelors degrees and wanted to do engineering but werent quite in the right place for it. Because of this, she was able to fill the lab as engineers and she hired many minorities in this position and jpl is quite a special place thanks to helen lang and the work she did hiring. Host so your understanding and research that you did, you come to the conclusion that jpl in addition to hiring perhaps more women than other nasa centers for Space Industries during that time, they also in many ways hired more people of color than perhaps others; is that correct . I dont think thats true. I think other nasa centers hired many women as well and hired women as well. What was unique were the careers they had. Women were often fired by the late 50s or 60s and this didnt happen at jpl. Instead they ended up having long careers there. Thats what i found was unique about that lab. Could you maybe tell us a little bit about why women were being fired from other centers in the 50s and 60s . Advent of technology. They fired many of the people that worked as computers and they were often large groups of women. I found this happening at nasa centers all over the country. Host wow, so the computers at jpl really did have analogues elsewhere and maybe be concerned about their jobs and sounds like they were pretty comfortable. Did you find in research to speaking to these women that they were aware of what was happening elsewhere, were they ever concerned about losing their jobs or did the culture of women leading women at jpl give them a sense of security that they may not have found elsewhere in the country . Guest they were definitely concerned about losing their jobs. They had men that they worked with who basically told them that their jobs were in jeopardy, you guys are all going to be gone because of technology so there was certainly fear there and they managed to overcome this in large part because of the fact that they had a female supervisor who could really vouch for them and because of their relationships with many of their male colleagues, what happened that was unique at jpl that i found was that many of the male colleagues would include the women on publications and this really was very uncommon at the time but it really boosted their careers quite a bit. Host that actually brings me to a question that i have for you thats about the overall conclusions that you make in the book. I would like to read a quote in the final chapter, while protestors were demanding equal rights for women across the country, the women at jpl had created their own quality, they had form it had lab in their own image building an environment amenable to women where their work and contributions very every bit as valued as of those the male counter parts and this is really a remarkable claim specially given the struggles of women and also given what you mentioned elsewhere in your book about the same arguments about women against jpl by the men particularly, youre going to leave if you get pregnant or get married. So im wondering in stating that the Computers Work was valued the same level of mens work, you mentioned that they were included in publications, but im wondering beyond and that resinates with me in that their names being on publications shows in a very specific way kind of the economy, the production of knowledge that theyre involved with. But im wondering how you measured value beyond being included in papers because noting that the women or arguing that women shaped jpl for themselves and to create this place of equality is a very large to make specially in the 1960s, so if you could speak a little bit more about how you came to the conclusion of equal value, i would appreciate that. Guest well, you know, they certainly had a crucial role in these missions, i found when i talked to them that much of that value was how they saw themselves. It wasnt just in their colleagues. It wasnt that they were included in publications and it wasnt simply their work which was quite important but it was that they saw themselves as equally important as their male colleagues and this is a big deal because they they certainly had many other women to compared themselves at the lab. There were women who worked as secretaries there and they found themselves to be quite different and they found that their treatment was different than secretaries and other positions at the lab. And so, you know, thats why im able to make such a big claim, is because of their place that they occupied that was really quite special at the time, and so it changes too as we get to late 1960s where they are on the virtue of becoming engineers and while theyre computers its important to note that theyre making less than male colleague that is are engineers and thats all about to change. Theyre about to become engineers and salaries about to go up, but they still they feel valued in a way thats equal to their male colleagues. But would like an overview of what this early period of nasa was like and even those historians and experts who know a lot about the history and know in detail about our Early Missions but may not know them from these perspectives and the role of women and my hope is there are stories people have not heard but are interesting in how nasa came to be. Host i was impresseded with the miney science lessons you place throughout the text. Mini you were explaining the processes the computers were working with. Why did you include those . It was important to include as much science and math because it is important to understand what women did but it is just fascinating. I found myself overwhelmed by the beauty of some of these experiments by our Early Missions. So yeah, it was a lot of fun to write those and hopefully they are accessible for any reader to be able to follow. Host sure. I find it accessible and i am not a scientist so thank you very much. As i was reading it was was thinking about the problems in education with the White House Council on women and girls to increase the representation in stem field and that is science, technology, engineering and mathematics. How do you thing your book encourages women to work infields in which they are traditionally underrepresented . Guest i hope it has a big influence. I think the situation with women especially in technology is desperate. We need to be bringing more women into the technology. My hope is that the stories of these women will be inspiring and they can serve as role models for women interested in science today. It is important we recognize their contributions because of course they deserve it. It is very overdue they get this recognition of their work. But i also hope that it will serve as an inspiration for all of the young girls who are interested in science today. Host that being said this book covers a fast breadth of material. Vast. I assume a few things fell on the cutting room floor that could not fit. I was wondering if you could tell me a few of your favorite stories or antidote that didnt make it. Guest there are a lot of great ones there. I was surprised. I talk about jupiter in the book who is a forerunner to the american satellite and i was surprised with how much work went into it. I discuss it briefly in the book but the details i learned from the women working on it was incredible. This was before sput nick launched they were strapping together what women were calling the bodal and they were put it it in stages on top of the red stone rocket and they wanted to launch the First American satellite at jpl and they eventually did but i was shocked they could have done this a year before sputnik was launched. The learning about the details and the trickery that happened there. They were working on this when they were not supposed to. They were supposed to be looking at nose cones for different rockets and instead they were designing a spacecraft and look at all of these rocket potentials. So i found that part of the story just fascinating. Host that is pretty remarkable they were able to keep so many things quite particularly at jpl which has a sad history of loosing people to, you know, political concerns. For instance frank malina had to leave because of the red scare. And so it seems remarkable that a lot of these projects continued to be kind of organized a little bit under the radar. Do you have a sense of were your subjects involved at keeping some of these, i dont want to call them secret projects, but under the radar projects from view of the powers that be to keep them going . Guest there were different security clearances at the same. This was in the 1950s and now things have changed in the lab but in the 1950s there were different colors for badge and different security clearances and the women that worked in computers had the highest security clearance in the lab and they would keep their doc documedock ments locked up and they had to be always on call in case there was a spill in the lab. What i find funny about jpl is how much these scientist and engineers have done things that are sneaky and they sort of continue to do this over the decade. I saw this with jupiter sea and the voyager which is sneaky. They try to push the limits of what can be done for exploration. Host it just seems i think it might be remarkable to some people listening that so much of what is done is tinkering and seems like it should be very specific but there is still at a place like jpl a lot of looking around and things are less cut and dry in terms of procedure and what they are working on and i think that you did a fantastic job of describing that particularly during the lead up to the First American satellite. That is another part of your book that i really enjoyed is that you have these while you are telling the stories of these women you are always telling an alterinate history of the Space Program. Besides your surprise about finding out we could have beaten the soviet union to the first satellite to sputnik. Was there any other surprises you found in your research, things that were unexpected, about the history of the American Space program that was revealed through your research on these women . Guest i was surprised by how many failures there were early on. It was very sad to learn about the atmosphere and what it was like in the early booner probes that were sent out from jpl. The ranger series in particular is just one failure after another and it was just so painful to learn what the affect was in the lab. Just a desperate time and a feeling we have to gate probe on the moon. We have to do this to pave the way for astronauts to go there at some point. There was a strained tension there because you had many of the engineers who sort of felt like the moon was too easy, that it wasnt interesting enough and what we were doing wasnt scientifically important and we should be focusing our probes to venus and mars. You had competing teams working on this that were looking at both projects and because of this i found that the initiative for the lunar probes often got left behind. There just wasnt the same excitement at jpl to work on these missions. And then things become desperate, people lose their jobs because there have been so many failures of the ranger series. This was just an interesting part of history about how difficult it was to get a probe up on the moon. Host where did the excitement go . When they lost their excitement was it just a matter of there being enough failures they lost heart or were there other factors at play . There was a lot of tension between engineers and scientist at that time. I found that an interesting dyn dynamic that continues at jpl today. There was a feeling for many scientist they wanted to explore parts of the moon that would be more interesting. They didnt just want to look at the flat landing places and of course that is what the probes needed to do. They needed to be able to go to the sea of tranquility and places are astronauts can actually land. It was interesting to learn about that tension and how they dealt with this and the mission certainly goes up in complexity from there. Host beyond the Ranger Program you are reminding me of the attention of crude versus uncrude missions during this time period. During the lead up to president kennedys announcement we were going to the moon, going to the moon wasnt a for gone conclusion. There were those arguing the soviets were better at heavy rockets and we were better at creating Scientific Missions and in shaping what the race should be we should instead of gathering data about mars, in the end with the other politics, landing a man on the moon became the space race. You mentioned there is a Ranger Program that the jpl staff worked on to create the possibility of landing astron t astronauts on the moon. I wonder if doing that they maintained feelings that crude base flight wasnt necessarily the way to go or if they had other motivations behind working toward these projects and their sneakiness. Did you get a sense they were not as excited about the human spacecraft and used that as a way to support the work they cared about which was uncrude space flight . Guest i did get that sense. I got the feeling it was thecrude spacecraft that was held in high regard and that was felt the work that was scientifically important and needed to be pursued and the crude spacecraft wasnt at interesting. It was a balance between different interests and what is impressive is ultimately you are able to have both. Jpl today is doing Incredible Missions that are all robotic today. Host i will go back a little bit to the particular women that you write about in your book and the way that you write about them, as i mentioned, this book reads in a lot of ways as a mem mem memoir and you have details of the computers mismatching her shoes and socks in the lead up to the explorer launch, and parties they attended and dates with their husbands and boyfriends. I am wondering did you in speaking to these women did you find they were just as in r interested in sharing personal stories as they were there work . You have personal things in there like the failure of sues first pregnancy and that is a moment that drove her to work at jpl. These women put themselves out there with this book and my question is how willing were they to share these stories and have you spoken to them about how you presented them in the book to see and hear the window into their lives . Guest yes, i was fortunate that i got to spend a lot of time with these people. When sue finley lost that newborn it is such a heartbreaking moment and when i talked to her about it she felt it was important to share because it is important for other women to know this happened. We tend to be silent on issues like this because it is so sad. It is a tragedy when a baby dies. But sharing her story i felt was important to her because she wanted other women to know what it was like, what it felt like, how it shaped her. It was an important part of her history and important to include. A lot of these details might seem silly such as the mismatched shoes but it is all an important part of story and fun to learn these details but it gives us more insight into what it was like to be part of these missions and what it felt like at the time. Host it really brings the story to life beyond the office scenes. The pranks were fantastic. Sue finley is now the longest serving woman employee at nasa. There is a moment in the book that i was thought interesting where she is at home after being a mother and facing strange malaise and her psychologist suggest she go back to work as treatment for this malaise. I found that surprising given this is the 1960s. Was she indeed unusual in this . Or did you find this story reve revealed perhaps a hidden threat of change about women in the workplace in the 1960s . Guest she was unusual because there were not that many working mothers at that time in the 1960s but there are many women that can relate to being home with Young Children and missing work and wanting to be at work. Evelien n if you are a stay at home mother there is probably part of her experience you can relate to. For her to have a therapist you should return to work that is definitely unusual. For her it was absolutely the right decision and she made quite a career after that and i am very glad she decided to return to work after having children. Host what is her child now . The idea of the human computer is obsolete now. A woman who started when she had the name of something that is now an electronic technology, what is her title now of someone who may not have the same ed education but worked as nasa. Guest in the 1960s all of the women who were titled computers were given the title engineer. This happened in 2004 and nasa decided if you didnt have a bachelor degree you could not be an engineer. Although she works as a System Engineer at nasa, and nasas longest serving woman, that title was taken away that year and her salary was changed to hourly. So it is really a terrible situation. I think it shows host that is terrible. Guest it is horrible. It shows the lack of recognition for the decades of service these women have put in at jpl and something i hope this book will change. Host sure. I feel like the time is ripe for there to be a movement to reverse sue finleys demotion. Changing gender norms over de deca decades. That is incredible. Were there other people i am curious if she is alone in this or if other women work at nasa and saw their titles change or if this is a oneoff situation . Guest she is a unique situation because the other women retired in the late 1990s before this rule took effect. They were hired in the 40s and 50s when having a bachelor wasnt a prerequisite even for men. Many women had degrees but many didnt. Just like sue who were exceptionally skilled at math. What i also found upsetting was the lack of recognition that took place in anniversary. One of them was during 2008 during the 50th anniversary of explorer one and nasa held a gala and invited all of the people part of the mission but they didnt invite the women that were part of it and that is very sad because many of these women spent a long time working on the mission and many were in the control room that night including barbara who was critical to that. Host absolutely. You open to her counting down. I remember being surprised saying i didnt know this was a womans voice that was monitoring what was happening and was the one to state there was success, right . She was the one to confirm that explorer had succeeded . Guest she was the one calculating the trajectory of explorer one and she was the one telling us the mission was that success. She had this room full of people waiting on edge. She had richard fineman, the famo famo famous fizz cyst. Host that is incredible. It helps encapsulate the book and the forgotten stories of these woman. The fact she confirmed the success of the First American spacecraft is huge. It is surprising it has been largely forgotten and i am hopeful your book is a good first step toward reinstating these women in the American Space program. I wanted to speak briefly, or i would like to hear from you about the computers creating a womens space. We talked about the Space Program and the position of jpl within nasa and the American Space history. You mention that women in leadership created this space in many ways rejected men who applied to be computers particularly in the 50s and 60s and that sounded similar rather to womens groups that came together in the 1960s to create womens only spaces. I wonder if you could discuss what these womens content was and if they saw them being part of a Larger Movement or if they were just kind of doing their own thing separate from what was going on in the rest of the country . Guest yes, they didnt really see themselves has part of a feminist movement. They just loved their work at jpl. They felt like their jobs were the best jobs in the world. I heard over and over again they could not believe they got to be there and got to be paid for this work. They enjoyed it that much. Even though they were this Unusual Group of all women, they only hired women, they were not setting out to change history that way. You know, that is actually a quote i open the book with. A quote from sally rye where she says i didnt come to nasa to make history and that encapsulates their view. They were there because they loved science, math, and it just so happens they did change history and make a really big impact on nasa. Host i love you included that quote from sally rye because she is a complicated figure in gender and the space arena. The Women Computers you talk about in your book and sally rye were all primarily doing their jobs but become feminist figures in the telling given their entries into fields that were previously dominated by men. So you create a nice arc there with the quote by sally rye. Do these women i know a lot of them have retired but do they still have their networks of camaraderie . Are they connected even in retirement or have they largely gone their separate ways . Guest they are. They are still friends and talk to one another. It says a lot about what life was like spending all of their hours together working and they had all of these social vents, too. This made their friendships very strong. In 2013, i organized a reunion of women coming from all over the country. It was such an honor to be there and tour the lab and see all of these places they remembered and hear memories of what it was like and then also to see their relationship with each other and to see they really are still good friends today was quite inspiring. Host you were able to get quite a few to come to the reunion . Did you have a large group . Guest i did. It was about 17 women and we just had a wonderful time. Host when you were going through did you run into anyone working at jpl now and were they aware of who they were in contact with . Guest there were many that remembered. Many worked until the late 1990s. But for the young women who were not hired by ellen lang and didnt know there was once a group of women called computers at the lab i think it was pretty surprising to see these were their forerunners and what made their future possible at jpl. Host it is an excellent book and extremely accessible. I would recommend it to anyone at any age who is interested in learning about a Remarkable Group of women history has gotten. Thank you, Nathalia Holt for being here. When i tune in on the weekend it is usually authors sharing their new releases. Watching booktv is the best television for serious readers. Booktv weekends. They bring you author, after author, after author, that spotlight the work of fascinating people. I love booktv and i am a cspan fan. If you look up the definition of the word liberal in the dictionary you will find it means many different things. The word broad minded comes up, the word open minded. A liberal is supposed to be somebody that is tolerant of different points of view. The idea you may disagree with me but have your right to your opinion and above all no one has the right to deny us our freedom of conscious. Competition must be kept opened. There is no settled science. The ends of history are open ended. We are not sure where woe are going. A checks and balance must be maintained in the government to make sure no one single party or partisan view prevails forever. The rule of law is sack and the same rules apply to everybody. That is the general mind of what a liberal should be. By that stance, self described liberals have a problem. Speech codes and safe spaces are used to stifle debate and descent. Progressive attorney jegenerals are issuing subpoenas for people who are against climate change. Religious people who question samesex marriage are called bigoted and worth. Universities where progressive reins supreme stifles conformity. All across america whether it is neighborhoods, schools or local dpment governments there is a zero tolerance of something that might offend in that institution at the time. Aggressive liberals have become the opposite of the liberal minded person i described here. They have become in tolerant, closeminded and even yes, jim liberal when is opposite of open minded. Too often they use public shaming particulary in universities and even coheort. It has been going on for a long time. Unfortunately there are also a lot of misunderstandings i wanted it tackle. I must say at the outset it will not do if you are conservative to argue progressives have always been this way. This is a response i have gotten on twitter as i try to promote the book. A lot of people come back with what is new under the sun. I dont think that progressives even though they have held long, strongheld views, i think their war against decent and desire to control have never been as intense as they are today so i think there is something fundamental and new. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org
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