Latest / Math Therapy / S4E08: “Dude Walls” & the lost women of science w/ Katie Hafner

Transcript

S4E08: “Dude Walls” & the lost women of science w/ Katie Hafner · Math Therapy

0:02
SPEAKER_01: For every Ronald Franklin or Marie Curie whose story has been told, there are thousands of women whose stories haven't been told and we are revisiting the historical record one extraordinary scientist at a time.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Are you not a math or science person or have you been told you're not a math or science person?
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Hi, I'm Vanessa Vicarian at aka the math career, and you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that helps guests work through their math traumas one problem at a time.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: But the scars that math has left on many of us definitely do.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and don't worry, no calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: Today I'm interviewing a true select.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so here's the story.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: A few months ago, Sabina, aka my BFF, aka our producer, called me freaking out, and she was like, oh my god, you need to listen to this podcast.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: It's called The Lost Women of Science.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: It's so fucked up.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: All of these women's scientists legit got erased from history.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Fast forward, I listened to the podcast, and holy shit, Sabina was right.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: So we tracked down Katie Hafner, who created the podcast and has been reporting on women in STEM for over 30 years, like way before it was even cool.
1:22
SPEAKER_02: She's also the author of six books and a regular contributor to the New York Times.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: Disclaimer about this episode, it will likely make you angry, like fucking flipping a table screaming, burn down the patriarchy angry.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: But I have good news.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: Katie has an epic project that we can all take part in to rectify this giant wrong.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: And it involves something called a dude wall.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: What is a dude wall, you wonder?
1:45
SPEAKER_02: I'll just let Katie explain.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: Katie, welcome to Math Therapy.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: We're so excited to have you.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm so excited to be here.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: I think.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: No, you're excited.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: You're excited.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: We're all excited.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: We're all fine.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: So just to start, to be honest, I want to know how you and Amy Sheriff came up with this.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: Like, how did this all start?
2:08
SPEAKER_02: What was the motivation?
2:09
SPEAKER_01: So I've known Amy for gosh golly, almost 10 years now.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh we were just social friends, and she kept telling me, and I'm a writer and I've written a bunch of books, nonfiction books, um, and I write a lot about I used to write a lot about technology, and then I switched to healthcare, um, all for the New York Times.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: And um, she just kept telling me about this friend of hers whose mother was the protege or the mentee of some woman named Dorothy Anderson.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: And I'm, you know, how when you're listening to friends talk and they're you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're kind of politely like nodding.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that sounds vaguely interesting.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: And and she said, and this and this woman detected cystic fibrosis, and I'm like, that's nice.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like nothing really registered, but I wanted to be polite because Amy seemed so impassioned about this story.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: And she said, I want to figure out a way to tell this story.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: And she kind of was hinting, maybe we should write a book together.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh dear God, no.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: And I just thought this is gonna be really super boring.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and also I realized that there was no archival material about this woman, but I kept kind of humoring Amy, and then a couple of important things happened.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, podcasts started to take off.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, I started my own podcast in the at the as soon as the pandemic hit, um, I was super depressed, as was the entire world.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: And I was walking my dog one day, and I thought, wait a minute, I can I can make a podcast.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody's saying, I can do that.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: And I had no idea what I was doing.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: I could barely use garage, I couldn't even use garage band.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know like anything about anything, but I decided to do my own interview podcast, which as you know is very different from a totally polished produced podcast.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: I decided to do my own um interview podcast called Our Mothers Ourselves, where um it uh enough with the people whining about their bad mothers.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: This was gonna be just extraordinary mothers, um, celebrating extraordinary mothers.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: So I interviewed like the daughter of Julie Andrews.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Julie Andrews was a, by the way, a great, a great mother, just saying Erin Brokovich's mother.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: I talked to Erin about her mom, and but also not famous people.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: So it's a really so then I so Amy was still kind of quietly pestering me about this woman, Dorothy Anderson.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I said, wait a minute, what about a podcast?
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Let's do a podcast about her.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: I had absolutely no idea.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, you were still humoring her, even though you thought it was going to be so boring.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know how boring could it be, right?
5:07
SPEAKER_01: So it could have been really boring.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: So uh I said, let's do a podcast.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: I thought, okay, we'll just do a one-off.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: And then I said, almost in the same breath, I said, you know what?
5:19
SPEAKER_01: Let's do an entire series and call it Lost Women of Science.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: And that was the beginning.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: And then uh, so we started on the Dorothy Anderson story, which by the way turns out not to be at all boring for so many reasons.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: I can vouch, it's a cliffhanger.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: And oh, it is really well, kind of like I'm on episode three, and at the end I was like, where is this fucking portrait?
5:47
SPEAKER_02: But like I was finished my run and I had to go inside and I was like, Oh my god.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: But okay, we'll talk about that, I hope, a little bit.
5:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay, yes, yes, yes.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: Of course, we're gonna talk about it.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, and I just saw that you've been signed on for seasons two, three, and four, right?
6:01
SPEAKER_02: Like you have, and as you said, you have so many supporters.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: I guess I kind of have a weird question in a way, because you know, we're all Sabina and I are constantly trying to pitch um our math show to Netflix and to like everyone, and everyone's constantly like, no one cares, no one wants to hear about math.
6:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, please stop pitching us.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: And I guess my question to you is how did you get so many people to care about the lost women in science?
6:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: I think part of it was that I I I've been around so long um that I have a reputation for being from my journalism.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: And so when I went to, for instance, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation um with the idea, they already knew me from my journalism because I have such a track record.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: And so when I said, and I and I said something pretty compelling, I said, you know, uh our mantra is this for every Rosalind Franklin or Marie Curie whose story has been told.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: There are thousands of women whose stories haven't been told.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: And so we are going back and we're we don't we're careful, we don't say we're correcting the historical record, we say we are revisiting the historical record one extraordinary scientist at a time.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: And the president of the Moore Foundation just said to me at one point, um, you have a tiger by the tail here.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yes, thank you for noticing.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: I think we do.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: And then I did something super smart.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, I shared with him our database.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: The coin of our realm is this database we have of about 200 women whose stories need to be told.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: So at this rate, we'll be we'll be finished in about a hundred years.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: Um okay, but that's a lot.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: That's a lot.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of lost women in science.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: That's and there's so many more.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, and he said, um, and I said, Listen, I'm gonna share this database with you, but it's completely confidential.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: And he took a look at it and he said, Wow.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: And that's when he said, You have a tiger by the tail.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: I said, I know.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: And so the the more foundation is they're the ones who are supporting us for seasons two, three, and four, because these things are really expensive to make.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, they're free to listen to, but they're expensive to make.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: So, and our mothers ourselves is an interview podcast.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: It's like nothing costs nothing to make, just my time.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: But this one, yeah, to do all that research.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: And like, I mean, that's that takes a lot of work.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: So, okay, can we can you tell us?
8:45
SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't want to give anything away because I think everyone should really go listen to the podcast.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: And you can't explain the whole thing, but why don't you tell us super briefly who Dorothy Anderson is?
8:56
SPEAKER_02: Because I think it's important, and I need to like I need you to tell us what the doodle is.
9:02
SPEAKER_02: Like, I just want you to say, I don't want to do it.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: You've got to do it.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: It's so good.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Too painful for you.
9:06
SPEAKER_02: I know it's too painful.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: So, um, so Dorothy Anderson, she was um born around 1900.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: She gravitated to science and then she went to medical school amazingly, when very, very few women went to medical school.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: She graduated from medical school in 1926, so almost a hundred years ago.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: And she wanted to go into surgery, but of course, women were shut out of surgery because it wasn't just that it would, there was a lot of uh prejudice against women within the profession of medicine, but also patients didn't want to see women.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they would think they were like incompetent, yes, and so um so she became a pathologist, which is not a patient-facing specialty, and um and uh she went to Columbia uh to worked at babies hospital as a pediatric pathology at the dawn of that of pediatric pathology, it really was ground zero for pediatric pathology, and she what I love most about the story, and I don't I'm not giving anything away here, is that she thought outside the box.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, the traditional thinking around cystic fibrosis was that it was celiac disease, and it's and I remember thinking, wait a minute, I thought cystic fibrosis was the lungs, and celiac is like GI stuff, right?
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Like you can't digest gluten or whatever the problem is, and I just had no idea.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: You're pointing to David, the the tech, your your your technician who has gluten problems.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk, we'll talk with that offline about your celiac, David.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: So um anyway, so um, so the so all these kids who were these babies who were dying, um, she was doing the autopsies and she noticed, and they were routinely diagnosed as having died from celiac.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: And David, don't worry, you're okay.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: And and she and she noticed that there was this lung involvement.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: So she uh went and kind of gumshoeed her way through this uh this problem of analyzing what was going on with the pancreatic duct and which is how celiac uh disease messes you up, and then uh the lungs, and she saw that it was everything was very sort of sticky and molasses-like, and she realized that um and just and this was long before you could just Google something, obviously, or go on to Google Scholar.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: She would have to write to all these hospitals and ask them for their slides, their their paths, their pathology slides, so she could compare these different cases.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: And it must have been a tremendous, tremendous amount of work.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: And then in 1938, she came out with this 50-page single-author scientific paper um describing this disease, and she called it cystic fibrosis of the pancreas, and and she had sort of broken through, and then word got out to parents of these babies who were dying.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, back then, cystic fibrosis would kill you usually before you were a year old.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: So these and these parents would watch these babies suffer.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: It was horrible.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: And so they would bring their babies to her, and so she was also a clinician, which is unusual for a pathologist.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: And she has basically both figuratively and literally disappeared from history.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: We even interviewed Francis Collins, who's the outgoing director of the NIH.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: By the time this airs, he'll be gone.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, and he is the man who isolated the cystic fibrosis gene in 1989, and he's a huge champion of women in science.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: He even has named his guitar, he's a musician, he has named his guitar Rosalind after Rosalind Franklin.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: He didn't know, he didn't know who Dorothy Anderson was.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, he knew who she was, but he didn't really know any of the specifics of her accomplishment and her discovery.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, really?
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And so uh, so then we just we went on this trail after her story, and the really tragic part is that there's almost nothing in an archival sense.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: You know how famous people die, they leave their papers, yeah.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: There's like notes or like things her correspondence is gone, her drafts of her papers gone.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, but where are they?
14:27
SPEAKER_02: Like, are they burned away?
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Like, are they just gone?
14:32
SPEAKER_01: I know.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: And so we found not one, but we actually amazingly enough, found not one but two.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: I call them our fanboys, our Dorothy Anderson fanboys.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: Fanboy number one is this wonderful um pediatric pulmonologist at Dartmouth um in New Hampshire, uh named Brian O'Sullivan, who dedicates his his lecture to his first year medical students, um, his cystic fibrosis lecture he dedicates to Dorothy Anderson.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I even keep a note here on my computer, something he says about her.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: And I just every day I look at it.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: And then um, and then our what does it say?
15:14
SPEAKER_01: Wait, what is the note saying?
15:15
SPEAKER_01: It says, I often hold Dorothy Anderson up as an exemplar for medical students of the importance of being prepared, being observant, seeing, and not just looking, if you will.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: And then we got super lucky when we found fanboy number two, who's obsessed with Dorothy Anderson and has just finished and published a biography of her.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: And that's Scott Baird, who you hear a lot of in episode three when we talk when he goes in search of the portrait and just keeps bumping into the dude walls.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: I feel like this is just making me want to listen to it again.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: And hopefully everyone's just gonna go listen to it because that's just like the tip of kind of the iceberg.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: Like that's some good background into why this is so fascinating.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, I want to just shift gears a little because one of the things you talk about in the podcast, and again, I'm not gonna give too much away.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: We obviously recognize, hopefully, many of us recognize, not everyone, that there's a lot of work to be done.
16:12
SPEAKER_02: Like, not only are there lost women, you know, from years back, we still have a serious, serious issue.
16:18
SPEAKER_02: And part of it is because of the fact that there's such a lack of representation.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: So, still to this day, we think it's super weird for a woman to even want to enter the sciences that they're that's still a stereotype, that's still an issue.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: And in episode three, someone says, I can't remember who, that the like what you know, if you're kind of sitting around super stressed, being like, oh my God, there's so much work to be done.
16:40
SPEAKER_02: One of the easiest things you can do is visually alter that representation that is outward facing by hanging portraits or removing portraits.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: So I I'm not gonna, I want you to tell us what the dude wall is because it's all tied together.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: But I like the idea, A, I think we need to all know what a dude wall is.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: B, I think it's kind of empowering to be like, this is a change we can literally make right now.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: In fact, what I'd like to do is ask if anybody who's listening uh sees a dude wall to send me a photo, but let's let's back up and explain what it is.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: What happened was, uh, and this is the thing about being a reporter for many decades, you have to sort of keep your eyes open.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh one thing that I saw in the Mount Holyoke archives was um there are some, there are some archives that have her, um, some of her, I wouldn't call them papers, so much as she filled out these alumni questionnaires and newspaper clippings about Dorothy Anderson.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: And there was one clipping where I saw that there was a portrait of her, an oil painting done by a famous portrait artist named Frank Slater, and of her that what and there was a big ceremony, Vanessa, a ceremony where they in 1963, right after she died of the unveiling of this portrait.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: And I said to Scott, what's with this?
18:07
SPEAKER_01: Where is it?
18:08
SPEAKER_01: It's gotta be there somewhere.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: And Scott said, I've never seen it.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: So Scott is our, he's our fanboy who's written the biography of her, who's uh at Columbia.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: He's a Columbia pediatric intensive care doc, like the angels upon angels of doctors.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And he um, I said, Well, get your record, get your phone, press record, and I want you to walk around Columbia University to every single building and ask if anyone's seen the portrait of Dorothy Anderson.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And I said, You're gonna bump into a lot of dude walls.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: And he said, What's that?
18:45
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, Rachel Maddow uh was giving a talk at Rockefeller University a few years ago, and as she was walking into the auditorium, she looks around and in typical Rachel inimitable style says, What is with the dude wall?
19:05
SPEAKER_01: So she came up with the term dude wall, and and in fact, what it these things are, it's walls that are basically covered with portraits and photographs of um white men, usually dead white men.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: And that is what how the institution sort of, as you said, does this outward-facing visual representation of its history.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And that's what so many uh people today confront when they walk through the halls of these places.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: So Dorothy's portrait at some point got lost.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: It was hung in the lobby of Baby's Hospital, and then and now it's gone.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: It's gone.
19:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God, this needs this should be a Netflix show.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, this is such a like true crime.
20:02
SPEAKER_02: Like, where the fuck is that the portrait?
20:04
SPEAKER_02: Now I'm obsessed with it.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: But also, okay, wait, what this is also reminding me very weirdly.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: So me and David are in a band, and I remember we went on tour once.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: We played like the Masonic Temple, that lodge, the Masonic Lodge, and they like were the Masons.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't know much about the Masons.
20:18
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you probably know what I'm talking about, though, right?
20:20
SPEAKER_02: Like, anyways, and I remember after Isn't that a cult?
20:24
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I'm obsessed with cults.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: So I was like, oh my God.
20:26
SPEAKER_02: Like, I guess it is, but I think like they use these lodges as just places to have shows in small towns.
20:32
SPEAKER_02: Like you can rent it out.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: But after the show, someone who was there was like, Do you want to see like the back of the Masonic Lodge?
20:38
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, me being obsessed with cults was like, hell yes, I do.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: And I remember we walked back and I was like, it was a dude of room.
20:46
SPEAKER_02: Like it was like four walls, every single wall.
20:50
SPEAKER_02: It was just white men.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I was visibly like, I was upset.
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Like I was like, like, I know I shouldn't be that surprised, it's the Masons, but it was jarring.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: Like I was like, there are hundreds of white men just on the walls right now.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: Like I felt so uncomfortable.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: It sounds like a Stephen.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, really scary.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: It it kind of was.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: Like I was like, this is so fucked up.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: Like it was, and it's funny to think, okay, yeah, so that's a cult.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: So that's a bit different, but also these walls do exist in our educational institutions, like not a cult, like somewhere we're we're supposed to be welcoming diversity.
21:26
SPEAKER_02: So, okay, what's the ask if we see a dude wall?
21:29
SPEAKER_02: Like, number one, send you a picture, but what do you think we should be doing about this in general?
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so send it to us at lostwomenofscience at gmail.com.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And then I think what we need to do is instead of complaining, which just by having brought it to the attention of the outside world, we're complaining, but give um, but be constructive.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: So go back, look at let's look at the history of this of the institution in question and find women.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Harvard is doing this several times.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Of the several places are now going back and rethinking their dude walls.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So go find women, people of color, underrepresented, whoever, and suggest either a portrait be painted of that person and put up on the wall, maybe a um a photograph, whatever it is, but change the walls.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: So that's the dude wall project born on this show with you.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was born right now.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm so flattered.
22:31
SPEAKER_02: Yes, 100% dude wall project.
22:33
SPEAKER_02: There's, I mean, I do feel like that's a TV show name.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: I can see it as a whole thing.
22:37
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I love that idea.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: And I also want to point out that again, I'm gonna say this because I get this all the time, and I'm sure you do too.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: We're not talking about like being like, oh, we need more, you know, women and people of color on the wall.
22:50
SPEAKER_02: Just stick any old thing up there.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: No, we're talking about all the people who actually had a meaningful impact that have literally been left off.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: And you actually even say in the podcast, a lot of the men on those walls are kind of random.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: Like there have been certain points where people just wanted to fill in their portrait walls.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: So they were like, hmm.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: So I think that's important.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: Total randos.
23:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: White men exactly.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's funny.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Like changing a portrait wall is almost like it's a very superficial thing, but it's one of those things where sometimes you have to start with the outer facing superficial to make a bigger systemic change.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Right?
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Like it's like you change the portrait wall, it means that more women and people of color walking through those halls feel like they belong, are more likely to stay in those programs, are more likely to enter science programs.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: But I had this crazy thought.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: I was like, what if you're doing all this work, you do the Dude Wall project, it goes viral, global, crazy, it obviously will.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: And in like 10 years, do you think it's possible that new textbooks will be written that will finally include like a ratio of women and people of color to white men that is proportionate to I do, I really do, I really do.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Like if you like look at Alice Ball, who's a perfect example, who came up with a treatment for leprosy, but was totally Matilda affected out of it.
24:09
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, so the Matilda effect is where just in brief, um, women get the um women get the credit.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, because my daughter's calling me.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: And I she's yeah, and so you want to get it?
24:25
SPEAKER_01: No, let me just tell her, let me just tell her up there.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: No, she's calling the home line because she can't read.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: Does she want to join the podcast?
24:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just put her on the podcast.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Put her on the pod.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: She's actually in medical school, so she would be good.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me see if she wants to talk.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: Hey, sweetie.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, she didn't answer on the other one.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm answering on this one.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: She's doing a podcast in her new fame.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: And you guys, and you guys are on it right now.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: Turn the CNN to be heard.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be crazy.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: So, sweetie, they wanted to talk to you because you're in medical school.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: The podcast people.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
25:23
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's right.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were we were joking, just to be clear.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: I've actually got to hang up because I am on a podcast.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Call me when you're done.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right, I love you.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, that was the best interruption ever.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: That sounded like that sounded like you know when on your podcast, for example, like you have someone calling in from the phone.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: Like it sounded the audio was like so like it's too bad.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: She didn't say anything juicier, like it was a pretty benign conversation.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: Was that your husband also being us in her studio?
25:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: What you need to know about my husband is he's like Dr.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: COVID.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: He's like this super now super famous COVID doctor, and so he's always being interviewed.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: He was interviewed on Rachel, Rachel interviewed him, he was interviewed on CNN.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: So did you hear him say now she's famous?
26:09
SPEAKER_01: Now she's yes, he said, now you're gonna turn on CNN and see her instead of Oh my god, we're gonna have him on.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: We'll be like, Yeah, a cameo by Dr.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: COVID.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: Wow, this is a Dr.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: Walter, Dr.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: Bob, Dr.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: Bob Walter is his name.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: You'll see he's a he's yeah, he's a thing.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so um what were you talking about?
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the dude, the dudewall textbooks years from now.
26:36
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the textbooks, yes, years from now.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: That's what that I wanted to just finish that thought because it's like you could change, like obviously you're already changing the world.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: There's no doubt about that.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: You're amazing.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: This is so inspiring, but you are, you are.
26:46
SPEAKER_02: I think it's really crazy.
26:48
SPEAKER_02: People always say this, right?
26:50
SPEAKER_02: They say it's almost like it's this new initiative to get women into STEM, and you're proving they've been in there all along, they've belonged all along.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: Like, so much of the stuff that we're benefiting from now in science is because of these women.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: I think you're this is a bit of a switch flip that is needed because there are so many people that are like, these initiatives to get women and people of color and STEM, they're just not interested.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: So I think it's so important to shed light on the fact that, like, not only have they been interested since the beginning of literal fucking time, but we are we are hiding them, we are silencing them.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: So, all that to say, imagine these textbooks come out.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: It's 2037, whatever year it is.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we're in school, women are flip or like girls and boys and whoever are flipping through their textbooks, and it's not, it does not even cross their mind that there should be a reason for them not to belong because they are equally all represented in the books.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: Imagine how that will change every time.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I was telling you about Alice Ball.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: So she's case in point.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: Alice Ball um came up with this treatment for leprosy, and she got Matilda affected out of history, and the Matilda effect is where men get credit for something that women have done.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: That's the very brief explanation, and um and that has been corrected.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, so it was some guy named it became the Dean method or something for treating leprosy because this guy named she died, and this guy named Dean basically took over her research and took over the credit and took the all the credit.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: And history has gone back and given her the credit, and so now it's called the ball method.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, I know, and this is this is gonna happen, I'm telling you, over and over and over again.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna and the the Matilda effect actually, I'm not gonna give anything away, but it comes into play in the Dorothy Anderson um yeah, in episode two.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and as you uncover more of these stories, I think we'll start seeing that this is not just like a one Dorothy Anderson, you know, this is many people.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: Okay, we have to wrap up because your daughter's calling you quite clearly, and also because but we're gonna talk about your book.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: I have a novel, a novel coming out, which is just thrilling because I don't consider myself a novelist, but uh and the and the character, it's told mostly in the first person, and the main character is a man, and I decided, you know, you can make shit up, which is amazing with fiction.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: It's like how old is she?
29:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how old do you think she should be.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, I decided that the parents should have kind of role reversals.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: So the mom and the parents are dead, and the mom was a computer programmer, one of the early Fortran experts, and the dad is an artist.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I love it because the mom teaches the kids when he's a little boy, they speak to each other in Fortran, they talk to each other in a programming language.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: So um that's next level.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: It is next level.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so that's uh that's coming out in July.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: And uh the title is The Boys.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: Everyone get this book.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: I will be pre-ordering.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty great.
30:08
SPEAKER_02: And I love just and one making that little choice, right?
30:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, not that it's a little choice, obviously it's your entire character, but making that conscious decision to make the mom a computer programmer and the dad an artist is again something that it's all about representation.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: So on behalf of the world, we thank you.
30:24
SPEAKER_02: Okay, final two questions that we ask every single person.
30:27
SPEAKER_02: Number one, I know that you're not like a math teacher, and we haven't even really talked about math that much, but math plays such an integral role in STEM.
30:34
SPEAKER_02: If you could pick one thing about the way math is taught in schools to be taught differently, what would it be?
30:39
SPEAKER_02: Like one different thing.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh, well, there's the old observation that um that teachers call on the boys first.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: However, there's this, there's the subconscious, because the teachers, if you show the what the teachers say is, I'm not calling on the boys first, they really don't think they are.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: And then you show them a video, and in fact, they are, and they're surprised.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: So what I would do is have a teacher every time they ask a question, I would have them stop and count to five quietly, and then wait a little bit, and then see and watch both their own behavior and the kids, giving the girls a chance to raise their hand.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: That's what I would do differently.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, no one has ever said that on three seasons of our podcast, and I absolutely love that answer.
31:33
SPEAKER_02: So, yes, absolutely.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: Okay, final question.
31:36
SPEAKER_02: What would you say to someone who was like, Katie, I'm just not a math or science person?
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, I would say dig deep if you really truly believe to are you not a math or science person, or have you been told you're not a math and science person?
31:52
SPEAKER_01: And there's a new study that just came out.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know if you're aware of it, it was just published a week or so ago in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which is show which looks at kids as young as six and eight in computer science and engineering.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't look at ability.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: A lot of studies look at ability, but or perceived ability.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: This looks at interest and perceived interest, which is a completely different way of looking at it.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: They they formulated the questions in some, you know, study like formal way, and then it's about what girls think they're interested in because they are told they're not going to be interested in computer science and engineering.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm definitely gonna look this up.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: That's like super interesting.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: It is, and then with math in particular, I mean, these kids, like girls, it's this is all you no news to you, but girls they think in math terms much the way boys do.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: Oops, did you hear the dog bark?
32:57
SPEAKER_01: That was the dog.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: I love that we've had the whole family on the podcast at this point.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: Newman, yeah, I know.
33:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it's totally true, and I think that I'm really interested to dig into that whole interest thing because even my whole master's thesis was on media messaging and girls' participation in math, and a lot of it had to do with even media messages that tell girls what they should be interested in.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: Like so much of it is about interest or that tell girls, let's say, for example, that like sure you can be interested in math, but that means you have to sacrifice all these other things.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: Like you can't like both be interested in math and Barbie, like you can't.
33:29
SPEAKER_02: So pick one.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Can I tell my my most heinous math story?
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, I very briefly didn't even date, but went to a couple of dinners with a Columbia University math professor when I was in my 20s.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: And um, and I said to him, and I was in my 20s, I mean, I didn't know anything about uh any of this stuff, about anything.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: And um and I said, I'm weren't there mathematici weren't there female mathematicians?
33:58
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, you know, as the old saying goes, and this this made me just want to wretch.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, they say that in history there were three female mathematicians, but two of them weren't really mathematicians, and the third wasn't a woman.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you excuse?
34:17
SPEAKER_01: I know, I know, and that that all these years did you leave stuck with what did you do at the dinner?
34:22
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, that would be so awkward.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: Did you have to keep sitting there?
34:25
SPEAKER_02: Was it at the beginning?
34:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't remember.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: I remember thinking, get me out of here.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I know.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: I'd be like, I need 10 more drinks.
34:34
SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: I know.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, that was, you know, wow, that was in the 80s.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, we unfortunately have to wrap up on that note, but let that be a note to everyone listening that that is not appropriate dinner time conversation.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: Right.
34:46
SPEAKER_02: Ever.
34:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, Katie, you are amazing.
34:49
SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited to, I'm so excited for our listeners to listen to your podcast.
34:53
SPEAKER_02: Everyone go listen to it.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: Lost Women of Science.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: And don't forget, take your dude wall pictures.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: Take the dudewall picture.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: Everybody take your and send it to LostwomenofScience at gmail.com.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm actually very excited for this dudewall situation.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: I feel like it needs both a TikTok and an Instagram account.
35:07
SPEAKER_02: So get somebody on the hut, ASAP.
35:10
SPEAKER_02: And I can't wait to hear the next three seasons of your podcast.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: And everyone go order or pre-order Katie's book.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: And thanks for being on the podcast.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Vanessa.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Goodbye.
35:20
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so are you A mad or are you B seething mad?
35:24
SPEAKER_02: I mean, how fucked that?
35:26
SPEAKER_02: Honestly, what gets me the most about what Katie has shown us is that women were there all along.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: Let me say it louder for the people in the back.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: Women were there all along.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: And I say this because sometimes all of these initiatives to get women interested in STEM, yes, I'm using air quotes, makes me so mad because it's like, bruh, women are interested and always have been.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: It's just that we literally erase them from history.
35:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, I'm mad all over again.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: Okay, deep breaths.
35:52
SPEAKER_02: You can listen to Katie's podcast by looking up Lost Women of Science on your fave podcast player.
35:57
SPEAKER_02: And please buy her book, The Boys, available everywhere.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Finally, if you're cruising through an educational institution and come across a dude wall, you know what to do.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: If something in this episode inspired you, please tweet us at Math Therapy.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: And you can also follow me personally at the Math Guru on Instagram or Twitter.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vicaria, produced by Sabina Wex, and edited by David Koachberg.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: Our theme song is Waves by my band Goodnight Sunrise.
36:27
SPEAKER_02: And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please share this podcast and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: Those things actually make such a difference.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: I am determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help, so please spread the word.
36:44
SPEAKER_02: That's all for this week.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: Stay tuned for our next episode out next Thursday.