Tonight, we are featuring aid journalists and near times bestselling author, Janice Kaplan and her fascinating book the genius of women from overlook to changing the world. Janice will be in conversation with the ceo of the womens fund of central ohio and this is going to be an illuminating evening. I will say that right now. Eni want to thank our venue partners and our fantastic friends and our Wonderful Community partners and all of these organizations have helped us get the word out. I want to fully introduce janice and kelly in a moments, but first i just want to ask you to silencer t phones, or any other noisemakers you might have with youou tonight. So we can just hear everything. I hope many of you have visited the books we are right down three, two blocks down we invite any of you who have not been there before to come and browse. We have been open for just three years and have promoted over 300 books during that period. [applause] besides being a fullservice independent bookstore in central ohio, we are connected toct the community which has authors important books and thats exactly what were doing tonight. He received a program when you came in, and i want to quickly give a shout out to three Upcoming Events that are listed there. We actually protas eight events every month. First, littere literary legend James Mcbride is latest novel one that black novel when the National Book award for fiction. He is also the author of a 1995, really affecting classics of color of water, black mans tradition with aye mother one of the best memoirs of her generation. He talks about king kong its a hilarious tapestry featuring an eclectic group of individuals that bear witness to ain shooting. You come see mcbride on person on thursday march 5 at 7 00 p. M. At the complex tickets or through the event. Then we feature a wonder for more by writer elise on march 9 on that memoir of steel and gray. The people looks at the childhood and the people that she says is the unsung backbone of our country. She will be with michael and it will be held down the street. Finally i want to shout out for march 30, we are really thrilled to feature gerry mitchell, to hear about his courageous story, bringing justice the klansman responsible for some the notorious crimes of the civil rights era. He is going to share his memoir, race against time, the unsolved murder cases of the civil rights era. He will be in conversation with Ohio State University historianni and experts, that will be held and tickets are veiled through our vents. Onto tonight. You will be hearing about women geniuses. Even in the time every thinking womens role, we define genius almost exclusively through male achievement. When asked to name a genius, most people mention albert id stone. Will Janice Kaplan decided to find out why, why have the orextraordinary work of so many women been brushed aside . The result is her remarkable book, the genius of women, its a memoir narratives and inspirations, janice makes surprising discoveries about women geniuses now and throughout history, and fields for music to robotics. Her research is extensive, she conducted interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and dunces of women geniuses at work in the world today. Her insights will be at the center of tonights i program. Janice kaplan has enjoyed wide success of magazine editor, television producers, writer, and journalist. She is the former editorinchief of parade magazine, the most widely read publication in america, she worked with Major Political figuresgu including president barack obama and she interviewed stars like arber streisand and max damon. She was Deputy Editor of Tv Guide Magazine executive producer of booktv guide Television Group where she created more than 30 Television Shows that aired primetime on net maker networks. She began her career as an awardwinning producer at abc tvs good morning america, she authored or coauthored besides the genius of women 14 books including New York Times bestseller the diary. Janice kaplan is clearly a woman genius. Joining janice in conversation is kelly, herself a woman genius as well. She was president and ceo of the womens fund of central ohio, a Public Foundation that is seriously committed to igniting social change for the sake of gender equity. Kelly is deeply rooted in his committed to his work and volunteered for many words while she worked as a partner and chief operating officer of pella tony and his Senior Vice President of the columbus foundation. After her conversation you will be able to 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 up and well just line up in this aisle so we can answer questions after words. After the question and answer, you still if you havent gotten a book you can purchase one then and janice will also sign copies. So please, please give a warm welcome to Janice Kaplan and kelly. [applause] okay, on mike, doing this one of this on . Do we need this at all . I think we do. And i doing anything here . [laughter] no. Here we go. [laughter] excellent. Welcome janice,. Guest thank you. I obviously, given its hard to imagine someone who thanks about bias and gender norms is 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. So thank you again for being here tonight and i want to do justice. The one thing we have to realize today sitting here today i said to janice as we are coming up here, today, marks the passing of kathryn johnson. At 101 years old. For those of you who that name does not 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, helped our own john glenn go into space. Andpe so, sort of my for today is no more hidden figures. And i think janice shares in that. So, thankha you kathryn for everything she did to pave the way for all of us. So janice, you spent a lot of timepl thinking about people, like kathryn johnson, what inspired you to take on the genius of women as the topic of this 15th book . Guest i have been thinking about womens issues for a long time in my career, but the particular for this is a survey that was done by a friend of mine named mike berman he was a strategist and pollster. He did a survey were found 90 of americans think that genius tends to be men. 90 . You dont get 90 of americans to say they like chocolate ice cream. [laughter] so we went out to lunch, mike presented his findings to me and he said what you think is going on . And i really had no idea. And so mike paid for lunch and i spent the next two years trying to come up with an answer. [laughter] cement this and understand your book where they ask people if they could be a genius. And 15 of men said probably, i might be a genius. How many women said so . So zero, there is that a woman in the survey who said she might be a genius. 15 of men who said they are geniuses are possibly delusional. [laughter] but thats okay, because you have to think that you can do something before you can actually do it. So i actually think it is much better, and i would like to hear a lot more women say well, maybe i am. C1 n0 did, thats stunning. And so, im just good to play a little game i want somebody to be very brave quickly, name a woman genius rightom now. or and part of the excitement for me and doing this book was in uncovering some of these people from the past and in looking at the people rum the present. The book is not profiled by any means. Its a narrative about women and womens issues but to be able to discover these people and read their story to was very exciting. That such a great point because what i love so much about the book was i did expect got it i was just going to read these wonderful stories and 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 thes definition of gens been shaped by society . Share with us i said the definition of genius is exceptional, intellectual or greed of power or other natural ability. What do you think about that . I try to change the definition of genius and you rethink what we think of genius. I started my research in london and i spoke to professor at cambridge named Charles Jones and we also went to lunch. You get a lot of good lunches when youre a writer. Meant. Heat took a couple sips of his chardonnay and a very pluming english accent, which i wont try to imitate, he said, genius, that would be where extraordinary talent meets 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 t