Happy To Be Here

Aileen Rizo was working as a math consultant at the Fresno County Office of Education when she discovered a recently-hired male colleague was being paid significantly more than her for the same work. Aileen had more experience and education than this colleague. What then began as a fight for herself quickly turned into a fight for equality for women everywhere. 

Aileen talked about the tough decisions she's made for herself and her family on a recent episode of the WBEZ podcast The Trouble. On this week’s Nerdette, you’ll hear that exceptional episode of The Trouble in full, followed by a conversation between Shannon Cason, host of The Trouble, and Nerdette’s Greta Johnsen. 

Plus, a suggestion for you, dear listener: Ask for a raise.

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From Murphy Brown to Kidding to Doctor Who and more, New York Times TV critic Margaret Lyons reveals the shows she’s excited about.

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is one of only 52 women to ever serve in the Senate. There are currently 23 female senators, which is an all-time high. 

“There are not enough women,” Duckworth tells Nerdette host Greta Johnsen. “We’re 20 percent of the Senate. That’s it. That’s wrong. We’re 51 percent of the population, yet 20 percent of those who make the laws that govern our lives.”

Duckworth also recently became the first sitting U.S. senator to have a baby while in office when she gave birth to her daughter Maile on April 9. She tells Greta about motherhood, political polarization, and her interesting personal obsession: extreme couponing.

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... Well, technically it's Pysc 157. 

This week Nerdette host Greta Johnsen speaks with the professor responsible for the most popular class in Yale University's 316-year history. Laurie Santos created a course called "Psychology and the Good Life” and about 1,200 students quickly enrolled in it. 

Put simply, the course teaches students how they can be happier.

“The good news is that we can do it,” Santos tells Greta. “The bad news is that like all good things in life, it takes a lot of work.”

First, listen in as Santos gives us three main recommendations (1. Socialize; 2. Prioritize time over money; and 3. Remember you're too blessed to be stressed). Then, take the course yourself! It's free online via Coursera. 

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Here at Nerdette, we've wanted to visit Argonne National Laboratory for MANY YEARS. Why? Because it's a massive research facility, it's just outside of Chicago, and it shares many similarities with Hawkins National Laboratory, the fictional government science complex from the Netflix show Stranger Things.

Greta, Tricia and our trusty guide Justin Breaux take a tour of Argonne, where we talk with a bunch of super-smart scientists about the stuff they're working on and the questions they're trying to answer. Questions like: If you had one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, what problems should you solve? And if you could solve those problems, how would you go about doing it? And what if one problem — a problem you've dedicated your entire career to solving — isn't solvable for centuries?

Also, can we see the Upside Down?

Guests:

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Hey! Nerdette is about to go on a little summer break, but before we do we wanted to share this lovely conversation Greta had with WBEZ’s Jenn White and the owner of Volumes Bookscafe in Chicago, Rebecca George. They talk about what makes a good summer read before offering an INUNDATING LIST of killer summer books. You can check out the full list of those recommendations at this link. 

Enjoy! Have a KAS and see you in a few weeks!

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Super-talented singer-songwriter Neko Case is not immune to self-doubt. In the years before becoming “an adult,” she tells us she had a complicated relationship with ambition. 

“I wanted to be in a band and I wanted to play music, but I couldn’t have even told you that then,” Case said. “I wouldn’t have even thought that I was capable of that, even though I was completely obsessed and had been my whole life.”

Her work has gone on to receive a lot of critical acclaim over her 30-plus years of making music. Her newest album is called Hell-On. She stopped by WBEZ to tell us how she maintains her sanity while touring and how she’s not superstitious — even though she learned her house burned down on the same day she recorded the vocals for a song called “Bad Luck.” 

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“I’d been patronized as a child,” Dame Stephanie Shirley — a.k.a. Steve — tells us this week. “I wasn’t going to be patronized as an adult.”

The kind of company that Stephanie Shirley wanted to work for didn’t exist in 1962, so she created her own.

“I wanted a company that was suitable for me [and] that I would like to work in,” Shirley says. “And I knew there were lots of women who had also hit the glass ceiling and were completely and utterly ignored by the industry.”

She’s talking about the software industry, which was even more of a boys club in the sixties. So Shirley started her own business, hired a bunch of women from IBM, and even changed her first name from Stephanie to Steve — in order to get the attention of potential clients through promotional materials.

Shirley tells us her incredible story, which includes creating a company that would later be valued at $3 billion, being made a dame by Queen Elizabeth, and keeping herself mentally and physically fit in the midst of life's many hurdles.

Power Up is a Nerdette project where fascinating people explain how they set themselves up for success in an exhausting world. Tell us how YOU power up by recording yourself on your phone and emailing the audio file to [email protected].

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Speaking out about traumatic incidents can sometimes be more traumatic than the incidents themselves. That was the case for one reporter after she documented rampant sexual harassment at a recent music festival.

Vera Papisova is the wellness editor for Teen Vogue and runs the magazine’s sexual assault awareness campaign. After Teen Vogue published her explosive article about sexual assault at Coachella 2018, Papisova became the target of internet trolls. 

“People usually say, ‘Ignore the trolls,’ and ‘Don’t read the comments,’” Papisova tells Nerdette. “I went against both of those. I broke both of those rules.”

Papisova tells us about her experience at the festival, how she’s been responding to her online harassers, and what she’s doing to maintain her sanity.

Power Up is a Nerdette project where fascinating people explain how they set themselves up for success in an exhausting world. Tell us how YOU power up by recording yourself on your phone and emailing the audio file to [email protected].

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Audie Cornish says she had something like an epiphany after posting a photo of herself and her new baby on Twitter in April. 

"I realized, oh my god, I’m part of the problem," Cornish tells Greta Johnsen. "Because there is absolutely nothing worse than opening up a glossy magazine and seeing a picture of some woman with, like, a pet and a 3-year-old, everyone’s groomed to the nines, and she’s like, ‘I woke up like this.’”

Cornish is the host of NPR’s daily news program 'All Things Considered.' She talked with Nerdette host Greta Johnsen about all the people not pictured in that photo that are helping her navigate motherhood for the first time. They also talk about finding forgiveness and having children during times of strife. 

"There’s always something difficult in the world," Cornish says. "But it’s so worth it. Because I look at him as being somebody who’s going to be a part of shaping his own world, not that he’s arriving a victim of it." 

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