Kate Zernike

People say times change, but in this particular conversation, it's hard to believe that after decades of women making major strides in the workforce, suddenly you take a look and realize maybe we're not as progressive as one would have hoped.

Kate Zernike is a 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for The New York Times.

She's the author of Boiling Mad, Inside Tea Party America from 2010.

Her most recent book, The Exceptions, Nancy Hopkins, MIT and the Fight for Women in Science.

Kate recalls at a young age when her mother was interested in applying to law school.

Advice her mom received was less than encouraging, and yet today it's been suggested that perhaps Kate is finishing up what her mother started.

But I'd like Kate Zernike to fill in those details.

Welcome to Should Have Listened to My Mother.

Absolutely.

Y- Last year, I had Kate Zernike on the podcast.

It was her second time on the podcast, and the first time she was on, she discussed the book she had written called The Exceptions, which had to do with female scientists at MIT, um, going through, uh, a period of discrimination there, which MIT later admitted to.

But the second time, we were actually talking about this issue, uh, ve- in a very similar way, and her view was that researchers and people in universities need to tell the public that when they're asked what they do, because to your point about the public not understanding what, uh, impact is coming out of research, should say, "I work for you," and explain it in that way.