[ Music ] >> Cheryl Lederle: Hello, and welcome to the Family, Food, and Field Stage of the National Book Festival. My name is Cheryl Lederle from the Library of Congress. I'm here with Gail Collins, whose featured book at the Festival is No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History. If you'd like to see her presentation at the Festival, log into nationalbookfestival.com, and click through to the Family, Food, and Field Stage. Let's begin the conversation. Please enter your questions. Gail, while we're waiting for questions to come in from our live audience, maybe you could just tell us a little bit about your book, much as you did in your video. What would you like our readers to know? >> Gail Collins: Well, it's -- I started thinking about this a long time ago, when I was writing a different book on women's history, and I was noticing all of these letters from colonists in early America -- and they were all men -- asking for wives back home and saying, "They must be civil and under 50 years of age." And I thought, "Wow. That's a lot different from what was going on when I was growing up." But it was, you know, you're not older; you're getting better. And the text was always, "When you're 25-years-old, you're really getting old." And then we moved on to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and at 80 and doing push-ups, and so I was trying to figure out what changed. What went back and forth? What made women who are older have status sometimes and not other times? And I finally concluded, the answer is basically economic, that if women are bringing in money or have assets when they're older, it doesn't matter. They have status and -- just like men do. And if they're -- if they're not, then it's a lot harder. >> Cheryle Lederle: Thank you, and I'm interested as a follow-up, what do you hope readers will take away from the book or think differently about after reading your book? >> Gail Collins: I always -- I hope that people look at it and think, "Wow. There's a lot of stuff out there." You know, you kind of have your vision of the world, and this is happening or that's happening. And this is possible." But there are just so many ways of growing older, in this country, in particular, and the thing -- of all the things -- I've written several books on women's history in America now, and the one thing that just knocks me out is the fact that the vision of what my entire gender was about, about the rights, about their equality, changed in my lifetime, completely. There was a turn-around for an entire generation, around the world, and I was there for it. I was living right through the middle of it, and I can't think of anything more exciting. >> Cheryl Lederle; That is exciting to think about, and something about that makes me wonder what in the colonial letters you referenced, was it civil or civilized? What did they mean by that, for women at that time, I wonder? >> Gail Collins; I think civil was just -- it might have been who obeys me well, but it also -- they were not very picky at all, at that point in time. But just everybody who was nice. You know, who behaved well. That was a -- and if you look at that period, once women got here, women who were on the farm were creating so much wealth. And it was most women, back in those times, you were, you know, growing vegetables and raising chickens and spinning yarn and trading things with other women, and it just created a lot of wealth for your family. And you were very high in status, no matter what your age was. And younger women wanted to come over and hang out with you, so they could learn how to do all this stuff, so they could create wealth when they got married. And it worked very well for people. But -- and then suddenly, people moved to the cities, and for middle-class women, your only function became having children and raising them. And once the children were gone, your function was pretty much over, and you were supposed to sit by the fireplace and be quiet. So, there's quite a movement there. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. A question from Natalie, that I think connects nicely with that, being invisible question. And Natalie asks, why are older women so invisible in our popular culture? >> Gail Collins: Older people in general are sort of invisible in our popular culture. I mean, it's always been easier for men, and it certainly is now, to -- if you've watched, you know, late night television, or anything like -- older people do not exist, and they're made fun of when they're talked about. So, it's less of a thing, I think, with women in particular that are just in with -- in parts of our society, anybody who's older, period. >> Cheryl Lederle: And along those lines, Kristin asks, what ways are you taking advantage of your -- and she has this in quotes, "olderness?" >> Gail Collins: That's a nice way to look at it. I'm -- one of the things that I like a lot is that I've -- having done a whole bunch of different things, I now know what things I really like to do and what things I will avoid, if I possibly can, and looking to structure life around that, that more people tend to give you a little more space in that way. I -- the opportunity to know people of my generation and then younger and younger and younger generations, just really knocks me out, and that's something, again, that it's a lot easier now then it used to be, although it should be even easier, yet. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. Eve has a somewhat more personal question. What books are on your nightstand? >> Gail Collins: What books are on my nightstand? Well, right now, I am reading -- I just finished reading Michael Schmidt, one of our time as reporter has done a book about the whole Trump thing, and it was really -- it was very helpful. And also, The Woodward book, I think, Rage is very interesting, and I've been reading that too. And I've got a novel over there, and if I could find it, I would tell you the title of it, but it's so [inaudible] at this point. But it's very good, whatever it is. >> Cheryl Lederle: Mary, I think, was following up on some of your reflections on the advantages of ageing, and Mary says, "When I hit my forties, I thought I was born to be middle-aged. It was such a comfortable place, and I felt so at home with myself. Do you think this is a common or uncommon feeling now? >> Gail Collins; Yeah, I bet it's way, way, way, way more common than it was in days of yore. I mean, the idea of seeing a woman who is middle-aged or older, enjoy work, you know, running a company, you know, or, you know, being out anywhere in the world, traveling by themselves, with other people, changing careers, moving -- and that's all -- it's all possible forever, and often -- and for many people, and many women, the period when you're younger, you've got kids, and you're trying to take care of your house and your kids, and probably your work, and you're balancing it all out, and you're having incredibly fulfilling and rich life, but you're tired all the time. And it gets a little bit easier, as you sort of [inaudible] a little bit on your domestic responsibilities. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And Beth is a fan of your columns. She says, "Your columns are one of my must-reads, and a great joy, as they make me laugh out loud. And could you speak a bit about your sense of humor? It's origins? And does your current book have funny bits?" >> Gail Collins: Well, I like to think so. What happened with me, with my -- when I started writing a column, I was at the Daily News, in New York. I worked for the tabloids for awhile and I covered local politics and stuff. And wrote, as I do now, a column. But after -- so many bad things were happening, and I was getting so angry, and I was writing so many columns about the terribleness of this, and the terribleness of that. And then one day, I sort of thought, "I'd like to do this in a way that doesn't make people want to throw themselves out the window when they're done reading it." So, since then, forever kind of, I've been experimenting with ways to write about politics and to write about issues that are kind of fun, that make it a little bit easier for people who have a lot of other really serious and difficult things to ready, during the course of the day. So, if I'm a break of any kind, that makes me happy. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And Constance has a follow-up question on a serious topic. "In the book, you seem to suggest that history has not yet decided how it will respond to Hillary Clinton. It has seemed that she's been emerging more recently as more of an elder statesperson, and positively regarding -- regarding." And Constance's question is, "What do you think the initial response was more about -- why do you think the initial response was more about what went wrong than about her strong popular vote-showing, and the esteem in which a lot of women, especially older women, seem to hold her? >> Gail Collins: Yeah, I've always thought two things about Hillary Clinton, who, you're right, is just an enormously talented and giving kind of person. One is that -- and this is not directly to your point, but I just keep thinking about this. The idea I've come to think of people having careers that are based on being married to somebody, is not a good idea, whether it's a man or a woman and what their area is, whether it's politics or business or something else. It's just -- it complicates things so much. When you're trying to write about stuff, you're trying to, you know, do business and there's this two different wavelengths of relationship between the people on the top. So, it -- she was one of the people that helped us to figure that part out. But she was -- she was -- worked so hard and the vision of her, the difficult person vision -- everybody who knows her says, "I don't know why people always think of her as this sort of difficult personality. She's so much fun to be around." And I think that's just partly having tried to live with all the things she lived, over her public life, you know, all the various sex things, and then all the intense politics things. And mushing all that together with being the first woman to do it, it was just an enormous, enormous burden. Now, it looks like very soon, there will be so many women running around at the very top, that we'll stop thinking about it or worry about anymore. But at this exact moment of history, we still -- and we haven't seen a moment when a woman got elected President. We don't know what it will look like when it happens, and she'll be looked on backwards as a pioneer. But her life was not an easy one. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. Lisa asks, do you think, if you weren't as well known as an author, that this topic of older women through history would be accepted by publishers? >> Gail Collins: That's an interesting question, but when I brought it up, to my publisher, they were very responsive, and one of the things they said was, "Wow. This will be great, because so many of our readers are older women. That's great to think about a topic that would be of interest to them." And there wasn't any resistance at all, I'd have to say. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And along the lines of older questions, Bonnie has a question about you personally. Have you had to change your work habits as you get older? Bonnie is working under the assumption, that like most of us, your memory is not as agile as it used to be and if so, what adjustments have you made? >> Gail Collins: I do find it amazing. You know, I spend -- especially now, since we're all locked up in our houses all the time, I spend, you know, most of my life with my husband, and at least 12 times a day, he will remind me about something that I've forgotten or tell me about something that I can't remember who it was or where it was or something else. So, clearly, the memory thing is going to be a challenge, and I don't what you do, except just try not to be disturbed by it, and move right along. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And William has a follow-up question about your sense of humor, and he asks, "Does it come naturally, or do you have to work at your humor?" >> Gail Collins: I -- that's sort of the way I'm comfortable writing, the way I really, really got coin in the business, was when I was in Connecticut, my husband had gotten a job to New Haven, so we had to move to Connecticut. And I could not find a job. There was no journalism jobs anywhere back then. So, I went to all the little papers in the state, and back then, there were a bunch of little papers that I said, "I will cover your state legislature delegation for you, for $10, $20 a week, whatever," and I would write stories about the legislator for that paper, just about, you know, what their guys were doing. And I had like 30 papers. So, I was writing like 200 million stories a week. I just never stopped. And it made it a lot easier for me, just to write. I just broke all the barriers. You know, type -- writing 40 stories a week or whatever I was doing. I mean, just I no longer thought about it, I just got down there, and that was all in. It happened. And it was done, and that makes it a lot easier for me to play around with stuff, because it is just so natural for me to do the writing part. And -- and beginning with the state legislature too, of all places in the world, I was writing also for some of the local weeklies and dailies, the alternative weeklies, and I was trying to think of ways to make the state legislature interesting, which is a real challenge, no matter where you live in the world, to get people interested in the state legislature. And I did find, that if I can find ways to make the stuff funny, that I was more likely to get some attention to it. So, I spent a lot of time, trying to find the funniest aspects of the Connecticut State General Assembly. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And Linda has a question about one of your previous books. She says, this is When Everything Changed. "What women's stories surprised you most when you were writing When Everything Changed? >> Gail Collins: Wow. That's a good question. You know, that was -- my favorite book is always the book that's out now, but I must admit that the most cosmically rewarding experience for me was writing that book, about the fact that everything -- that in my lifetime, the entire role of women changed so much and so dramatically, and it's not your point at all, but it's something I just remembered, and I really -- just really love to talk about it. I came to realize that it was all about economics, that once women were economically important, then women were important, whatever age they were. And that the big changed happened in the 1970s and '80s, when the people, American people who after World War II, had gotten used to a booming economy, where regular, average Americans can expect to get married, buy a house, and send their kids to college, maybe go on vacations, then suddenly, the economy just fell apart and collapsed, and it was no longer possible to do that on one salary. And that was a transformative moment. Suddenly, when it wasn't just a matter of, well, do you want to work? Maybe we'll get more extra stuff, if the wife works. It was a partnership in which both husband and wife had to contribute economically, to make stuff work. And once that happened, young girls in high school were thinking about not just what boy they'd like to marry, but what kind of a job they would like to have when that happens, and that -- that was the big moment, really, I think, in our history, for when things really turned around and that's -- I'm sorry. I forgot the beginning question, but I've been wanting to tell you about that since I got here today. >> Cheryl Lederle: Terrific. And I think that answered the question just fine. And so the next question. I'll put it out there, and it's a political question. Do you think there is any possibility that new Supreme Court Justice nominee Barrett will not be confirmed, prior to the election? >> Gail Collins: No. I don't. It's going to happen. I mean, something could happen. We could get tornados or something. But I mean, in the world of the regular functioning of the universe, she's going to be confirmed. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. So, flipping back to what you said earlier, about in the current situation, where you're spending so much time in your space, with your husband, so much of writing is a solitary experience. So, I'm curious. Do you enjoy that solitude, or does it make you crave being out among people? >> Gail Collins: I miss going to the office, just the being in the office part of being in the office. I have no trouble at all writing at home, and I -- where I'm sitting right now is our study, and I use that every day, and that's sort of where I hold up during the day. And then come out as if I was gone somewhere else. And I come out for the evening, but boy, you know, I just -- I don't know if we'll ever get back to that, at least not in my career time, that normal way of doing things, where everybody just got up and went to work in the morning and saw other people and then came home. It's just a different relationship entirely now. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. Rebecca has a question. How can we overcome the fact that many men do not take women in positions of power as seriously, or they brush us off as emotional or irrational? >> Gail Collins: Well, that's -- you tell me. Everybody would have to tell me their own stories about this, but I -- at the time that I've been in the work world, I've seen that change so dramatically. I mean, when I was first working and well, for a long time, and even though I had great jobs and wonderful male cohorts, it was very -- I mean, there was less women. There were not many women in work, comparatively speaking, and the women that were there tended to be in secretarial jobs or sort of resource jobs of one sort or another. So, when men looked at them, they tended to have feelings, both about the women and what they could get away with, with the women, how they can treat the women, whether they could be not only, you know, sometimes sexually aggressive, but just sort of jerks. And you can't do that anymore, because -- in most places, because there are just so many women on every level, and they're just not going to stand for it. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And Linda has a question about the current time and possible changes. Linda asks, "It seems like the burden for caring for home and family still falls overwhelmingly on working moms. What prosects do you see that federal and state policy will offer some relief to working moms?" >> Gail Collins: Yeah, you know, the thing -- and this is not an answer, certainly to everything, and the best answer is find a working dad who will be a big help and be a partner in what you're doing. But, you know, beyond that, not just for women's independence issues and everything, the thing in this country we've got to do is provide early quality, high quality, early childhood education for every child who wants it, who needs it or wants it. If you can -- until we can do that, there's -- nothing makes any sense. You can't have the strain on, especially if, you know, working class husbands and wives, who have to take care of balancing all this stuff who, you know, if there's a teacher's day off, then they're -- right now, we're seeing that right now. The schools closed down. What did the parents do? How did they take care of their kids during the day, when they both have to work? It's -- it's something that's changing, because it has to change, but we still got quite a long way to go, and if there's one great cosmic issue I would want everybody around, it would be early childhood, quality early childhood education and childcare. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. Alexandra read your column last weekend, and said it focused on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Alexandra wonders, "Did you ever get to meet her? And if so, are there any stories you can share?" >> Gail Collins: Yeah. That was one of those moments, you know, that one of the editors just called me and said, "Justice Ginsburg just died. Can you write something in an hour? Because we've got to go to press for the Sunday paper?" And it was -- it reminded me -- this is totally beside the point -- but when I started out, I was -- I worked for United Press International, which was a wire service, and it was sort of the loser wire service. It was about to go bankrupt. But they were trying so hard and the motto that everybody had was, you know, I can write better than anyone who's faster and faster than anyone who's better, and that's kind of my, you know, my creed for this kind of stuff. But I met her, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, once. I just called up, and just for the heck of it. I worked out of New York, but I just called up and said, "If I come to Washington, can I get an interview?" And she got on the phone, and she said, "Sure. Come on up." And I came and we had a lovely talk, for maybe about an hour, and I don't -- can't give you any great moment in which she said something profound. What I came up with was what -- she was just such a nice person, and so cool to talk to, and so normal. There were just sort of none of that status of, "Okay, here I am, in the high court, and bow down and do me honors." She was just very, very approachable and friendly and I really liked her a lot. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. We have a question about your process. Susanne asks, "Every other week, you have an exchange with an op-ed columnist. David Brooks, then Arthur Brooks. Now Brett Stevens. Can you talk a bit about your process of developing those?" >> Gail Collins: Yeah, that's -- I can tell you, one of my happiest times of the week now is doing the conversation with Brett. It started a long, long time ago. We were just trying to get more balance onto the op-ed pages, and it's -- you notice this, actually. You can just watch what happens with the Times all the time, that went -- although the theory of our page is that we're going to give you editorials, which is the Times' position, the Times' op-ed department's position on these issues. But we're also going to publish stuff that's both for and against, you know, we had the conservative, liberal, or whatever. Readers don't really appreciate that, usually, and some times, if we publish something, particularly something that's conservative and sort of -- the idea -- they do not get the idea that this is not the Times saying, "This is the way things should be." So, that's always kind of a challenge. And we were trying to think of ways to get more conservative voices onto the page, and at some point along the way, you know, we talked about, "Hey. You know, we could just talk. You know, if two of us are talking, the readers will be engaged, because everybody will be on one side or the other." And it's been always a pleasure. I love doing it with Dave Brooks. I love doing it with Ross. Brett and I just -- maybe it's just partly the new world of, you know, talking through emails all day long, but it's so easy -- and we both talk about this every week. I mean, we just do it. We just back, back and forth, and it's just really fun. I had no idea it would be that much fun, but we have a really good time, and it's -- there's no hard part, and we never get angry at each other, and he's great to work with. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. This is possibly our last question. We'll see how the time goes, but another question about Justice Ginsburg, who Beth says, she pointed out women would have more opportunities for real equality, when more men take more responsibilities regarding childcare. With the ageing population, how do older sandwich generation women balance when less childcare, but more care is needed for the older generation, without necessarily institutionalizing them? >> Gail Collins. That is absolutely true, and that we're so overwhelmed with the child stuff now, that we really haven't come to grips with this -- the way we're going to need to. The traditional has always been that older people stayed home and took care of themselves, and if they couldn't, then they went into some kind of a nursing home or rest home or retirement home or whatever. But there's just way too many people who don't want to do that, who want to stay where they are, and we've got to develop a whole another kind of period of life, economy, support system, in which both older people can work more, maybe part-time or from home, if they choose to do or whatever, and in which older people can also get healthcare in their home, in terms of visiting nurses or -- when we have this, obviously. We've always have this, but to do it on a massive, massive scale, so that's kind of part of life that you can work yourself into. That's going to be the future. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you. And we have time for one last question. Liz asks a personal question. "How have you managed the isolation of the pandemic with your desire to maximize the value of your later years?" >> Gail Collins: I would really love to be exercising the value of my later years, not in a pandemic. That would be really, really nice, but given that that's where we are -- and you think about the history of the world. They had stuff happens all the time. You know, you try to look at it and think, "Well, at least it's not Bubonic plague or, you know, at least it's not, you know, it's not going to be some sort of incredible disaster that nobody can rescue you from. It's -- at least you've got a phone, and you've got television, and you've got the internet. Then you're connected in some many ways to the outside world, and we're just going to have to learn how to do it. And -- but I'm grateful that I got to be old when this stuff was all available, because, you know, I spend my whole day, working and talking to people and corresponding, and going back and forth, and having conversations, and it's such a blessing. I'm just very, very grateful. >> Cheryl Lederle: Thank you, Gail, for so generously sharing your time with us. We are out of time. We've been speaking with Gail Collins, whose latest book is No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History. Thanks as well to our audience, and I hope you enjoy the remainder of the National Book Festival. [ Music ]