[ Music ] >> Hi, everyone, and welcome
to the National Book Festival. My name is Anna Laymon, and
I am the executive director of the Women's Suffrage
Centennial Commission. I am here today with Megan
Twohey and Gail Collins, both incredible authors, and
writers, and journalists, and I cannot wait for you to
hear what they have to say. So I mentioned that I'm
the executive director of the Women's Suffrage
Centennial Commission. The Commission is a
very proud sponsor of the National Book
Festival this year. We are the sponsor of
the Fearless Women Trail, which is featuring authors who
are fearless, just like Gail and Megan, but also
books and stories about women throughout
American history. And it's just really
a privilege to be here in this place today
with these two women. So I'd like to start us off
with some brief introductions for Gail and Megan, and
then we'll kick it off. So, Megan is joining us. She is the author of "She Said, Breaking the Sexual
Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement." She's a Pulitzer -- excuse me -- Pulitzer Prize-winning
investigative reporter with "The New York Times." Gail is also from
"The New York Times." She joined their staff in
1995 on the editorial board, later became an op-ed
columnist, and in 2001, she was appointed the
editorial page director. She's here today to
discuss her book, which I have right
here behind me. Megan, I'm going to
hold your book up, too. We just have to have some brief
-- here we have Megan's book. Here we have Gail's book, "No
Stopping Us Now, the Adventures of Older Women in
American History." Should we get started, ladies? >> Sure. >> Sure. >> All right. So I'm just going to kick us
off with kind of an easy one. Megan, we'll start
with you first. Would you tell us a little bit
about your book, "She Said," and how it came to be? >> Sure. So the book that I
co-authored with my colleague, Jodi Kantor, another
investigative reporter at "The New York Times,"
came about because after we broke the Harvey
Weinstein story in October of 2017, you know, we
watched with wonder as the dam broke [laughter]. And, you know, women all
around the world came forward with their stories of sexual
harassment and abuse, and the -- you know, watched with wonder as the Me Too movement really
spread around the world, as we saw this global reckoning over sexual harassment
and abuse. And we really felt like
we had an obligation to continue reporting, and to
take readers behind the scenes of this investigation that had
helped spark this reckoning. And, you know, so much of investigative reporting
takes place behind the scenes and is confidential, and we
really wanted to take readers -- give them a front-row
seat to the first kind of hushed conversations
we had with our sources, from famous actresses
to women who had worked in Weinstein's company. We also wanted to report
into what had happened on the Weinstein side. We realized that, in that
first story, we had been able to piece together some of the -- you know, some aspects
of the puzzle, of how this powerful man
had been able to get away with abusing and
harassing women for decades. But in reporting this book, we
were able to help illuminate so many of the other
factors that have -- that explained how he was able
to do that, the institutions and the systems that have
enabled sexual harassment and sexual assault, not just
in the case of Weinstein, but in so many other industries
here in the United States. >> And, you know, just so you
know, as a reader of your book, you absolutely do what
you set out to do. I mean, as I was reading
through those pages, I felt like I was following
your journey of investigating that story from start to
finish, and it was gripping. I mean, it was gripping
the whole way through. Gail, would you tell us
some about your book, what it's about, and
how it came to be? >> Yeah, but I want to say
first that I've written a bunch of books now about history,
and that it's a real privilege to be here with Megan,
who made history. This was just such a huge
-- so welcome, welcome. This book -- >> So nice to be with you, Gail. Privilege to meet. >> Yeah, do you two
know each other? Because you both work
at "The New York Times." So do you -- do you know
each other in that -- >> -- yeah, we've passed and
met, but the opinion people are, like, in a whole different area of the building than
the news people. It was sort of arranged like
that because of the theory that we, you know, were
completely different, didn't talk to one
another so much. So we get as -- nearly as
much chance as we would like to just sort of hang
out with the news side. >> Yeah, this is -- for us. >> Right. Well, I love this. Okay, Gail, tell
us about your book. >> I wrote a book a while back
in which I ran across a letter from one of the early
American colonists -- they were all guys -- writing
back and asking for people to please send them some women so they could get
married, and get families. And they wrote, "The woman
must be of good character and under 50 years of
age," and I thought, wow, you know [laughter], they're
not that picky back then. And suddenly, I was remembering
those ads from the -- I think it was the '70s, the
"you're not getting older, you're getting better" ads. And they started out saying,
"These days, 25 is getting to be very old," and I
thought, wow, you know, it went from 50 is
young to 25 is old, and where -- how
did this happen? Where to go back" -- and
that's how I got started on the whole looking into what
it was like to be an older woman at different points
in American history, and what they got away
with, and what they did. >> Well, and I love having
the two of you in conversation with each other for this panel,
because what you both really get at are -- your books are
about women's experiences, and women's lives, both throughout American
history and now. And so, there's that common
thread that runs through both of these books, and
through your larger work, right, that both of you do. And so, I think putting you in
conversation with each other for this dialogue is --
I mean, it's perfect. Let's pivot a little bit. Megan, your book is really
about your investigation of the Me Too movement,
about Harvey Weinstein. For people who haven't read
your book yet, could you talk us through a little bit
about, you know, why did you and Jodi decide to
write this book? Right? What sparked
the idea of "we need to put this down on paper. We've done our investigative
reporting," right, that has, as Gail said, made history
and changed the world. Why put it together into a book? >> You know, one of the reasons
was that we realized that -- as I mentioned, we realized that when we broke the
Weinstein story, we had -- we had learned a fair amount
about this powerful producer, and his decades-long history
of harassing and abusing women. But really understanding more
of the -- how that was -- how could somebody let -- how is it that powerful men
in this country have been able to get away with that, year
after year, decade after decade? And we really felt an
obligation to report further into those questions, to report
into the question of complicity. How was it that Weinstein
worked for -- Weinstein ran some of the most
prestigious film companies and powerful film companies
in this country, Miramax, and then the Weinstein Company. You know, we realize that
these companies had glimpses of this -- of the
boss's predation, including Weinstein's
brother, Bob Weinstein, who was the co-founder of these
companies, and worked side by side his brother for years. And so -- and the board
of his company, and so, we really wanted to report into
the question of complicity. When people get glimpses
of wrongdoing, what do they do in response? How do they try to stop it,
or do they look the other way? We wanted to report into -- we wanted to report more
into these secret settlements that have been used --
you know, Weinstein -- we were able to piece together
a financial trail of payoffs that Weinstein had made over
the years to silence as many as 12 women who came forward
with allegations against him. You know, there was this one
moment in the investigation when I was on the
hunt for a woman who we thought had been
sexually assaulted by him when she was a young assistant, working as a young
assistant in his company. And, you know, I actually drove
out to a family home of -- one of her family members had
a home outside of New York, and I drove out there with,
like, a handwritten note that I was going to give
this family member, saying -- making the case for why
she should talk to us. And the woman herself actually
answered the door, and she said, "Oh, my gosh, I can't
believe you found me." And then the second thing she -- you know, I've been waiting
for this knock on my door for 25 years, and yet,
she was legally prohibited from telling me what
had happened to her. Like so many women
in this country who suffer sexual harassment
and sexual assault, you know, she had been advised
by her attorneys that her best option was to take
money in exchange for silence. And so, we really felt
an obligation to try to explore more of these
secret settlements, and what they've meant, and
how they've allowed predators to cover their tracks. And so, there were -- it was
clear that there was much more of the Weinstein story
that needed to be told as basically an x-ray into
abuse of power in this country. And then, we also realized
that we wanted to -- you know, we never
could've predicted the way that the Me Too movement
was ignited following -- that our story had played a role in this Me Too movement
being ignited. And we knew that it had come to
mean so much to so many people, and so, we really
wanted to give people -- we wanted to take
people inside to the -- inside the New York Times news
room, and into our partnership as reporters, and to watch
journalism in action, and see how you build an
investigation like this that can have such
a huge impact. >> Well, and in reading
your book, I was reminded that you all basically, through
your reporting of this -- we take it for granted now,
but following the paper trail of these nondisclosure
agreements -- that wasn't done before you all
figured out that that was a way to sort of prove a
pattern of behavior. And in reading your book,
I was reminded of something that now seems obvious,
and clear, and like -- of course, that's how this
investigation happens. But no, that was
just a few years ago, that you all really uncovered
something very important. >> Well, I would
actually -- to -- I mean, I'd do a little bit
of a correction to that, which is that we were
actually taking a playbook that had been -- first been
created by our colleagues, Emily Steel and Mike Schmidt, who broke the Bill
O'Reilly story. >> That's right. That's right. >> Bill O'Reilly -- $400 million
in secret settlements to women who had come forward with
allegations against him, and, you know, so they -- these
are women who were locked into silence for these
secret settlements, and Emily and Mike were able
to basically piece that financial trail
of payoffs together. And when they were -- when
those stories were published, the impact was immediate. I mean, Bill O'Reilly,
perhaps the most famous and powerful figure
in conservative media, was fired from Fox News, something that had seemed
unthinkable just months before. And so, that was really the
moment at "The New York Times" where the editors and
reporters came together and asked a question that may
now seem quaint, which is, "Are there other powerful
figures in America who have been able -- you know, who have abused women
and covered it up?" And that was really how the
Weinstein investigation began, and we were really fortunate to
be able to draw on not only some of the tactics that
they had used. But, you know, we
were in consultation with Emily Steel throughout our
investigation, saying, like, "You know, we're about to --
we're trying to get these women to talk, and what do
you think we should do?" So there was -- you know, we
were really grateful to be able to draw on their
previous reporting. >> Right. You know, it's
-- that's another theme, Megan and Gail, between your
two books, is really giving -- giving voice somewhere where women's voices
have been taken away. And, Gail, I'm reminded of
that in your book, right, that oftentimes, with women -- women have a very complicated
relationship with aging, that society has handed to us
on a very dicey silver platter. And your book, you know, really
speaks to that, and it speaks to the power of that,
and the beauty of that, and the complicatedness of that. Could you talk a
little bit about -- you know, what was it like
to research that topic, and to sort of bring
life to this topic? >> I think when you do this
stuff, you just read, and read, and read, and read for a while,
and then you kind of fall in love with different
people in your story. And you just want to figure out
more about them, and tell more about them, and one
of the ones -- I had not been a huge Elizabeth
Cady Stanton fan before the book. She had, you know, a kind of
mixed record on some things, but the thing that fascinated me
was that she came up in an era when women were dying
to talk about abolition, and rights of women to vote,
and they weren't allowed to. Because the idea
of women speaking in public was regarded
as so shocking. It was like a sexual thing, and
anytime a woman tried to get up and speak in public,
they'd throw things at her, and say she was a whore, or it'd
ruin her reputation, and so on. So they didn't, and what she
figured out was I am old. I am a grandmother. Look at my gray hair, very old. I can't possibly be
a problem, right? How could you worry about this? And once she had gotten that
it's safe if you're older and a woman to go
out and do things -- it's not the same
kind of a shock -- she was on trains across
the country playing poker with soldiers, and
climbing up mountains. I mean, she just had
a million adventures, and spoke to a million
different people. And I just sort of love the
way she figured that out. >> I love that. Can you -- okay, so I am
the executive director of the Women's Suffrage
Centennial Commission, so suffrage history, of
course, is very important to me, especially this year. For everybody out
there who is listening, this year is the
100-year anniversary of the 19th Amendment, and
women's right to vote -- so a very important milestone
in American democracy. Gail, you talk about
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. You talk about Carrie
Chapman Catt. You talk about Alice Paul. You talk about Sojourner
Truth in your book. I mean, you talk about
several suffragists. One of the things that I love
about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, you know, as a mom myself,
is that she had, you know, babies on each hip,
babies around her skirts, and she was still just
this bold, radical woman, right, her whole life. Can you talk a little bit
about the investigation and the research that you did,
and the writing that you did about the suffrage
movement in your book? >> It came up a lot,
and you find it in all kinds of different
places. I've been thinking about it
a lot this week, of course, because it came up again. And the -- one of the
interesting things -- I'd like to hear how Megan
thinks about this, too. I've thought so much about
suffrage and the right to vote, but having the right to vote all by itself doesn't really
take you all that far. You've got to have
more than that. You've got to have the
right to speak in public. You've got to have the
right to have public lives, and you've got to have
income of your own. There's one thing that -- what I've read and history
has taught me, it's that women who can bring in money, women
who make money for themselves and their families, have a
whole different status in life than women who are confined just
to being housewives and mothers. And it wasn't their doing. People were stuck in different
things as they went along in history, and they
moved to cities. Stuff happened, but it's -- and I've wondered
this about sexual -- the fact that, right
now, since the 1970s, there's been this transformation of the economic role
of women in America. It was in the '70s that
suddenly, because of one thing or another, married middle-class
couples could no longer support their lifestyle with just one
income, and women really had to think about working
their entire lives, not for ideological purposes,
but just to have the standard of living they wanted. And once you got to that
point, and women started to be economically
important, everything changed. But women also have to
go into the workplace. They're expected to, and they're
in positions in relation to men that they never were before. I mean, I don't know if, in
the entertainment business, there would've been that
much interaction between men and women who were working
behind the scenes maybe 40 years ago, and that that's a danger
as well as a great blessing. So -- is that right? Does that make sense? >> You know -- yeah. I think that -- yeah, I mean,
I think that not just the -- you know, not just
sort of are women -- in some ways, this may be
stating the obvious, right, but it's not just
like are women working and taking home paychecks, but
what positions are they holding within various industries. I thought, you know, in trying
to figure out how it was that the Weinstein --
you know, in 2015, the -- 2015 was actually one of
the rare moments when the -- like, at least one allegation
against Harvey Weinstein burst into public view,
when this model -- this model from Italy had
reported to a work meeting at his office here in Manhattan,
and within hours of leaving, had gone to the New York
Police Department and said, "I was just sexually
abused by this producer." And there weren't charges
brought at the time, but there were headlines. And so, we knew that
the Weinstein Company, the other executives in his
company, and the board -- the board of outsiders
overseeing the company were aware of that. And in the course of our
reporting, we realized that, in that year, they also had
learned of other allegations, that there was actually a
junior executive in the company who actually submitted a
scathing memo outlining all of this alleged harassment
and abuse by Weinstein that the board saw. And so, what did
they do that year? They renewed his contract. They renewed Weinstein's
contract, and to try to figure out how something like
that could've happened, I always thought that it
was very interesting to note that the board of
Weinstein's company had no -- there was not a single
woman on that board. There was no -- on that board,
and I always wondered -- yes, there were women
working in the company. Yes, there were even women
in the company working at high levels, but there
was nobody on the board. There was no women on the board. And what would it have
looked like over the years if there had been actually
women on that board who read those memos,
who saw those headlines? >> Yeah. Yeah, it's
such an important thing to think about, right? Women and our voices, and what
spaces we occupy, and power -- you know, both of your
books have an undercurrent of the dynamics of power at
play for women in the world, and how much that matters. Megan, could you talk a
little bit about the reception of your reporting, and the
reception of your book? >> Yeah. I mean --
well, it's interesting. You know, Jodi and
I -- when we were -- when we started the
Weinstein investigation, we knew that there had been -- we knew that there had been
other journalists who had tried and failed to do the story. We would also learn sort
of closer to the end that Ronan Farrow was
also working on the story, and close to the
finish line as well. And so, we -- and there were
times when we would be knocking on women's doors, and contacting
sources, people who'd worked in Weinstein's companies, or
were otherwise in his orbit, and there were people
who said, "Listen, you're not the first
reporter we've talked to. There have been other
journalists who've shown up on our doorstep." And in some cases, there
were people who said, "Not only did they show up on
our doorstep, but we talked to them," and then -- only
to watch those stories, those reporting efforts
die, come to, like, a screeching halt. And so, we heard time and
again, you know, Weinstein is so powerful that he's going to actually find a way
to kill your story. He's going to barge into
"The New York Times." He's going to get this -- you know, people just
didn't have a lot of faith that this story was ever going
to actually make it into print. And we would always
say, "Listen, can't speak to the
experiences that you've had with other journalists or
other news organizations. But we want you to
know that when we show up on your doorstep,
you know, we're showing up with the entire support of
'The New York Times' behind us, up through the top editor,
up through the publisher who were aware of the stories." And Weinstein was, in
fact, contacting them. He -- one of the many
things he was doing to try to stop the investigation,
but we, as an institution, were really committed to
-- if we were able to -- if we were able to nail
the facts, if we were able to get information
that was publishable, that we were going to do that. And so, I think that -- now, that doesn't mean
that we had any expectation of what would happen after that,
after we were able to publish. In fact, there was this night -- you know, a couple nights
before the story was published, Jodi and I had been
working around the clock, and we finally, you know, left
work, I think around midnight, and shared a cab
back to Brooklyn. And it was in that kind of rare,
quiet moment that we turned to each other, and I think I
was the one who said to her, "Do you think anybody's actually
going to read this story?" You know, we were in -- we were
sort of so in the midst of it, in the trenches at that
point, that we couldn't -- you know, couldn't quite
see what we had, or what -- you know, we just were so
focused on trying to get -- cut through everything
that Weinstein was trying to do to stop the story. You know, which we would later
learn included hiring, like, former Israeli spies, who
adopted fake identities to try to dupe us and our sources. And so, I think that we were
-- our starting point was pride that we got there, you know,
like, that we were, like, thank goodness, because
the prospect of having heard all those
stories of harassment and abuse, and to -- this fear that we
would sort of join the ranks of journalists who had seen
that, and heard those stories, and not been able to publish
was, like, too much to bear. We were just so terrified
of that. So I think, for us, upon
the story being published, the reception, at least
internally, was just like, yeah, you know, we got it. At least we were able
to accomplish that. But in terms of the fact
that, within days -- and, you know, within several
stories of the story -- within several days of
the story being published, Weinstein was fired
from his own company, which was our first indication
-- like, okay, this is really -- this may actually have an
impact, with regards to him. But in terms of having, like,
a broader impact on the sort of culture, and -- that was
something that we started to also feel within those first
several days, when our e-mails and phones were flooded with
women who were coming forward with their own stories
of harassment and abuse. Not necessarily in the Hollywood
-- but, like, way beyond, and for reporters
who had done -- for any journalist who's worked
on these stories of harassment and abuse, and to know how hard
it is to try to extract those and bring them to light, this
idea that all of a sudden, like, there'd been a -- like, this --
the river had reversed, right? And that there was now,
like, this whole stream of information coming to us, and
people starting to step forward. And then, also, the
moment a couple weeks in when I finally had a moment
to go on my Facebook page, and started to see my
own friends, and family, and colleagues doing --
sharing their stories directly under the Me Too hashtag, it
was -- it was something I -- you know, I'll never forget it. It was so moving, and
certainly something that we just never
could've imagined, we certainly didn't predict. >> Yeah, I -- you know,
so I worked for many years at a crisis advocacy center,
working with survivors of sexual assault, and as
I was reading your book, I thought a lot about
those experiences. And that's such a -- you know,
a micro -- that's a one-on-one, working with victims, and what
you were doing was that kind of work on such a macro level. And when I was doing that
work, you know, it was a lot of responsibility,
right, and it was heavy. That was heavy work. And so, as I was reading your
book, I thought a lot about what that must have been like for you
and Jodi to have been entrusted with those women's stories, to
be entrusted with their hope, right, with their
fears, you know. And then, of course, at the --
in the moment, you don't know, you know, that all of society
is really depending on you to [laughter] -- to get
this story out there, and to make it happen, and
to make change in the world. But, you know, I thought a lot about that while I
was reading your book, and you mentioned it
just a minute ago. But could you talk a little bit
more about, you know, what -- what did the weight of
this feel like for you? I mean, you've reported
on President Trump. You've reported on a
lot of heavy stuff, but what did the weight
of this story feel like, and what did it mean to
just get it into the world? >> Yeah, I mean --
well, you're right that there was a --
there was a weight. It did feel like a
grave responsibility to be carrying those
-- not only once -- for the women who did share
their stories with us, and then -- you know,
there were the women who shared their
stories with us, and then there were the
women who went on the record. And that was a small
number, but we were kind of carrying the stories
of a fair number of women at that point, and especially
the ones who were going to be going on the record, and having their names
associated with it. That's when you've got, like,
the huge responsibility, because those are the people
who are opening themselves up to everything
that can happen. And, you know, I remember,
you know, reporting on women who had come forward with
allegations against, you know, then-candidate Trump,
and the death threats that they experienced, and, you
know, having people on Fox News, you know, take aim at them. And to have President Trump
threaten to sue them, and -- so I was very aware
that going on the record and putting yourself out
there like this, for the women who agreed to be sources
and go on the record in these stories is not done
lightly, and is really -- comes -- can come
with real risk. And so, it is absolutely, if you
look at the kind of landscape of reporting that I've done,
and I think I can speak for Jodi as well -- like, this was one
where you really did feel -- people will often ask us,
especially when it's a -- you know, when they learn
that there were these spies, former spies who had been
-- who were on our trail, and trying to stop us. And there were these powerful
lawyers, like David Boies, who -- and others who were
threatening to sue us, and, you know, people
have asked us, "Like, were you ever afraid
for yourselves?" And we always say
no, we weren't. I mean, as investigative
reporters at "The Times," you kind of wake up -- you
know, it's the reason we get out of bed in the
morning, is to like -- is try to hold powerful people
to account, and expecting that they're going to
engage in all those -- in a certain amount
of tactics to try to stop you, prevent scrutiny. But I think the real fear
was not for ourselves, but that somehow, the women
who were working with us on this story could -- were
going to be harmed, or, you know, suffer as a result. And that made publishing all
the more important, because, you know, oftentimes, the
best protection for sources is to have the story out for
public view, because then, there's so much more
that somebody like Harvey Weinstein
can do behind the scenes when he's trying to
stop an investigation. But once it's in public
view, and he's the one in the hot seat, it becomes much
more difficult for him to go after the people
who have been -- you know, who have sort
of bravely spoken out. >> Gail, I'm going to pivot
to you in a way that -- there's not going to be any
connection to the question I'm about to ask you [laughter]. I know. I can -- we could keep
talking about Harvey Weinstein for the rest of this
session, but, Gail, I have so many questions
I want to ask you as well. So could you -- Gail, you
have written several books. You wrote for "The New
York Times," you know, for I think close
to two decades. You are on the Pulitzer
Prize board. I was wondering if you could
speak a little bit to anybody who may be listening, who
is an aspiring author -- and then, Megan, I'm going
to ask you the same question about being an aspiring
journalist. But for anybody who's listening
who might be, you know, an aspiring author, an
aspiring journalist, could you speak a
little bit to, you know, what advice would you have for
young women who are looking to you, and the career that
you've had, and the stories that you've managed
to put down on paper? What advice would you have
for young women who see this, and who want to do
what you've done? >> Can I -- one other sort
of slightly off thing, and I'll throw it to Megan,
who has more about right now. But when I -- back in the
'70s, women started filing around the country suits to get
more representation at work, to get more promotions, to get considered the
same way that men were. And at "The Times," it
happened in the '70s, too, and in the '80s, and in all
of these instances almost, the women who filed the
suits were never the ones who got the reward. Because they'd been
there a long time. They hadn't been promoted. They'd gotten in people's faces, so they weren't the
most popular always. And what happened was,
when the suits were won, when companies came to
realize the importance about sexual diversity,
people like me, who were the next ones coming in
through the door, got enormous, enormous opportunities. Because all those other women
had made the companies ready and eager to have that kind
of diversity, and that women who really did it for
us never get, I think, as much celebration
as they could. Because, you know, you always
want to talk to the first person who did whatever it was, but that whole behind
thing is just -- it's just so important
to remember. No, go ahead, Megan. >> Right, well, and you
were the first woman -- yeah, yes, and you were the
first woman to be appointed as the editor of
the editorial page at "The New York Times," right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, so you were in
there, breaking down doors, shattering glass ceilings. >> It's true. And you have to --
you have to be able, when the glass ceiling
gets shattered, to do whatever it is you
need to do to make it work. But I just -- one more diversity
story about how people other than me got this done. When I was on the editorial
board, and I was a columnist, one day, Hal Reins
[assumed spelling], who was then the editor -- the
editorial page editor, came in and said to me, "We're going
to change everything around. I'm going downstairs. We want you to become the
editorial page editor." And I said, "That's
a crazy idea. I really haven't had that
much experience, you know, doing stuff like that." And then, just the
-- the first one -- it just seemed like
it should be somebody with a lot more background. And he just looked
at me and said, "This is possibly the last
'first woman' thing that's going to be available for a
while, because they're -- and if you want to be the
first woman at something, unless you're planning to become
the baseball commissioner, this is the time
you've got to do it. Take this job." And he was -- people. >> Well, and that's -- you
know, I think that's good for young people to hear,
too, that, you know -- I think probably most people
suffer from impostor syndrome, right, as we call it
today, where you feel -- and I think women especially
feel like, oh, well, maybe you're not quite
qualified for that thing. Maybe you need a little more
experience, and, you know, most men don't suffer
from impostor syndrome. It's really us, and we feel it. But we're ready,
and we're there, and we dig in, and
we do the work. And you get to be the -- you know, the first editorial
page editor as a result, so -- >> Yeah, the one thing that
I do tell younger women when they're -- the stuff
that I did earlier on -- I covered the state
capitol in Connecticut for weekly newspapers
for, like, 10 years. It was ridiculous,
but I learned so much, because I had to work so hard. We were working. Trish Hall was my partner
that I -- for about, you know, 20 hours a day sometimes, to try
and get 25 papers little stories about all the things
that were going on. And they weren't great
stories, but you get to a point where you're just
used to doing stuff, where you've got the base
skills, and you can't sort of demean those
basic-skill-learning times, even though they're not
maybe the most exciting and creative things
you'll ever do. That's really, really important, just to feel very
comfortable with your work. >> Yeah. I -- Megan, I'm going
to shoot a similar question over to you, because I
think, you know, one day, there is going to be a movie
about what you've done here, and Angelina Jolie
is going to play you. And there are going to be a
lot of women in this country who are going to say, "How can
I be an investigative journalist like Megan and Jodi? How do I do this? How do I right wrongs? How do I bring powerful
people down?" For anybody who is watching this
out there, who is looking at you and saying, "I want to do that. I want to be that. I want to have that kind
of impact on the world," what advice -- what lessons
would you have for them? >> Well, I would say,
for one, it's interesting to hear Gail talk about
her time working in -- Maryland, did you say? >> Connecticut. >> Connecticut, excuse me. Connecticut, yeah. You know, I spent time -- I,
too, spent time working in sort of -- I -- my first
newspaper job was at "The Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel." I worked in a suburban bureau,
almost like a rural bureau of "The Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel." >> I wrote obituaries
there once. That's great. "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" -- >> Do -- yeah, yeah. >> Right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, Gail -- >> Yeah. >> -- anyway, keep going. >> So I learned -- you
know, I -- you know, I -- people will refer -- you
know, refer to this as, like, paying your dues, and I think that that's one way
to look at it. I mean, another thing
to look at it -- another way to look at it
is to just always be looking for the jobs where you're
going to learn the most, and that you're going to be
-- where you're forced -- where you're going to
be forced to work hard, and to learn, and to grow. And those -- when
you're starting off, those that don't
necessarily -- that doesn't -- I mean, I may say that's
rarely going to be at -- that's rarely probably going to
be starting out at a place like "The New York Times," or in a
-- you know, it's sort of -- I would say to -- there
are jobs that come with prestigious titles, and with prestigious
organizations, you know, employers. But I really do believe,
and I really do feel like, when I was squaring off against
Harvey Weinstein in, you know, a conference room of "The
New York Times" before, when he barged into "The
New York Times" uninvited, the day before the story
was going to be published, with his powerful lawyers by his
side, you know, I not only took that meeting, but
was not intimidated by it in the slightest. Because of all of the interviews
that I had done over the years, going back to the small-town
administrator in Racine County, Wisconsin who was somebody who, even though he was a public
official, didn't think he had to answer questions from
a reporter, and would -- his office would literally hang up the phone on me
when I called. And I had to figure out how to
get answers, and how to get him on the phone, and how
to hold him to account. And so, I just think
that there's no sub -- I would just 100% echo Gail, and
say that there's no substitute. I think to become -- you know, if you want to become an
investigative journalist, if you want to just do
good journalism, period, there's no substitute for
taking the kind of jobs where you're just, like, on the
ground, doing the work, and, like, developing those
reporting and writing muscles that are going to
serve you well. Because when it --
you know, when it came to not just Weinstein, but in
some of the tougher interviews that I -- with Trump, when
I went to interview him about the women who
had had allegations of sexual misconduct
against him. And he was calling me a
disgusting human being, and screaming at me on the
phone, I mean, there was no part of me that was rattled
in these interviews, because of the experience I had
had as a cub reporter working in some of the non-glamorous
places, just doing the work. >> Right. And, you know, I think
it's good for people to hear, too, that even in the midst of
this world-changing reporting that you were doing, you
weren't sure any of it was going to stick, much less
start a movement. And I think that's
important for people to hear, that you do the good work,
you dig in, and, you know, you hope that -- you
hope it has the impact that you hope it will have. But that doesn't stop you
from doing the good work. You do it because it's
the right thing to do. I have one last question
for you -- oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Megan. >> No, I was just kind of
saying you do it with the hopes that you're -- that
it's going to -- not that it's going to
bring attention to you, but that it's going to bring
attention to the people that you're writing about. You know, that Harvey
Weinstein is going to get fired from his company, and that
those women who participated in the story will
walk away thinking, "That was the right thing to do. That did hold power to account. That did make a difference." >> Yeah. Can -- so I'm going to
take us to our last question. I can't believe that
our time is already up. This has gone by so fast. I could talk to you both
for the rest of the evening. But to wrap up --
to wrap us up here, the National Book
Festival this year -- this is the 20th anniversary, which is such a phenomenal
milestone, and just really speaks to how
much this festival resonates with folks across the country,
and how important it is to have a space to get
together, and share ideas, and sit with likeminded people,
and think about new things. And the theme of this year's
festival is American Ingenuity. So I'm wondering, before we wrap
up, if I could ask you both just to speak to that theme
of American Ingenuity. How does it relate to your book? How does it not relate
to your book? What does that mean to you,
that phrase, that thought? Is there power behind
that for you? Gail, could we start with you? What does American Ingenuity --
how does that connect for you? >> It's a sort of a freedom,
because in this country, once you get to a position where
people notice what you're doing, and are paying attention to it,
which is tricky sometimes -- but people are ready
to listen, and accept, and to give you credit for stuff
because of the way the history of the country's gone. And, you know -- and on
the women's side, I mean, just think of all the
women who did all the stuff that they got no credit
for whatsoever over all of our history, and that all
can you do is just remind people of who all these
other people were, and sort of go back
on those tracks. Think about that a little bit,
and then, just as we've said, work like a crazy person
-- amazing things until -- and then, that's all
there is [laughter]. >> Yep. >> Megan, what about for you? American Ingenuity -- >> Yeah, I mean, I
think that, you know, if I think about when we
were doing the Weinstein investigation, and I
guess the -- one of the -- another one of the reasons
that we wrote this book, to go back to one of
your original questions, is because I think that
there's no question that, in doing the Weinstein
reporting, we saw a lot of darkness. You know, we reported
into a lot of darkness. We reported in -- we got a very
close look at abuse of power, and sexual violence, and
how powerful people are able to cover that up. And -- but this was ultimately
a -- I think that one -- another one of the
reasons we wanted to write the book was that, at
a time when the country can feel so polarized, and when the
very notion of truth feels like it's collapsing, that
this was also an example of how brave sources -- that
this is a real testament to the power of brave
sources, and journalism, and how facts can win. And I think that it was
also ushered in this new -- to watch what happened in
the months and the year that followed, and is still
happening, to see that, in some ways, we were doing -- just using the same
investigative techniques that journalists have been using
for years, and years, and years. But to see victims
of sexual harassment and sexual assault be able to
kind of step up into a new space in this country, and use
journalism to help bring about change I think was
a real -- was, like -- was so inspiring to watch,
and also participate in. >> Yeah. Well, American
Ingenuity -- I would certainly say that
that applies to both of you, and the work that you've done. Thank you so much, Gail
and Megan, for joining me for this conversation. To everybody -- yeah,
to everybody who is watching the National
Book Festival this weekend, we're so glad that
you are taking part in these conversations. These are amazing books. Please check them out. I encourage you -- there's
so much in these books about women's lives,
and women's stories, and in this centennial
year, where, you know, we're really celebrating
women's history, this is a moment to learn. This is a moment to listen,
and this is a moment to engage in women in our lives, and to
just really look at each other, and be grateful for the work
that we've all done, and to, you know, look to the next 100
years, and think about the work that we still have left to do. So, Gail and Megan, thank you
so much for joining us today, and thanks, everybody. >> Yeah. >> Thanks so much for having us. [ Music ]
