amelia earhart is a social worker from boston who comes next? you know in our quest to remember earhart or to solve the mystery of how she disappeared we seem to have forgotten almost everything about how she actually lived. and the fact of the matter is in 1927 and 1928 amelia earhart wasn't a famous pilot. she was a licensed pilot. but by her own admission, she wasn't doing much flying anymore. she was working at a settlement house. on tyler street in boston what people in boston now call chinatown? and she was helping new immigrants to this country. learn how to speak english. learn how to get a job. it was here at the settlement house in 1928 six months after ruth elders flight. the connected east coast businessmen would discover her including her future husband george putnam of putnam publishing and they would put amelia earhart on a seaplane sitting in boston harbor flown by men. plane that was going to be going across the atlantic. you know on this first flight amelia had no job but to sit behind the two men who were at the controls and ta

or of course amelia earhart. and when we think about amelia, we like to think of her all alone, you know, alone in that plane over the ocean, alone flying into those cultural headwinds. but at the time amelia was flying, other women were flying with her. each of them was brave. each of them was bold. some of them arguably, objectively, were perhaps more talented in the cockpit than amelia. today we've forgotten almost everything about them, their battles and their losses, their friendships and their rivalries, what they fought for, how hard they fought. we've forgotten too that seemingly impossible victory over the men in 1936. with this book, with "fly girls," i set out to change that, reminding readers of this time and these characters. women who stood up for themselves and each other again and again, defiant in the face of rules that were intended to keep them in their place. and also confident in the knowledge of who they were. now, i want to be very clear here. this is not intended to be a comprehensive histo

it's women's history month and, naturally, we're celebrating accomplished women like amelia earhart, tubman, and me jane krakowski. thank you. but unfortunately by the time we finish covering all the greatest women, there's no time left to talk about everyone else. so tonight we're celebrating all the women who deserve our praise but up until now haven't quite made the cut. this is great-ish women of history. august 1, 1927, lara mazer becomes the first person in history to take off her bring through her sleeve. today women across the country celebrate her by taking off their bras and repeating the famous catch phrase. aaahhh! >> 3,000b.c., serga invents the wheel. she invented other smaips, too. may 27,. queen augusta invents the queen-sized bed, who later ghaith birth to twins. november 19, 1310, lady katherine desnack invents the concept of snacking when she eats just a little bit. she went on to invent brunch, breakfast for dinner and fries for the table. a true pioneer. february 21, 1902, sara anderson invents mixed nuts when she falls down a flight of stairs while carrying five

>> cooper: it's an opera she wrote about amelia earhart's doomed attempt to circumnavigate the globe.dio, and she's going, like, "i can see you, but i can't hear you." and they're going, "i can hear you, but i can't see you." >> cooper: she's in perpetual motion, playing with technology and images, fascinated by language and sound. >> anderson: what was really fun about this-- oop. >> cooper: she's working with an australian university on an artificial intelligence program loaded with everything she's ever written, said, or sung. you can ask it a question or give it a photograph, and the algorithm creates an original poem in the words and speech pattern of laurie anderson. >> anderson: half of it is really terrible poetry. a quarter of it is kind of interesting, and a quarter of it is really kind of great. >> cooper: to see how it works we uploaded a photograph of my newborn son, sebastian. wow. >> anderson: the mouth, the eye, the hand, the face. there's nowhere to go, no place to hide it. it's everywhere now that i'm here. i can't believe it's me. who did this? who are these people?

so we did "i am amelia earhart" and "i am abraham lincoln.lala, and i'm gonna make sure people learn and show them how to fight back. right? and that was vital to do those >> seth: and they're really -- i should stress, you know, they're beautifully written books. they don't shy away from issues, but they're also incredibly palatable. and i find it a great way to introduce ideas to my kids that way. and some of them were taken off bookshelves for a brief period >> they were it's great i mean, they literally banned our books, "i am rosa parks" and "i am martin luther king jr. i got a call from fox news, from cnn, from msnbc. they all wanted to have me on. they were like, "this is a travesty." when fox news and cnn and msnbc agree, you know you screwed up >> seth: yeah, yeah. >> right you know you went too far. and we fought really hard against the school board in pennsylvania the students in the area and the activists in the area, we spoke at the school board meeting. we got the ban overturned. we told everyone, "if you want to see this overtu