Happy 150th Birthday, Laura Ingalls Wilder!

you need a higher this week marked the one hundred fiftieth birthday of one of america's best loved office i'm kate mcintyre and today and kbr for is that we celebrate laura ingalls wilder's the author of the popular series little house on the prairie which traced her family's travels across the midwest including two years in the kansas territory near what is now independence kansas the books were the basis for the popular television show little house on the prairie which aired in the nineteen seventies wendy mcclure we trace the life and travels of laura ingalls wilder churning her own butter grinding her own wheat all while wearing a calico bonnet see is the author of the wilder life my adventure in the lost world of laura ingalls wilder i visited with wendy mcclure at the johnson county public library this interview originally aired in two thousand eleven how did you come to re visit the whole little

house on the prairie scene well first i had to reread the books which i do you for over thirty years i search across the first book accidentally after it turned out that in my parents cry too and they're having a moving sale and so it added i read we read a little house the big woods i was really reluctant for years of the book's actually because i'm a children's book editor and i have was always are afraid that it wouldn't hold up that you read a lot of historical fiction when you're an editor and you get used to certain what the jars are and i think i was just really worried that it wouldn't be as wonderful they're remembered but the wire and little house in the big woods it really was so i mean see as telling my report from crescent spokesman you know this book is so great and a couple weeks later he came home with a box set of the reader's digest blue paper backs

of the little house books and i was i thought of the time actually well that's nice enough to know i'm not that we read all of them at once but then i did you didn't just read them you became kind of obsessed with yeah how did that happen well i think he was or my natural you know survival curiosity out at the same time i was reading that the books i was also looking things up on the internet they were you know just serve a new world observe opened up to me now i'm in one year when you're older and you're evil to serve other things more critically and and also disable it ok what we're really is going on and in wisconsin you know it can i can i go there and then i found out when i stir do research that indeed in all these places i didn't know that as a kid so arm that releases are struck me right away and then nine

i also just b he really preoccupied with the idea of ok come on to recreate some of the stuff but let's see what it's like to make long where brett ellis it was like to churn butter and i found out soon enough that there was a wonderful book out there called the little house cookbook by barbara walker who also i mean i really got to credit her way and that the instinct of going back and re creating all these all these things and that's just such a wonderful way to engage the books so i might get that cookbook and i don't i did lots of things when he can i have you read from the very beginning of the book i was born in eighteen sixty seven analog haven't will and wisconsin and maybe you were too we live with our family in the big woods and then we all traveled in a covered wagon to indian territory or pa built as another house on highlander the prairie grasses swayed right we remember the strangest things the way robertson while handsome snakes respects the cabin to escape a prairie fire or else how it felt when the head of the

neil slip through a whole the thimble and stock was hard we want it all we didn't we moved on to minnesota and south dakota i swear that's true we were grown mr a living grew up and grew old and passed on and then she became a part of that somehow she existed fully formed our heads her memory swimming around in our brains of their own oh that's helpful to me at least as i was still feel sometimes i really think about it i mean i don't believe in reincarnation and obviously laura ingalls wilder did either now at a respectful protestants singing off key it wouldn't hurt his upbringing is just how real the little house books was for me as a kid they gave me the uncanny sense that it experienced everything she had that i had nearly drowned in the same polluted creek endured the grasshopper played eighteen seventy five and lived for the hard winter it's a classic target delusion i know and am i typically get the way i tend to believe that the fantasy was mine alone

and this magical past life business was between war and me and no one else surely i was the only one who does profound mind meld with her that allowed me to feel her phantom pigtails to get my scout i had to be the only one who's into the books that much and oh my god i want to live in one room with my whole family and have a pathetic corn cob doll on my own i wonder where congress sun bonnet or rather i wanted to not work out some bad the way laura did letting it hang down her back by its ties a minute chores because of these books carry water churn butter make head cheese a long dead rabbits brought home for supper i want to go out in the backyard and just i don't know rich stuff of trees or approve things from the ground and bring it on site in a basket and had my parents they might lead and what to harvest there are a host of other things from books that i remember i wanted to do to such as they can be by pouring service now make bullets by point lead so a scene with tiny i'm perfectly straight stitches had

a man's hand spam a corset waste which at the time didn't seek creepy at all pristine sticks its salt pork it cut pork hippo suckling pig as a pet chase a horse and or arcs into a barn staal right on the back of a pony just by hanging onto its main feel that in a way and it's not but i really want to make bold to re strand and ponies it's just that i want to be in laura world and do them you just described my own childhood perfectly if i remember reading those books and thinking gosh why don't we have a corn cob dolls anymore and in the world something as mundane as making my own bare is setting the table for our family dinner didn't seem like an exciting story somehow going out and fetching water did see now some of your suburban challenged to sing so unsatisfying after reading those books i don't know really exactly what it is as someone who writes children's books for a living do you think that there is but this

is an indication of how well written the little house books are that it pulls you into this world in how sort of magical way they i think so definitely you know there's a lot of historical fiction out there a perilous because you it's has its the literary equivalent of a historical village and you know and even know we're certainly did that in the books by giving these wonderfully detail procedural passages about the churning butter or come or how to make smoke medicine are making cheese burger any those things there is there was also something about the perspective that was so immediate you were early reading just about the character you are really with laura that there was it was just a point if you come you really felt like

you were her head and i think that the writing so in your re creation of war world youth churned her own butter you grind it your own wheat you bought numerous as the sun bonnet is you can't go out in a wagon you know all kinds of things that laura would have died in the in probably a slightly more authentic fashion a day did your family saying you know maybe i think you're going to go forward it should be said that i didn't do you know anything really truly immersive and actually i think that's that was kind of it was never the point in our to do some survived the great experiment to go live in a cabin without electricity because that would've seem like an endurance event and people's family it is legit and then to her you know our worlds are so different and i understand that and to do something like that would

be a guess at about something else but i like to serve doing these little things and they were discouraged little portals you know into it and to get these moments in the books is so well i think you were pretty supportive of you know chris might they can say you know how could grind the wheat with me i mean there was always acknowledge that about meant that this was a little a little weirder we're doing ok speaking of chris i have to say in reading this book by the end of it i love it he's great you know you better camping out in the why didn't because that's probably right so out in this met south dakota there's a place called ankles homestead which is actually that ingels homestead land and one of things you can do is is spend the night and eight sort of modified sheepherders wagon that looks like a sort of a viral glass covered wagon with a wooden wagon bed and

it's like a very crude camper inside and we spent the nightmare i was kind of a rainy night and kind of a rainy night of the raid and then and then there was hail you could hear on the hard top and really one of the most spectacular lightning storms ever and we were very aware of the fact that were this little wooden box there is knowledgeable about right beneath us as an ally in the ground right rickety boats there's a little knoll bolts you're missing really a polite teenager and you know where we're singing someway different things with it for anna di replied was gonna happen to the wheat because there was a beautiful wheat field out there and then there was a hail storm it's of course and you know there's something always happens to the wheat in the little house books so it out and it was you know

the lightning struck nearby it was it was really you know it was white and experience and ease you know everyone thinks that any go out service you know seeking adventure like that that you know we kind of got it in spades that night and they're like this is like this is where i ask for and when it was all over korea said whoa what about the crops usually i think the funniest line in the hope that the first thing the next morning it is we as we we got up and we knew what we went over to it was fine it turned out but it did give you probably a sense of how delicate the ballot in a limit any moment that crop could be could be gone again and it is your livelihood of the year one of the things that i think you and i have in common is that we both love these books as a kid and didn't actually watch the tv show and i'm guessing that many of our one of our listeners did fall in love with a

series of books initially i'm guessing that there's also a pretty good contingent of people they came to the book through the tv show glee to me why it is in your circumstances that you didn't watch the tv show is a kid i was really play it when i was looking back on first started doing this research i was wondering i love those books what an ever watch the tv show and i went back and i looked at that the tv schedule from something like make at wine and realize that little house the prairie was in the same time slot as delete here in cincinnati which of the show my family watched so some family friendly programming alley beside you know we watched why anderson in howard it and it did reveal kind of an uncomfortable tension between were followers of the tv show ends of the art and history of the book there's always a little dance when you for our first talking to

someone and you say you're terrible house in the prairie and they say i'm telling us the prairie two and you still have to feel each other out just make sure you're talking about the same little house on the prairie because if they start saying oh that episode where albert was addicted to morphine and then the very disappointed that that didn't happen in the book said and he had to say are you kidding at the same time i was really surprised at how many people i really love that the books and the tv series equally that was you know they're desperately purists there are people who owe say an hour a bad eye out for the tv show at all but there are people who understand their two different things and i love them both and that the surprise me one thing that really surprised me in reading your book was the attraction that the whole house of prayer work world holds for people who home school yeah well there's a home school curriculum that's based on a little house on the prairie so that's certainly part of it and as far ahead

is living history i am in the books are really wonderful for that you know we would all kinds of hands on stuff that you can do that really lends itself to a home schools buy it they i think you know the gears there's definitely percent of the population out there who have i'd dissatisfaction with the modern world like us and i'm in the little house books that world becomes really idealized to them and i think you know instead of returning to the outfit to the little house books you know as a curriculum in a howitzer of their their way of embracing that i don't know that she set out to create this idealized world that there are issues he races that maybe in a tv show or a kind of glossed over a little better or maybe not actually watched the tv show big un do you think you ever let them i'm asking you to go out of your head and do you think laura ingalls wilder would be

a surprise to sort of we see her world in some idealized way or do you think that was maybe her intention in writing the books there was that little bit of an agenda and that was both on her part and then rose to her daughter who helped write the books mean you know that they'd ever represented a picture of a family always have probably wouldn't last word when in reality the din you know they didn't quite do that they they backtracked sometimes sometimes say they fell on hard times and had to live with other family members or give up farming in and do something else there's a whole a period of couple of years that lowered input in the books where they lived in baroque iowa and he ran a hotel and in the hotel i am having to deal with travelers there was a bar room there was a saloon explorer and i don't think the family like it very much but they deserve to get it to get by an edge really interesting knowing that many going back to read

the little house books overseen a little town on the prairie where there's talk about war going into town and maybe working and mussels not hotel and it's really interesting that you know she has not saying they're considering you know it and in real life she was working in a hotel when she was ten years old and it was not so there is that there was definitely some some glossing over and there is actually also some a little bit of a i think a political ideology just you know the sense of people pull themselves up by their bootstraps also emitted from the series is an image of them getting government assistance when reality mary died funding to attend i will call to the blind so you know those things worse or deliberate choices and the books are definitely crafted though i think it's i don't know mom

would you think about the sort of family family values i mean she might she knew she might not disapprove i guess and it's it's it's a somewhat different agenda than i think what to laura was put out not that much different but a little bit what persons you're in the kansas right now the part that will probably be the most interesting to our listeners is the part where they're in cambodia and i was surprised in reading your book it's still unclear where effective they are and to tell us what happens when they get to campus well founded it there's what the book tells you and unless there's real life mom in real life house seems to have been very deliberately squatting i'm bauman osage reserve land and probably in the hopes of getting cheap land anticipating that eventually will be open for outstanding so that's the reality in the book they are going out

and if there is much much more ambiguous situation where if it's a really interesting for me was a trail by the more so that a lot of people people like to think there's this deadly multiple perspectives there's there are the neighbors who you know who feel the indians just need to be driven out altogether or worse just eliminated and then there's there's part was more tolerant view and then there is there's laura who serve as the obvious question which is why are we on their land anyway why did they have to move west when it's their land and you know it's a very it's a very pointed question and i think you know for all the legitimate criticism that the book has forged a trail of native americans i think and it was it was a good bet that you pose that question and then does it the way the book serve resolves this is a soldier comes out and tells

part that he deserve happen to be you know over the line and that it's some sort of a government you know bureaucratic mix up and so in the end the governments to blame and uncertainties are because it's a no add to all this there's all this ambiguity but that at the end because when the government which is now because i am in reality i think that they're not quite sure why the ingalls family left the territory by one thing that is true is that they had sold her cabinet couples can send to grant to missouri and kansas and then the the man who had bought the cabin from and could keep making payments so they realize that there's a chance to go back and reclaim that happen so there was a lot of reasons why they went back and then they're also battling rumors that the government was going to come and pick them up the land but there was never i think a case of a soldier coming in asking them to leave

and there was also a little bit of confusion in sort of alan nathan is a wiry exactly are they and the distances between like how close they are to independence kansas in the book laura says that they sold forty miles from independence reality in reality as they discovered in the nineteen sixties when a research land records and compared them with census records they were forty miles away so they think that laura had misheard the story or mis remembered and so it's really just if you look it's the earlier additions of the books when you look at the flap copy they say that their oklahoma because that's that would've been forty miles from independence aunts also where indian territory was so on and that was that was a really sort of interesting little footnote there so you look at that really know where the site was herself as you went looking around oklahoma for at one point in

an nineteen thirty or so they don't really know where they were in we do this this research in the nineteen sixties which actually is also when they when they found out when i began to discover that that the books they were based on an oral appliance but there was love or fiction to them because when they finally add up the years and at the map or would've been two a half three years old at the time and not the older child that she is a reality in the books wendy can i have you create it from the part where they're actually in kansas and we're going to visit her site in kansas the little house on the prairie replica captain gets an a for authenticity a plus really the big woods cabin we'd seen wisconsin had been a tiny splinter was a fair constructed by professionals the kansas capital like it'd been built by while pa the walls are made especially and strip clubs of peeling bark the corner joyce her rack in the cracks between the lungs are filling with crumbling

clay i'd read and then build fallen morris descriptions as closely as possible certainly the door looked like he had been made for the descriptions in the book with its elaborate let's descriptions to that this day i can ever figure out first he hewed short thick piece of oak park says from one side of this in the middle he cut a wide deep knowledge he pegged to stick to the inside of the door up and down and you're the edge he put them outside against the door so the matchmaker little slot somehow it's so specific it's disorienting one side and a metal up and then a near the edge every time i read this passage i follow along as best as i can and then to completely lost but a look at the door or a facsimile thereof you'd never guess a good sound so complicated and help a stupid and relieved to see how it works you call the slow rope and then this thing goes up the door was low i had a duck a little to go inside the cabin was further

somewhat there was a primitive bed with a quilt some rough wooden furniture a table with a red checked scarf on it just like minded used and a guest but for visitors the mental health a glass oil lamp and a china shepherd us both of them glued in place and they were coupled enamel ware parts on the hearth and they felt terribly lived then something like this could only gesture toward holiness but i liked being there and felt in fact like a playhouse a one to just sit there for a while maybe would reign again and i could listen to the rain on the roof but the rain had stopped for the most part and i can see out the door there to a curved pulled up along the fence going back to explore the rest the place behind a tiny post office which i found out had once served with a kansas were a couple of little printed signs and smelly cricket posts and beyond them lay the open space of the prairie one sign indicated that dr george tan the black doctor who treated the ingalls family during the fever in a new chapter of the book and live somewhere off the distance across where the highway now ran in a sign

simply said look north and visualize cover weapons coming over the kansas prairie when we do or in locations like that keeps you just look north and to five hundred where you can hear the prairie for the most part one of the wonderful things about seeing these home state says that the landscape is still very much the same and we have to sort of keep our credit for that he really never liked to be anywhere where was crowded and soda know these home sites are all up to be that beaten path here is no risk of suburban encroachment air or anything like that so it's still there still very much the same so you went to all these different war in those wilder of sites throughout the midwest do you have a favorite or a favorite experience that one of them one favorite experiences when christian i went to pack in wisconsin that was the very first site we want to and i couldn't wait to get started

sweet went in the beginning of march else i get out of the courts are cds places and different seasons and we went and he also you know there's not that much there there's a little museum there of course was closed for the season there was a cap and you can go inside to happen but it's a sort of empty inside but then we want to see lake happen which is a lake on the mississippi river and it was still completely frozen and had something like two feet of ice and i realized that it was the same time of year that the ingalls family had driven across that lake to get to minnesota at the beginning of all house on the prairie land he does could this or look across the sea the bank an economist and i just had a sort of feeling that he does want to cross you would actually submit be back in the end minnesota it would be on their journey and you know you'd be at seventy and that was that was a really wonderful experience and it was

something that i hadn't really expected to unite i thought like i'll be nice to be a lot happened that this was something that was that was really wonderful there was a really great way to discharge michael tree of all welcome laura world experiences that i wish i had had i think at the one that i always wish that i could have replicated was living in a sod house the actual sun house where there's family lived is now serviced depression in the ground now it's escaped in pellets on the right on the pigs a plum creek and except for the fact that it's just a dip in the ground it still looks very much like you would imagine that and it's from that from that depression that they can see how big it actually was so as we go into town on a grove and then also in and i'm just mad you can see these replica dugouts and they're tiny village of you like a freight elevator inside and a color changes the story for you would you realize that you know

the scene where they're they're making the button string for kerry and trying to keep it from her and they just had to turn their backs and in a quarter there was there was no other no other part of the room where they could go and so it exerts a scene kind of absurd you know and a thousand one case where you know i feel like my my book memories make more sense than the reality when he won passage that i'd really like for you to close and keep it set up where you are right now and enter what's about how well at this point we're and in south dakota and we were looking at driving around looking at the homestead land and all places where they'd then and there's a replica shanties were where they lived on the angles homestead land by waves ever seen everything we could that day we were driving around we'd seen

the lake where lorne oh man so had had gone riding in their buggy we'd seen the cemetery is in other kinds of things and then we drove a little bit north of town to see the place where a book the first four years of taking place and which was there was really nothing there now but i just it was such a strange time it are still really sort of vigilant distracting around and just needing to take it on land and it was a really severe starting to not getting a break down you know i was i was really really searching after turning back north we finally pulled off the road by the historical marker that designated the low empty hill behind it as rosewater lanes birthplace the site where the water claim chanted stood with sen harkin ear sandwiches sterile s the scrubby cow pasture where lower and al mansour had lived a luckless existence but is also beautiful there are no trees here they look away the country must have looked when the railroad first came

through here ever since yesterday would watch the pageant and have a feeling that there are two worlds here one layered upon the other let everyone who came here was always trying to see through one prairie to the other wendy to me they're perfectly summarizes exactly what you were doing in writing this book and going on this adventure hero it was thank you for sharing it with us thank you for for having me again this week marked the one hundred fiftieth birthday of laura ingalls wilder the author of the popular series little house on the prairie i'd been visiting with wendy mcclure she's the author of the wilder life my adventures in the lost world of laura ingalls wilder she tweets as half right angles i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to take your presents on kansas public radio we've got more keep your prisons coming up but first a song inspired by

laura ingalls wilder and perhaps her time here in kansas this is the big the sunflower by douglas b green from happy lamb musical tribute laura ingalls wilder is a strong i can't explain my heart goes and her eyes are trying call saul star goes the

treaty well no in the snow the

songs he said all oil majors that's a big sunflower by douglas b green from that album happy land musical tributes to laura ingalls wilder this week marked the one hundred fifth the eighth birthday of laura ingalls wilder author of the popular series a little house on the prairie i'm j mcintyre you're listening to k pr prisons on kansas public radio

for the rest of this hour what can they ever teach you about leadership and business why you should forget everything you've been taught about public speaking and so much more karen haas is the founder and ceo of improv adds a former actress motivational speaker and this years keynote speaker for the lawrence school's foundation she's taken her acting skills to coach others to go out on a limb and take risks in the workplace karen thank you for coming in today is my pleasure to me a little bit about the journey from actor to businesswomen sure if it was it was a journey that i didn't see coming you can plan this kind of thing obviously play by it so i you know i started acting when i was five i was onstage there and so i ate as a very young i liked it they didn't learn how to do so it was as an undergrad at yale that i learned about improv comedy and

back then it was not as well known as it is and curly and so it was a very new form of theater and a friend of mine from chicago had had learned it and taught it all to us so we founded the purple crayon and yell which was the first improv group their enemy helped other ivy leagues to founder their first improv group so it changed my life changed without about theater chains without about informants and so when i graduated i wanted to really dive deep and so i trained and performed at the second city in chicago which was a huge honor but i also went on to found my own improv groups and i did everything from film and tv and radio to shakespeare to black box to lots and lots of lots of light and improv so i had a super career i was very lucky i loved every minute of it and there is a point i think for certain kinds of people where you need something you've you got a take on the next challenge so i had married him moved to new york and i never got to see my husband because he was a banker and i was an actor so one day i i literally thought gosh technology is really going so quickly this could be a fantastic place for me

and i got a job and it was like no education or no experience whatsoever in it but a lot of desire and a light transferable skills and so i you know it's funny about the next eight years and never containing specifically so that was that was fantastic i was able to take one small company that i worked with went public i got to watch that happen and be a part of it i got to be involved in one that was acquired an i loved business and i realized i was doing extremely well i was certainly cramming in taking classes every single lives during that time to bring us about to speak technically but i was also improvising during the day so i can collaborate with my team members i could help a client understand what we were talking about by simplifying ideas i could think of i think i could come up with with good new creative ideas an innovative ideas and so these are all what improvises do well is all the skills of improv and so my dear friend was getting her degree a warden

and i said you know this is right in a response of and exactly and i said you know we should test this idea because i think it's got links with it and we're allowed us to test with their mba students and so my passion and my career since then over a seventeen years now has been the steady of isolating the behaviors from the improv stage and proving that they affect high performing corporate leaders in teams which they do it and then also find in science behind it so i had the good fortune to work with psychologist neuroscientist and end their fascination with this behavior all our template has been fantastic and they've really helping to build up the science side of the work that we do at corporations all over the world what step back from the academic side tell me how is that bad people whether you're operating at the highest level of a corporation or a small businessperson are just a regular employee how can they use what you bring a suit change the workplace you know i think it really lucked out there's a lot of risk aversion out there is a lot of

hierarchy out there but the truth of the matter is that russia's changing very very quickly and so if we're going to be able to be as innovative as we have to be and move at the speed that that corporations are now and small businesses are we got extremely flexible and improviser step onstage with no script no props no costumes all they have are the team members sometimes elite sometimes you stand back and you have to be of the change on a dime you have to see possibility immediately if something goes terribly wrong on stage you got to deal with it and then move on and these are all the skills the real professionals needed a and would you agree it's coming from an annual be good and some of the principles of improv like yes and a lot of people to have to have heard of that now i remember whatever started nobody revere stand with the concept of first agreeing with someone else and then building on their idea rather than yours as a whole i know but out there know i like i did you suppose the mine whereas true collaboration a high performing teams come

from number one saying yes i hear you you're valid your id is valid know we may not end up following a thrill but to create a highly collaborative team effort is going to have a stake in it i feel like they're heard and i'm willing to build on and support you and those soft skills are the skills extremely high performing companies and things that we see now and i i will tell you too that he was able to work with and the funny part is i work with a brand new hires people even in college or just out of college and had just starred in their career and i work with ceo's of multinational corporations in their direct reports because depending on what kind of promise you trying to solve the skills are transferrable we work in industries from la and we worked in accounting we were consigned to work in pharmaceutical and health care my gosh we work in finance we work in manufacturing it's very transferable it just a matter of how you apply it to make it successful karen i know one of your one of the things that you often talk about

our women in the workplace do you think some of those improv skills do they vary depending on gender they do actually believe it or not i there's a whole a body of work that that i put together on the differences that women have to take into account in order to be successful so you know all of my research is that we started from the place of wanting to find out the most information i could to create a learning template for a corporation so for example think negotiation i started my research a negotiation over nine years ago and looked at all the negotiation until it currently held focus groups we were creating negotiations specifically at that point for attorneys because the bar association to come to us and said hey we've got all these courses for you know what less to prepare and what to do in a negotiation both we would you know the emotional side and some expected to corn starts to sweat and we don't have anything for that and you seem to have a specialty and they were right but during that time i realize that there was so much

gender specific information that i was finding that we were able to pull that out and create not only a general negotiation course it would work for anyone but also of course very specific to women because as you look across statistics there are significant differences there are and then as we look at things like presence and how we're perceived in the workplace i found significant statistical differences for women versus men that if we dont take into account we could stumble and find all sorts of pitfalls care and just this past week there was a really interesting story that i'm sure you read about how women in the obama administration how they made sure their voices were heard that various staff meetings by and remember amplification and it was a term yeah i'd never heard of before they can you know talk to me a little bit about that yet it's interesting and i have quite a number of examples from my own clients of the opposite occurring and and needing to address she was brought in to coach a male leader who by the way the work we do is never men versus women i

think men are she'd support it two women we have a lot to learn from them and vice versa you know we want him to lean on a swimming is as well so what has happened and again you can trace this it's it's very well documented that what can happen is a person who has a minority in a conversation we'll put out an idea so that woman could be the minority it could be a racial minority to be a religious minority but when you're sort of alone in a group in the rest of the group is different of a somewhat hear your idea but they don't really attribute you with the idea and what often happens is then someone else was part of that group's a let's just say it's a room full of men and one woman and i've been in that situation many times i hadn't seen it you know either sit there and it's not that they mean it maliciously by you know a good idea gets flooded it happens to come from the woman another man will repeat it differently a few minutes later and then suddenly the leader recognizes it perhaps more authoritatively true maybe maybe said more they affirmatively maybe with different words that that we're more understandable to the leader

and so that is a con men and well documented issue that occurs that women's ideas and i've heard recently we called takin and then re rematch and so what's happened is it's also pretty well documented that the minorities first words are not heard if there's only one of them in the room so once the obama administration the women would be at the table they would realize that that this was occurring and again not maliciously but for some reason or other the communication was no current probably so what they did is if a woman floated an idea and she was cut off or someone didn't acknowledge it another woman across the table would immediately repeat it and and not an end in your face kind of a way that they might say yeah ok you know i like that point that you said about the fact the launches a great place to grow up in and susan you know have you ever visit lawrence is it a good place to grow up and that we would have her say it again so that there were multiple voices tracing it back to its source and reminding the people on the ground that this is an idea thats out there

many to hear it so it's a very very effective it's not in your face by it is important even even in places like the obama administration what i feel has been tried to be as open and as as receiving an and there's says moving forties they possibly can from a social science standpoint or a behavior same point we all fall into those situations i know i know that i am always constantly trying to be more inclusive i i stumble over my words and i make mistakes and offend other people from time to time it off then the key is to say well i i do i messed up communists and what i can do better next time an unhealthy recognize that as a as a better way to move forward carol you've written a number of articles and a couple of books including the best title ever be the best bad presenter ever break the rules make mistakes and win them over why would anybody want to be at bad preventer yet said that that was a really fine title come up with

an egg that we do surveys every time we put out a new book and i know i'm working on my third right now so and seventeen you'll be able to see one on the innovations some unfortunate but be the best that prisoner ever came about because a lot of people would come to work with us with my ensemble and me and wearing in five cities now so i have the most amazing people that i get to work with and i kept hearing stories coming in from the field and also for my own experience of people saying they were really bad at walking go look i'm a really bad prisoner and terrible so oh you hear this you couldn't be in pain and the thing is that they were really bad they were following the rules that were making them bad so the entire book is about breaking all these rules that we think are dyed in the wool good presentation skills rules which are really horrible and standing in our way can you give me an example yeah practice run of the year that's good advice and saturday nights will terrible girl how many how many hundreds of times it even till the price of over their life and i have never practiced in front of a mirror but i have practiced in a room by myself that's made

it ok and easy feel better but what is it about looking and amir they you think it's a good idea but it's not so one of the biggest problems in a prisoner's a self conscious and if you practice in front of a mirror it's going to amplify your being self conscious you're going to think about how you look you gotta watch yourself not to mention that you practice your speech while you're looking at yourself and you became an obsessed with that thing you do with your mouth or you know watching yourself present and then the first sign that you have to an l so you only practice throwing your voice and your energy about twelve inches away to tailor their mirror as so then the first time you stand up in front of a crowd you can't look at yourself and all you can think about is i wonder from doing a thing with my mouth into a lot the way i did and oh my gosh they're saying they can hear me in the back but i'm speaking as lovely as it was over the near does all this damn stuff because the key to being a really great prisoner i think is to focus on the audience not on yourself you gotta get your head you better watch than interact with them talk to them see if it's landing engage them haven't you're raising hands as many many things you can do to get the audience more involved with

you and vice versa want that lessons that i've always heard words if you're uncomfortable establishing eye contact with people in the audience that you should look over their head does to some undefined place that chua i've also heard that that's true really transparent it's so bad as i actually in the book yeah it's it's a really transparent anyone i've talked to have said could you tell that they would look in the back while every prison guys are there are yeah i'll tell you can sell so it doesn't work number one and it also disconnects you from the audience now i understand that making eye contact can make you very nervous so what you want to do is get yourself small bowls or have planned some video and have them sit take a friend you know you don't want to give your whole position a friend it's nice to have a safe place in the audience to look so the interesting part about eye contact is that when you make warm and meaningful eye contact with one person the entire audience feels that they actually think they're getting into so if you're looking at the back wall the whole time you're basically chilling out the entire audience to

look at your friend for a couple of senses and if you need to look away look at the back that's ok for couples and does that then come back and look at somebody in the front row for a couple of sentences and then look up get yourself a break take a breath look at somebody in the fourth row for a couple of sentences and move around and practice how to do that but again if you're practicing for the mere you can't do that it's easier to stand in a an anti roma or have a friend come and watch you practice the key is to practice aladdin on your feet and practice that eye contact one of the things that i've learned over the course of my career is there everybody needs to do a certain amount of public speaking and that to say like well that's just not my thing gets you nowhere in the world whether you're working at you know whether you're an auto mechanic you still need to speak to people whether you are a radio producer you need to speak to people regardless of what you do whether you're you know flipping burgers at the

local fast food place you're still connecting with people are there any jobs where public speaking is not a really good skilled a half now isn't be very clear about this guy ah i also think public speaking is having the ability to impact someone with communication and the point is that even if it's one or one like you made the example of the mechanic first of all you wanna make a person feel safe that you can do a good job you made to sell them the service and those require a lot of the same skills a public speakers use of persuasion of having a really great opening line of using eye contact with them and showing them that a credible of telling a story for example all these skills translate to smaller situations now you not standing in throwing your arms and using a loud voice but you're connecting with that person and public speaking is speaking one on one as well all the skills that we talk about you just bring them down in a translator bought two small group meetings one on ones anything and you know we all want to make our best

impression at some point or other we always want a primer basford forward so even a conversation with some of them might be important if you practice at first or you think about how i could use a story we think about the last thing you're going to say to them before you walk out the door that they should remember very critical one as i mentioned you written several books be the best dad presenter ever the improvisational ads you've also written something called the yes that tommy butler oh it was one of the first things that i produced has really fine except i want to share some of our best ideas this is early in the career of improv at which my company and i want to share some of our best ideas in a playful way in a simple way and so we created a deck of cards so instead of having to force its of it are diamonds estate et cetera we had the four principles of improvisation that trademarked with the help of one is a score so there is a yes space suit a building blocks

suit a teen equity suit and anecdotes to eureka sit those principles what the data does is it first of all teachers people what this principal's name it gives them a few cards that have very inspirational quotes on them that meant a lot to me in my life and then they also have really cool exercises so literally anything from if you're a trainer at a company and you need a great icebreaker it's in there if you are someone who has to run a conference call every other week or something there's great ideas in there about running the conference call these ideas in there about getting out of writer's block or just getting out of your head and the more creative so it's a really fine tool that you can use to be more engaging use with your team and learn about improv karen clearly you've taken all of these theater skills in improv skills and apply them really successfully to the business world i'm curious if it works the other way other things that you've learned in the business world how that translates into the creative side of your life yes very much so i think i i i did have a

fairly good business head as an actor which is part of why i did so well bites you know business can teach you a lot about being organized and about role clarity so you will never meet an actor that wantonly they can do everything and i believe that you know you need a great stage manager fantastic you got me you need a leader i'm here it's amusing done right i i i loved being everything and and you really stretch yourself which is great however there is a point we need to realize that there other people who are so much better at you and other skill that you need to make that teamwork and that was what improv taught me as well i had to learn that actually i am the straight it my improv troupe they almost always made me the straight because i was never as funny as the other people on stage but if you don't have the strain of a character person which is up what i was once you dont have as rich a saint so i had my place i brought my skill so as a businessperson i really have learned that i've got to bring in the right talent to make my business do well and grow i mean my project managers have skills i will never every time i have the most fantastic accounting and financial

our specialists who work with me i have amazing designers and so you know even on the artistic side were always pushing ourselves we're bringing people into have incredible capabilities and also connections to other industries or i may not have worked so we have an incredible practice known architecture because we're working with a prisoner's i'm an architect but also artistic can if you could leave our listeners with sort of one message about public speaking are about applying creativity in a different way to the workplace or without the city has to do it is to get out and do it and yes you will make a mistake and fall flat on your face in a while go so well so do it in a safe place if you want to be a great public speaker if you want to expand your role at work if you wanna try different kind of project you gotta stand up and take that moment of great butterflies in your stomach and step forward and realize that number one you'll be given credit for courage never to improv is about doing it's about standing around and think about it all the time and number three it's about just keeping trying

because i made so many mistakes elena flat on my face so many times by just kept getting back up again hands again improv is about doing so go do it karen thank you so much for sharing your message thank you it's a pleasure karen haas is the founder and ceo of improv edge a former actress and lawrence native sees the author of be their best bad presenter ever break the rules make mistakes and win them over and the improvisational edge secrets to building trust and radical collaboration at work she was this years keynote speaker for the lord school's foundation earlier this hour we heard from wendy mcclure author of the wilder life my adventure in the lost world of laura ingalls wilder this week marked the one hundred fiftieth birthday of war in bills wilder author of the popular little house on the prairie books we'll end this week's

show with another song inspired by little house on the prairie this is happy land by peggy from the cd avalanche musical tribute laura ingalls wilder i'm came at entire dvr prisons kansas public radio piece sneaky sneaky oh

yeah is it