Welcome to the not old better show. I'm your host Paul Vogel-Zang. I saw the movie Hidden Figures last night here in

Washington DC. I'll tell you this right up front. This is a superb film

excellent really and judging from the audience reaction, you know, those in the theater

with me, we all agreed. Lots of applause throughout, lots of audible gasps at parts of the movie and certainly lots of talent in the

cast and production. Probably most of you know this story by now. Hidden Figures tells a true story of a group of

African American women who worked at NASA to help launch several of NASA's

preeminent programs like Mercury, Atlas, John Glens, Friendship

Seven, and other successful space missions. The cast, made up of Taraji P. Henson from Empire, in a curious case of

Benjamin Button, is really the powerhouse performer here although everyone is is great

of course we had a chance to chat with Teraji P Henson recently about her new book

around the way girl and it's a thrill to see her and to see her talent just explode.

You know, given the time of year, there are more than just whispers about an Oscar for Taraja P Henson's work as

Catherine Johnson, the real life math prodigy who works for NASA's Langley West Area Computing Unit.

She and a number of other African American women

work in the segregated division as computers.

That's what they're called.

And it's important to point out the vast,

literally the vast geographic distance between the West Area Computing Unit and the rest of the Langley campus.

As a matter of fact, this distance is, the element of this distance is really a crucial plot point in the

plot point in the film and the excellent book by author

Margot Lee Shederley. So when Johnson and played by Taraji P Henson, when she gets a promotion of sorts,

she begins working on the team tasked with getting John Glenn and the other astronauts

...