Speaker 1: Hey Jackie, Hey Rebecca. So, now that it's been a
Speaker 1: few weeks since we wrapped the season, how are you feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I am still digesting everything we did over eight episodes.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a lot of work, but we're
Speaker 1: not quite done yet. Last week at the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week conference, you and I sat down and talked about
Speaker 1: the making of the season, everything from how it came together,
Speaker 1: the high points, the challenges, and the reactions. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: really went behind the scenes about our thought process, favorite
Speaker 1: episodes and moments, and we ended on what's bubbling up
Speaker 1: now that could maybe even be potential for a fourth season.
Speaker 1: It was fun and we figured we'd turned it into
Speaker 1: a bonus episode for you, So here it is. We
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy the conversation. Um. So, for the first
Speaker 1: two seasons of The Paycheck, I did it solo, and
Speaker 1: we started the very first season with a personal story
Speaker 1: of mine. The first season was about the gender pay gap,
Speaker 1: and my mom actually fought a gender discrimination lawsuit. So
Speaker 1: when we decided we wanted to switch gears to the
Speaker 1: racial wealth gap, I wanted to bring on a co host,
Speaker 1: and I wanted someone who could bring something personal to it.
Speaker 1: And I certainly couldn't do that on my own. So
Speaker 1: immediately her name came up, as you know, a very
Speaker 1: impressive high ranking journalist in the news room. Um, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know if you would be into it. You're
Speaker 1: very busy. I didn't know if you wanted to get
Speaker 1: into the weeds of a podcast. So I want to
Speaker 1: know how you felt when we reached out to you
Speaker 1: to take on the show. Honestly, it felt like you
Speaker 1: were all asking for my hand in marriage. But it
Speaker 1: took me literally a nano second to reply salute, let's go.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't really give it a lot of
Speaker 1: thought because to me, in spite of how busy I
Speaker 1: am and we're all busy, um, this is a deeply
Speaker 1: important topic. It's a topic that was really sort of
Speaker 1: sweeping the country, the world, and you know, just the
Speaker 1: idea of being involved in it in the minute, Um,
Speaker 1: it made a lot of sense. So yeah, in a heartbeat,
Speaker 1: the answer was yes. I thought that was really cool
Speaker 1: and everyone should know that Jackie like took this incredibly
Speaker 1: seriously and I mean really did so much work and
Speaker 1: it was amazing to work with you on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I mean, Becca, have the fact that you've
Speaker 1: done three seasons and you know, as you explained, the
Speaker 1: first two focused on the gender gap. Can you just
Speaker 1: give views a little bit of a sense of why
Speaker 1: we decided to go to the racial wealth gap this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we had actually planned a third season on the
Speaker 1: gender pay gab and we had started production and then
Speaker 1: the pandemic happened, so we put that on hold. And
Speaker 1: when we went to revisit the series and you know,
Speaker 1: get back going again, we just looked back at what
Speaker 1: we thought we were going to do and it just
Speaker 1: didn't make sense. It didn't work. The world had changed,
Speaker 1: you know, pandemic revealed inequalities, it created new inequalities, and
Speaker 1: it was also the summer and the country was in
Speaker 1: the middle of these massive racial justice protests, and it
Speaker 1: just made complete sense to us to look at a
Speaker 1: different inequality statistic. And the racial wealth gap was, you know,
Speaker 1: demanding our attention at that time, so we decided to
Speaker 1: dive into that and I think it I think it
Speaker 1: worked really well. Yeah. So the beginning of season three
Speaker 1: starts with a really power full personal story that you
Speaker 1: tell about your family. My dad talked less and less
Speaker 1: about the land, but he never gave up on it,
Speaker 1: and one email I got from him, he says, I'm
Speaker 1: certain of one thing. If that property ever pays off
Speaker 1: in Texas, we are out of here to someplace other
Speaker 1: than Mexico. I have no idea what he meant by Mexico,
Speaker 1: and I never got a chance to ask. He got cancer,
Speaker 1: and while sick, a cousin reached out to see whether
Speaker 1: I could get him to sell some of the land.
Speaker 1: How did you decide that you wanted to explore your
Speaker 1: own history and passed as part of the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we talked about it um a bit, and I
Speaker 1: think actually you remembered it better than I do. But
Speaker 1: it was one of the planning sessions and one of
Speaker 1: the calls we were doing. I mentioned, by happenstance that
Speaker 1: my family owned land in East Texas that we no
Speaker 1: longer own, and that this land was acquired in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and passed on in a very sort
Speaker 1: of messy way that black families in that era acquired land.
Speaker 1: So a little bit of slice here, liver there, and
Speaker 1: that's basically how it came together. And you know, ultimately
Speaker 1: we lost that land, but you know, just knowing that
Speaker 1: the how wealth in America is a mass. It's usually
Speaker 1: through inheritance, and a big part of that equation is
Speaker 1: land and property. So it did make sense, make sense
Speaker 1: when I thought about it, to pull in my family's
Speaker 1: history and my family's story and sort of tie it together.
Speaker 1: But you know, to be honest, I needed to push Um,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to kind of think about unraveling your
Speaker 1: own family history. It's very complicated. Record Keeping isn't what
Speaker 1: it was what it is now, especially for that demographic
Speaker 1: back then. Um. But ultimately, once I got into it,
Speaker 1: I got into it. Yeah. I remember we were just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've just reported up, Like it'll work out. I knew
Speaker 1: that you would get something good and useful if you
Speaker 1: just used your reporter skills. But I do want to know, like,
Speaker 1: how was that process for you as a journal as
Speaker 1: kind of trying to dig things up versus you know,
Speaker 1: a person who's digging into and learning about your family's
Speaker 1: really difficult past. Yeah. Well, I mean I think that
Speaker 1: you know the history of black people in America, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an ugly history, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why people have a hard time, you know, like,
Speaker 1: let's just move on you know, we don't really want
Speaker 1: to talk about this. It's ugly, it's messy, and it's personal.
Speaker 1: And I didn't mention this earlier, but you know, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I was so compelled by the project
Speaker 1: is that I knew we would look at this and
Speaker 1: sort of the way we do at Bloomberg. So we
Speaker 1: would look at it with facts and data and statistics
Speaker 1: and numbers and sort of you know, like really had
Speaker 1: that lead the narrative versus sort of a purely emotional
Speaker 1: one that said, it's very emotional. So I found out
Speaker 1: things about my family I did not know about, you know,
Speaker 1: family members who you know, died in childbirth, plowing fields
Speaker 1: and sort of losing land and losing you know, sort
Speaker 1: of racist incidents that they would come across. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there were times I was doing my research
Speaker 1: and I burst out in tears, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: it's it is deeply personal, and you know that combined
Speaker 1: with the fact that you know, you're looking at your
Speaker 1: own country's history and through this optic and with the family, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a bit kind of overwhelming at times, but
Speaker 1: I'm still glad I did it. What did you, Becka?
Speaker 1: You know, again, given the fact that you've seen us
Speaker 1: through three seasons, what did you find was the most
Speaker 1: challenging part of digging into this theme. Yeah, I come
Speaker 1: out of from a really different place, um, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I consider myself an expert on the gender
Speaker 1: pay gap at this point, having done all this reporting
Speaker 1: and then we were just switching gears into something. Definitely
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit less comfortable with as a
Speaker 1: reporter a journalist, so having to definitely feeling like, you know,
Speaker 1: I could be an expert for the listener. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure we got this right. So that
Speaker 1: was the first challenge, And then the other challenge is that,
Speaker 1: of course racism at any quality exists in lots of
Speaker 1: different forms all over the world, but it is a
Speaker 1: very specific to the u S story what we were telling,
Speaker 1: and so making sure that people who were outside the
Speaker 1: u S could understand it. But then when we also
Speaker 1: did episodes that were global, we had an episode in
Speaker 1: the UK, like trying to understand the way racism manifests
Speaker 1: there and explain it to a US audience. I think
Speaker 1: that was one of the most challenging parts for for me,
Speaker 1: just like as an editor and a journalist, What would
Speaker 1: you say was something that you UM learned through the
Speaker 1: show that you you know, had never learned before, Like
Speaker 1: that was something new that we had dug up. So
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of things I learned because you
Speaker 1: know a lot of this is not UM taught in
Speaker 1: history books. But the thing I took away amongst many things,
Speaker 1: but was the unsung heroes that appeared in the in
Speaker 1: the different narratives. So for instance, episode three features a
Speaker 1: black farmer who struggled to obtain credit to keep his
Speaker 1: farm going, and he experienced racism in that process and
Speaker 1: challenged a federal agency basically set up to help aid farmers,
Speaker 1: you know, from which he and his demographic had been excluded.
Speaker 1: Fifty dollars to struggling in farmer who has no money
Speaker 1: is a real shot in the arm up. So it
Speaker 1: did help. Did he give the land back? No? Was
Speaker 1: it enough settlement to to make all of the discrimination
Speaker 1: go away from U SDDA to answer is no? But
Speaker 1: did it help the people who got the money? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: You know, he took a legal challenge and I learned
Speaker 1: about that. I learned about I was very touched by UM.
Speaker 1: A character we bring into the season CALLI House. You know,
Speaker 1: a black woman in the late eighteen hundreds who had
Speaker 1: multiple children was seemed stress and she was one of
Speaker 1: the first people to put the idea of reparations on
Speaker 1: the table. She was jailed for it. Um. She ultimately
Speaker 1: died without seeing sort of the outcome of that initiative.
Speaker 1: But you know, all the things that she did are
Speaker 1: still ringing true today if you look at some initiatives
Speaker 1: going on right now around reparations and just acknowledging our past.
Speaker 1: So the real thing that I took away and learned
Speaker 1: from it was just the things I didn't learn as
Speaker 1: a as a as a school child about my own
Speaker 1: history and the people who were unsung heroes in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think John Boyd the Farmer, actually talked about that
Speaker 1: in the episode how he won this really huge racial
Speaker 1: discrimination case but feels like it's really overlooked. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's something that came up in the finale too, with
Speaker 1: Claire Setteth who talks about not learning about any anything
Speaker 1: in school. And so I hope the other listeners get
Speaker 1: that out of it too. Well. What about you, I mean,
Speaker 1: what was your what did you learn that you didn't know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Mine's like definitely wonk here. Um. I was really like
Speaker 1: enlightened by just the learning. You know, I think I
Speaker 1: understood that slavery made people very rich. I understood that,
Speaker 1: but um, hearing that Marsha Bratra and talk about it
Speaker 1: as a system of capital that you could you know,
Speaker 1: you could take out loans on it and make yourself
Speaker 1: richer if you own slaves. That was an asset on
Speaker 1: which you could gain leverage to buy more stuff. And
Speaker 1: that's how you get rich, is you have assets that
Speaker 1: produce wealth and then you can get more credit based
Speaker 1: on those assets. And I just had never really thought
Speaker 1: about it in that way. And then we also talk
Speaker 1: about housing in the same way about I think one
Speaker 1: of the people we talked to said, I hope that
Speaker 1: is right. Most people start their own business by taking
Speaker 1: out collateral on their houses, and so it's not just
Speaker 1: like your house is gaining in value and you have
Speaker 1: that security, but it's like this ability to build something
Speaker 1: more and how black people have you know, we're first
Speaker 1: their bodies were used that way, and then later we're
Speaker 1: left out of other ways. So that was that was
Speaker 1: probably the most enlightening thing to me, right, And it
Speaker 1: was there, I mean was there anything that really shocked
Speaker 1: you that you were like, wow, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I don't know if I don't
Speaker 1: know what the right answer is to that, because it's
Speaker 1: also this is a cop out, but it's all really shocking.
Speaker 1: It's very um and it's just shocking, like how it
Speaker 1: perpetuates itself. It's like, again, I think people think of
Speaker 1: slavery is something that happened a long time ago, and
Speaker 1: that is true, but it just continues to perpetuate on itself.
Speaker 1: And I think that was something you season one with
Speaker 1: the gender bag up too. It's like these little seeds
Speaker 1: get planted and then you can't just forget that that happened.
Speaker 1: They grow and you know, create new any qualities. What
Speaker 1: about you? Um, everything shocked me from start to finish.
Speaker 1: I think when we did the math uh An episode two,
Speaker 1: and we actually you add up the value of human
Speaker 1: life and human capital, I think that when you think
Speaker 1: of the you know how the system is basically built
Speaker 1: on the backs of people. The economic value of the
Speaker 1: four million slaves was an average of a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per person, or about four billion dollars altogether. The banks, railroads,
Speaker 1: and factories in the United States all put together well
Speaker 1: worth about three and a half billion dollars. It's something
Speaker 1: that you have to actually pause, you know, many many
Speaker 1: times over and then you see how that sort of
Speaker 1: perpetuates itself across history and over the different episodes, and
Speaker 1: you know, when you're looking at you know, the question
Speaker 1: of reparations, or you're looking at what happened in England
Speaker 1: with wind Russian immigration and how that you know had
Speaker 1: an packed you know in a different, similar but different way. Um,
Speaker 1: it's sort of that self perpetuating and you know, kind
Speaker 1: of knock on effect that this basic you know, event
Speaker 1: of enslaving people. That's that's the thing that it's just
Speaker 1: it never really leaves you. I have to ask, um,
Speaker 1: but what was your favorite episode? I don't like to
Speaker 1: pick favorites among my children, as I say, but um,
Speaker 1: episode one, I just loved it. I felt like episode
Speaker 1: first episodes always the hardest because it needs to be gripping,
Speaker 1: but also set the scene and do a lot of work.
Speaker 1: And also I think you get in your head about it.
Speaker 1: I do. I got mad about it, but I think
Speaker 1: we got there and I think your story was so
Speaker 1: well done. It just was very subtle in a way
Speaker 1: for people who haven't listened that I think is difficult
Speaker 1: to pull off and effective, and then just set us
Speaker 1: up for the rest of the season. We weave Jackie's
Speaker 1: store right in and other episodes, so I also really
Speaker 1: liked that we did that, um so episode one, and
Speaker 1: then the other episode I really stayed with me and
Speaker 1: I really liked was episode six, which was our first
Speaker 1: reparations episode about reparations in the US, and I liked
Speaker 1: that for a lot of reasons, but one reason I
Speaker 1: liked that we looked at this reparations scheme and Evans
Speaker 1: still Illinois. That's happening right now, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of our episodes are historical or look back, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool that we had something
Speaker 1: going on right now that, you know, as we were
Speaker 1: making the show, news was happening, and I think that's
Speaker 1: always really cool. And it also I think changed, you know,
Speaker 1: I think my perspective on reparations was changed a little bit,
Speaker 1: like the solutions to all these things were made more
Speaker 1: complicated for me after doing the show, which, um you know,
Speaker 1: nuance is a hard thing to accept, but it's there.
Speaker 1: So those were my my two favorites. What about you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you, Um, we love all our children equally, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But I mean it would be kind of strange advice
Speaker 1: that I didn't like my own family's story, even though,
Speaker 1: like you said, it was very subtle, um, And it
Speaker 1: was sometimes frustrating because there are things I just didn't
Speaker 1: figure out in the end, Like I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how my family ultimately got the land. I mean, I
Speaker 1: got the d thanks to a listener who sent it
Speaker 1: to me. But you know, there were so many like
Speaker 1: pockets of holes in this story that that said, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, like it very much was the context of
Speaker 1: what we were trying to achieve to explain the gap,
Speaker 1: and so it really did, I feel set the scene.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think, um, is I really liked
Speaker 1: the Claire's story the finale, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: the perfect sort of juxtaposition to my story. So you know,
Speaker 1: you've got you know, the black family, UM coming out
Speaker 1: of slavery trying to build wealth, and you've got her
Speaker 1: family UM discusses from the perspective of a descendant of
Speaker 1: a slave owner. Um. I I love. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a perfect you know bookend to the entire series
Speaker 1: because you know, you have these different perspectives. And what
Speaker 1: I really liked about her episode, because I had the
Speaker 1: pleasure of interviewing her multiple times for it, was, you
Speaker 1: know that she could really articulate, you know, this process
Speaker 1: of understanding how her you know family owned slaves, and
Speaker 1: you know, even the idea that potentially her great great
Speaker 1: great grandfather, you know, impregnated as slave. And she goes
Speaker 1: through that process of sort of discovering like all of
Speaker 1: these nuances and historical moments and and sort of relating
Speaker 1: it back to the present. And so someone that I'm
Speaker 1: connected to today is connected to someone is connected to
Speaker 1: someone who did love someone who owned slaves. And I
Speaker 1: think that is something that I've actually never really articulated
Speaker 1: before and also something that I think is necessary for
Speaker 1: us to understand. There seems to be this feeling that
Speaker 1: in admitting your past wrongs here somehow admitting that everything
Speaker 1: about you in the past, or everything about your family
Speaker 1: in the past is bad and terrible. You know, when
Speaker 1: she talks about her ancestor you know, writing you know,
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Constitution to basically forbid blacks from taking part
Speaker 1: in voting. Well, there's some remnants of that sort of
Speaker 1: happening in and she sort of connects the dots. She
Speaker 1: also talks about history and the fact that she never
Speaker 1: learned like me, I didn't learn a lot of these
Speaker 1: these historical facts, a lot of these unsung heroes. So
Speaker 1: I think that there was a lot of connectivity between
Speaker 1: the two stories, and it's two American women sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, basically having a voice on the topic. I
Speaker 1: thought it was those are I have to say my
Speaker 1: probably my two favorites. We have some questions to we
Speaker 1: take some questions, you know, let's do other people's questions.
Speaker 1: The first question asked is in a single parent household,
Speaker 1: is it more difficult to create and retain generational wealth.
Speaker 1: I mean I would say yes. And one of our
Speaker 1: episodes does hit that when we talk about the tax
Speaker 1: code and we have, you know, a character in the
Speaker 1: series who basically a woman who owned her home and
Speaker 1: she happens to be a single parent um who's now
Speaker 1: having to rent her home because she lost that property
Speaker 1: because of you know, basically the tax system was not
Speaker 1: even an equal Yeah, I feel left behind. I feel
Speaker 1: left behind. And then and then well last year to
Speaker 1: learn that I was over taxed by five thousand. It
Speaker 1: makes me s it, it makes me depress, it makes
Speaker 1: me feel like a failure. I mean, that's one example,
Speaker 1: but it does not help you don't have different partner
Speaker 1: or people to to to help you, um in that situation.
Speaker 1: For sure. It's one example. What do you think? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the thing we learned or I learned through
Speaker 1: this was that wealth is something that builds over time.
Speaker 1: And so you know, your circumstances right now certainly can
Speaker 1: help you. But also it really matters what circumstances you
Speaker 1: came from. So it's kind of hard to answer that
Speaker 1: question because there could be a single parent who inherited
Speaker 1: a lot of wealth, or a single parent whose family
Speaker 1: helped them put them through school, or you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's more it is generational. Um, So that's my answer.
Speaker 1: All right. This one's for Jackie. What did your family
Speaker 1: think about this series? That's a really good question. There's
Speaker 1: a good question. What did my family think? You know,
Speaker 1: it actually took them, some of them a bit of
Speaker 1: time to sit down and listen to it, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: But when they did, I think that they, like me,
Speaker 1: were pretty emotional about it, because again, you know, it's
Speaker 1: part of the reason why I can't watch films like
Speaker 1: Mississippi Burning or documentaries about civil rights era. It's painful
Speaker 1: to watch, you know, any demographic, you know, one from
Speaker 1: which you sprang to have that kind of hard look discussion.
Speaker 1: You know, it's easier to turn on like a comedy
Speaker 1: series or something. But so I think they put it off.
Speaker 1: But their reaction ultimately was, um, joy again, you always should,
Speaker 1: when possible, put a voice to your narrative. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: just speak up again, make it fact based, you know,
Speaker 1: teach and and basically you know, have a voice. So
Speaker 1: ultimately they were the reaction was pretty positive. So our
Speaker 1: final question was actually going to be our final question
Speaker 1: to each other. So I'm glad you guys asked it.
Speaker 1: Which is what topic will you explore for your next season?
Speaker 1: I can take this one. We don't know yet, um,
Speaker 1: but I think having now shifted away from this idea
Speaker 1: of the gender pay gap as being what we focus
Speaker 1: on for this year's we've opened ourselves up to exploring
Speaker 1: any wealth inequality or any inequality statistic, and so I
Speaker 1: think that's really exciting and freeing because we can go
Speaker 1: a lot of directions with us. One idea that I
Speaker 1: was discussing with Jackie is maybe we've been very US focused. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe there's some sort of global inequality statistic we can
Speaker 1: look at. But um, we just finished the season, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to need a little bit of a break
Speaker 1: to think about it and rest up. Yeah. I agree.
Speaker 1: I want to go global um to the degree we can.
Speaker 1: I think it's important, particularly in a recovery year and
Speaker 1: looking at the annemus of the recovery around the world.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for for being here, and please listen
Speaker 1: to the show you haven't already rate, subscribe, Thank you
Speaker 1: if you want even more paycheck. Bloomberg's Quick Take team
Speaker 1: made a video adaptation of our series, which you can
Speaker 1: find at bloomberg dot com slash qt. Some people they
Speaker 1: just got fired and they have no idea why some
Speaker 1: people were detained losing access to healthcare. How many have
Speaker 1: been detained as prisoners in their own culture? The historical
Speaker 1: injustice has never been addressed. Ending an injustice is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as making up for its enduring effects.
Speaker 1: Factors and millions of negroes as a result of centuries
Speaker 1: of denial and neglect then left. I feel this the travesty.
Speaker 1: I want to leave my children something that I earned
Speaker 1: and I put my bloods with tears into. If I
Speaker 1: stabbed you, you may suffer complications along after that initial
Speaker 1: actual stabbing. That's the case with African Americans. There are
Speaker 1: people well within the living memory of this country, there's
Speaker 1: still suffering from the actor. In facts of the Motherland,
Speaker 1: that's what Britain was called the motherland, and then the
Speaker 1: mother just rejected their children for what reason. We didn't
Speaker 1: do anything, Bro, thanks again for listening and we hope
Speaker 1: to be in your ears again soon. I