00:01:35.760Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:45.540There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:49.340I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:58.720So this week, we heard from labor reporter Kim Kelly about the wave of union organizing in the United States at places like Starbucks and Amazon warehouses.
00:02:07.620And it really made me want to revisit our conversation with Talia Jane.
00:02:11.420Back in 2016, Talia Jain became the poster child for, quote, entitled whiny millennials0.93
00:02:17.420for asking for Yelp, the company where she worked, to pay staff a living wage.
00:02:23.140Her story is fascinating, and I think it tells us a lot about what we can expect from how
00:02:27.480big tech companies treat their employees.
00:02:30.020So let's listen in to Talia Jain versus Yelp.
00:02:40.840There's a good chance you've heard of Talia Jain,
00:04:05.860um we moved around a lot lived in a lot of low-income housing um a lot of food insecurity
00:04:14.780as soon as I was old enough to read uh it was expected that I make my own food and do my own
00:04:22.180laundry and kind of be the parent uh very very early on um and on top of that when I was 11
00:04:33.540My mom's three best friends were arrested for murdering five people, which I, you know, obviously I had a response to and issues with, but it really spoke to her sort of chronic need to be liked by people.
00:04:57.500and to go along with whatever people wanted to secure a sense of stability and friendship,
00:05:09.540It was not a good environment that I was in.
00:05:11.960And when that happened, I went to live with my grandparents in Southern California
00:05:19.380and I was put in a stable environment for the first time in my life.
00:05:23.780someone else was making dinner and someone else was doing my laundry and they were very
00:05:29.540they were very firm that the only thing I had to focus on was school um and then I bounced around
00:05:38.940a little bit more between my mom family friends um finally went back with my grandparents and then
00:05:47.040when I graduated high school it was like all right you know because they you know they're from
00:05:53.240a different generation where it's normal as soon as you graduate high school you are out0.96
00:05:58.200and ideally also married for some reason so on graduation day my grandpa walked into my room
00:06:04.860and he was like congrats you have 30 days to find a new place to live um and so it's just been a lot
00:06:12.720of um instability moments of stability that are sort of shrouded by this sense that um
00:06:23.080The circumstances that I'm in are not going to last and that they are not normal.
00:06:32.900Talia took out loans to attend Cal State Long Beach, but eventually found herself having to decide between going to college and working so she could support herself.
00:06:42.640She found a job lead that sounded promising at the food delivery site Eat24, which was then owned by Yelp.
00:06:49.100She'd be starting out with minimum wage,
00:06:51.160which she said worked out to about $8 an hour after taxes.0.96
00:06:54.600But it was a job, and there was talk of her being able to move into a position with better pay.
00:07:00.220This job also meant that she could be closer to her father.
00:07:03.180I thought this would be a good chance to connect with my dad,
00:07:06.280who lives in the Bay Area and who I never really had much of a relationship with.
00:07:11.920So I was like, all right, we're going to do it.
00:07:13.780like I just opened a credit card and I put like moving expenses on there. I went up there and spent
00:07:22.340two weeks or two weekends searching for apartments. And I finally found one that was
00:07:31.460extremely expensive, but at a point, like it was month to month. So I figured, you know,
00:07:37.080I could live here and I'll find someone at work to room with and then I can move and it'll be fine.
00:07:43.780like it'll it'll sort itself out. Talia did something a lot of people have done at some
00:07:49.300point in their life, packed up on the hope that what she was leaving for would be worth it when
00:07:53.560she got there. And it was a chance at something that she really didn't get much of as a child
00:07:58.100living with her mom. Stability. Only that stability never came. I wasn't able to find a roommate.
00:08:05.320I did not get transferred to the position that would have me earning something like a dollar
00:08:11.980more per hour. I was working full time, minimum wage. I was living 30 miles away and paying
00:08:23.160something like $11 a day to commute to and from work. And very quickly, it went from this is
00:08:33.320difficult, but if I just keep pushing, something will break and it'll be fine to, oh, this is not
00:08:40.060tenable I was by the time my letter happened I was I hadn't eaten an actual meal in a while
00:08:53.620and I had noticed that my hands were shaking constantly and all I was doing like when I went
00:09:01.780to sleep I wasn't dreaming I would just lay down and then my alarm would go off and I would wake
00:09:06.100up. And I had been doing that for a few weeks. And I had something like $20 or $16 in my bank
00:09:16.540account. I'd gotten into positions where I couldn't afford to get to work because I couldn't
00:09:22.940afford to put money on my clipper card to take the train. And I couldn't afford to pay the toll
00:09:28.560cause I didn't have any cash. Um, and it just, the situation devolved very quickly. And on top
00:09:36.500of it all, I didn't even get to like nurture a relationship with my dad. We got coffee once,
00:09:43.580um, on our birthday, we, we share a birthday and we got coffee for like 15 minutes.
00:09:52.080and I was like cool like that's you know it was not great um yeah it was it was it was a lot of
00:10:02.920like you know when when people read my letter and they responded to it with like oh this girl's so
00:10:08.040entitled you know it's like no I was attempting to create something better and I had been told by
00:10:20.060numerous institutions and people that if I did certain things and if I followed a certain
00:10:28.700playbook and if I worked really hard and threw myself completely into the work and
00:10:35.760dedicated everything of myself to that that things would work out and obviously that is not true
00:10:44.840and I'm not saying that just because of what happened to me but if we look at like
00:10:50.040the world. That is the whole concept of the American dream and pulling yourself up by your
00:10:58.280bootstraps. These things aren't based in reality. They are pretty lies that we tell ourselves to
00:11:05.320make ourselves feel better for being constantly chronically in pain. One day at work, Talia's
00:11:13.440boss, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stuckelman, sent out a cheerful all-staff video blog, something he did
00:11:19.220pretty regularly. And something I just have to say sounds like the kind of soul-crushing semi-mandatory
00:11:24.200motivational tactic right out of the movie Office Space. Seriously, Talia says that one of his vlogs
00:11:29.700is about how he styles his hair in the morning. Hearing her boss speak so cheerfully about her
00:11:34.180company at a time when she was struggling was her breaking point. In true Talia fashion, it started1.00
00:11:40.380with a sarcastic little joke on Twitter. She tweeted at the CEO offering to edit and watch0.99
00:11:44.680his vlogs if he agreed to pay a living wage. Then, she wrote him a scathing open letter on Medium.
00:11:50.940If you've ever found yourself in an economically precarious situation, her letter will probably
00:11:55.380sound very familiar. It's written with Talia's trademark dark sarcastic humor, but in it,
00:12:01.160she writes about not being able to afford groceries or heat and making rice for dinner most days.
00:12:06.420She describes how her co-workers teetered on the brink of homelessness and eviction.
00:12:10.680Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can't even afford to buy food, she writes.
00:12:17.920So walk me through how you were feeling when you wrote that letter in 2016.
00:12:21.460Was there like a moment where you were just like, I am over this?
00:12:26.140Or was it something that was just like a slow burn inside of you?
00:12:29.960So I remember I was standing in my kitchen and I was drinking some water because I had tried to go to sleep and I couldn't sleep because I was hungry.
00:12:39.820And so I was drinking water because my stomach was cramping and I was waiting for some rice to boil.
00:12:48.360And I noticed that my hands were shaking.
00:12:51.680And I suddenly realized that these things that I had started doing, drinking water to get myself through the 20 minutes it takes to boil rice.
00:13:03.240So that way then I have food in my stomach so I can sleep for a few hours while my hands are shaking.0.98
00:13:08.380and like all these things I suddenly like zoomed out very quickly and I went oh this is fucked0.99
00:13:15.860and I was just like holy shit I am I am wait am I allowed to cuss absolutely0.99
00:13:26.640I was like holy shit I cannot believe I'm in this situation and0.98
00:13:34.620it immediately became clear that I had been doing all of the things that we tell ourselves we have0.98
00:13:42.260to do. And I had been putting in the work and I had been making plans A, B, and C to make something
00:13:50.720happen. But the problem was that I was in a circumstance and in a place where none of those
00:13:58.480things were going to work because the area in the Bay Area has become unlivable for people who earn
00:14:07.860six figures. And yet there are still jobs that pay a minimum wage in that area where people have
00:14:13.660to commute several hours so that way then they can live somewhere slightly more affordable and
00:14:18.480they're still failing to get by. It all clicked together and I was like, oh shit, I should be0.98
00:14:27.060earning a living wage and I started typing and I thought about saving it as a draft and I remember0.89
00:14:36.380I like sent a picture to my friend of the rice that I was eating with my laptop open I was like
00:14:44.660I am venting really hard right now and the picture was blurry because my hands were shaking from
00:14:51.720being, you know, malnourished. Um, and I was reading it because usually what I do
00:14:58.860is I will write something out just to get the emotion out. And it occurred to me that like,
00:15:08.960there were more people that were struggling. Like if I have it bad, there are other people
00:15:17.240at this same job who also have it bad and it's not fair to them to stay silent and to just0.65
00:15:25.180go along with it when it's so clear how fucked up things are and of course there was like a part of0.84
00:15:33.660me that was like they shouldn't fire me though because this is protected concerted activity0.96
00:15:43.500I'm speaking on my circumstances and on the circumstances of my co-workers and demanding
00:15:50.080something better. Like I'm taking a stand for all of us. They would be very ignorant to
00:15:56.920fire me. And then, of course, two hours later, my email got deactivated and I was like, oh,0.65
00:16:06.080yep, I'm fired. And that's when everything blew up. It was read by over two million people.
00:16:13.500In less than two hours in hitting published, she was fired from Yelp.
00:16:17.380Her time at Yelp might have been over, but this was just the beginning.
00:16:20.540It turns out, just asking the question of whether it's okay for a company based in one of the most expensive cities in the world
00:16:26.240to be paying staff minimum wage was enough to spark a lot of outrage.
00:16:30.700What was the fallout like after that letter went viral?
00:17:28.780The responses were really personal and angry.
00:17:31.880Talia Jane shows that she has a lot to learn about adulthood, one headline sneered.0.85
00:17:36.200Talia Jane, she was a Yelp employee.0.65
00:17:39.400She went on Medium.com, wrote this blog post, basically calling out the CEO.0.99
00:17:44.000And yeah, blaming the company that is actually the one that's paying her bills, allowing her to function.
00:17:51.220One of the most popular responses was by Stephanie Williams.1.00
00:17:54.760She wrote that Talia lacked work ethic and that if only she had hustled harder, like getting a second job in the service industry like she did, she could have pulled herself up by her bootstraps.
00:18:05.360Her response made a lot of assumptions about Talia's life, like how she was probably able to get support from her family, when in reality, that wasn't really an option Talia had.
00:18:14.540After her response to Talia went viral, Williams did a series of TV interviews about Talia and entitled millennials.
00:18:22.000Here's Williams' segment from Fox News called The Wussification of America.
00:18:26.040The whole thing kind of sounded very Dickens-esque, like, I am so poor, oh my God, I'm so poor.
00:18:32.100But when I got to the end and I realized that she had included a link to her Venmo account and a PayPal account, asking for people to help her to pay rent, I just sat there and was like, you have got to be kidding me.
00:18:43.700After doing a media circuit about Talia, Williams successfully sold a TV show, writing on Medium that her viral rebuttal about Talia's lack of work ethic had been, quote, her golden ticket.
00:18:55.580Well, the thing that I had trouble with is that she was, you know, listing all the ways that she worked hard, but she was also putting it in the context of privileges that I don't have access to.
00:19:08.240She was living at home when she was working.
00:19:12.680She, when she lost a job, she was able to move back home.
00:19:18.880I, like I said, like my grandparents were like, all right, see ya.
00:19:22.120Like, I couldn't, I didn't have a home where I could share the financial burden while getting myself in line, you know?
00:19:32.900The responses to Talia's letter, calling her lazy and entitled or a wuss, reveal a big problem about how we talk about poverty and work in America.
00:19:41.000It isn't always about individual choices or people.
00:19:44.040And while it's great that some folks are able to hustle hard enough out of tough situations,
00:19:47.940if someone is working a full-time job, they should make a wage they can actually live on.
00:19:52.120And it's not entitled to expect this in America.
00:19:55.160You're not being a wuss by simply posing the question of whether things could be better.
00:20:00.700And having to work multiple jobs just to get by isn't a badge of honor.
00:20:04.720It's a sign that something larger is amiss.
00:20:07.660Obviously, you should not need to work multiple jobs to survive.
00:20:12.940The minimum wage when it was created was enough to cover a family of three.
00:23:39.900After her letter, people combed Talia's social media to prove she wasn't struggling as much as she said she was.0.87
00:23:46.180They found pictures like ones of her eating a homemade roast or ones of her using facial scrub to suggest she was exaggerating her financial situation.0.94
00:23:54.920That, too, reveals a big problem with how poverty is framed.
00:23:58.700It doesn't always look how you might think.
00:24:00.760And we've made it seem like it's justified to question the financial choices of someone who's poor.
00:24:05.080And we expect that someone who's poor should project that poverty at all times.
00:24:09.780You can't be poor and have an iPhone or a laptop or nice nails or eat the occasional good meal.
00:24:15.360And in the age of social media, the problem gets even trickier.
00:24:18.920Everyone knows the reality we present on Instagram is better than the one we actually live.
00:24:22.860So is it reasonable to judge someone's financial situation on what's essentially their digital highlight reel?
00:24:29.380So I think an important thing that people don't realize is that when you're struggling financially, you have a limited number of ways that you can release stress to help you get through it.
00:24:44.020and for a lot of people that might be drinking or you know going to the beach or experiencing
00:24:54.760something beautiful as an escape from the ugliness of your day-to-day for me it's cooking0.83
00:25:01.180like I made these banging ass cupcakes from scratch with like candied lime slices or something
00:25:09.440Like, like, and it was a joyous thing for me to be able to escape all the other stuff. So that way, then I can take a breath and get back into it. And when we look at these things, and say, Oh, well, you're not really struggling. We have to consider the fact that people need outlets to get through shit.0.88
00:25:30.420on top of that, social media, we, every single person curates their social media to appear0.99
00:25:39.980better than it is. You never see someone posting a picture of their infant with a huge diaper blowout
00:25:48.300screaming their face off. Even though that happens, you only ever see those little babies
00:25:54.240looking cute and cherubic right like we tailor our social media to present a better version of
00:26:04.220our lives and this happens throughout the you know the financial spectrum what it boils down to is
00:26:11.800why do you feel the need to police other people like why also like why do you need a ton of
00:26:20.060context to justify someone's experience like I had a picture of a oven roast that I made and people0.91
00:26:31.340said that it was steak and I'm like no you're just being a cliche I'm not making fucking steak and
00:26:36.720lobster it was an oven roast it cost like seven dollars and someone else purchased it for me to
00:26:43.460cook for us but I'm not going to put that context on social media because if my family and friends
00:26:51.020found out that other people were buying food because I couldn't afford a seven dollar roast
00:26:56.280then it's going to be like a huge thing and I didn't want my family to be worried about me
00:27:01.420because they don't have the resources to help me and they would just feel really bad that I
00:27:08.160was struggling and i didn't want to put that on them like it's just it's just ridiculous like
00:27:13.840these assumptions of of uh feigning poverty or feigning excess or like anything like that like0.98
00:27:23.700who gives a shit if someone on food stamps wants to buy themselves steak and lobster because that0.92
00:27:32.040steak and lobster is the first meal first real meal that they've eaten that makes them feel human0.99
00:27:37.580after months of struggle and houselessness and all these different things if they want to do that
00:27:45.800that's their prerogative they're a grown-up you're a grown-up act like one I feel like we're all
00:27:53.700most people that I know even people who are pretty comfortable are all like one or two
00:27:58.940calamitous things from not being so comfortable and I knew someone who was living pretty comfortably
00:28:03.880and then like many folks lost their job and then like many folks lost their health insurance and
00:28:09.220then like many folks had a health emergency when that person was doing comfortably their car was
00:28:14.260an older an earlier model bmw but so many people were like i can't believe you drive a bmw and
00:28:20.080you're on you're on wick for the baby you're on food stamps and she was like what am i supposed
00:28:24.060to do sell my car to make you all feel better about me being on food stamps and government
00:28:28.920assistance like how would that make sense for like how is that a choice that makes sense maybe
00:28:34.080the point of the matter is that like it's not really your business to make sure that i have
00:28:40.840what you assume to be the trappings of poverty to be you know adequately broke down enough that i
00:28:47.860deserve to eat i deserve you know government assistance or what have you we have this like0.99
00:28:53.560really fucked up I feel like it probably has roots in that bullshit thing of the welfare queen I feel0.99
00:29:03.660like it has roots in that where you have to kind of present yourself you have to put on like a1.00
00:29:10.680performance of your struggle for people to believe it's real you're not allowed to have
00:29:18.340acrylics or nice hair you're not allowed to have you know in fashion clothes or things that fit
00:29:30.200you comfortably and that are clean you can't have any of these things you have to be like dirty
00:29:37.180grimy tattered clothes like you have to put on this charade for people to be like oh yeah you
00:29:46.480really are struggling I've been saying all of these things but unless I'm doing the song and
00:29:52.360dance to make you think that or like to make you believe my reality it's somehow like oh well what's
00:30:00.500your personal fault like what's your failing like if you have a laptop you're not poor like most
00:30:08.600people in the US have a laptop. Also, it's not that hard to purchase a laptop and then put it
00:30:18.760on credit and you're paying like a small amount every single month. It's not hard to purchase an
00:30:26.060iPhone and every single month you're only paying $20 a month to pay off that phone. Like you don't
00:30:35.240see all of the the other debts that go into just like maintaining an existence in modern society
00:30:42.780but because you're seeing the aspects of existing in modern society you're just going to assume that
00:30:48.960people are faking it like i don't need to walk out in 1932 for you to believe that i am depressed
00:30:56.640because it's like you know the great depression um thank you for that context like i don't need
00:31:03.540I shouldn't need to be like sepia toned and dusty and like with dingy, dirty nails for you to
00:31:11.820recognize that earning a minimum wage is not a living wage, right? Why do I need to live in a
00:31:18.540shack out in the middle of the woods for you to believe that my struggling is valid? Like we have
00:31:24.960to really, I think, examine our biases when it comes to what poverty looks like, what poverty
00:31:32.520sounds like and what poverty feels like. Because so many people, they assume certain types of
00:31:40.180people are poor. They assume they're poor in certain types of way and that there's nothing
00:31:47.580that can be done because it's their own personal failing. And it's just like a big fuck you to1.00
00:31:54.720all that because it couldn't be further from the truth. These are systemic issues that need0.98
00:31:59.740systemic fixes and one of the best ways to get started on a systemic fix is to recognize your
00:32:06.420internal personal adherence and enabling of that system and to uncouple yourself from it you know
00:32:15.160and then you go through and be like oh I now realize that even though I'm not struggling as
00:32:23.440hard as someone in a third world country, my struggles are valid. Or I realize that my income
00:32:31.020does not reflect my value. And I recognize that your income doesn't reflect your value.
00:32:38.500Yeah. So like, there's so much that we can uncouple in ourselves. And when we do that,
00:32:42.480we are able to remove the power that these systems have over us and demand better. But if we don't
00:32:50.040do that, it's not going to get better.
00:32:53.440Two months after hitting publish on her open letter,
00:33:05.320Talia's story faded from the headlines.
00:33:08.120And for as many media outlets ran pieces about entitled millennials like Talia,0.75
00:33:12.440much fewer followed up on the story and the fact that Talia was actually right.
00:33:17.060And that her letter triggered real change.
00:33:20.240Not only did Talia get people talking and thinking about the living wage,
00:33:24.300two months after her letter, Yelp increased pay from $12.25 an hour to $14.
00:33:30.300They increased the number of paid time-off days from 5 to 13,
00:33:33.900and they added 11 paid holidays, up from their previous number of zero.
00:33:38.600Even though a Yelp representative told Recode that the company did agree with many of the points in her letter,
00:33:45.260Yelp still says these changes had nothing to do with her and that they were already in the works.
00:33:50.640Do you think this was in response to your letter?
00:33:56.780So here's the thing is that the city of San Francisco had previously enacted a thing where the minimum wage was set to increase up to $15 by, I think, 2018 or something like that.
00:34:14.380So no matter what, they would have had to raise the wages, but that first bump would have been much less, and it wasn't going to go into effect until June. So they raised wages more than the bump that they needed to, and prior to, they needed to do it.
00:34:34.560and then they're going to go ahead and claim that it wasn't because of me when at the same time as
00:34:42.140my letter was going viral the customer support managers were having one-on-one meetings with
00:34:48.220all of the customer support staff to gauge how they were feeling and to basically try and prevent0.95
00:34:54.440a mutiny and workers were like yeah it is fucked I'm working full-time I should be making a living0.78
00:35:01.640wage and they were like oh we need to do some changes real quick and then that's when they0.97
00:35:07.720rolled it out like it's obvious they're never going to admit it but it's obvious do you feel
00:35:15.560vindicated no um because the amount that they raised or like the amount that they increased it
00:35:22.240it's still not a living wage the workers that are working for these tech companies are still
00:35:28.060not earning a living wage the rental costs in the bay area is still unlivable and there's still0.98
00:35:36.420all this stupid like nimby infighting against building housing and capping rental prices and0.95
00:35:45.080all these toxic things occurring in the bay area so people are still struggling you know i do feel0.99
00:35:51.580like it's like yeah i was right but also the fight continues like we're not done yet more after this
00:36:00.800quick break the new red bull dragon berry and tropic berry energizers now at mcdonald's made
00:36:12.520with freeze-dried fruit and an electric burst of flavor the all-new red bull energizers now
00:39:16.340Talia is happy to see more workers know they don't have to keep quiet
00:39:19.660when something bad is happening at their job.
00:39:22.220Every time I see an open letter, I'm like, yeah, you're welcome.
00:39:26.900Like, I remember when Medium posted like an app update
00:39:32.000and they in their in their debug log they called it an open letter to medium users
00:39:37.680talking about talking about like what the update included and I'm like my legacy
00:39:46.100but I do feel like people I was I was early but I was also right on time I think because obviously I
00:39:57.300spoke up in a very loud and a very um indignant and like direct way uh which you know you don't
00:40:08.320usually see you see like leaks from people uh speaking to media off the record or whatever it
00:40:15.520is in this sort of like closed door method to get the information out there and instead I was like0.51
00:40:22.500fuck that I'm just gonna hit post and I think it might not be direct but I think that I did
00:40:32.660get caught in like the early part of people realizing that they have the capacity to use0.98
00:40:38.120their own voice and say this stuff out loud directly I'm hesitant to say that I was the
00:40:46.760originator of that but i do think that people can look at at what i said and be like i can do this
00:40:55.160but in like a less sarcastic way and and then and they they do it you know like like hunsey went on
00:41:05.720um you know matt hunsey is for ba he was like yeah this stuff is racist and bad things are bad here
00:41:13.460and then they were like oh we're putting him on uh paid leave and he's like look they're so afraid
00:41:19.620of people just saying the thing but if you just say the thing then it's out there and people have
00:41:23.960to uh reconcile with it if you don't say it who will you know i think the lesson that a lot of
00:41:31.140people take for me is like oh you have to be really scared of like your social media presence0.97
00:41:34.940and like whatever you post on there and it's like who gives a shit i make beautiful cupcakes0.98
00:41:40.160mistakes and I say stuff that needs to be said. Like, just say it. If it needs to be said, put0.96
00:41:46.380it out there. If you're scared of blowback, do it anyway. You're going to have people who are
00:41:52.640going to come out of the woodwork and be like, hell yes. You know, like the risk that we create
00:42:00.580in our minds of being afraid of like, uh, like, you know, like for me, I obviously am still working
00:42:09.780low-wage jobs um but that's not i like i i used to see it as like punishment like oh i'm never
00:42:18.400gonna have a good job because i did this thing and i'm and now i'm like there are no good jobs
00:42:23.480i don't care i did the thing you say the thing do the thing that's it so thinking about
00:42:31.540organizations like uber and amazon and instacart you know they're fueled by working people but yet
00:42:38.360those same people don't really have a loud voice in the conversation about those same companies so
00:42:44.500what could what can we like how can we make sure that we're meaningfully centering those voices
00:42:48.260um in conversations about about things like uber and amazon and and instacart pay them to write
00:42:54.260the articles about the companies we just have people who you know went to journalism school
00:43:01.080contacting workers and asking them questions that other like that journalists are thinking of but
00:43:08.120that other workers aren't necessarily, like the workers know the problem more than a journalist
00:43:14.560asking questions does. I saw, especially among COVID reporting early on, so much of the coverage
00:43:22.980would detail how hard it was at a company for low wage workers. And then every single quote
00:43:32.480from workers boiled down to essentially quote, like, I'm frustrated and scared. And then there
00:43:41.000was no deeper dive. The best thing I have seen, like the best article I've seen about workers
00:43:49.620in COVID was written by an MTA worker who had the piece published, I think in the Washington Post.
00:43:57.500and they wrote about the terror of seeing people that they saw every day just vanish and die and
00:44:05.920like these are things that you are seeing as you're working in it and you're able to mediate
00:44:12.580like and like think on these things as you're experiencing them a journalist is just popping
00:44:17.920into a space and being like hey how's it going good no bad okay and then like that's their story
00:44:23.760if you want to see these stories reflected accurately pay the people who live them to
00:44:29.900write about it get a good editor who doesn't mind spending a little bit more time and nurture the
00:44:36.540story don't take their voices and and put it into your mouth and then speak for them if you knew
00:44:45.360now all the things that were going to happen if you published your letter would you would you do
00:44:49.140it again that's it yes i mean it's it's the trolley problem right would you uh sacrifice
00:45:02.120one to save a hundred yeah i don't mind if i'm the one that's fine and i mean i've definitely
00:45:09.520still had issues but the further away i get from it the more obvious it is that uh socially and
00:45:17.960culturally, whether people realize it or not, if they were to go back and read my letter today,
00:45:23.760they'd be like, yeah, obviously. Duh. Like, we've moved into a place where what I wrote
00:45:30.580is like, it's not controversial anymore. Talia's right. For all the hate she got for her letter,
00:45:37.520by a wide margin, Americans say they favor raising the federal minimum wage.
00:45:41.960Two-thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 41%
00:45:47.000who say they strongly favor that kind of increase, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
00:45:53.300So will Talia be remembered as someone who was an early adopter that most people now agree with?
00:45:57.980Do you think that you'll be remembered as a whiny, entitled millennial or someone who amplified the conversation around living wages and actually made tangible change?
00:46:06.660I think both. You know, Senator Ben Sasse, in his book, he called me an entitled millennial.
00:46:14.440And that book is going to be on shelves, you know, and certain people are going to choose to read that.
00:46:24.820The founding fathers would panic at the survivability of the nation if we were to have too many Ms. Janes.1.00
00:46:35.460Think about that. A sitting senator says if there were too many people like Talia, our country might not have been able to survive.1.00
00:46:42.300But what she did was actually see a problem in her country, and at great risk to her own comfort and stability, asked, why couldn't it be better?0.97
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00:47:42.300I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:47:50.180what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files.
00:47:55.760Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:48:01.600and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:48:06.780Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:48:15.160If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:48:20.940Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:48:28.720Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
00:48:32.720with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.