There Are No Girls on the Internet - Talia Jane vs Yelp

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

After Talia Jane called out Yelp for failing to pay a living wage, she became the "entitled millennial" poster child. But she was actually right.Read the Wired profile on Talia's life: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/the-revelations-of-lady-murderface/Read Talia's Medium piece: https://medium.com/@taliajane/[e-mail] Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. There's a good chance you've heard of Talia Jane, even if you don't recognize her name. In 2014, when the country seemed to be having a love affair with crapping on millennials, Talia basically became the poster child for the whiny, entitled Millennial Brat. But she also ignited a conversation about the living wage and took on one of the world's biggest tech companies, and actually kind of won.

My name is Talia Jane. I am a low-wage worker, labor activist, and occasional writer. My pronouns are she, they also. And I live in Brooklyn, New York. My social security number, if you give me a ticket. I don't include that. Wait, that's not how this works. Talia's upbringing was complicated to put it mildly.

When she was a kid, her mom got a number. involved in a convoluted criminal plot that left five people dead. You probably want to know more about that. There's a wired profile about her that you can find on the episode description. I lived, my mom was a single mother. She was working low wage jobs. She was, you know, like a secretary. She worked for Mary Maids, the cleaning company. She did all sorts of stuff like that. we moved around a lot, lived in a lot of low-income housing, a lot of food insecurity. As soon as I was old enough to read, it was expected that I make my own food and do my own laundry and kind of be the parent very, very early on.

And on top of that, when I was 11, my mom's three bus first. 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 and to go along with whatever people wanted to secure a sense of like stability and friendship. which was not translated to me. It was not a good environment that I was in. And when that happened, I went to live with my grandparents in Southern California. And I was put in a stable environment for the first time in my life.

Someone else was making dinner and someone else was doing my laundry. And they were very, they were very firm that the only thing I had to focus on was school. and then I bounced around a little bit more between my mom, family friends, finally went back with my grandparents, and then when I graduated high school, it was like, all right, because they, you know, they're from a different generation where it's normal. As soon as you graduate high school, you are out,

and ideally also married for some reason. So on graduation day, my grandpa walked into my room and he was like, Congrats. You have 30 days to find a new place to live. And so it's just been a lot of instability, moments of stability that are sort of shrouded by this sense that the circumstances that I'm in are not going to last and that they are not normal. Talia 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. She chose working.

She found a job lead that sounded promising at the food delivery site Eat 24, which was then owned by Yelp. She'd be starting out with minimum wage, which she said worked out to about $8 an hour after taxes. But it was a job, and there was talk of her being able to move into a position with better pay. This job also meant that she could be close to.

to her father. I thought this would be a good chance to connect with my dad who lives in the Bay Area and who I never really had much of relationship with. So I was like, all right, we're going to do it. I just opened a credit card and I put like moving expenses on there. I went up there and spent two weeks or two weekends searching for apartments and I finally found one that was extremely expensive, but at a point, like, it was month to month. So I figured, you know, I could live here and I'll find someone at work to room with. And then I can move and it'll be fine. Like it'll sort itself out. Talia did something a lot of people have done at some point in their life, packed up on the hope that what she was leaving for would be worth it when she got there.

And it was a chance at something that she really didn't get much of as a child living with her mom, stability. Only that stability never came. I wasn't able to find a roommate. I did not get transferred to the position that would have me earning something like a dollar more per hour. I was working full-time minimum wage. I was living 30 miles away and paying something like $11 a day to commute to and from work. And very quickly, it went from this is difficult but if I just keep pushing something will break and it'll be fine to oh this is not tenable I was by the time my letter happened I was I hadn't eaten an actual meal in a while and I had noticed that my hands were shaking constantly and all I was doing like when I went to sleep, I wasn't dreaming. I would just lay down and then my alarm would go off and I would wake up and I had been doing that for a few weeks and I had something like $20 or $16 in my bank account.

I'd gotten into positions where I couldn't afford to get to work because I couldn't afford to put money on my clipper card to take the train and I couldn't afford to pay the toll because I didn't have any cash. And it just, the situation devolved very quickly. And on top of it all, I didn't even get to like nurture a relationship with my dad. We got coffee once on our birthday. We share a birthday and we got coffee for like 15 minutes. And I was like, cool.

Like that's, you know, it was not great. yeah it was it was it was a lot of like you know when when people read my letter and they responded to it with like oh this girl's so entitled you know it's like no i was attempting to create something better and i had been told by numerous institutions and people that if i did certain things and if i followed a certain playbook and if I worked really hard and threw myself completely into the work and dedicated everything of myself to that that things would work out and obviously that is not true and I'm not saying that just because of what happened to me but if we look at like the world that is the whole concept of the American dream and pulling yourself up by your bootstress These things aren't based in reality.

They are pretty lies that we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better for being constantly, chronically, in pain. One day at work, Talia's boss, Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stuegleman, sent out a cheerful all-staff video blog, something he did pretty regularly. And something I just have to say sounds like the kind of soul-crushing semi-mandatory motivational tactic right out of the movie office space. Seriously, Talia says that one of his vlogs is about how he styles his hair in the morning. Hearing her boss speak so cheerfully about her company, at a time when she was struggling, was her breaking point. In true Talia fashion, it started with a sarcastic little joke on Twitter. She tweeted at the CEO offering to edit and watch his vlogs if he agreed to pay a living wage. Then, she wrote him a scathing open letter on Medium.

If you've ever found yourself in an economically precarious situation, her letter will probably sound very familiar. It's written with Talia's trademark dark sarcastic humor, but in it, she writes about not being able to afford groceries or heat and making rice for dinner most days. She describes how her coworkers teetered on the brink of homelessness and eviction. Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can't even afford to buy food, she writes. So walk me through how you were feeling when you wrote that letter in 2016. Like what was the, was there like a moment where you were just like, I am over this? or was it something that was just like a slow burn inside of you? So 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. And so I was drinking water because my stomach was cramping and I was waiting for some rice to boil. And I noticed that my hands were shaking and 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. So then I have food in my stomach so I can sleep for a few hours while my hands are shaking. And like all these things, I suddenly like zoomed out very quickly and I went, oh, this is fucked. And I was just like, holy shit. I am, I am, wait, am I allowed to cuss? Absolutely. I was like, holy shit. I cannot believe I'm in this situation.

And it immediately became clear that I had been doing all of the things that we tell ourselves we have to do. And I had been putting in the work. And I had been making plans A, B, and C to make something happened. But the problem was that I was in a circumstance and in a place. where none of those things were going to work because the area in the Bay Area has become unlivable for people who earn six figures.

And yet there are still jobs that pay minimum wage in that area where people have to commute several hours. So then they can live somewhere slightly more affordable and they're still failing to get by, you know? Like I suddenly, like it all clicked together and I was like, oh, shit, I should be earning a living wage. And I started typing and I thought about saving it as a draft.

And I remember I sent a picture to my friend of the rice that I was eating with my laptop open. I was like, I'm venting really hard right now. And the picture was blurry because my hands were shaking from being malnourished. And I was reading it because usually what I do is I will write something out just to get the emotion out. And it occurred to me that like there were more people that were struggling. Like if I have it bad, there are other people at this same job who also have it bad. And it's not fair to them to say silent and to just go along with it. when it's so clear how fucked up things are.

And of course there was like a part of me that was like, they shouldn't fire me though because this is protected concerted activity. I'm speaking on my circumstances and on the circumstances of my coworkers and demanding something better. Like I'm taking a stand for all of us. they would be very ignorant to fire me. And then, of course, two hours later, my email got deactivated, and I was like, oh, yep, I'm fired. And that's when everything blew up.

It was read by over 2 million people, and less than two hours of hitting published, she was fired from Yelp. Her time at Yelp might have been over, but this was just the beginning. It 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 to be paying staff minimum wage was enough to spark a lot of outrage. What was the fallout like after that letter went viral? So there was two waves to it. The first wave was people being like, holy shit, this is awful. Oh my God.

And it was a lot of people in Silicon Valley who were like, whoa, this is huge. Like the fact that someone said something about Yelp paying minimum wage. age in like to work in San Francisco one of the most expensive cities in the country that this is a whistleblower and then about four days later conservative media started to pick up on it because their crusty asses are always late and that was when they were like oh she's entitled like who Who does she think she is demanding a living wage? Who does she think she is? The responses were really personal and angry.

Talia Jane shows that she has a lot to learn about adulthood. One headline sneered. Talia Jane, she was a Yelp employee. She went on Medium.com, wrote this blog post, basically calling out the CEO. And, yeah, blaming the company that is actually the one that's paying her bills, allowing her to function. One of the most popular responses was by Stephanie Williams. She 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. Her response made a lot of assumptions about Talia's life, like how she was probably able to get support from her family, but in reality, that wasn't really an option Talia had. After her response to Talia went viral, Williams did a series of TV interviews about Talia and entitled millennials.

Here's Williams' segment from Fox News, called the Woosification of America. The whole thing kind of sounded very Dickens-esque. Like, I am so poor. Oh, my God, I'm so poor. But 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.

After 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? Well, 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. She was living at home when she was working.

She, when she lost a job, she was able to move back home. Those were not options that I had. Like I said, like my grandparents were like, all right, see ya. Like, I couldn't, I didn't have a home where I could share the financial burden while getting myself in line, you know? The 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. It isn't always about individual choices or people. And while it's great that some folks are able to hustle hard enough out of tough situations, if someone is working a full-time job, they should make a wage they can actually live on. And it's not entitled to expect this in America.

You're not being a wuss by simply posing the question of whether things could be better. And having to work multiple jobs just to get by isn't a badge of honor. It's a sign that something larger is amiss. Obviously, you should not need to work multiple jobs to survive. The minimum wage when it was created was enough to cover a family of three that's two adults and a child. Today, it cannot cover a single person by themselves working full-time. And that is the thing that we should be discussing. It's not you as an individual are failing.

It's the system does not want you to succeed. We'll be right back. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob. Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel,

help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me.

I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-Ehart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs. without Luca and Austin Reed.

And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series

because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis. offense. And when IT's friends stopped by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He run up the court licking his fingers why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get

the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience. We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car, and then my car got stolen. I was shoplifting.

I was having panic attacks. I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship. To be present is a learned skill. and it's hard to be present. We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression and the brain implant that saved his life. What I learned is the procedure made me happy

because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety and John Hirschfield about obsessive-compulsive disorder and the science of how the brain can change. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain. brain goes off course and what we can do about it. Listen to Inner Cosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. After her letter, people combed Talia social media to prove she wasn't struggling as much as she said she was. They 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. That too reveals a big problem with how poverty is framed. It doesn't always look how you might think, and we've made it seem like it's justified to question the financial choices of someone who's poor. And we expect that someone who's poor should project that poverty at all times. You can't be poor and have an iPhone, or a laptop, or nice nails, or eat the occasional good meal.

And in the age of social media, the problem gets even trickier. Everyone knows the reality we present on Instagram is better than the one we actually live. So is it reasonable to judge someone's financial situation? on what's essentially their digital highlight reel? So 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. And for a lot of people, that might be drinking or going to the beach or experiencing something beautiful. beautiful as an escape from the ugliness of your day to day. For me, it's cooking. Like, I made these banging ass cupcakes from scratch with, like, candied lime slices or something like, 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. On top of that, social media, every single person curates their social media to appear better than it is. You never see someone posting a picture of their infant with a huge diaper blowout, screaming their face off. even though that happens, you only ever see those little babies looking cute and cherubic, right? Like, we tailor our social media to present a better version of our lives. And this happens throughout the, you know, the financial spectrum.

What it boils down to is why do you feel the need to police other people? Like, why? Also, like, why do you need a ton of, context to justify someone's experience. Like, I had a picture of a oven roast that I made, and people said that it was steak, and I'm like, no, you're just being a cliche. I'm not making fucking steak and lobster. It was an oven roast. It costs like $7, and someone else purchased it for me to cook for us.

But I'm not going to put that context on social media, because if, my family and friends found out that other people were buying food because I couldn't afford a $7 roast, then it's going to be like a huge thing. And I didn't want my family to be worried about me because they don't have the resources to help me. And they would just feel really bad that I was struggling. And I didn't want to put that on them. Like, it's just, it's just ridiculous. Like, these assumptions of of feigning poverty or feigning excess or like anything like that like who gives a shit if someone on food stamps wants to buy themselves steak and lobster because that steak and lobster is the first meal first real meal that they've eaten that makes them feel human

after months of struggle and houselessness and all these different things, if they want to do that, that's their prerogative. They're a grown-up, you're a grown-up, act like one. I feel like we're all, most people that I know, even people who are pretty comfortable, are all like one or two calamitous things from not being so comfortable. And I knew someone who was living pretty comfortably and then, like many folks, lost their job.

And then, like many folks, lost their health insurance. And then, like many folks, had a health emergency. When that person was doing comfortably, their car was an earlier model BMW. But so many people were like, I can't believe you drive a BMW and you're on, you're on WIC for the baby, you're on food stamps. And she was like, what am I supposed to do?

Sell my car to make you all feel better about me being on food stamps and government at distance. Like, how would that make sense for, like, how is that a choice that makes sense? Maybe the point of the matter is that, like, it's not really your business to make sure that I have what you assume to be the trappings of poverty to be, you know, adequately broke down enough that I deserve to eat. I deserve, you know, government assistance or what have you.

We have this like really fucked up. I feel like it probably has roots in that bullshit thing of the welfare queen. I feel like it has roots in that where you have to, kind of present yourself. You have to put on like a performance of your struggle for people to believe it's real. You're not allowed to have acrylics or nice hair. You're not allowed to have, you know,

in-fashioned clothes or things that fit you comfortably and that are clean. You can't have any of these things. You have to be like dirty. grimy, tattered clothes. Like, you have to put on this charade for people to be like, oh, yeah, you really are struggling. I've been saying all of these things.

But unless I'm doing the song and dance to make you think that, or like to make you believe my reality, it's somehow like, oh, well, what's your personal fault? Like, what's your failing? Like, if you have a laptop, you're not poor. Like, most people in the U.S. have a laptop. Also, it's not that hard to purchase a laptop and then put it on credit and you're paying, like, a small amount every single month. It's not hard to purchase an iPhone, and every single month, you're only paying $20 a month to pay off that phone.

like you don't see all of the the other debts that go into just like maintaining an existence in modern society but because you're seeing the aspects of existing in modern society you're just going to assume that people are faking it like I don't need to walk out in 1932 for you to believe that I am depressed because it's like you know the great depression um thank you for that context you like I shouldn't need to be like sepia toned and dusty and like with dingy dirty nails for you to recognize that earning a minimum wage is not a living wage, right? Why do I need to live in a shack out in the middle of the woods for you to believe that my struggling is valid? Like we have to really, I think, examine our biases when it comes to what poverty looks like, what poverty sounds. like and what poverty feels like because so many people they assume certain types of people

are poor they assume they are poor in certain types of way and that there's nothing that can be done because it's their own personal failing and it's just like a big fuck you to all that because it couldn't be further from the truth these are systemic issues that need systemic fixes and one of the best ways to get started on a systemic fix is to recognize your internal personal adherence and enabling of that system and to uncouple yourself from it, you know? And then you go through and be like,

oh, I now realize that even though I'm not struggling as hard as someone in a third world country, my struggles are valid. Or I realize that my, My income does not reflect my value. And I recognize that your income doesn't reflect your value. Yeah. So, like, there's so much that we can uncouple in ourselves.

And when we do that, we are able to remove the power that these systems have over us and demand better. But if we don't do that, it's not going to get better. Two months after hitting publish on our open letter, Talia's story faded from the headlines. And for as many media outlets ran pieces about entitled millennials like Talia, much fewer followed up on the story and the fact that Talia was actually right, and that her letter triggered real change. Not only did Talia get people talking and thinking about the living wage. Two months after her letter, Yelp increased pay from $12.25 an hour to $14.

They increased the number of paid time off days from 5 to 13, and they added 11 paid holidays up from their previous night. number of zero. Even though a Yelp representative told Recode that the company did agree with many of the points in her letter, Yelp still says these changes had nothing to do with her and that they were already in the works. Do you think this was in response to your letter? Yeah, absolutely. They'll never tell you that. So 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. So 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 raise wages more than the bump that they needed to, and prior to they needed to do it and then they're going to go ahead and claim that it wasn't because of me. At the same time, as my letter was going viral, the customer support managers were having one-on-one meetings

with all of the customer support staff to gauge how they were feeling and to basically try and prevent a mutiny and workers were like, yeah, it is fucked. I'm working full-time. I should be making a living wage. And they were like, oh, we need to do some changes real quick. And then that's when they rolled it out.

Like, it's obvious. They're never going to admit it, but it's obvious. Do you feel vindicated? No. Because the amount that they raised or like the amount that they increased it, it's still not a living wage. The workers that are working for these tech companies are still not earning a living wage. the rental costs in the Bay Area is still unlivable,

and there's still all this stupid, like, nimbie infighting against building housing and capping rental prices and all these toxic things occurring in the Bay Area. So people are still struggling. You know, I do feel like, it's like, yeah, I was right, but also the fight continues. Like, we're not done yet. More after this quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, You only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right?

That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, right? Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Humor me. I need some jokes to make. me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-Eyheart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs.

I think Joker's going to be exhausted this. series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the bar like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court. And you're going to. You get your ass up and down the court.

you're going to get the boss. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are times when the mind becomes a difficult place to live. This is David Eagleman with the Inner Cosmos podcast, and for Mental Health Awareness Month, we're dedicating a series to understanding the mind when it struggles. I'm joined by doctors, researchers, and those with lived experience.

We'll talk with singer-songwriter Jewel about anxiety. I started living in my car. and then my car got stolen. I was shoplifting, I was having panic attacks, I was agoraphobic. And making it through hardship. To be present is a learned skill, and it's hard to be present. We'll talk with John Nelson about clinical depression and the brain implant that saved his life.

What I learned is that procedure made me happy because I'm disease-free. And we'll talk with leading experts like Judd Brewer about anxiety and John Hirschfield about obsessive compulsive. impulsive disorder and the science of how the brain can change. This is a month of deeply personal and honest conversations about what happens when the brain goes off course and what we can do about it. Listen to Intercosmos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Let's get back to it. In the last few weeks, workers across industries have been speaking out against unfair, racist, toxic work environments. after Matt Hunsey at the food publication Bon Appetit tweeted about racist workplace practices within the organization. He was put on leave. Talia is happy to see more workers.

No, they don't have to keep quiet when something bad is happening at their job. Every time I see an open letter, I'm like, yeah, you're welcome. Like, I remember when Medium posted like an app update and they, in their debug log, they called it an open letter to Medium, users talking about, talking about like what the update included. And I'm like, my legacy.

But I do feel like people, I was, I was early, but I was also right on time, I think, because obviously I spoke up in a very loud and a very indignant and like direct way. which you know you don't usually see you see like leaks from people speaking to media off the record or whatever it is in this sort of like closed door method to get the information out there and instead I was like fuck that I'm just going to hit post and I think it might not be direct but I think that I did get caught in like the early part of people realizing that they have the capacity. to use their own voice and say this stuff out loud directly. I'm hesitant to say that I was the originator of that, but I do think that people can look at what I said and be like, I can do this, but in like a less sarcastic way. And then they do it, you know, like Hunsy went on,

you know, Matt Hunsey is for BA. He was like, yeah, this stuff is racist and bad. Things are bad here. And then they were like, oh, we're putting him on paid leave. And he's like, look, they're so afraid of people just saying the thing. But if you just say the thing, then it's out there and people have to reconcile with it. If you don't say it, who will? You know, I think a lesson that a lot of people take for me is like,

oh, you have to be really scared of like your social media presence. and like whatever you post on there. And it's like, who gives a shit? I make beautiful cupcakes and I say stuff that needs to be said. Like, just say it. If it needs to be said, put it out there. If you're scared of blowback, do it anyway. You're going to have people who are going to come out of the woodwork and be like,

hell yes. You know, like, the risk that we create in our minds of being afraid of like, like, you know, like for me, I obviously am still working low-wage jobs. But that's not, I, like, I used to see it as like punishment. Like, oh, I'm never going to have a good job because I did this thing. And now I'm like, there are no good jobs. I don't care. I did the thing.

You say the thing, do the thing. That's it. So thinking about organizations like Uber and Amazon and Instacart, you know, they're fueled by working people. But yet those same people don't really have a loud voice in the conversation about those same companies. So what could what can we like, how can we make sure that we're meaningfully centering those voices in conversations about about things like Uber and Amazon and Instacart? Pay them to write the articles about the companies. We just have people who, you know, went to journalism. school contacting workers and asking them questions that other like that journalists are thinking of

but that other workers aren't necessarily like the workers know the problem more than a journalist asking questions does um i saw especially among covid reporting early on so much of the coverage would detail how hard it was at a company for low wage workers and then every single quote from workers boiled down to essentially quote like, I'm frustrated and scared. And then there was no deeper dive. The best thing I have seen, like the best article I've seen about workers in COVID was written by an MTA worker who had the piece published, I think, in the Washington Post.

and they wrote about the terror of seeing people that they saw every day just vanish and die. And like these are things that you are seeing as you're working in it and you're able to mediate like and like think on these things as you're experiencing them. The journalist is just popping into a space and being like, hey, how's it going? Good? No? Dad? Okay. And then like that's their story. If you want to see these stories reflected accurately, pay the people who live them to write about it. Get a good editor who doesn't mind spending a little bit more time and nurture the story. Don't take their voices and put it into your mouth and then speak for them. If you knew now all the things that were going to happen if you published your letter, would you do it again?

That's it, yes. I'm truly. I mean, it's the trolley problem, right? Would you sacrifice one to save 100? Yeah, I don't mind if I'm the one. That's fine. And I mean, I've definitely still had issues, but the further away I get from it,

the more obvious it is that socially and culturally, whether people realize it or not, if they were to go back and read my letter today, they'd be like, yeah, obviously. Duh. Like we've moved into a place where what I wrote is like it's not controversial anymore. Talia's right. For all the hate she got for her letter, by a wide margin, Americans say they favor raising the federal minimum wage. Two-thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 41% who say they strongly favor that kind of increase, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.

So will Talia be remembered as someone who was an early adopt? that most people now agree with. Do 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? I think both. You know, Senator Ben Sass, in his book, he called me an entitled millennial, and that book is going to be on shelves, you know,

and certain people are going to choose to read that. He said, what was his quote? the founding fathers would panic at the survivability of the nation if we were to have too many Ms. James. Think about that. A sitting senator says if there were too many people like Talia, our country might not have been able to survive. But 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? What's more patriotic than that? Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoady.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of Iheart radio and unbossed creative.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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