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