The Sun Always Rises

tragedy for the last eight years. I don't think that we do enough in terms of really asking ourselves are we okay? Really asking our friends and our family, how are you really doing? And so I found myself today as I was sitting down for this interview with my friend Jennifer Tobb. You guys know, she's come on, we'll gay off. She's a friend of the show, and she's the author of the book Big Dirty Money, and she

does white collar crime. And I've had her on and to talk about, you know, so many of Donald Trump's crimes, and you know, and other wealthy entities and capitalism and all of these things. That's not the conversation we get into today. It's the first time that jen and I are talking since the New year, and both of us found ourselves in a really deeply reflective and just introspective place.

So if you are out on a walk and listening to this, if you are home, grab a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, and just settle into a conversation about how the fuck are we really doing? You know, I know it's supposed to be New Year, New me, calendars change, and yet things don't feel different. And if they do feel different, in a lot of respects outwardly around the world, it feels worse. So we're going to get real and we're going to unpack in a way that I don't usually use woke f to do so,

but today it feels necessary, So join us. Coming up next, my conversation with author, podcaster, and professor and all around bad ass Jennifer tub Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the show my friend Jennifer tub who. This is our first show together on woke af since since the New Year, So happy New Year to you. You guys know Jen She is the author of Big Dirty Money, The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime. She's also a fellow nerd Avenger. She's also

the host of Booked Up with Jen Tobbs. So if you want to be in a good podcast book club, check out her podcast and Jen I will let you plug it when we rap at the end. But you know, I want to start off by asking you just what seems like a relatively easy question, but I find it to be more and more complex as time goes by, which is, how are you doing? Right? Like, there's so much that goes into our thinking of this flipping of the calendar, the shifting of the year, these grandiose plans,

these resolutions. I you know, and yet it seems to be the same old shit but with a different number attached to it. So I genuinely, you know, my friend, how are you doing? I'm so glad you asked that, because it should be a simple question, right there's a for the non friend, you're like, I'm fine or I'm having a hard time or whatever. For a real friend, that's a hard question because you've got to be honest

and not superficial. And I don't know how I am, Like I seem to be outwardly accomplishing a lot of the goals I want to accomplish my relationships with friend and friends and family are good. I feel like my mental health is in a reasonably good space. I feel healthy otherwise, And yet there's this part of me that's like, yeah, I'm not I'm not fooled by this, like the real may It's kind of like I say, I see I say, you're moving around. I see you walking around, But are

you really attending to the deeper stuff? And I think the answer to that is no, that is no, because we have been through so much since twenty fifteen. Our world has been turned upside down. Some things are good. I probably would not have met you if we had not all moved over into so much of these zoom spaces and so on. And you know, we could go on and that, but you know, that's water under the bridge now we all we have the relationships we have,

we have the bad stuff we have. But I think the deeper I think it's time for some you know, turning things over in some deeper understanding of how I'm doing, how the world is doing, and how and how to move forward into the next period of my life. You know,

I am a full disclosure. I just finished therapy. As I come to turn on the mic to be in conversation with you, and I realized now that that was like the perfect thing to do because I'm having similar deeply introspective moments and times when I because when I pull back, Jen, and I realize, my god, we've been through a lot in you know, been through a lot where folks, you know, before we turn hit and hit record, we're like, twenty fifteen, what's that been? Seven eight years?

Like what? Like what are we talking about in terms

of like a time frame? Because you know, jokingly, I will say often time is a construct, and it truly is, but that we've been living inside of this weird wormhole and the idea that we've had to continue to produce because that's what capitalism requires during this time of great upheaval and strife and upending of systems and worlds that we have been indoctrinated into participating in in a certain type of way that when I pull back just a little bit from the doing and the producing gem, I'm like,

how the fuck are we all getting off the couch every day? Like how are we all? And were we all are in a different state and place of you know, in the In twenty twenty one, The New York Times referred to it as languishing. That's not it, because it isn't for me. It isn't this sense of languishing, this this kind of it is just this. I didn't know

that the upheaval would feel like this. I didn't know that I would still have to be doing the normal, regular shit as the world around us is falling apart. It's funny, you know, as we were talking, I'm thinking about, well,

when did this begin? And I'm thinking it goes fifteen years with a financial crash of twenty eight for me, because that was a huge awakening, a huge, huge political and philosophical awakening for me, and that I always believed if stuff went down and it was really bad, the ordinary people would not be left to you know, millions of families kicked out on the street everything that went down then, and that's what happened. And I also believed,

you know, oh my god, there's this reckoning. Look looks like, you know, having too much wealth in the hands of people who can't spend in under chasing an investment. I guess we're going to understand that that's a bad part of capital, and we'll take the good stuff, some aspects of markets, but we'll also take the good stuffs around, you know, more socialism in terms of let's have government do some things for people. Like I thought we were going to get a better balance, and instead that's not

what went down. And I think it was, like I think what happened then at that time, we are still feeling the shock waves of that. Honestly globally too, because you know, you get, I mean, it was already happening in the nineties, the return of you know, neo fascism or the turn of fashionism, the form of neo fascism in Europe. But I get the sense set in the US, the ability to pin the economic problems on the usual suspects.

Ye starts happening then, And so as much as we can mock economic anxiety, that economic anxiety was exploited and turned around and every I think, you know, the Tea Party came out in two thousand and nine, you look at all the stuff that went down. Instead of taking that opportunity at the end of the Bush era, an early Obama era, to say let's help everybody out, We're all in this together, and let's rethink things, it didn't go in that direction. And some you know, and I

feel like the same thing continues to happen. The difference, of course, is during COVID it was so much more of an immediate shock to the economic system that everybody and also because it was a white Republican president, everyone was fine throwing money at the problem. Right. I don't think Barack Obama got the support that he needed in terms of the stimulus. There was a lot that one went down in two thousand and nine that set the

table for getting someone like Donald Trump in place. And then the effect of where we are now still and the fact that we have these insurrectionists in Congress on the Homeland Security Committee, the fact that we've got this complete faith, bigger faith than Donald Trump, who is not just seated in Congress, but they're giving him committee assignments.

I don't even know who the hell he is. Look, I'm sitting here going you know, for all the stories we use, stories, all the fear people used to have and say like, well, if such and such a happens, then democracy is over. I mean, people, we gotta how can this even be happening? Like and why? Okay, now I'm gonna rant, why the fuck is the what the what the the news should be doing right now, what journalists should be doing. There should be two kinds of stories.

One story should be, Hey, American people, there are thousands of dollars in rebates and tax credits available for you if you go green. Here's how you do it. Because my friends don't even know. All people know is there's some stupid culture war between a gas stove versus an induction top stove. How about talking about, Hey, you are going to renovate your house, or you have a crappy old stove, you can get a free one and free labor if you do this. Why aren't those the news stories?

And the other news stories should be what the fuck is going on with the Republicans. They've got a guy involved in a Ponzi scheme, complete liar, and they're putting among committees. There should not be a single story about Joe Biden's documents in the newspaper because I don't give a fuck, and nobody does, and I don't know what is going on anyway. I'm sorry nobody to hear any

rantings I'm not doing. Okay, no, but but that is the is the That's not just your rant, that is the rant of anyone who is in touch with reality and what's happening not only with us internally, as we continue to figure out how to make sense out of a world that we realize was built on a lie.

You know, I said the other day, and I forget who I said it to you, but I said, you know, the funny thing about K through twelve education and public public school education is that it's built on a lie about who America is and about who Americans are and who we are to the world. And you spend your whole adult life if in fact, you are in tuned and you're thinking to yourself with that nagging suspicion that something just doesn't seem right, This story just doesn't come

together completely in the way that it should. And if you are intellectually curious in that way, in nimble, then you're going to start to challenge the things that you

are learned. And so what then adulthood becomes is this entire unlearning of everything that you were taught for the first eighteen years of your life, right, And that becomes something that is incredibly painful, because one, you want to believe that you were smarter than that, and then two you're like, what do I do with this information because now that I have it, and the system seems so big, and the roofs seems so huge, and the Ponzi scheme is not just in one area, it's in all systems

that is built to uphold the uber wealthy, the uber white right, the faux Christian nationalists, and everybody else be damned. COVID allowed us to see the real truth behind the curtain and the lie right, because there was no way to avoid why you were why you wanted to open up a state when you realize the who the vaccine was,

I mean, who who was being most harmed? And you say liberate this place and liberate that place, because you could give a fuck if the people that are dying are the essential workers that we say are essential, but we don't essentially pay them a fucking living wage. Right, But we were all able to stay shuttered in our home so that black and brown people and immigrants and low income workers could be out there literally battling a fucking virus, right, so that we could all stay safe inside.

So who did we realize mattered and who didn't? And I think that there is something that becomes gen like really existential about that reality it's it's it's hard to look at yourself in the mirror when you think about it, because you know, I'm part of a system that I did go back to work at a school, but I was wearing a mask and I wasn't there all the time, and in fact, we dropped the mask requirement. I guess it was last spring and it was this past fall.

That's what I got COVID for the first time. But by the time I got it, I had been vaccinated four times yep, and I felt safer and I got the pax lav it. I wasn't scared because I'm an asthmatic, you know, and I'm scared, like holy shit, because I'm the person who gets every you know, you name an upper respiratory infection. It's like, hey, there's gen lungs. So I I was scared. I want to go back, though, too, to like this whole Okay, where are where are the

news stories? Like you know how people are going, Oh you have you know all these people I can name them who come on the morning shows and TV and they say, look, you go to the store and this cost more, and yeah, I can you know. I was just at the grocery store today and I was surprised. I hope a few bags I had and how much money it was? Okay, that's absolutely true. But you know how much money I could save if I replace the

old stove we put in this house. We bought a really old house and what was it twenty two thousand and six and it's a gas stove and it's gonna cost I can get an eight hundred dollars what rebate or credit plus labor? I could get that thing taking out something else put in. It's safer for all of us. That's a lot of that's a lot of trips to the grocery store, and it stimulates the economy. That means someone local here is going to do it. That means

I'm going to shop in a local appliance store. Well, I want them to walk around an appliance store and every fucking news show and say, this is nice, what does it do? How fast does it work? What would it cost? That would be free? And here's why, because if you make this amount of money this and then I want them to go to the home improvement store. I'm not making this stuff up, Danielle. It's real, and

the word isn't getting out there. And I don't know whose fault it is that the word isn't getting out there, but I think someone needs to be pitching these stories. Maybe I should pitch them. I mean, I could talk to people I know who are on television, but this should be everywhere. Why is it only a story if someone's doing something bad instead of a huge multi billion dollars worth of savings for their American people. Why isn't

that a story? Why is it only a story if I'm paying more on milk or pay more for gas, which, by the way, they got the gas prices down. You don't hear about that, no, because that is not what leads in newsrooms. Outrage does. And once we decided that journalism was dead and that we were all going to just put out whatever was going to be clickbait, then telling those good stories, who is that good for? Because I'll tell you that I will never forget this. Walking

the halls of MSNBC. Trump is elected. This is pre pandemic. And I heard a producer say he's bad for the country, but he's good for business. You know what's good for business? The advertisements though for all these appliances, or maybe they're just not ready. Maybe the manufacturers aren't ready to advertise about like, fuck, aren't these what I understand you come from a place of thinking that people don't share good information because they don't know. And what I've come to

realize is that they do know. They absolutely do know, and they don't give a fuck. Oh yeah, that is the reality. It isn't just like I wish that people understood. I wish that the people that were sitting in these c suites and making decisions about what the segments should be and who goes on air and what is delivered, I wish that you know, they just knew. No, they do jen, they just don't care, right, because the reality is is that if everyone was doing well, then there

wouldn't really be the bottom of the pyramid, would there? Right? And you need to have an oppressed, marginalized, just sick enough class of people so that the uber rich can live the way that they want. So you have to deny education, you have to deny access, and then you have to make it somebody else's fault so that they don't realize who's really pulling the strings. So the whole obedience, so someone's doing the jobs and paying up through the

pyramid is that you're is that what you're getting at? Well? Yeah, And you know it's interesting that just Larry Summers when he was doing some kind of television interview from did you see this from a beach resort? Island resort, they're like palm trees behind him and he's saying, you know, you know, you know the trade off people often talk about between employment and inflation. He's like, yeah, we've got

too many people employed, just the way it is. And he's sitting there like with the palm trees, and I was like, you know, you don't even know how to manage that image, and really and if that's but by the way, if that's going to be the orthodoxy, and that you're going to have to have a certain level of unemployment, then there should be a better fucking safety net.

But you don't want a safety net because you believe that most people who don't look like you, don't love like you, don't share the same fucking nasty, immoral values are undeserving. If everything is about a safety net, and you believe, through some mythical form of thinking, that you've pulled yourself up from your bootstraps, which is a fucking lie, and you believe that you were somehow anointed, which is what we think about the royal family and what they've

told us for generations. Right. If you think all of these things right, right, then why would you provide anything to these other people? Right? Why don't they just do for themselves the way people like people thinking that way? No, okay, because I never thought that way. It don't Maybe my parents didn't teach me that, but I never thought entit.

I never felt entitled, and I felt empathy always and privilege like but I will tell you, as somebody who grew up middle class, and I am a child of immigrants who left Jamaica and came to the United States to build a better life for their family, that I, when I was very young, was fed the lie about black Americans that had been absorbed and spread around because everyone participates in white supremacy, and so the idea was like, well,

look at us, we came from Jamaica. We were able to buy homes and build lives and businesses and this, that and the other thing. Why can't those black Americans do that? And it was understand it, but it wasn't until like then I would learn and understand and challenge this very stupid idea that I was that was being taught to me by virtue of my family, but also through an education system and society that was reinforcing that same lie. When I say understandable, I don't mean accurate.

I mean the way I relate to that is I had so much internalized patriot. Yeah. Yeah, because I was luckily one of the kind of kids who learned easily, who was a good people pleaser, who did well in school. And I became and I was. I went to partially with all girls middle school, and then the upper school was co ed, and I and everyone would say, you know, girls don't talk in class, and I was like, well,

that's our unfucking fault. I don't believe this. They should just do it because I'm an annoying talker, interrupter, whatever. And I believed until my and through my twenties that you know, women could get as far as men, because I was always getting as far, if not farther, and men respected me and blah blah blah. And I don't know what the moment I realized suddenly I'm I kind

of dude. But without getting into all of it, is that there was no sweet spot all of a sudden, like everything worked fine for me until you know, I think I got to that glass ceiling. And then I also looked around and said, I don't know if i'd like these values. I don't know if i'd like to relate to everybody in this way. And I don't. And I see how cutthroat it can be. There's a lot of stuff. But if I can internalize all of that, I can see why you would too, if those are

the stories you're told. And I was definitely told those stories that, oh, women make these choices. Somebody asked me the other day It's like a really valid question, and they're like, you know, I'm just so interested to talk to you about your career path because like you're an out black queer woman and you've been so successful, and I'm just like confused about how that has happened. Like what have you faced and like what are like what

are the challenges you know that you have faced? And I said, UM, that is a really good question, and I'm going to be really honest with you. I've had like very minimal hardship in terms of things that I have faced because any microaggressions, Um, around my race, uh and gender that I have faced I have readily pushed back on because I had a certain amount of privilege that afforded me the ability to do that, right. Um, and so you had the same from your family or

from my family. Without that, you wouldn't be able to push it back. You would take it, swallow it, shrink, and then do whatever it is you had to you in order to move forward. I didn't have to do that. But then recognizing that just like you did, Wait a minute, people are not choosing to do that, like this is we are happened to be an anomaly? And why are we an anomaly? Oh? Because of these things that these other people didn't have access to, right. And so recognizing that,

to me is what conscious raising is truly about. It's we're not all the fucking same exactly right, and a luck. I mean, I think along the way, it wasn't just your upbringing giving you the confidence a story you had in your head. But I can point to all the people who saw the real Mai along the way and help me even though I had kind of pointy elbows, and not everyone gets that. I mean, you could go back and think of moments where your life could have

been hugely different one hundred percent. I mean I tell people, particularly my friends that are attorneys, right, I say, I wanted to go to law school. That was the only thing that I wanted to do post undergrad. And I had the white male professor who told me I wasn't smart enough to go to law school. So I didn't go. That is the one regret that I have and I almost went back, but then I was just like, why incurred the debt? Because I'm doing all the same jobs

that everyone around me is doing without the law degree. Right, it wasn't a hindrance. And people say, well, they were making more money. No, not necessarily, not necessarily, so you know, so it was a learning But I say that to people often because one person was able to turn shift my life trajectory. Yeah, and so what if you have a whole bunch of people like that? Do you know

what I'm saying? So it's like recognizing it again, having the privilege and the time and the space and the thinking to be able to unpack those things, sure, you know, and be able to sit here and say, yeah, it's been eight years and this ship is fucking crazy, like we are living in crazy, crazy times. But this, oh my gosh, I just figure something out. Between the two

of us and our little therapy session. We start out by saying, well, on the outside, we're doing blah blah blah blah blah, because our whole life we have survived by doing all the things yes, right, and that's what we do so good through bad. If it's no way, it's like where the mailman in the poem, like it doesn't matter as it's snow ways at raining, it's the whole country burning down, We're gonna be there. Given our kid, it doesn't. But you have no idea how we're really

doing it. And sometimes we don't know because I think we've learned to tune that out and there's a benefit to dialing it down but not turning it off. And so I think I'm trying to take moments where I'm really, you know, going, how are you really doing? Yes? And it's the moments that I'm really that I'm taking with friends, that I'm taking with family and folks that are listening to this. If you haven't asked yourself or those around you because you are afraid of what the answer is like,

sit with that as well. Because I think that we are all in some shape or form, lying to ourselves because the reality of what we're experiencing is so fucking crazy and deep, and we just don't have the arm spand to wrap our arms around what is going on. So we just continue the doing and the producing and the moving along, hoping that the tides change. I think

the one thing that helps me is listening to music. Music, new music that I haven't listened to before, and stuff I'm familiar with, because I think it's funny some people lead with emotion. I just it's deep. I got to really find it for me. I mean, I I care, but caring is a thinking emotion, right to feel I really need and tap into that. So like listening to music, going for walks and really doing that, but also, like you said, checking in with the people I'm close to

and say, how are you really doing? Yeah, they tend to tell me I'm around people who are much more emotive than I am, honestly, and I too, am around people that are very emotive. And the thing that I have been doing similarly, my therapist said, you need more beauty in your life. You need to be reminded of art and music, and that there is still beauty that is being produced and expressed, and you need to consume that so much. Agree, Yeah, with the vigor that you consume.

All that is wrong. Yes, you know it's funny. I in fall of twenty twenty or was it twenty twenty one, all the things blend together. It was twenty twenty one, right, so we'd kind of been vaccinated. And I go out and I came down to New York actually to go to a friend's book party. And I had to kill some time because I drove in and I drove out, and I parked right at the met because it was actually pretty cheap parking up there, right in the museum.

And I went in there and I almost started to cry, like from looking at art, because I realized how impoverished I'd been, and how beautiful it felt to me dance because then there aren't words, especially things without words. I mean, you and I live in it with words. Maybe no words. Maybe maybe look at paintings and dance and for maybe music without words, because I think we both need that. I have UM I recently, and UM the thing that I will tell people I recently I went to over

the holidays. I saw Alvin Elly, which is a tradition that I love and like can try and restore now that we're managing to live with COVID. Incredible. M Did they do revelations? Oh my god. Yeah, I'm just and you know, just sitting there and being able to take in the beauty of movement, of spirit of music and just like it was similarly how you said when you went into the met like I did cry because I realized, is that, oh this still happens in the midst of

all that is occurring. It always has, it always has. But it's the remembering to remind yourself to consume it right in that in the way that is needed. And I don't say in a way that is balanced, because we need to be taking in more art, more music,

more nature, more community than we are the toxicity. Yes, So final thoughts Jen to you, what advice do you take and do you offer to those listening about how to connect with the truth and not just the veneer of I'm fine to say it's okay not to be fine. I mean, we all have a finite you know, when you know we have a finite experience here on this earth. Whether you believe in an afterlife or not. This is what we have, and we have the relationships, and we

have art, and we have making a difference. And the reason why we should be staying politically engaged and seeing things as they are isn't just for us, but it's for the next generation and the next one. And that's

our part. And I think we see ourselves, you know, I'm thinking about God is at the end of I haven't read it in so long, but maybe Anna Karnina, we're like whoever the guy in Tolstoy's novel is seeing himself because he goes through this whole process of trying to figure out who he is religion wise and all this stuff, and then he finally situates himself and this long arc of history and that's us. We're part of

thousands upon thousands of years. And people are making gorgeous work during the plagues and people, you know, and people are doing incredible things during aids, and people now have found ways to express in me during these terrible times.

And the sun always rises, ye, and there can be that feeling of warmth of sun on your skin, and there can be all of these things, the good and the bad in the world, and that happens, and it's our job to also be alive to that, even as we understand that this political world and this economic system is really unfair, infect up, and we can try to move it into a better place. But that work is

never going to be done in our lifetime. But our lifetime is going to be done in our lifetime, and we can't rob ourselves and the people we love around us of that full self, human self that can enjoy beauty, feel pain, and show love. Jennifer Tom that I don't know. This was not an interview. This was more so a beautiful, imaginative intervention, and I appreciate you so very much. Thank you for making the time for woke af Thank you so much. I didn't know I need this too? Who knew? That?

Is it for me today, Dear friends on woke f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.