Why is talking about money and class so awkward?! (w/ Jonathan Menjivar) (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

Chris Duffy: You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. I'm gonna be honest with you, I am nervous about this episode. I'm nervous because we're talking about a topic that feels very intimate and personal, but it's also a topic that I don't feel like I have very much. Practice talking about, or even hearing other people talk about publicly, and that's class and money.

I once read a study where respondents said that they would rather have people see nude photos of them online than their bank account information. And I'm not sure that I agree with them. Uh, I'm not sure which one I'd prefer to have leaked, but I have to say I do understand that it's a tough call because how much money we make and have and what we spend.

Ooh. That is a lot to think about putting out there publicly for everyone to see The fact that this topic and these conversations are are a little awkward and messy and uncomfortable. That's exactly why I am so glad that we have Jonathan Var on the show with us today. Jonathan is a public radio producer and he's the host of the podcast Classy, which unpacks these issues really thoughtfully and compellingly.

Here's a clip from Jonathan's show.

Jonathan Menjivar: So many of us have this class anxiety that we're letting munch on our insides, like a little parasite, and it's not just former working class kids like me. This class discomfort goes in all kinds of different directions. So many of us, rich, poor, working class, middle class, we're looking at the people around us and

Either wanting more or feeling bad about what we already have and that icky feeling, it gets us in trouble. It puts us in awkward spots, makes us do things we normally wouldn't do.

Chris Duffy: We are gonna talk with Jonathan a lot more in just a moment, but first we're gonna play a few ads. And to be totally transparent, we need to play these ads so that we can afford to make the rest of the show.

So we will be right back after this.

Today we're talking about class and money with Jonathan Menjivar.

Jonathan Menjivar: Hi, my name is Jonathan Menjivar. I am the host of Classy, a podcast from Pineapple Street Studios and Odyssey.

Chris Duffy: I am really glad that you're on the show because I've been a fan of the pieces that you've made for a long time, and then I felt like classy was, I binge listened to it and then afterwards I just couldn't stop thinking about how these were questions and struggles that I've never been able to articulate and that you put words to. And I think in some ways that's kind of like the point of the show is that we don't really know how to talk about class.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. Well first off, thanks. It's incredible for you to say that's really kind. There are other shows that are dealing with elements of class that are about economic inequality and that kind of thing, but a, a lot of what

Classy is about, is a class anxiety and living in a system where some of us have and some of us do not have both money and advantages and education and everything that comes along with all of those things. There's an anxiety that can sometimes be produced as a result of that and, and it is hard to talk about because it feels whiny.

Chris Duffy: Certainly not everyone agrees about this, but I think that there's a pretty broad understanding that. pretending that we are colorblind and that we don't see race or ethnicity, that actually doesn't really do much of a service to the ideas of like justice or equality. And I think that when it comes to class.

we're not necessarily there yet. Like there is this idea of like, let's not talk about money. That's weird. Or like, we only talk about it in the terms of the more dramatic versions, like when there's, uh, a, a person who's struggling with housing or with feeding themselves, but not these levels of gradation between like how much choice you have and how much you're able to choose and where you're able to go on vacation and what clothes you wear.

There's not a lot of conversation around that because it, it still feels like maybe we're supposed to pretend like we don't notice those things.

Jonathan Menjivar: Because bringing them up is, it's kind of rude a lot of the time. You know? Um, and so I think there is a lot of ways that we do just totally pretend. Like some of us are pretending that we've got less than we have and we're struggling more than we are.

And some of us are pretending like, like, we can't afford that vacation that we put on Instagram.

Chris Duffy: I live in LA and there are quite literally sets that look like the inside of a private jet where you can pay to just take photos to make it look like you were traveling on a private jet. Like that's a thing that people do that's not just for TV and movies.

Jonathan Menjivar: That's wild.

Chris Duffy: Wow. And you know that is, of course, I'm picking an extreme example, but I think there's the other side, which is that like there's people who are going on a fancy vacation and are only taking photos that look like. It's not a fancy vacation

Jonathan Menjivar: because I think some of it is, is, is just feels like showy and weird.

Like an acknowledgement of like, yeah, I've got these advantages that you don't have. So I, I do think people are constantly trying to pretend like we're all the same. Um, I. Which to like a, some, some degree. I understand like we live in a democracy. We're all supposed to be equal. You know, I don't want somebody like coming in and flaunting their class status in my face all the time, like taking it too far.

The other way would, would also be pretty obnoxious.

Chris Duffy: I guess my question is like, should we actually be talking about class more and or in a different way, or is it ? Good that we don't talk about it. Does it exclude people to talk more about money or should we be talking more about money in class? And I'm actually even right now, like equating money and class as being the same, which obviously they're not exactly the same. So yeah, that's a big question.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. I mean, I think what I was striving for and sort of pushing in the show is for a level of honesty about everything. I actually had a reporter, uh, early on when the show was first coming out.

The tagline is something about how we don't talk about class basically, and he's like. If we're talking about class all the time, you know, like just like basic questions about like, where'd you grow up? What's your favorite restaurant, where do you live? Where'd you go to school? That's a big one for me.

That's always like gets me in the gut. Like these are class questions, you know? And we are all trying to like connect and understand like, well, where do I stand with you? Like, have you had the same sort of of experiences that I have had in my life? I think we are talking about it. Let's not try to hide it all the time.

Let's be a little bit more honest about where we stand. No matter where you come from. You know, I mean like in some ways, like this show for me was a huge, coming out of a bunch of things I've tried to hide, you know, of like I never hid the fact that I grew up working class, but. I did hide just like how much it affected my everyday thinking and that I was feeling bad about it all the time.

Chris Duffy: That's part of what felt like a revelation about listening to this. So one of the questions that is for you, one of these trigger questions is where did you go to school? What are some of the other subtle class questions that put you in your head when you get asked them?

Jonathan Menjivar: I mean, I think they all relate to that same kind of idea of sophistication and of like being an educated person, who moves freely in the world and has an ability to have thoughts and opinions about things like, what's your favorite book? My God, I don't know. You know, like, don't, you're like testing me to see like, have I read the things that you think are important?

You know, I mean, restaurants too. Like I, I don't have favorite restaurants. I, there's like three places I go to in the suburb I live in, you know, like that's, those are my favorite restaurants and they're, they're not worth talking about, you know, so anything that is about judging taste, I think I am like a culture monster.

And like constantly devouring all sorts of pop culture and news and everything else and, and I have opinions and TA and taste about all of that stuff. And I will judge your opinions and thoughts about all of those things, but those are very triggering for me for sure.

Chris Duffy: I. And it's interesting even to hear you say, right, like you have worked in public radio, you worked for Terry Gross, you make a podcast, you live in the suburbs now.

Like those are all pieces where people who are listening to this, they don't necessarily have to see you or know anything else about you to already have assembled an idea view and. To me, part of the things that bother me when people ask me those questions are that in some ways that mental image that people immediately have assumed of me is exactly right, and in other ways it's so not who I want to be and maybe not who I feel like I am.

So we contain multiple identities. And I'm like, that one is right, but also, I'm not just that, or I'm not the other pieces that I associate with.

Jonathan Menjivar: I, I try and maintain, uh, and pretend like I'm still a working class guy and that like I will fix my sink if it's backed up. I'm not gonna call the plumber 'cause that's the kind of guy I am.

But I do also drive a Prius, you know.

Chris Duffy: I think family for me is one of the places where I related the most because. My dad is the first person in his family to go to college. He paid his way through college by taking time off and working in an auto factory in Michigan. You know, my uncle, his brother drove trucks for a living like that.

That's that side of the family. But then we, my brother and I. We grew up in Manhattan. We went to like a fancy private school, and we did that. Like we were able to go to this fancy private school because we got financial aid and all that, but we were just in this completely different world. And even me saying that now, right, like, oh, well we got financial aid is like I, I feel this real need when I talk about my background to justify and qualify and say, oh, but not blank, right?

Like, I have this idea in my head about like not wanting to be a rich jerk and not wanting to be associated with people who I perceived to be rich jerks.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the very first episode of our show is called Are Rich People Bad? That question is an extreme version of judging all of this stuff that we're, we're talking about with class of.

The assumption on that, like, like part of the picture when you think of rich people is like a hoarding of wealth and resources like these people have and other people do not. And that sucks. That's really unfair. It's bad. We, we talked to this sociologist named Rachel Sherman and she had done this big study and essentially she was trying to like figure out like how rich people feel about and justify their wealth. And a lot of it comes down to this question of being good or bad. That if you are, like if you're a good person, if you're nice to people, if you leave big tips, it's okay for you to have all of that wealth. But if you're like the preppy guy from an eighties movie, you're bad. Yeah.

Chris Duffy: If you're the ski villain.

Jonathan Menjivar: Right, right. Or Cobra Kai or whatever, you know? Yeah.

Chris Duffy: Just a quote from that first episode is you say, if it's not clear by now, I have some hangups about class and I realize it's ridiculous because who am I kidding? I'm not Joe Six Pack or whatever we're calling that guy now.

I think of myself as a working class kid, but I'm clearly something else now. I mean, I own multiple cardigans , which I just think is a great joke and also is, to me, is very relatable because I, I kind of really, I find myself really clinging. To the story of my dad and my family being working class, right?

And then middle class and now, like what I do for work is I like tell jokes and I write jokes and I sit in a air conditioned room and I have a conversation with someone who I admire. Like that is not hard work. Right. You know, like my dad slept under the car while his roommate would like work. The other shift, like that was how they worked at the factory.

And not, not every night, but like that's how they were like. Save time on commute. Like I get upset when the air conditioning isn't working at a hundred percent. That's like my struggle, but that's not how I want to be perceived.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah, for sure. The only calluses I have on my hands are from hobbies, you know,

Chris Duffy: That's really good. Oh, I think about that every time I shake the hand of someone who is like an actual working with their hands person where I'm like, oh, this is a soft hand you're about to touch.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. Yeah. And so all of this stuff also touches all sorts of issues about masculinity. But yeah, there are ways in which I am pretending all the time and there, there are ways that are so silly 'cause they're imperceptible to anybody else.

Like, uh, my stepdad for a long time was a truck driver. Um. So he had, he'd hang his left arm out the window and so his left forearm was more tan than any other part of his body, and he had a watch tan all the time. Mm-hmm. So it is just like burned in my, into my brain and key to me that I have a watch tan.

I just, like, I leave my watch on when I go to the beach, you know, Uhhuh. It's so stupid. It's so dumb. But it's important to me, yeah. Because it's part of that working class identity that I'm clinging to. I mean, it, it's how I grew up, you know? And so, mm-hmm. Like I pushed a broom at a movie theater for years, but like, other than that, like, I've never done any physical labor.

Chris Duffy: You know, my uncle who was a truck driver, gave me one year for Christmas, like a consolidated freights jacket, so it had the like little patch that said Duffy on it. And I have never had an item of clothing that I was prouder to own. And I, you know, the irony of me, like wearing this, you know, actual trucker jacket to my private high school where it's like

I was like, I'm not like the rest of you, but also I really wanna get into a good college, and of course I'm going to college. Like it was just like. You know, both of those things were true at the same time,

Jonathan Menjivar: I still have my gas station jacket I got at pick and save in high school.

Chris Duffy: We will be right back after this short break.

Today we're talking with Jonathan Menjivar, the host of the podcast, Classy about money and class, and how to be better at navigating and understanding it.

 Now in one episode of Classy, that really stuck with me, Jonathan, you're interviewing this sociologist Rachel Sherman. And Dr. Sherman finds that in her research, she's really struggling to get rich people to talk about wealth openly, but that when she starts using this workaround, which is to ask them about home renovations, people love to talk about that.

And then they would end up revealing a lot about wealth and class and their ideas around it. And one of the things that struck me that, that she brought up to you is she's talking to someone who is, by pretty much any definition of the word rich, has inherited wealth, has, you know, does not have to worry about money.

This person is talking about their home renovation and they say, I don't want the stove that looks fancy in their like, incredible open loft kitchen.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. This guy was having his kitchen totally redone and told the crew that was designing and, and making it to not have one of those like big giant chef stoves, you know the thing that is in every other kitchen that looks like that because he wanted to to pretend. I don't know, like it's not like anybody was gonna walk into that apartment or walk into that kitchen and be like, this is like normal. This guy's like totally middle class yeah.

Chris Duffy: You know, you're one of us. I see that you have a regular old stove in this house.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. Uh, there's an interior designer, I believe, who told Rachel that when she's designing things for people's homes, she'll throw in like a piece of IKEA or Crate & Barrel furniture and they love it, just like one piece. 'cause then that, that, you know, they've still got some like credibility.

It's not all like totally ostentatious.

Chris Duffy: I don't want the stove that looks fancy. For a variety of reasons. My wife has fewer hangups around class and wealth than I do. I think because of how I grew up and the kind of transitional being between classes and it's more emotionally loaded.

Anyway, when we were, one time we were moving in to a new apartment in Brooklyn and we were looking at apartments and this really feels to me like my version of, I don't want the stove that looks fancy, is we looked at an apartment that was in a building that was branded as a, uh, luxury condo building.

We could afford the rent. It had a gym in the building. It had, it was like new, had this beautiful like big, super quiet bedroom and like a fancy kitchen and the whole thing from the lobby to the apartment looked fancy. It looked expensive. Yeah. And I was like, I cannot live here I will not be the kind of person who lives in this building.

She was like, this is really like, this is a nice apartment and we can afford it. We should live in this one and be, I was, I had like a visceral, I will not be able to have people over to see that this is where I live. I'll be ashamed to be living here. And then we ended up paying the exact same rent to live in a building two blocks away.

That was just like second floor walkup that had a different kind of charm but didn't read fancy, fancy, fancy money and they cost the same. But for me, I was like, I cannot be seen in this building.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. What do you think would've happened if people had had seen that, if you lived there?

Chris Duffy: Well, I'll tell you that the day we moved into the other one, I was like, we've made a horrible mistake. Oh my God. We should have lived in that other one. This is so bad. You know, I honestly, I was thinking that people would view me differently that I wouldn't be liked. I was like, people will come over here and they will know something intimate and private and kind of shameful about me, which is that I have enough money to live in this apartment.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. It's weird that shame. That's the thing about nice stuff and being able to afford it. Yeah.

Chris Duffy: This is something that you come back to numerous times over the show is. Is it okay to have nice things and do you want to have nice things? And you know, this is where like the personal and the micro and the macro intersect because I think we can all agree that like the fact that some people can't have what they need to survive is bad.

And then that gets linked to our personal thing of like, if I buy an organic apple, am I the reason why someone else is in poverty and it's not as simple as that, and yet it's not unconnected.

Jonathan Menjivar: So many of these things are tied to cultural things too. Like, you know, in my family growing up, uh, we were working class real paycheck to paycheck.

Um, doing just fine. Like I never suffered really in any way, but there were things that I wanted that I, uh, we couldn't afford. Um. , but also like my parents were getting new cars every three years there. There was no like judgment put on that. In fact, that thing was a point of pride that we like pulled up on the lawn.

It washed every week, you know? Mm-hmm. I drive a 11-year-old, used previous , but I also like have spent over $200 for a shirt. My dad came to visit me for the first time here where I live and. I showed him one of these shirts, his, like his mouth dropped open totally, understandably, but I don't feel the same way about his new truck.

You know, it's funny the way that we like value and judge each other on these things. Another thing that I was trying to talk about is that like class. Is this whole set of cultural values that come along with it that we are often just not talking about very openly.

Chris Duffy: It's interesting when you do talk about it openly because like, let's just take work for example, right?

Like it's kind of, at least in many of the places that I've worked, been a social norm to not talk about how much money you make. Yeah, but knowing how much money someone else makes is actually a very like practically helpful and informative piece of information when you work at the same company, right?

Like you have to ask for raises, you have to know. So like salary transparency would kind of benefit us all, but there's this stigma around it that doesn't really help anyone except the person who's making the salaries. Two things that are interesting about that for me are. As a comedian, when I first started doing standup and like going to gigs, a lot of times people ask, they don't say like, we'll pay you our standard comedian rate.

They just say like, what would it cost for you to do 20 minutes of standup? Oh God. Yeah. And the only way that I ever knew that was to ask other comedians who had done it longer, Hey, what do you get? What should I charge a college? If they want me to do a corporate brunch, what does that cost? And people were so willing to be like, here's what I say, here's the range I give.

And it was just the, this cultural norm, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to as comedians figure that out. So you interviewed Wyatt Cenac on one of the episodes of your show and. One of the, one of the jobs that I've had is I, I was a writer on Wyatt's an ACT's show on problem areas with Wyatt's an act.

And one thing that made being in that writer's room so comfortable for me is that I knew every single person who was a writer on that show. We were all making the union minimum. Right. Which is still a lot, but so I, I knew to the dollar. Everyone, all the six of us are making the exact same amount of money.

And I can just look it up on the union website. Sure, sure. Yeah. And as a result, there was no weirdness about money. Like when we went out to like get lunch, it wasn't like, should I offer to pay for lunch or should they be paying for my lunch? Like it was just like, yeah, like we all are making money.

Jonathan Menjivar: Yeah. But the other part of it is like. Uh, salaries aren't the only place that money comes from, you know, like mm-hmm. I, I work in media where there is like a variety of different salaries, but like, for a long time I worked in public radio. Mm-hmm. Pay historically has been bad, you know? Mm-hmm. There is a question sometimes of just like, wait, how are people affording the things that they afford?

And that, you know, even if you know what people are being paid, you don't know, like. Did their parents help them with the down payment? Of course their parents helped them with the down payment. 'cause that seems to be everybody's story. You know, did like grandma leave some money? All of those kinds of things, um, is a whole other part about money that's really tough to talk about and certainly not like a, a question I want to be asking of anyone.

Chris Duffy: If we do know a little bit more or if people are more open about it. Many people would feel a lot less of like shame or disappointment at like, why am I not doing things right? Like, why is that person able to do this stuff? Right? 'cause the answer is like, well, it's not that they're better at work or smarter or savvier, it's that, you know, they got.

A huge amount of money that you didn't get.

Jonathan Menjivar: Right, right.

Chris Duffy: I have a very dramatic example of this in my own life, which is that I have now twice been on a game show and won money on a game show, and it's like, it's a funny version of basically like inheriting money, Uhhuh 'cause. It is like, of course I don't deserve the money that I won on a game show,

But also it's so public, like everyone could just watch. I was on an episode of a hundred thousand dollars Pyramid and I won $109,000, and it just shows the number when people ask like, how are you able to spend. The past two years working on a book and just doing the podcast and not having to have a day job, I'm like, you can watch the episode where it happened.

You can literally see the moment where I became able to do this. It's because a celebrity guessed the word parks and then I won the money. That's what it was.

Jonathan Menjivar: So, uh, when you won the $109,000, has anyone ever made you feel bad about that? Has anyone ever like to have it be so public in that way?

Chris Duffy: I don't think anyone has ever made me feel bad.

I have felt bad about it. Yeah. In a way where it's like being really seen that I had a financial windfall and there's a part of me that's like, should I be doing more with this? You know, like, are you expecting me to like, give you money or something like, just like a kind of look of like, wow. Yeah, you won money.

Yeah. You know, like, oh, take me. You can take it. Yeah. I shouldn't have it. You should have it. But I also gave a, I gave a huge amount to charity. Like I did give it away. I didn't take it off for myself, but certainly I have felt. Kind of the

Jonathan Menjivar: arbitrariness of it. I think that was another thing we wanted to explore in the show is the way in which, when we're getting away from the world of just like people on the brink, so much of these feelings about class are like things that we're putting on ourselves as a former working class kid, like I have basically told like two stories about myself.

To myself my entire life. One is like I had to fight harder than anybody else to get here. Like, mm. I didn't have any of the advantages. I went to a state school that I paid for myself, like I didn't know anybody, you know? Which is not true because like, as I like pursued things I wanted to pursue, I like started making connections and then I knew people, you know, that's how it worked.

Mm-hmm. So. It's, it's either that like, I am better than other people, or I'm never gonna get those things. Like, that's part of the advantage of about like talking openly about these things is you get to air them out and pick them apart a little bit, you know?

Chris Duffy: So, I, I wanna ask you to be prescriptive for a second.

Okay. And I wanna do it from two angles. So first we've been talking a lot about like, you have achieved a level of class or material success and feeling that kind of like some shame or like you don't deserve it or, or maybe some version of imposter syndrome. What would you say to those people who are feeling like, I don't belong, even though I seem to belong here?

How, how would you, what advice would you give people who are coming at it from that level? And then I want to talk about it from the level of people looking up.

Jonathan Menjivar: It's like the same thing that my therapist taught me about like any sort of weird thing that I'm feeling is just to separate yourself from yourself, you know, to like float above yourself and sort of just like really assess outside of your own body, outside of your own head.

What's going on here? Let's say it's work we're talking about. Um, 'cause that's where a lot of the stuff came up for me. I'm here, I'm doing the work, I'm doing a good job, and somebody is paying me to do that work. And it doesn't matter that like I got here a different way or that like my experiences and

The things I am familiar with are different than other people, or that I, I'm not reading the same magazines or whatever as some other people. You're there and there's probably a reason that you're there.

Chris Duffy: And what about for the people who, they want to be a part of this world that's above, they're striving for this world, but there's all these class kind of invisible class markers that are hard to break through.

Do you have any like practical advice for them? Because you kind of have done this.

Jonathan Menjivar: I think what I would say is like, don't do it the way I did it, like I turned myself into a parody. You know, like I used to work at this American Life. I showed up to the office in like a blue blazer and, and loafers without socks, and I.

Somebody was like, are you going sailing? What? Like, what's happening? , you know, and like, I like, I like dressed a certain way that I thought, you know, I, I, and I ended up looking like Thurston, how ii, you know? Mm-hmm. It was just like over the top. And I, I, I think in trying to be, pretend like I was, that, like, you know, Ivy League educated guy, I turned myself into a parody.

And so I, I think. I, I think there are like certain cultural markers that maybe are, make it a little easier for the people in, in that, in other classes to accept you, but why play their game? Hmm. I think that's what I ended up learning.

Chris Duffy: And what about for the people who. Who have a lot of money or class or, or high class, they have this status and they're trying, you know, you talk about people trying to not be entitled to be like a good, rich person and not a bad, rich person.

How should people question their own class or their own blind spots in a, in a healthy way rather than. A way that kind of contributes to silence in these conversations.

Jonathan Menjivar: I, I think it's again, about being honest with yourself and being honest with the, if you do have those advantages of really looking at them.

I, I think there, there is like a, a whole movement of younger, rich people who are really, who are really focused on acknowledging their privilege. And giving away a lot of their money. And I find that to be pretty admirable. We don't live in a communist country. Like things are never going to be equal here, but, but acknowledging it and doing what you can with your advantages.

And also I think like sharing secrets, you know, like that's what is another huge part of this is like. Coming from where I came from, there's like a whole way of navigating systems that I didn't understand. You know, and I think this happens in all sorts of ways. Like there are reasons why like the rich can navigate the justice system.

I. , you know? And poor people are the ones who are in jail for in much larger percentages. That is true in all sorts of ways in, in work and education. And so like, I'm always advocating for people to share as much as possible the ways in which they understand how a system works and if they see that people around them don't to share that.

Like I, I think in the workplace, you know, like, yeah. Rather than let those people struggle, like setting people down and being like, okay, here are the things that you don't know you need to know to be successful in this place, and here's how you can work on those things.

Chris Duffy: Yeah. Every place has a kind of a cultural unwritten rules, and the more that you can make those rules written or at least explicit, the more that everyone can succeed in a place.

Not just pay transparency, but

Jonathan Menjivar: let's be transparent about everything, you know? Totally.

Chris Duffy: The way that this relates to parenting and to kids. Mm-hmm. Because I think a lot of class is also, I mean, you and I have, we've referenced our fathers so many times in this conversation. 'cause there's this generational thing of like, what do you inherit and what do you want?

But also then what do you want for your own kids? And I, I know you are a parent and I have a, a baby that is under a year. And so like thinking about him, so much of the things that I feel like, okay, that's good that I have accomplished that. But then I'm like, but I don't want that to somehow mess you up.

Right. I don't want you to be bad or entitled or also to not have to struggle because struggle builds like meaning and character and purpose. But I don't want you to struggle too much because struggling too much, you know, builds trauma and, and deprivation and strife. So how do you think about that as a parent and someone who's thought about these?

Jonathan Menjivar: My wife and I just try and be as open as possible as we can with our kid. We're not in a position where we're not like struggling and that she has like all of the choices in the world that she could ever want. She is certainly growing up different and with more options available to her than either of us did.

But it's, it's a weird balance 'cause like. I want her to know that, but I don't want her to feel guilty about it either. , I think for the most part, we are just generally trying to build an awareness, like we live in a town where there are some extremes. You know, she's got friends who are really wealthy and friends who, who are poor.

You know, she's 14 years old now, like she's, Hmm. Like we, we, we don't have to explain a whole bunch of this to her. She can see it when she visits people's homes. It is that awareness I want her to have of just like what you are experiencing growing up in this house isn't everyone's experience. There's kind

Chris Duffy: of this like pity then that comes from like, oh, if only everyone had this stuff.

And I think that one thing that is when I think about like the benefit in my own life of having had family members who were of a different class is to be like. They're doing great. Money is not the only marker of happiness and success and love.

Jonathan Menjivar: There was a time in my life that's really hard to admit, where like my working class family, I'm like, oh, they don't have the things I have.

Mm-hmm. But what I was doing was judging them by my tastes and desires, you know, and like. My folks are doing just fine. Like my dad lives in a house in the desert. I think that thing has five bedrooms. It's got a pool. There are fillers on the inside. It's not where I would choose to live, you know? But like he is an immigrant from El Salvador who has like more than he could ever want.

He worked. Like crazy for it, you know? Mm-hmm. His body suffered for it. He worked in factories. He worked at Walmart and Amazon Worked in a shower door factory. He killed himself for it. Me sort of like looking down on the working class, you know, in that way is shameful. It's awful that I had ever thought that way, you know?

But I think that's what we do. You know, like as much as we like say that rich people are bad, we hold that up as the example of like what we should be striving for. And then, and then we say that like working class folks are like resentful and angry, you know, and that's why they're voting for Trump. That story is like way, a way too simplistic way, uh, at, at looking at people's lot and life, you know?

Chris Duffy: Yeah. I mean, listening to classy and also just talking with you now, I feel like one of the things that you're helping me to articulate or kind of pull out a little bit is the way in which so much of popular culture has simultaneously like valorized wealth and made it so that like having more money is always a good thing, and how that is a lie,

But then also has created this situation where there is a huge systemic problem where people do not have enough money to survive and to be able to, to worry about anything other than money. The fact that level of money should be something that everyone has access to. Yeah. Doesn't mean that all money is good.

That meaning comes from having more money. Right. And that those two we often like link together.

Jonathan Menjivar: I mean, if there was like a universal basic income.

Chris Duffy: Well, Jonathan Menjivar, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a total pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate you making the time.

Jonathan Menjivar: Thank you so much.

Chris Duffy: That’s it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human! Thank you so much to today’s guest, Jonathan Menjivar. His podcast is called Classy and it’s amazing.

I’m your host Chris Duffy and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects, at Chris Duffy Comedy dot com.

How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team that’s as classy as they come. On the TED side, we’ve got Daniella Balarezo, Banban Cheng, Cloe Shasha Brooks, Lanie Lott, Antonia Le, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Matheus Salles.

On the PRX side, the team of geniuses who enable me to pay my bills are: Morgan Flannery, Noor Gill, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Maggie Gourville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzales. 

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