#126: Alissa Quart — Author of “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” Prof. at Columbia University, Executive Director of the Economic Hardships Reporting Project, Nieman Fellow

You’ve probably heard the term “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” referring to one's ability to pick themselves up, and get to work.

But what if we said the whole phrase was actually a joke?

There’s no one better to explain this than Alissa Quart, an author, professor at Brown and Columbia Universities, and the Executive Director of the Economic Hardships Reporting Project and the author of the book “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream” and “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America.”

We sat down with Alissa to talk about how the great American myth of the ‘self-made’ person, may be just that: a myth, and one that is weaponized to keep support systems and opportunities out of the hands of some of our nation's poorest workers.

This is another episode you’re not going to want to miss, so with that…let’s bring it in!