Between the Seasons: Stories from a South African Childhood

As we gear up for our new season launch on September 18, we’re taking a trip down memory lane with some of our favorite stories from Trevor’s childhood in South Africa.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Before the new season begins, we return to where Trevor's story was first written, South Africa. In the laughter and struggles of childhood, lie the roots of who he became. These are the tales we gather now.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Our journey begins where Trevor's family always began, with prayer. In the townships, prayer was more than faith. It was identity, a reminder of where you belong.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  This is the awkward part, how you start a conversation. It's the worst part of every conversation.

• 0:45Trevor Noah?

  Why don't we start with a prayer? This is actually why our grandmother started meetings with prayers.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the awkwardness.

• 0:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because it's to cut the awkwardness. Because now you're not, you can't just come together and be like, "Your son has a drug problem, and your husband is cheating." If you start with a prayer, then it opens up.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  But it was also a township power move, because everyone here will know whose house this is. Because you can't lead a prayer at...

• 1:06Trevor Noah?

  You can't lead a prayer at somebody else's house.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08Trevor Noah?

  When you pray, when you pray in a South African household, right? First of all, like, I don't know if your grandmother did this. My grandmother used to give her address, and she used to give like where she's from and her name and everything.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  No, my grandmother didn't.

• 1:18Trevor Noah?

  No, really, my grandmother would do that. She'd be like, "By which is a Muslim, eh, Kamalamungu Francis Noah", and then she'd be like, "Stala la eh, six two six six."

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Send, send quarter location.

• 1:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, who you are, where you're from, whatever. And I remember I asked her once, I was like, "Why are you doing this?" And then she was like, "Why do I assume..."

• 1:32Speaker 01

  He knows where I am.

• 1:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, she said, "Hi, Trevor, I must just assume that God is always listening to me." She said, "Ay, ay, ay, that's not fair." And if you think about it, most South African, like, prayer in general, I think is very like considerate of God. It's very much like, we know that you're doing stuff and we know that, like, you know what I mean?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I can see, I think because of missionaries, we never, as black people, thought that God is with us. God was brought to us. Huh. So we always have to identify ourselves and also separate ourselves from the non-believers.

• 2:04Trevor Noah?

  It's funny, now that you say the missionary thing,

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07Trevor Noah?

  I actually think a lot of that was real.

• 2:11Trevor Noah?

  Is that like, because I always think about this, I go like, imagine being... A black person anywhere on the continent, right? These people come with religion, right? And then they tell you that the reason things are going bad in your life is because you don't have

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Religion.

• 2:28Trevor Noah?

  This God in particular, because there was religion.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:31Trevor Noah?

  There were different religions all over the continent, all over South America, all over these places. They would force, you know, the native people, they would force them to buy goods from them that nobody else wanted to buy at predetermined prices. They would say they would do the work of like donkeys and mules and all of that stuff. But the main thing was they also came in with religion. So everywhere in the world, I can see this vibe where people have come in with religion saying to you, hey, all these bad things that are happening to you are because you don't worship God. And then it must have been weird because the natives are like, you are the bad thing that's happening to us. They're like, yes, exactly. If you had prayed.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  And you have penicillin.

• 3:11Trevor Noah?

  This wouldn't be happening to you.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  But I thought you didn't need penicillin because you can pray.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  And this is. Go put on clothes. It's not cancer time yet.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Trevor's mind moved to its own rhythm. Some sort disorder yet. It was a gift, a gift that once left him shoeless on the side of the road on his way home.

• 3:38Trevor Noah?

  My record with my mom, the story that she keeps bringing up is one day I came home from school.

• 3:46Trevor Noah?

  I had no backpack and I had no shoes.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 3:52Trevor Noah?

  And then my mom said to me, and my cousin always tells a story as well, because he says that day I got one of the all time beating. And he says he remembers like watching me going, but this could have been avoided. He was also a child, but he was like, he says he watched me and he thought to himself, but he could have avoided this. And what had happened was I came home and apparently my mom was like, where's all your stuff? And I said to her, I said, the bag got heavy.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Put it down.

• 4:17Trevor Noah?

  So I put it down. I literally left them on the side of the road.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Very logical.

• 4:21Trevor Noah?

  To me, logical.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:22Trevor Noah?

  And then she said, and what happened to the shoes? And I said, the shoes were new and I didn't want to finish them. So I left them somewhere close to school so that I don't have to wear them out on the way home. Because you know, like, your shoes would get worn out on the sides, right? Like, we couldn't afford new shoes the same way other kids could. So I noticed kids always had, like, a flat heel on their shoe.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Look at how observant you are, though.

• 4:44Trevor Noah?

  Exactly. And then my shoes had the slant.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:47Trevor Noah?

  That looked terrible. So I was like, OK, if I can preserve my shoes, then I won't get laughed at as much. So I'll leave the shoes near school and then walk home barefoot. And we went back and everything was where it was, which means my plan worked technically.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Technically?

• 5:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but she couldn't understand. And my brain, I remember thinking, this made sense.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  To me.

• 5:07Trevor Noah?

  To me, it makes complete sense.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  As children, Trevor and his friends turned the streets into playgrounds, claiming space where none was given. He remembers how community can be built from nothing but bricks and courage.

• 5:26Trevor Noah?

  I think the truth is that we think we don't have the third spaces, but it's just because we've made every space a private space. Like, I was just thinking this walking around, like, parts of Brooklyn the other day. I've noticed a dip in how many block parties there are.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 5:44Trevor Noah?

  Just, that was a simple event where you close the streets. Yeah. You agreed. Neighbor at the end, we all agree, on Saturdays, we are going to close our block. And everyone's gonna just open their door and, like, walk out and the kids can kick a ball and can hit a ball. And I've seen a few parts of New York where they do it now. Like, this is, like, in Manhattan, by the way. Like, Chelsea, somewhere there. OK. I remember driving one day, and I was irritated because I was in the car trying to get to an airport, and the road was closed. But I loved the fact that, like, I saw, like, someone hitting a ball, a baseball. And then people running. The whole street was just closed. And I was like, oh, we've been tricked into thinking the thing that's right outside our door is not a third space.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  No, but that's not a third space.

• 6:26Trevor Noah?

  Why is it not?

• 6:27Speaker 03

  Third spaces are like actual, I'm talking about parks, libraries.

• 6:31Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yes.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  They have decimated them.

• 6:33Trevor Noah?

  I'm with you and I'm telling you that when I grew up, they didn't exist. Black kids couldn't go to a library.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:39Trevor Noah?

  There was no park.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Trevor Noah?

  There was no, during apartheid, none of this exists. But I have the full childhood that you're talking about.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:45Trevor Noah?

  Because the third space was the street.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Okay, I get what you mean.

• 6:48Trevor Noah?

  Your grandmother told you. You travel around the world, sometimes you don't see girls, but you always see boys playing in the street. Yes, the third space is the street. Yeah, that's right. So you go, you tell the kids, go out.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  We need to get rid of these SUVs. I would let my son play in the street if Americans didn't have these huge cars.

• 7:05Trevor Noah?

  You know, and you see.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  If he runs in front of the car.

• 7:07Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but that's what I mean by close the street.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:09Trevor Noah?

  So I go, I would love to live in a society where we go, like, we used to do this on, I wish I could like, take you to the picture in my brain. We, as the kids, ran the streets as if we were adults. So we would close the street with bricks. You take the responsibility. Yeah, we would take bricks and we would put them at the beginning of each road and close each road.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:30Trevor Noah?

  And then when a car would need to turn into the street, because this is like a road, you know, and it's not a public, I'm not talking about like main roads. So if you're listening to this. You have no permission to do this, this was just an informal thing you did. Yes, I'm not talking about a highway, I'm not talking about a main road, I'm talking about like.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  In your neighborhood.

• 7:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, your neighborhood. It was a township, but it was still a neighborhood. We'd put bricks there, a car would need to turn, there would be kids stationed at every corner and you'd shout, "Kolo i", you know, car. Okay. And then you'd run there together, you'd move the bricks. Let them through. Everyone would clear the road. The car would drive either through where it needs to go to, or it would like stop at the house that it's stopping at. And then we'd put the bricks back on the road and then we'd continue playing. And because I agree with you, I'm not saying like go play in the street, but I'm saying sometimes we look at problems in life. And they, they seem insurmountable because we're looking at them the wrong way. Okay, no phones and no this and no, and where now are we going to build third space? How much is a third space? Where do you get it? How do we build a park? Do we get permits?

• 8:23Trevor Noah?

  Do, guys, everyone, if you are lucky enough to have a house, if you're lucky enough to be renting a space, if you, you literally have the third space right outside your door. That's right. You just have to claim it back. Yeah. You literally just have to claim it back collectively.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  In his home, drugs and drink were shadows never touched. But one day, Trevor's mother offered him a cigarette and a sip, teaching him that even temptation could be faced with honesty.

• 8:53Trevor Noah?

  I think about growing up and my perception of drugs. So I didn't touch weed my whole, okay, so I'll even take it before even like drugs, drugs. Uh, my mom doesn't drink, my mom doesn't smoke, my dad doesn't drink, my dad doesn't smoke. Alright, so I grew up in a home where that wasn't a thing, my grandmother, etc. And my mom said to me when I was thirteen, twelve, thirteen, maybe even younger. She came to my room and she had cigarettes and she had beer. And she said to me, do you want? And, and I was like, oh, this is a trap. Obviously, this is a trap.

• 9:37Trevor Noah?

  And I was, I was almost disappointed and I was like, come on, lady. I'm not gonna fall for a trap like that. You're gonna come into my room and offer me cigarettes. And she was like, do you want, do you wanna try them? And I was like, no, because these are bad things and we shouldn't have. And then she said to me, listen, you're gonna, you're gonna encounter alcohol, you're gonna encounter cigarettes and things. So if you're gonna use it, I would rather know that you use it and then you use it at home.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:59Trevor Noah?

  And then I don't worry that now you're out in the world using it, you know, hiding it from me and then getting into situations where you can't share that you're, you're using it.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Palm reduction.

• 10:09Trevor Noah?

  Exactly.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  It's amazing.

• 10:11Trevor Noah?

  Which is wild, I mean, my mom is, my mom is like super religious and super strict and super.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Very progressive.

• 10:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and so then she didn't even know how to like light a cigarette. So we had to go, we had to go to an uncle of mine. And then he was like, Trevor, what's up? And she said, he wants to try cigarettes. And the guy was like, okay, you want to smoke? And he gave, gave us the cigarettes and I puffed with him and I was like, this is trash. This is so, I was like, how is the taste in your mouth, you know what I mean? It, it tastes like someone's like eating everything disgusting and then farting it into your, your, your oral cavity. And then the alcohol beer just tastes like, like old water that has, you know, dribbled down a sewer into.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  I'm a bad breath, I don't like, I don't like it.

• 10:53Trevor Noah?

  So I, I didn't like any of that. And then drugs was almost in the same category for me.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Because of that in, initial experience?

• 10:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, in fact, drugs, the way I grew up was you are a loser. You are gonna end your life. That's how I knew drugs.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  That hasn't changed now, that was just when you grew up?

• 11:09Trevor Noah?

  That's, that's how I knew drugs. That's all I was told. These are the things that'll happen when you take drugs. So I didn't, I didn't touch weed. I smoked weed for the first time when I was twenty one.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 11:18Trevor Noah?

  That's how like anti-drug. I used to judge people and I would look at them and I would say to them, "It is a pity that you've chosen to do this with your life." I used to say that to my cousin.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  In South Africa, thinness was not beauty, not at all. It was struggle. To gain weight was to be blessed. Trevor recalls how the meaning of a body can change depending on where the story is told.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Now, I think that one of the things that our whole fascination with Ozempic is based on is, and it's interesting, you know, Christian, I wonder if you have thoughts with little kids, right? Part of beauty is thinness, as it's taught to you from a really early age, like fatness, queerness, darkness, all of these things are like coded as signs of deviance. Like you, you learn as a really young child in Disney movies, in anything, like beauty is really coded as morality and there's this Protestant work ethic thing, right? It's something that you should achieve through hard and punitive work and discipline, right? Yeah. And when people use Ozempic, it's like, mm, you cheated. You skipped the hard work part, you know? Yeah. And so you, you got the thing we demanded of you, but now we find this a vaguely immoral thinness.

• 12:33Trevor Noah?

  Like you worked hard to achieve the right thing. Okay, I, I hear what you're saying. It's funny because I, I don't know how it was for you growing up, but so I have, I've had an interesting journey with weight and how I perceive it and fatness, et cetera, because I grew up in South Africa, genuinely, growing up. This is such a weird thing to try and explain to people. In South Africa, you did not get made as much fun of if you were fat. Like, so like a fat person, you'd just be like, I mean, I don't even remember if we had that many names, but I remember all the ones for skinny people was Sticks Manzanza.

• 13:09Trevor Noah?

  That was my favorite ones. Stixmanzanza, Skinny Manili. It was like there were all these names where it was just like you, you, you're a twig, you're thin. And it was a sign there of, of a lack of having. Yeah. If you got married and you didn't gain weight, people would say that your marriage is not going well. Literally, they'd be like, is your wife not treating you well? Aye, man, no, man, look at you. If I would come home from the States, and like many times I would, I'd come back from America and I gain weight. And so whenever I go home, people will be like, ah, you're looking good, man. You're looking good, America's treating you well. You're looking Trevor, no, man, you're looking good. Look at your cheeks, you're looking good. And then, and, and, and so where I grew up, fatness was considered like sort of a choice.

• 13:54Trevor Noah?

  And then being skinny was like, ugh, your life is not going well and you're not making the right choices. For sure. So it's interesting how it flips, you know, and I'm sure it's time as well.

• 14:10Trevor Noah?

  Some of the most interesting things you learn happen while you're doing something completely ordinary. Maybe you're cooking dinner while watching a history video. Maybe you're on a flight catching up on a long-form interview. Or maybe you're trying to figure out how to fix something in your house because apparently owning a screwdriver means you're an electrician now. But you see, that's one of the things I love about YouTube Premium. I travel a lot, so I download videos before a flight. That way, I'm not leaving my entertainment in the hands of airplane wifi. Yeah, I've made that mistake before. You think you're gonna watch something in 4K and suddenly everyone's face is pixels. But one of my favorite features is smart downloads.

• 14:51Trevor Noah?

  You see, YouTube Premium can automatically download recommended videos for you based on what you already watched. So sometimes I'll get on a plane, I look at my phone, I'm like, ah, I didn't download anything. And it's like, no, YouTube already thought about this. They packed entertainment for me in my little lunchbox. And with background play, I can lock my phone, switch apps, and whatever I'm watching just keeps on going. So. If you like YouTube, you will love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. Therapy is one of those things lots of people talk themselves out of without even realizing it.

• 15:30Trevor Noah?

  Like it's too expensive or it's too overwhelming figuring out even where you're gonna start. But Rula is one way to make that first step feel a lot more doable. Offering accessible, affordable therapy that fits your needs. Sign up in just a few minutes and get matched with a therapist who fits what you're looking for. Need to talk to someone quickly? Appointments are often available as soon as the next day. And with insurance, sessions average around a $15 copay. You can also see estimated costs upfront, so there's a lot more clarity going in. And in terms of outcomes, 93% of Rula patients report symptom improvement. If therapy's been sitting in the back of your mind, Rula is a pretty simple way to take that first step.

• 16:15Trevor Noah?

  So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com. That's R U L A dot com to find a therapist the easy way.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  As a child, Trevor learned that even authority could be questioned. Around the dinner table, disagreement birth new ways of seeing. He explores how questioning can spark creativity.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  There's some classic research looking at at families. Looking at what does it take to raise a creative child? And it turns out that creative children come from families more often than not that had regular arguments and disagreements. Really? Yeah, so if you want to raise a creative kid, you can at least increase the probability. I'm not sure if it's causal, but by arguing with your spouse a little bit more. What do you think that is? I have an idea, but I'd love to know what you think that is. Well, I want to hear your hunch before I tell you what I think because I've been thinking about this for a long time. Okay, so here's what I think it is.

• 17:25Trevor Noah?

  I think the reason children who grow up in houses that are a little more argumentative might be a little more creative is because they're existing in an environment where there isn't one way to think. And so what happens is they're both stumbling on what I like to call third thoughts. All right. I had this idea, like this idea when I was working on The Daily Show with my team. And I'd say, I think everyone has a thought, right? And then like you can have a second thought even by yourself. But I think there's this elusive third thought that can only come from two different thoughts clashing together and forming a third thought that isn't from one specific place. And so I think if you are watching people who don't agree as a child, people who you

• 18:08Trevor Noah?

  generally love or you care for, et cetera, you are listening to a person and you are agreeing with them maybe, or just seeing their point of view. You're looking at another person agreeing with them and seeing their point of view. And then maybe you are holding both, including a third, which might be yours, which is another opinion of it. And that might force your brain to think of more things than just the things that exist, which I think is what creativity fundamentally is.

• 18:34Speaker 05

  I love this. Okay. So, so your theory is cognitive complexity comes from seeing people argue.

• 18:39Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  That you don't default to.

• 18:40Trevor Noah?

  I need to remember all the, you, you make like some of my ideas sound way smarter and fancier than they are, which I like. Cognitive complexity, write that down. All right.

• 18:47Speaker 05

  I just give you terms for things you already know.

• 18:49Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, okay, cool.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  I also think you learn to be a non-conformist through that same process.

• 18:54Trevor Noah?

  Oh, interesting.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  That instead of just defaulting or deferring to whatever an authority figure tells you, you realize, well, there are two different authorities in the room and they don't agree. And you, I, I think that can both lead to cognitive complexity, but it can also lead to more courage when it comes to challenging the status quo. Cause there's not a right answer coming from above.

• 19:15Trevor Noah?

  There is not one coming from above.

• 19:16Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 19:17Trevor Noah?

  You know, it's funny you say this. My mom is very religious, extremely, extremely religious. But I also think she is one of the most progressive thinkers I've ever come across in my lifetime. And one thing I always noticed as a child was how sometimes she would disagree with the sermon that the pastor gave when we'd leave church. And I'd be like, huh. And I'm just a kid. I'm just sitting in the passenger seat, listening. And she goes, I didn't agree with that. I didn't, I didn't, I, I, I hear where the pastor was coming from, but I think he was, he, that, that story of Joseph is not about. And then she'd go into her thing and, and then I'd be like, but he's the pastor. And she's like, yeah, he's a guy who reads the Bible.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  He's not God.

• 19:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but he's not God. He's like, we also have the Bible. And it was an interesting way for me to view even religion is going like, huh. Don't assume that the person who stands on the pulpit has like a monopoly on knowledge.

• 20:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:14Trevor Noah?

  You too have the book that you can read. And so now that makes me wonder now, I'm like, huh, was that part of me, you know, would, okay, I like this.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  I, I like it too. I mean, you can see both of those effects playing out.

• 20:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  You're not just gonna assume that the pastor's answer is gospel.

• 20:30Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  And then you're also not going to be afraid to question what somebody in power says.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Travel was part of the first generation to sit in classrooms across color lines. A fragile experiment, very fragile, if I'm to be honest with you. Shaped by apartheid's shadow. He recalls what it meant to grow up in that moment of change.

• 20:53Trevor Noah?

  You know, I, I, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, Dale, and we were talking about how at our school, they had a program where, because we were the first generation that was like, literally, you and I were the first generation. How old are you, Dan? Thirty-one. Thirty-one, yeah. So we were the first generation of kids that went to school with kids of a different race. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally, I sometimes think about how crazy that was. When I go like, literally, the first year in my school, that there were black kids, Indian kids, colored kids, with white kids. That was the first time that had ever happened. You guys were round one. You were the first child. We were literally. All an experiment. Yo, our teachers. Could have gone so wrong. Our teachers had never seen a black child in front of them in a classroom before.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Our parents had to wear their Sunday best for the first drop off.

• 21:40Trevor Noah?

  Drop off? Our parents didn't even know what a drop off was.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I mean, drop of life.

• 21:46Trevor Noah?

  No, but think, but just think about that as a concept. I remember being shocked that when I went to school. Yeah. Kids were dropped off by their parents in a vehicle that they owned. Like, one child got out of one car. Hmm. Meanwhile, when the black kids got there, it looked like a circus trick. Where like one car and they'd open a door and then like. So many. You're fifteen. Hmm. You, and, and that's how we just traveled around. The back of every buggy, the back of every van was all of us, you know what I mean? But that exposure, like our school had this program where they went. We want every kid to go and stay at another kid's house who they're friends with. They weren't even like, they don't like a stranger. Yeah. But they said, hey, you guys are friends. But it was a deliberate program. Yo. Yeah.

• 22:28Trevor Noah?

  It was amazing to see. To, talking about like exposure therapy. It was amazing to see how the black kids weren't particularly surprised by what they experienced. Because many of them had moms who were working for white people. So they had seen a glimpse of a white life. A sense of it, yeah, for sure. Let me tell you something. Every single white kid who went to go and live with a black family for a weekend. Every single one of them went home and said the same thing. They said, mom and dad, do you know how black people live? And not in like a righteous way, just as like a child. Like a curious way. Like a fourteen year old, fifteen year old, they went, yo, do you, do you know how they live? Hmm. Do you know how they come to school every day?

• 23:12Trevor Noah?

  Do you know that they have to take three buses to get here? With other people, with strangers. Do you know that they don't have hot water in the morning at their house? You, you have to make a fire and then heat it up and then they. Or the coal stove. And then you have to do it again for each person and they have to. You know, they all, they don't have their own bathrooms. You know that their toilet's outside? Hmm. I go to school with this kid. I see myself as his direct like competition in that way. Yeah. But I'm going, how is he doing math when he woke up like that?

• 23:40Speaker 00

  In the spinning of a simple roundabout, young Trevor found joy in bringing people together. He uncovers how that childhood game revealed the purpose guiding his life. Oh, yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 06

  Okay, tell me an early, specific happy childhood memory, something I can relive with you.

• 24:04Trevor Noah?

  An early, specific

• 24:06Speaker 06

  Happy childhood memory.

• 24:07Trevor Noah?

  Childhood memory.

• 24:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:08Trevor Noah?

  Damn, this is an interesting one. Let me think. Because there's many. How old? Give me an age and I'll tell you.

• 24:14Speaker 06

  I don't care.

• 24:15Trevor Noah?

  No, but what, when does childhood end?

• 24:19Speaker 06

  Forty-two.

• 24:20Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 24:21Speaker 06

  No, no, I'm being serious, though. I want, when you're, when you're, you know, a child, like under, you know, in, in school, like an early, an early childhood memory.

• 24:28Trevor Noah?

  One of my happiest childhood memories is me

• 24:31Speaker 06

  The only one who's ever asked me, what do you mean by childhood?

• 24:33Trevor Noah?

  Yes, because, because I think, because I think your memories at different ages are very

• 24:37Speaker 06

  Definitely early, specific childhood memory.

• 24:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so, okay, when I think of young, young, one of my favorite memories was playing on the, on the roundabout at a park near my house.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  This is something, a specific time, not just a thing you did regularly?

• 24:51Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, this is, it was a specific one.

• 24:53Speaker 06

  Okay, yeah, go on.

• 24:53Trevor Noah?

  And we were all seeing how, we were all teaming up. I got a bunch of people together to see how fast we could make this thing spin. But like, it was, it was a monumental effort. Do you know what I mean? Because everyone had to be at the right place, swinging the thing at the right time to get it. Our goal was to make it fly. That was the dream. We thought if we spin it hard enough, it's going to take off. And this, this was, but that was one of my, when I think back, I go like, wow, what a day. What a day.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  And of all the amazing things you had happen in this magical childhood that you've talked about, what specifically was it about this one thing that stands out so much that you want to talk about it now?

• 25:28Trevor Noah?

  Collaboration. I chose the people I was doing it with. We didn't pick the random kids who in you had no coordination because the thing's going to smack you in the hands, right? So we got the strongest, fastest, smartest, like, you know, most affable. We put the people together and we were like, this works. So it wasn't like, if you were the small kid, then your job might have been to be more on the inside. If you were the big kid, your job was to push. But we put people together and it, it matched in many ways, right? And the most important thing, funny enough, Simon Sinek, the most important thing. Was that we were having fun. And I mean this genuinely, we were having. Yeah. We had a purpose, but man, we were having fun.

• 26:02Speaker 06

  So you, so, so now what I'm doing is I'm looking for the connection between those things.

• 26:07Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 26:07Speaker 06

  And saying, okay, that's the common factor, right? Which is you, that where you find great joy is when you can bring the right people together to do something that matters and have a ton of fun doing it.

• 26:21Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 26:22Speaker 06

  Okay? And that's sort of your, your purpose in life, which is to bring people together, to do something bigger than themselves and have a good time doing it.

• 26:29Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  And if everything you do in your life, you can, is, is that, is that, is that.

• 26:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that merry go, yeah, merry go, we go to call merry go round.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. That, that, and everything in your life was like that roundabout, you, you, that is what a game on is.

• 26:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 06

  And so the opportunity for you is to remind yourself of that, right? So I, whether you get a Lego merry go round or a picture of a merry go round or just you, that merry go round.

• 26:52Trevor Noah?

  Oh, this is, I like this, this is, I like sentimental things.

• 26:54Speaker 06

  Right? The merry go round is, it's your, it's your talisman, it's your, it's your, it's the thing that reminds you of why you get out of bed today.

• 27:01Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 27:02Speaker 06

  All you want to do in life is work tirelessly to create the merry go round, right? And, and the thing is, is because you're, you have vision, we're gonna make this thing fly.

• 27:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 06

  Okay, so people go, huh? And you go, you, you, you, and you.

• 27:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 06

  Okay? And now they're all coming in and you're having a blast. And whether it succeeds or fails, it didn't fly.

• 27:23Trevor Noah?

  It did not fly.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  It did not fly.

• 27:24Trevor Noah?

  It did not.

• 27:24Speaker 06

  It did not fly. So it actually failed, if we're really honest with ourselves. But it didn't matter because it was the joy of the together and the fun, even with the vision, that made it worth. You'd never said at any point, and I fricking nailed it.

• 27:38Trevor Noah?

  No, that's not the point.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  Right? The point wasn't the result.

• 27:41Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 27:41Speaker 06

  The point was the people coming together.

• 27:43Trevor Noah?

  The outcome is a bonus, I always say this.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  The outcome is a bonus.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Carrying us until we meet again.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  The End