Meet José Andrés - My Favorite People

Trevor sits down with famed chef and humanitarian José Andrés, who is also one of his favorite people, for a conversation that’s as human as it is hard-earned. Drawing on his experience leading rapid-response teams feeding thousands in disaster and war zones around the world, José shares how he approaches his work and his life with the precision of a field general and the heart of a chef. Along the way, the two explore the deeper meaning of food, not just as nourishment but as dignity, and why even in the darkest moments, it’s still important to slow down and savor life.

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

• 0:00Trevor Noah?

  This episode is a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know Apple Card is the only credit card designed for iPhone? That's right, it lives on your iPhone in the Wallet app and you get daily cash back on every purchase. And because fees don't help you, Apple Card doesn't have any. So if your credit card isn't Apple Card, maybe it should be. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City branch. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from seventeen point four nine percent to twenty seven point seven four percent, based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January one, twenty twenty six. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com.

• 0:46Trevor Noah?

  You land in the wrong place, in a football field in Jamaica. Here are people coming to the helicopter. You don't know their intentions, they don't know your intentions. And you trust that you can get them to sort of join your mission even in the few moments that you've been with them. Where did you learn that? And then, and, and, and what do you think we should all be learning about? How to trust people that we don't even know?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  It was twenty ten Haiti and I'm cooking there in a couple of, of, of places, you know. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes, the poor of the poor lost their homes and so was all these little villages that were being created, temporary housing.

• 1:25Trevor Noah?

  This is after the earthquake?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  After the earthquake. And I would cook in, I was, that day was beans, a lot of beans, they were in season, I bought, I would buy every day. This is the early days, I was in the kitchen when it was me and two friends.

• 1:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  And I make these huge pots with the help of local woman of beans. And at the end, with the help of the translator, they speak beautiful Creole there. And they come to me and they say, Jose, they, they love that you are feeding them here every day, but they want to tell you that they don't eat the beans the way you could burn them. And I'm like, man, they couldn't tell me before. And, and then I say, okay, how do you want them? And there you have this Twister Michelin chef. And they began singing and we began smashing the beans until it became a puree. It took it took two more hours or three. But at the end, you used to see the joy when the beans were finished. They sang amazing traditional Haitian songs through the process.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  And they were doing the the the poa congo and this black bean stew with the rice, the way they eat them, which is not a soup, is not a cream, is not a sauce, is something else. But that's the way they eat it.

• 2:35Trevor Noah?

  That is the way they eat the food.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  And and this to me, obviously, we are was a big lesson because that's also the dignity we give. Now, even that's a my hope poor people may be, everybody has a way to eat.

• 2:48Trevor Noah?

  That's beautiful, man.

• 2:55Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 3:01Trevor Noah?

  Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heat waves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love. From Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy, to Dirty Dancing, to Top Gun Maverick, from Alias to The X-Files. It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 3:36Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info on travel days or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry, Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 4:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, booked forever, forever. This episode is brought to you by Verizon. Pretty much every brand offers rewards these days. But most of them, let's be honest, they aren't that rewarding. Well, starting now, Verizon's doing rewards different. Rewards you'll love all year round for every customer. They're introducing Verizon Dollars, which gives you cash back every month just for being a customer. That's it. Plus, you have the flexibility to use those glorious new dollars how you want. Shop with Verizon. Get gift cards for the brands that you love or transfer them to our partner programs. They're also introducing Verizon Shine, where now, every Monday,

• 5:07Trevor Noah?

  you can snag once-in-a-lifetime experiences like NFL tickets across the globe, all-inclusive music festivals, and the chance to meet your favorite stars. Plus, daily drops, tickets, and pre-sale access all week. So, let's recap. Cash back in your pocket every month with Verizon Dollars and epic experiences from Verizon Shine every Monday all year round. Now, those are some rewarding rewards. Only from Verizon. Enroll today at Verizon.com.

• 5:42Trevor Noah?

  Let's do it. Vamos. Andale. Where do I find you coming from?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  I was at Austin, South by Southwest.

• 5:50Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah? What were you doing there?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I went to, well, was the excuse to promote this. Quite frankly, I don't know where I go sometimes. But I was doing something with Delta and Rivian, so.

• 6:06Trevor Noah?

  With Delta and Rivian. You know, I was thinking on my way here. You have one of the most interesting lives in that I don't know where you've, like, like, like, were you ever a fan of Batman growing up?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:22Trevor Noah?

  You never knew if you were meeting Bruce Wayne or if you were meeting Batman? Because Bruce Wayne was coming back from like a gala dinner with the richest people in the world. And then Batman was coming back from, you know, just having fought the Joker or Penguin in one of the worst parts of Gotham. I feel like that's, that's your life. When I think of Chef Jose Andres, I go. This man could either be coming to my podcast from a disaster somewhere in the world, or he's going there after this podcast, or he's coming from like one of the most exciting, luxurious experiences, or he's going there afterwards. Do you ever think about how how extreme your life is in that regard?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it yeah, it feels that way at times and and is no easy at times. Um, it's enjoyable, but I've been going in through the the zone of, like my wife always says, when I come back from any any missions, I'm

• 7:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  It takes me weeks to put my brain back to normal.

• 7:23Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Like I get absent or I'm on the phone all the time.

• 7:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  I keep checking what's going on, where the people are left behind. And and but that's life itself, right? Uh, that's why that's why um I enjoy every single second, a glass of wine of uh the best wine in the world.

• 7:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Or a wine from a small winery that the wine is under five dollar and is delicious because has a great people with great pride. But and I love my my my my cooking. My way to to to feel holy is you get in the kitchen, go to the market,

• 8:06Speaker 01

  chop, making sure I have all the ingredients I want, and I start cooking all day. And the way for me to give love to people um can be very fattening because it's in the it's in the world in the form of of food. But I have I I have a hard time uh forgetting um at least one part of my brain is always active in that sense.

• 8:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Since the days I began, like so many other people around the world, volunteering in a soup kitchen in Washington DC.

• 8:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that how it all began?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Very much, uh nineteen ninety-three. This is Andrew Kitchen, a fascinating place. But then then cooking is one thing, but then when you go on the shelters or on the streets and you even engage in conversations and even people you get to know.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  And but then I go back to my beautiful house in my apartment or my beautiful new home. And I know it's gonna be people sleeping on the street that day. And sometimes you feel that moment that life is like a lottery, that some of us, we bought the winning ticket.

• 9:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And other people, other people don't even know there is a lottery.

• 9:16Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  And life sometimes can be complicated like that. Uh, because sometimes people are put through moments in their life and maybe, maybe they made a wrong decision and sometimes it's not even making the wrong decision.

• 9:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's not even a decision.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  You didn't even had an opportunity to make a decision. I had a lot of chances to make decisions and people that support me through those decisions.

• 9:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And this was in DC, in the streets, but right now, you know, I have a hard time. You's uh forgetting about what's going on in Ukraine, forgetting what is going on in Gaza, places I've seen. And and your brain sometimes is kind of going through. You cannot suffer like the way those people are suffering.

• 9:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  But the part of your brain is almost trying to, to maybe understand what they're going through and it's it's difficult to forget sometimes. And and and that's why every time it's a moment to enjoy, but also, also I like to enjoy it because life is too short not to enjoy every moment. You have the opportunity to do so. Uh, even the people in those areas, uh, you know, in Gaza, recently we reached a million meals a day, with more than eighty kitchens and was like a celebration.

• 10:28Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Everybody was celebrating. I know there's some people that were, why are you celebrating? The people of Gaza are going through. Like, well, we, I'm not celebrating, they are celebrating.

• 10:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  People forget that even in those moments of mayhem, people need celebrations because it's the only thing that carries them.

• 10:47Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  To live another day.

• 10:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Thinking that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that there is hope. That things may be terrible today, but things can maybe one day go back to where they were before.

• 11:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I think the biggest misconception people have about other people who are struggling is that they don't have the full access to their humanity. Do you know what I mean? Like, people don't think that like a homeless person has friends. People don't think that somebody in a disaster zone has emotions. They they tell a joke, they laugh with their friends. They and and you you literally see this on the ground. I like some of the conversations, you know, I've had with you have taken me on on on the most beautiful, wild, you know, and and then sometimes sad rides because I I love the fact that you brought up the lottery tickets, alright? Because we we don't even get a chance to buy it. Like, where are you born? Who are you born to?

• 11:45Trevor Noah?

  And then a bomb drops on where you live or a hurricane hits or an earthquake. And all of a sudden, your whole world is gone. You know, like, like, literally, your whole world has changed overnight. And now you are the person that you never thought you would be. And you don't have the most basic thing, which is a meal. And that's where like Jose Andres comes in. I I genuinely am always fascinated by your world because of that.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Well, obviously, in the old days, it used to be me because the organization was only one person. But now the organization, I would say, you know, we are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

• 12:21Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  I will say that World Central Kitchen is the biggest organization in the history of mankind. It's it's bigger than any government, bigger than any any bigger than the UN, bigger than any corporation. And when people ask me, well, I think you are overdoing it. And I say, no, I'm not, because every every restaurant and every food truck belongs to World Central Kitchen. Every every horse, boat, helicopter, plane belongs to World Central Kitchen. Every gas station belongs to World Central Kitchen. Every canoe belongs to World Central Kitchen. Every person that you see is part of World Central Kitchen.

• 13:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  What happened? They don't know it yet. But in the way we arrive is like, in an emergency, it's like almost you have to take ownership of everything you see and put everything you see at the service of bringing aid to people. And when you think that way. Everything is much simpler. Because you come with the software, with the heart, with the brain, but it's all about software. What can we do with what we have?

• 13:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Not waiting for things to come, but what can we do with what we have on hand? And that way you start providing relief. Uh, day one. In Gaza, before even we had the huge quantities of, of food, uh, we realized that was fish farms that they were not, uh, working anymore very well, and the fish was going to be dying in few days. And we began buying from that fish farms. And we were giving grilled tilapia fish to everybody we were trying to help in Gaza. You see, we, World Central Kitchen adapts. Uh, the, the world is always gonna be full of issues, um, of problems.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  But we have to start changing our mind and see every situation as a way for you to come with a new idea. As a way for you to serve, to, to be creative enough, to don't follow the plan. Because very often, life, even if everybody's trying to put us in a, in a jacket, and this is the plan, and you have to follow the plan of life, very often, life doesn't follow that plan.

• 14:37Trevor Noah?

  No, it doesn't.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Because we've all been trained through that plan, what we do, we freeze in adversity. What we need to start doing is embracing the complexities that lives puts in front of us, in them like a test of life, and start getting ready and trained to adapt to the circumstances where every chance is an opportunity for you to show the, the hidden side of yourself you didn't even knew existed. We all have that power.

• 15:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  We only need to believe in that power.

• 15:07Trevor Noah?

  So, so help me understand how you do it on, on day one. Like, what, what, I, I know there are some places in the world where you've, you've been with World Central Kitchen, and you've been feeding people for a very long time because it's an ongoing disaster or, or a situation. But what's, what's the most recent where something happened acutely, like a, like an earthquake or a hurricane or something like that? And then just, just walk me through like the, because I realized I don't, I didn't, I don't, I don't know this about your world. I understand that you're there, I understand that you set up kitchens, I understand that you help feed the people, you get locals to cook the food, and I wanna talk more about the why around that, but. But what do you, what do you do like from the very first moment that a disaster strikes? So what was the most recent one that you had to, that you had to jump into?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Well, uh, uh, Jamaica was, was the latest one.

• 15:56Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  The hurricane hit the western part of the island, the area that probably everybody knows. Um, away from Kingston, the capital, which is, uh, Montego Bay and Negril, Blue Fields. And, and it's a part I kind of knew, knew well because a couple of times I went to, on vacation invited by friends in the southern part of Jamaica, uh, Blue Fields. And when that happens, um, it's kind of, I was, I was thinking to escape that hurricane because very much I've been in every single hurricane, category three or, or above, uh, in the last 15 years.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And it's like, okay, I'm gonna take a vacation on this one, which is great news because means we have great teams that know what to do.

• 16:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  But kind of, uh, my daughter Inez was like, I think I'm gonna go. So this time I didn't go on my own. I kind of was following my daughter.

• 16:52Trevor Noah?

  That's amazing.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Which by the way, she stayed there over, she stayed there over a month. Um, so I landed and I joined the teams. Uh, by the time I landed in Kingston, we were already feeding even without having boots on the ground because this is the wonderful thing of chefs and restaurants that you are only a phone call away from knowing somebody that knows every chef and every restaurant anywhere in the planet.

• 17:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but, but this is what I don't understand. Like, help, help me out. You see, you said we were feeding, we were already feeding people, but this, this is what I don't get. We're watching the news, most of us. We see this terrible news that a hurricane has struck Jamaica. We see that it's ravaging the country. It's destroying, you know, infrastructure.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  But really.

• 17:35Trevor Noah?

  And then the number one thing that starts to happen is people don't have meals. People don't have food, right? You said by the time you land there, your organization's already feeding the people.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, at the smallest scale.

• 17:45Trevor Noah?

  No, but still, no, but I'm still trying to understand.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  I know they're already doing hundreds, few thousands of meals, 24 hours.

• 17:51Trevor Noah?

  Okay, but explain that process to me. I, I really want to understand on like a logistical level. Where does it even begin? Like, where does the food come from? Who cooks the food? How does the food get to the people?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Total destruction, obviously, is never total destruction. It's something that may be functioning. And we always, now, as more and more that people know Worsendra Kitchen, sometimes even it'll be a restaurant that all of a sudden has the sign of Worsendra Kitchen, but they are not even part of us.

• 18:25Trevor Noah?

  And that becomes your HQ.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Kind of almost there. But this happens in very beautiful ways. It's like, oh, my God. Jose, we are already there. Is somebody, you know, or I call the teams, is somebody? Who is feeding there? Because I already got a tweet that we are feeding there. We don't know who the people is. That's the beauty of it.

• 18:47Trevor Noah?

  That's amazing.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Means everybody has a call to action. They don't need to do it with us. They can do it on their own. But it's so, somehow, Worsendra Kitchen is becoming this this very unique thing, like, yeah, like the abandonment. The abandonment call. It's an idea that takes over very quickly. But obviously, we are already near and we start moving in. We start moving in. In the case of Jamaica, the roads were very complicated. The traffic pattern makes everything very complicated. Between the trees down and the electric poles down. Jamaica in that part, fairly complicated to move around. Very narrow roads. And all of a sudden, everybody, between the people are trying to help,

• 19:33Speaker 01

  the people are trying to leave, the people are trying to check their loved ones. It's chaos. And if you have to be doing anything from supporting hospitals to food to water, complicates the whole thing. And especially as you began increasing the number of meals. One thousand, five thousand, twenty thousand, hundred thousand. So we need helicopters. Why? Because with helicopters in a very mountainous kind of area of Jamaica, we are able to land in the middle of somewhere. And from that helicopter. Already with locals that we find or cars of hours that they are sent six hours before waiting for the helicopter.

• 20:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  You know, if we were waiting all day for the food to be ready, then it takes forever to get to the people. We can go in the middle of the night where it's not so much traffic. We are already waiting in place, the cooks already have time to start early in the morning, preparing the tens of thousands of meals. They fill up the helicopters, we already know where the helipads are, the cars are waiting there. The helicopter lands, we fill up the cars, we start going into the communities for first time, is what we call first contact. But there we start meeting the local leaders. Um, there can be a pastor, can be somebody that becomes the unlikely leader of his community.

• 20:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden with this first contact, we tell them, and tomorrow we'll come back. We already get an idea of what are the needs and sometimes the helicopter takes a medical evacuation because we go back empty. Why not to use it to move people to.

• 21:08Trevor Noah?

  So that you don't have an empty leg going one way. Okay.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And this begins happening hundreds of times a day. Before you know, we understand the real need, we are able to increase the number of meals.

• 21:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Accordingly, and we will use every, every possibility and, and, and resource. In, in Kingston, we were buying from every bakery that was making the Jamaican patties.

• 21:32Trevor Noah?

  Oh yeah, the little patties, yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  The patties who are like the best, became the best way to start delivering food quick and fast.

• 21:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Then we began moving, we saw which one are the restaurants closer to ground zero. That your chicken place, the other place that specialize in this special rice. Okay, uh, how many can you do? Five thousand? Okay. When we see that they do five thousand, well, hey, can you increase to ten thousand? Uh, uh, and we do the same with many other restaurants. We will open our own kitchens because we like to have also wall center kitchen.

• 22:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Uh, um, uh, give us a lot of power to be able to deliver food twenty four seven.

• 22:08Trevor Noah?

  Right, right, right.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  But between the local partners, the local restaurants that is great because we began channeling money through the local economy. Buying locally, not trying to bring food from overseas, but even if the food comes from, from overseas. Because Jamaica imports food, but also they have a lot of farms, we make sure that also the guys that do. All, all the know-how of importing, distribution. We began ordering from them because we are telling them, I know the country seems is stopping, but actually, we don't need you to stop. We need you to keep doing what you do with this, helping us put in place all the systems of distribution. So things will look like normal, quicker and faster. So in a way, what we are not only people that cook,

• 22:51Speaker 01

  but people that we began the redistribution, the logistics of making sure that things go back to normal, faster and quicker. This is the way that through one plate of food, we kind of ignite this kind of willingness of everybody to say, oh, man, we're gonna put this country up and running quicker than anybody. And then everybody joins in our very simple mission, which is food to everybody as quick as we can. In the present, something magic happens. We began helping the fishermen. We buy them boats. We buy them nets. We buy them whatever they lost.

• 23:23Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  The fishermen, before you know it, they are fishing quicker and faster than if we didn't help them.

• 23:29Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, we are buying fish from them. All of a sudden, we are putting that very poor fishing village already up and running in the middle of the Mariana Sea. This is very much what, what Central Kitchen does.

• 23:43Trevor Noah?

  You know, when you're speaking, I was, I was thinking to myself, there's a conversation I had with Radka Bregman. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's a, he's a Dutch writer. Really, really fascinating thinker. And, and one of the things, he, he was the guy who went to Davos and he said in the room, he said to all the billionaires there, why are we talking about solving the world's problems as if not paying taxes is not one of the problems, you know, and he talked to the room about that. And, and the conversation we had, and it's an organization that he started now, is, he said, one of the biggest issues we have in the world is you have some of the greatest thinkers who are being sucked into industries that are really meaningless, you know? He said, you've got great thinkers and they come out of the best schools,

• 24:24Trevor Noah?

  but all they do is go into a world where it's like, it's about making money, but not making an impact. And while you were speaking now, I, I've never noticed this about you, and I've known you for a long time, my friend. I really have. I was like, this man is a general. It's just, thank God you didn't go into like war. But you went to like, you went into like the war of feeding people instead of like bombing. That doesn't make sense. Everything you said to me sounds like a general working, trying to fight a war, but it's like a good war. You go, I need these people on the ground. I need to set up that kitchen there. I need the helicopters coming in and taking the people who are injured out. I need helicopters bringing in supplies. I need to figure out a way to fix the roads. Let's get the locals involved. Let's move. It's amazing. Like, where did you, where did you get that from?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Um, I, I, I did service in the military of Spain.

• 25:10Trevor Noah?

  Maybe this is it.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I served in the, I was in the Spanish Navy. I, for me, this was very important in my life.

• 25:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I was cooking for the admiral and I told him, I'd love to cook for you. It's an honor in his house. But my dream was going in a boat and not on any boat. I want to go in the Juan Sebastián del Cano. Name after the first person that finished the circumnavigation of the earth after Miguel and passed away. Was his second in command. So the boat is a four-mast tall ship. Um, that had three hundred crew members and trains, the midshipmen of the Spanish Navy. He put me on that boat after my request. First time I left Europe, first time I visited Avellan Ivory Coast and I had cajun in the streets of Avellan.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  First time I visited Rio de Janeiro and I remember visiting the favelas and the fascinating world that opened and my first caperinha and visiting Dominican Republic.

• 26:13Trevor Noah?

  That first caperinha is something.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 26:15Trevor Noah?

  Let me tell you something.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 26:16Trevor Noah?

  That first caperinha is something.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Changes your life forever.

• 26:18Trevor Noah?

  Let me tell you something. I don't think there's a person on this planet who doesn't remember their first caperinha. The, the sugar, the lime, the way it hits, there's something in a caperinha.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  So fresh.

• 26:29Trevor Noah?

  There's something in that drink.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got it. Cachaza.

• 26:32Trevor Noah?

  There's something in a caperinha.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Cachaza to rule the world, I'm telling you. So Dominican Republic, first time I came to America, Pensacola. One of the five flags, they celebrate the five flags. Uh, one of them, the Spanish-American flag is like, okay, I belong here. Uh, New York, um, Ellis Island, Lady Liberty, that really, um, marked me. But what really had a big effect on me was this way of against currents and winds. Three hundred people. Uh, working together, you could go through storms, you could get anywhere you wanted. If you kind of follow this common goal of working as one. Wow. So that my, my time in the military service in, in the Spanish Navy was really

• 27:19Speaker 01

  uh, in this way was life changing in more ways than one. And obviously my mom was a nurse, my father was a nurse. That I always saw, we saw during the pandemic, but I, I grew up in watching all these people that to me were like. Right. Superheroes even doing little things, like reading a, a little book to a child because his family, their family uh, didn't arrive to the hospital and he was alone and, and, and they will go. Right. Extra duty. Yeah. On things that is not written, this is your job, but they will do it. And I think I grew up in that environment. You know, Clara Barton, the, the founder of the Missing Soldiers. Uh, that she found what happened to over two thousand uh, soldiers during the Civil War and then created the American Red Cross.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Her house, her apartment just was found uh, thirty meters across my restaurant in downtown DC and and I got fascinated by this woman that she was a nurse during the Civil War, but then she created these two organizations with her same nodal edge, but she had such an impet, only putting her skills uh, in more creative ways. Yeah. Uh, to help others there tells you, man, we can all do that, you know, um. Uh, and then you tell me where, where I got it. I just got it watching and learning. I went Haiti. Uh, because I watched Katrina, what happened, not in all Katrina, not in all New Orleans. Know what happened to the poor people at the Lo Nine and we saw the images. But forget all New Orleans, only the Superdome. We left over a week.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Twenty thousand Americans almost forgotten with no food and water. Wow. On an arena, my friend, it's not a place where we go to see a great comedian perform or where we go to see our basketball team uh, win a ring or where we go to see Taylor Swift. No, an arena, a stadium is a gigantic restaurant that entertains with comedians, musicians and sports. It takes a second. Going to fit everybody. That's why Wazandra Kitchen we use in many occasions.

• 29:18Trevor Noah?

  You try and find central places.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  A lot of big stadiums.

• 29:21Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  In earthquakes, obviously, you need baseball because nobody wants to sleep in any place.

• 29:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  So we will use in earthquakes, uh, baseball stadiums because it's no brainer. It's the best.

• 29:33Trevor Noah?

  It's been designed for a lot of people to come in, a lot of people to go out. There's a, there's a lot of spaces.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  And to provide a lot of services that is beyond food and water. And, and we've done that. And then live, you keep learning. You keep, um. Going through the punches and every situation is a moment that you leave every mission with more experience than before. Obviously for me, um, you know, in, in Jamaica on the second day, because we began moving, it's a lot of moving pieces. And we had the big Chinook, this huge helicopter.

• 30:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Um, almost you have six, seven people running the helicopter and we had like three, four thousand mils. And they were picking me up somewhere around the south uh of, of Jamaica. They picked me up uh, uh, up in the middle of the mountain. Uh, near Blue Fields. And then from there, they were supposed to be taking me to, uh, to, to another town. Um, actually, uh, was Montego Bay, but for some reason they send the wrong coordinates and we're landing in this. Looked like a football stadium, a, a football field.

• 30:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  In the open, surrounded by palm trees. Already was getting dark. We had to drop the food because we had to go back to base. And all of a sudden, I don't see any of the cars of Wazandra Kitchen. They were supposed to be a meeting point. So people will help me download the four, five thousand mils and then this with them. And we land there, is nobody there. And people began coming around this helicopter. And the situation got a little bit tense. It's first, first arrival to Negril.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  And I don't know, man. I, I, I began like, hey guys, why? I need you, I need you all to organize. We're gonna do the food, but please don't, don't come close to the helicopter. This is screaming in to the air. And and the only way I got everybody kind of work as one is we we began singing. One love.

• 31:22Trevor Noah?

  No ways.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  One and and everybody kind of calm down.

• 31:26Trevor Noah?

  Let's get together.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  We got like thirty forty of the strong man, they help us download the helicopter. I didn't have to play, we even, we already make contact through a hotel, but the helicopter didn't wanna leave me there, but I couldn't leave all the food there without organizing the delivery of the food without creating chaos. The helicopter left, I stayed there. And the people even in a tense situation, some of them hungry and and anyway, when it's aid coming can be dramatic at times, but people were amazing. Some police arrived. Everybody was calm. We keep singing a couple more of times. We deliver all the meals without almost any chaos.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  You see, uh, in these situations, you kind of try to learn from previous moments. I was in Haiti, I saw one time somebody with very good will, the drop in a began giving food. Without thinking that people will start running and sometimes you have children and then things happen.

• 32:27Trevor Noah?

  Now there's a stampede.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And you don't know those things until you're now in the middle of them. Happened in Bahamas where people were trying to leave Abakua, even with the military there. Sometimes the situation is tense when people living three, four, five days without knowing.

• 32:41Trevor Noah?

  Food, yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Food and what is happening and they wanna leave and and and in those moments, you you realize that um. If you come with food every day, if you come with water every day, people know they can trust you, everybody becomes calm. Everybody becomes.

• 32:58Trevor Noah?

  That's interesting.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Part of the solution. Because when you are desperate, if I was desperate to feed my children.

• 33:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  I will do whatever it takes to feed my children.

• 33:06Trevor Noah?

  Because you don't know if there'll be another opportunity to get that food.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  But when, that's why it's so important to be fast, to be quick, to be there next to the people. Because then they know you are with them. And then everything becomes so much easier. Everybody is helping each other. Everybody is looking after each other. Uh, nobody is pushing anybody anymore.

• 33:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Uh, this is the dignity we need to be giving to the people. And that's why for me, it's always so important that we arrive quick, that we arrive first. And that from the first second, we show that it's somebody there looking after them. And that we will not leave until things go back to normal, days, weeks, a month from now. And this is what Volzhentag kitchen tries to do. And that's why for us. It's so important to be first now because we wanna claim we're first.

• 33:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  No, because if we are, if we are early, we understand better than anybody what happens.

• 34:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And then every decision we make is a good decision on behalf of the people.

• 34:06Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere because we got more what now after this. Fall has a way of turning an ordinary night into a reason to gather. Whether it is a football game, a Halloween party, or a dinner on a cold evening. Whole Foods Market makes those moments easier with comfort food, seasonal treats, and quality standards built into every aisle. Start with a Whole Foods Market Kitchen's lasagna, packaged soup, or a build your own family meal from the prepared foods counter, which feeds four for thirty five dollars. For game day, add made in house wings, frozen pizzas, and three sixty five brand chips and dips.

• 34:50Trevor Noah?

  The limited time bakery lineup brings the season home with pumpkin blondies, apple brown butter cookies, and chocolate bourbon pecan pie. And with no artificial sweeteners like sucralose, artificial colors like red dye number forty, or high fructose corn syrup store wide, nothing gets in the way of the flavors you came for. Shop fall flavors with higher standards at Whole Foods Markets. Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heatwaves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love. From Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy,

• 35:33Trevor Noah?

  to Dirty Dancing, to Top Gun Maverick. From Alias to The X-Files. It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 35:49Trevor Noah?

  I think one of the things you realize when you start caring about clothes is that simple doesn't have to mean basic. Because a t-shirt is a t-shirt. Until you find the right t-shirt. Ooh, then suddenly you're talking about the cut, the fit, the weight, the way it falls on your body. Then you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Look at the sleeve. And that's what I've really enjoyed about Quince. One of my favorite things is their Pima Cotton Lux Touch t-shirts. And it's become one of those pieces I keep reaching for. The cotton has this really smooth, premium feel to it. The fit is great and it just lays really nicely. And I think that's what you sometimes take for granted with simple clothes. When they're done really well, they become the foundation of an entire outfit.

• 36:34Trevor Noah?

  You can throw on a jacket, a sweater, whatever you want. But everything works because you started with the right thing. That's what I like about Quince. It feels premium without feeling like you're trying too hard. It's effortless. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. Hello over there. Oh, and if Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was What Now with Trevor Noah. It's the best way to support the show.

• 37:21Trevor Noah?

  I can't help but think people also feel like they matter when somebody shows up early. You know, you look at it in society. One of the worst things that can happen to any community is being over policed and under policed. Having police that clamp down on people's civil liberties, but then also not having police show up when they actually need them to show up. And the under policed one is one that a lot of people don't understand because they go like, oh, I mean, is it annoying? It's like, no, it shows people that they don't matter. And it's interesting hearing you say this. When you show up as soon as something has happened, even though you still have to scale up the meals,

• 38:03Trevor Noah?

  you still have to go to 100 meals, then 1,000 meals, then 100,000 meals, then a million meals. Just you being there as soon as the disaster has happened has showed the people that they matter. But then I guess the question that comes to my mind is,

• 38:17Trevor Noah?

  why do you need to exist? Like, I know this is maybe a naive question, but why are governments not able to do this, right? Because you, as Jose Andres, have created this organization. You have many, many, many, many, many hundreds of thousands of people helping you on different levels. So some are permanently in your organization. Others join the organization, you know, on the ground. And then some are auxiliary, like you said, the fishermen in Jamaica, who now are part of it because you buy them nets, you buy them boats. They sell you fish, but they're part of the operation. But like, from your experience, why can't governments do this?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  The younger Jose, I will be much quicker to criticize. But I began realizing the wonderful people that are in those positions.

• 39:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  In FEMA in the United States that, you know. And they do much more than even people are aware. I will do certain changes that will make FEMA more efficient. And believe me, God knows I've been trying. I've been trying with few administrations now. And I've not been lucky enough. But I can tell you the people care. USAID, which I think is one of the worst decisions America has done as a country. Because genuinely, America is a country that cares. And used to wipe out USAID, that is one of the best ways for the United States of America show the power of self-power. I mean, next to the people. I think it's not been a very smart decision.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  And I don't think President Trump has been well advised.

• 39:56Trevor Noah?

  About the value of it.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  But the issue is that we all have the government we deserve. But we all have to work towards to have the best government we can. Wasn't Dragic an excuse in a way? Because government agencies, it's true that sometimes become too big. Sometimes become too big that then move very slow. In emergencies, you have to move quick and fast. You cannot have all these manuals that by the time you finish the manual is like, okay, exactly what I'm able to do.

• 40:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  From who orders the water? Who pays for the water? Who orders the food? Who, you know, in food and water, for example, I saw many examples. We deliver huge amounts of water to Puerto Rico.

• 40:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  I even remember doing a tweet thanking President Trump for activating that water. But then we realized it was almost $10 million of water in a tarmac in an airport.

• 40:56Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  A month later, then nobody, then nobody delivered.

• 41:00Trevor Noah?

  Nobody had actually delivered the water.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  That nobody delivered, so. Things get lost in translation sometimes. Um, I've seen how we do M R Es, Meals Ready to Eat, which Meals Ready to Eat are a wonderful um, human invention, which are these meals that one hundred years later, the meals will be okay and you can eat them and nothing will happen to you.

• 41:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  But they were created for soldiers in the battlefield, going in, away from anywhere, anywhere where they couldn't cook and they will have these packs and will be enough food for one, two, three, four, five days. We have this feeling like we bring the, the, the M R Es and we drop them and we claim we, we have a million meals, but sometimes we drop them in the fire stations. Well, the, the, the fire, the, the firemen, the firemen are people to take care of rescues, of stopping fires, of, of helping people in floodings. They're not the people.

• 41:54Trevor Noah?

  To distribute the food.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Are gonna be distributing the food, period. And they shouldn't.

• 41:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Why? Because when it's a fire, you send firefighters. When it's a earthquake, you say, you send search and rescue teams with dogs.

• 42:04Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  When it's food, you should be sending the people that know better the logistics of food from top to bottom. And those are people in the restaurant industry, period. So that's why it was Central Kitchen. So I come here, no, not so much to, to show the weaknesses of the system in countries around the world.

• 42:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  But we come to support those systems.

• 42:26Trevor Noah?

  Okay, I hear what you're saying.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Because I know.

• 42:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  That inside the governments is not people thinking about that, because it's not people thinking like that. I remember in, in, in Bahamas, we did almost four and a half million meals, sixteen islands north of Nassau. We were landing in sixteen islands every day, six helicopters, two hydroplanes. We went, because there was no airports north, we had a boat with two helipads, because we had to refuel. Um, we brought water filtration systems. But we were there before the hurricane. Uh, nobody invited us, we went because we know the people of Bahamas were going to need us.

• 43:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, right.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  And I remember going to, with the team, we were there already, we were like ten, and we go to what is the logistics, the hurricane emergency of, of Bahamas and happens the president was there. Not like he has to know what Volzhandragichin is or who Volzhandres was, but he was coming towards us and then he stopped, "Hey, how are you, how are you?" And I used to tell him, "I'm Volzhandres, this is the team of Volzhandragichin, and I promise you, we're gonna feed you people, don't worry about food and water." It was nice, he shake hands, "Thank you, thank you," he left. You know, I think he left thinking, "Who are those naughty guys with a colorful logo?"

• 43:45Speaker 01

  What was very beautiful that we reached eighty thousand meals a day fairly quickly. We did multiple medical evacuations. Again, we were landing in sixteen islands every single day. The only way was doing it through helicopter because the islands were covered in water. A month later, five weeks later, he happens, came to visit the United Nations and was a gathering of all the people of Bahamas. And happens is the first time I leave Bahamas and I'm here and they invited us to go. And we are there in the back of room, I wanted to see what the president, how he will talk to his people. You become, you want to become part of the story, to what the people are going through,

• 44:28Speaker 01

  how they see what's happening. And out of the blue, he arrives, he's about to say something, but then he begins walking away from the mic and comes to where the Volzhandragichin team and myself we were. He came, he puts his hands on my two shoulders and he said, "You know, you said that you were going to help feed my people and I wanna thank Volzhandragichin because you guys did it." And I told him, "Well, we didn't do it, Mr. President, the people of Bahamas help us feed the people of Bahamas, so thank you to you and to all your people." And that's what we do, you see, we go to cover the blind spots of governments.

• 45:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand that.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Because sometimes things are overwhelming, happened in Acapulco.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Um, they were not even letting us go into Acapulco. It happens that we were already in because we had helicopters and we were landing in the golf course. And was the military was doing a okay job, but the military don't have experience in fitting. Before you knew, we were doing, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of meals a day in a town, a city that got wiped out and especially on the water. That's what we do. We come to support the local governments. We come to support the countries and hopefully in the process, one day, I think we're getting enough awareness that we are okay and good at what we do.

• 45:55Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  That we will have rewrite what should be the emergency systems. That's a matter what it is, hurricanes or fires on.

• 46:05Trevor Noah?

  This is like best practices on how.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Be next to the people as quick as fast as we can. That's what we did in Ukraine. That's what we did in Lebanon, in Gaza. That's what we did in Israel.

• 46:15Trevor Noah?

  How, how do you, how do you think you, you, you, you built the trust? It seems effortless, but I, I, I, I'm sure it's lessons that you learned, you know? When I think of governments trying to help, you know, and I mean trying to, they're supposed to do it, but, but they'll often get bogged down, you know, when I think of that $10 million worth of water that was supposed to go to Puerto Rico and then never leave the tarmac. I can't help but think about people who then go, but where, where's the water going? And how do we know it's going to the right place? And you know what? If people are stealing this water and what if? And you see this everywhere in the world. Sometimes the argument against helping people is that the help won't necessarily get there or they'll be wasted or somebody will steal or.

• 46:57Trevor Noah?

  But, but you seem to have this, this, this trust and a, and a different type of attitude around like the people, even in the story you're talking about with like the Jamaicans on the ground. You land in the wrong place, in a football field in Jamaica. Here are people coming to the helicopter. You don't know their intentions, they don't know your intentions. And you trust that you can get them to sort of join your mission, even in the few moments that you've been with them. Where did you learn that? And then, and, and, and what do you think we should all be learning about? How to trust people that we don't even know?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  It was twenty ten Haiti, and I'm cooking there in a couple of, of, of places, you know. Hundreds of thousands lost their homes, the poor of the poor lost their homes. And so was all these little villages that were being created temporary housing.

• 47:46Trevor Noah?

  This is after the earthquake?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  After the earthquake. And I would cook in, I was, that day was beans, a lot of beans, they were in season. I bought, I would buy every day. This is the early days, I was in the kitchen when it was me and two friends. I make these huge pots with the help of local woman of beans. And at the end, with the help of the translator, they speak beautiful Creole there. And they come to me and they say, Jose, they, they love that you are feeding them here every day, but they want to tell you that they don't eat the beans the way you prepared them. And I'm like, man, they couldn't tell me before. And, and then I say, okay, how do you want them? And there you have this two-star Michelin chef.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  And, and they began singing and we began smashing the beans until it became a puree. It took, it took two more hours or three. But at the end, you used to see the joy when the beans were finished. They sang amazing traditional Haitian songs through the process. And they were doing the, the, the poa congo and this black bean stew with the rice, the way they eat them, which is not a soup, is not a cream, is not a sauce, is something else. But that's the way they eat it.

• 48:56Trevor Noah?

  That is the way they eat the food.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  And, and this to me, obviously, we are, was a big lesson, because that's also the dignity we give, no? Even, that's how I hope poor people may be. Everybody has a way to eat. You see it when I go out in the streets in the purists. It's people that like it more spicy, people less spicy. It's people that, I don't know, peel this rim right to left or left to right. And it's certain things that is, is fascinating. That's a matter who you are, with money or no money. Um. You can be as poor as poor you may be. But that you're poor doesn't mean you don't have the same dignity that anybody else you have.

• 49:37Trevor Noah?

  I used to think that, you know, when I would watch, um. You know, growing up in South Africa, I would see all these videos of aid coming to Africa. And it would always be, you know, the military dropping giant like crates, those pellets of random.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  It's a parachute mentality.

• 49:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, you drop the pellets and then the people. And and I I genuinely remember saying this, but I would like say this to my friends when we'd be watching the news or whatever, I'd go. Who who chose that food? And I didn't mean it in like a in a disparaging way. I was just like, who chose that food? Because it seemed like they were dropping the same food in every single African country. And I know the people needed it.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  And this is the next phase, no? What what Zandra Gitchan does is not fighting hunger. We are really pure emergency.

• 50:17Trevor Noah?

  Okay, yeah, you're going for emergencies.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  No, no, like hunger is an emergency, but when something gets totally upside down.

• 50:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that immediate event.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  That's what we come. That's what we are effective. War Food Program does can always get better, but there's a. Uh, i- i- is organization that does this job for long term hunger. Also, they do emergencies. But but but but they're good in the long term hunger, and that's what Juen created. Uh, obviously for War Food Program, but take a look, no, the issues we face today. Uh, the military spending average twenty twenty five now twenty twenty six is gonna be two point five trillion dollars.

• 50:53Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  To take care of. Total hunger. Uh, will be roughly eighty billion a year. Eighty billion a year.

• 51:04Trevor Noah?

  No, Jose.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  To take care of the of the few hundred millions that they they are going through many of them.

• 51:09Trevor Noah?

  Say those numbers again?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  So it's two point two point five trillion.

• 51:13Trevor Noah?

  Trillion is gonna be spent.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  We only need eighty billion to take care. And eighty billion. Of the two uh point five trillion roughly is under two percent of the military spending. That means that if every country in the world will only put no of their total budget, two percent.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  In a bank, two percent of their military budgets, and we have the right system and organization, we can have the money to take care of the poor people. But then how we do that? I saw it in Haiti perfectly. I was very, very happy of the response of America to Haiti in 2010. But doing good is not enough. Doing good is what my friend Robert Egger, the founder of This Is Central Kitchen, told me over thirty years ago, that charity seems is about the redemption of the giver, when charity must be about the liberation of the receiver. And here is where it gets complicated. And politics require, policy needs to be good, so it becomes good politics.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  We gave so much rice and food for free to Haiti. And really, we gave a lot. So I'm proud as an American, Europe, France, gave a lot. But we gave so much that nobody was buying from the local farmers in Haiti. We put them out of business. That's why a few years later, some of the Haitians, thousands of them that we saw under a bridge on Texas, which by the way, while Central Kitchen was there also, helping feed them. These were some of those farmers that left Haiti because they went through hunger times later, when they ate a stop. And all of the sudden, they began arriving to different parts in America and going to place to place.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  And where they're gonna go, to the richest possible place. Why they leave their home? Because they want only feed their children. Anybody listens to that, you see that then we create problems. Instead of giving so much rice for free, we were supposed to do better investment in, can we buy the rice from the Haitians? And can we give them maybe new equipment so they can even produce more? And can we help them with better water management? Can we help them with better quality fertilizers? All of the sudden, you have entire population of Haitians in the rural areas that with very little investment, we're making them get richer and better, helping Haiti as a country. Versus creating mayhem and chaos.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  So in the way we do international food aid, dramatically has to change. I do believe that everybody listening to us, if we will say...

• 53:57Speaker 01

  My god, with two, three percent of the military spending, we can end total hunger in the world. That then if we do it well, can also help create riches in those countries.

• 54:09Trevor Noah?

  It really is.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Versus keep throwing money at the problem versus investing in long-term solutions. This is where the international organizations, UN, governments dramatically will have to change the way we take care of, of, of, of, of the people, including wars. Uh, because obviously the money is going into wars instead of investing

• 54:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  in education, in food, in health. And right now, I'm very worried that at the end of twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven, we may have a very big hunger, uh, increase. Fifty percent, forty to fifty percent of all the fertilizers that the world uses to produce food, they go through the strata for mousse.

• 54:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 54:54Trevor Noah?

  That's that, that's that tiny little strip of water

• 54:56Speaker 01

  They're a byproduct.

• 54:57Trevor Noah?

  Of the coast of Iran.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  So we're talking about gas. And when we think gas is what moves our cars and our planes and our industry, but also is what moves, creates the energy that moves the humans, which is the food we eat.

• 55:10Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  I'm very worried that because that lack of fertilizers, uh, and not enough investment in fertilizers produced more locally in every part of the world.

• 55:22Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Now also, we're gonna be very dependent from what's going on. And this worries gonna be creating two things, probably a shortage in quantity of food. Uh, but also it's gonna be an increase in the cost of food because also to transport the food is becoming more expensive. And at the end, who is gonna suffer? You and I, even if the rice increases and our sushi increases.

• 55:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  And our beautiful quinoa from Peru and our green tea from Japan increases. Okay, we're gonna be able to, to pay it.

• 55:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  But the vast majority of the people, starting by America in many parts of the world, that increase of food, that may be three, four, five, six percent. For the people with a lot of money, it was absolutely nothing.

• 56:08Trevor Noah?

  Right, doesn't change much.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  But for people that live on dollar, in two, three dollars a day, at the most, like Haiti and other parts of the world, that increase in the cost of food is exponential increases what they spend on on food. Therefore, I'm very worried that this war in the Middle East, many people say unnecessary, with no very clear idea if Iran really developed that nuclear bomb. They say they created, it's gonna make the world hungrier and it's gonna make a lot of people poorer. That's why wars, wars don't make any sense in any way or form. That's a matter how you wanna explain it.

• 56:51Trevor Noah?

  You know, it's interesting when you, when you talk about,

• 56:55Trevor Noah?

  in particular, let's say the story of the Haitians who were, you know, traveling over to to the US. I'll often have this conversation with people who are anti-immigration. And I don't, I don't even have this conversation flippantly. I don't, I don't have it in a, in a, in a mean way. I genuinely try and engage people, but I'll say to them, you're anti-immigration. They go, yes, I think there's too many people flocking across. And I go, I agree with you. I think there are too many people who are trying to come into the United States. There are too many people who are trying to go into South Africa, too many people who are trying to go. But now let's ask ourselves the question, why are there so many people trying to do that?

• 57:38Trevor Noah?

  Contrary to popular belief, most people want to live in their homes. Most people don't wanna go to another country. Most people don't wanna give up everything that has defined them, their language, their music, their food, their culture. They don't want to let it go, but they're forced to let it go. And then I often say to them, I'm like, so why not invest in keeping everybody where they are? You know, we had Mia Motley on the show, on the podcast, and

• 58:07Trevor Noah?

  She really laid it out in one of the most beautiful ways possible. Here you have like the Prime Minister of Barbados, a tiny nation, but her voice has been outsized where she says.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  She's amazing.

• 58:16Trevor Noah?

  She's phenomenal. And she goes, you think that the small nations do not matter in the world. And yet all the big nations are complaining about the people from the small nations, not understanding that they are part of the cause that the small nations have an exodus in the first place, you know? And I see you talking about the one you talk about.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  She has one of the best food policies of any country.

• 58:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, she does.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  It's fascinating.

• 58:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. What about it do you think is fascinating? Like, why you? I'm interested from your perspective.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Because everything is in there. Well, number one, you know, I always said that presidents of the world

• 58:50Speaker 01

  need a food, a national food security advisor.

• 58:55Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I like that. A national food security advisor.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  And understand that food is much more than agriculture. In the United States right now, big percentage, close to half of the corn is produced. Is produced, but not for food, for humans or cattle, which will be great because the corn will feed the cattle and then with the meat, but it's to produce ethanol. So all of a sudden, the USDA, the Secretary of Agriculture, in a way, is also Secretary of Energy. But this has a lot of consequences.

• 59:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  As price of energy goes up.

• 59:34Trevor Noah?

  The price of ethanol goes up.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  The price of corn is gonna go up, the price of meat is gonna, is gonna go up. But then it's deeper than that, right? In America, we have what they call the food stamps is what it's called snaps, more technical.

• 59:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Which is a short term help that the government gives to families that fall behind, lose their jobs. So they need extra money to cover the needs in the table. This is, this is okay, but very often, I saw it during the pandemic in places like Oakland or Baltimore or in the Navajo Nation, that is not money they receive from the government where they live, which is a very poor area.

• 1:00:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  In that poor area, they don't have a place they can spend that money. They have to go to

• 1:00:20Trevor Noah?

  No ways.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Other neighborhood. So.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  The Department of Urban Housing Development should also have to be working alongside the Department of Agriculture, because we need to make sure that every poor neighborhood in America, in the richest country in the world, has markets that if the private sector doesn't do it because they feel they lose money. Yes. Okay, create a partnership with the government, support the private business, which everybody will agree, private business is in the, in the process of making money. Yeah. But if they get the right partnership with the government, now we make almost mandatory by government standards to have markets in every poor neighborhood. Right, right, right. All of a sudden, the people that receive aid from the government, they have places in their own neighborhoods that they can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but then you

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  hire from people that live in that poor neighborhood to create an employment. And you, and then, why you don't let the food stamps be used in the local food trucks and the local diners? Happens that those poor areas don't have restaurants either. So if a mother is working two jobs and it still doesn't make it because she's underpaid, and even with the help of the government to cover the needs of food, if all of the sudden she's coming from work and she can use stamps, the food stamps, to buy from the local food truck because she's too tired to go now and do dinner. All of the sudden, you're helping the mother to take care of the children, the mother, you help her be stronger, you need her a full house because a mother we know has multiple jobs.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  When you are a working mother, you have more jobs than any man ever. And all of a sudden, that money stays also in the poor neighborhood, helps a woman to take care of her family and take care of herself, and you are also giving dignity to that neighborhood that all of a sudden has the store, that sells fresh fruits and vegetables and has the food truck, and maybe a little diner that employs more people. All of the sudden, that poor neighborhood, with the same money that the government is throwing at the problem, the government is investing into the solution. Yeah. You see, every single situation can be explained that way, but it requires very clear mentality, very clear understanding of how food touches everything, from the Department of Defense to immigration.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  And all of the sudden, you make decisions that improves the system. You don't make decisions that make the system worse. If people eat better, they're gonna be healthier. If they're healthier, you're gonna be saving money from

• 1:02:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, your health cost already.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  That we are paying every year to keep Americans on the world healthier. Well, let's invest in the solution from the beginning. Let's not throw money at the problem at the end. So governments, starting by United States, but every other government in the world, they need to start seeing food as something much more important in the functions of a democracy. And we are not taking it seriously enough. That's why in emergencies, food seems is always an afterthought. And that's why then organizations like World Central Kitchen and others, we are the ones trying to solve that lack of thought in the food process.

• 1:03:27Trevor Noah?

  You know, when you say this, there's a few things that come to my mind. One is it's so much easier to sell fear than it is to sell love.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Trevor Noah?

  But one can sustain itself. One can keep growing in a beautiful way. And then the other one degrades what it's touching. If you tell people, we're gonna spend more money on bombs. We're gonna spend more money on missiles to protect our country. They go, I'm in. I get it, I'm in. No one thinks about how much an actual missile costs. They also don't think about how many missiles just miss. They just hit nothing. You know what I mean? They just blow up dirt and nothing. But that money, but that money is gone.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  They hit the school with children in it.

• 1:04:08Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yeah. Which, you know, you've seen on some of the most harrowing levels. But then I go, why not invest in the defense of your people from the inside? Governments are so willing to spend so much money to protect their people from this outside force. But then I go, why not defend them from an inside force? Which is starvation, which is poverty, which, you know what I mean? And the second thing I found myself thinking of when you were saying that is

• 1:04:36Trevor Noah?

  it feels like, when you talk about investing in the community and the mom and the dad and this and that, it feels like you have a belief.

• 1:04:49Trevor Noah?

  That those people can create something. And I don't necessarily think that all governments or all people believe that every other community can create something. Does that make sense? Like, I think, I think a lot of people who will talk about, let's say, immigrants, they do not think that in America, they don't think that Mexicans can do something. So they need America in that way. They don't think that Haitians can do something. They don't think, but you seem to have this belief that if I can plant the right seeds in the right places, the people who are there will become the nurturers of the garden that it grows.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Well, obviously, we see that the unemployment rate in America is fairly low.

• 1:05:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  It's what we call

• 1:05:30Trevor Noah?

  Four percent or whatever.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Close to, to, to total employment.

• 1:05:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, basically.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Which sometimes is not very good, because then they say the rates per hour goes up and then all these economics that sometimes

• 1:05:41Trevor Noah?

  The economists get in.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  We all get lost. But the truth is that it's hard for a lot of industries to find workers. The unemployed, the undocumented, as some people call illegal, me, I like to use the term undocumented, that can be anywhere between, who knows, fifteen to twenty million people, including one million Dreamers. Dreamers being young, young children that arrive when they were very much babies and that they've been granted this temporary meaning they are always on the edge of being

• 1:06:17Trevor Noah?

  Always in limbo.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Sand. And many, many years later, they are doctors, they are nurses, they are professors, they are business people, they are mothers and fathers with already American-born children, that they are on the edge of being thrown out of the country. You know the effort that the country puts into bringing up and educating a million people? America, we are not right now in the, in the situation of just being given, read of such a good, talented people that they are Probably anybody walking across America, you're gonna find rumors one place or another, even if you are unaware. Uh, the fifteen million undocumented. Who do you think is working on the farms? We saw it during the pandemic. Who do you think is delivering your food?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Who do you think is driving the, the trucks uh to get the food to the supermarkets? Who do you think very often is taking care of the elderly in many homes? Hundreds of thousands of elderly taking care of by maybe those undocumented immigrants? Right. They're all across us. So, of sure, we have to protect the borders. Every country should. It's not true that anybody is against it. I am pro, let's every country make sure that we understand who comes and who goes. That's good. What cannot be is the big lie, that when you have the big harvest, or you need a lot of people to take care of the cattle, all of a sudden seems that those immigrants are coming through the border with no problem. Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  And people hire them because the business need them and seems everybody is looking to the other side. But then when you don't want them, it's like, oh, now I don't want them. They're, they're no mine, they're no mine. Yeah. They only help me temporarily. Listen, uh, Republicans and Democrats, uh, going back to President Bush and Reagan, they wanted immigration reform. I think during uh the times of President Obama, he had a big opportunity to pass immigration reform. It's always a reason why we didn't pass immigration reform. But this is not a problem for us to solve. It's an opportunity for us to seize. Our golf courses will not work without them.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Our uh wineries and farms will not work without them. Our restaurants and taxis will not work without them. They are the part of the DNA of what America is. Yeah. Their Lady Liberty themselves. It's about time that we stop now making them like.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  The ones that create all the problems we face. Because when leaders don't have really solutions to solve certain problems, they're gonna be looking for the pundits.

• 1:08:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  And the immigrants are not those. Ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of the immigrants we may have in this country, there are people that want to work hard, that want to provide for the families, that are helping the American economy, that people, believe it or not, that they pay taxes because many of them have W2s and I9s. And this is something that functions very well in America. It functions so well that even undocumented are paying their taxes. We should be celebrating that. But now we want to demonize them. We want to hunt them like it was the planet of the apes. We want to be in front of the schools and waiting for the mother picking up their three American-born children.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  What we are doing is use dehumanizing the human race.

• 1:09:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  And this dramatically has to change. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. The border needs to be protected, yes. But also, we need to improve the systems. So when you hire somebody, you know if they are documented or not? Because in that moment, we will know how many people really we need.

• 1:10:06Trevor Noah?

  That's actually true.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  And those undocumented, let me tell you, they are needed. Because right now, you ask around, there's many businesses across America that they all have one thing in common, that they need hands so they can keep moving their business forward. Our politicians need to be responding to that simple call. We need to legalize, once and for all, document those people that they are part of us, that they are part of what America is, and where we need to stop doing what we're doing, which is quite frankly, not something America, uh, five, 10 years from now, will be very proud when we look at the past.

• 1:10:42Trevor Noah?

  I also don't think it's smart. You know, like, on the one hand, it's definitely inhumane. But I think even if you were to strip away all emotion, I don't think it's smart. And I'll tell you why. I think...

• 1:10:55Trevor Noah?

  You know, oftentimes, people will talk about borders as if they only exist like a moat around a castle. You know, the moat is what keeps the people out of the castle. And then I look at Europe and I look at the European Union. I've always found it fascinating that once you're in Europe, you're in Europe. And then you just move between countries now, you just move between countries. And they've found a way to sort of understand that the mean average means that like everyone won't just end up in one country. Because if you think about it, the argument most people make about a border is we have to have borders. Then I go, fine, okay, you have to have borders. But I think you can also redefine how a border operates. And Europe has showed me that.

• 1:11:35Trevor Noah?

  For how people argue about a border,

• 1:11:39Trevor Noah?

  you would think that once the European Union said there's no borders technically like between us, everyone would end up in one country. We're all going to Barcelona, Barcelona. Andiamo, you know what I mean? It's like we're all there, vamos. But no, some English people moved to Spain. Some Spanish people moved to Italy, some Italians move. People moved, but you know what happened? It sort of all stayed the same. And one of the most convincing things I've read about like how people think about the border is in the United States, it used to be a lot more acceptable for laborers to move from Mexico to the US, do work and then come back. And there was a more porous system on the border. And it's actually the crackdown of the border.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  What creates the bigger problems.

• 1:12:21Trevor Noah?

  It created the bigger problem.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Because we need revolving door businesses. The people come, they cover the needs of the cotton farmers, the agro farmers, the tomato farmers, or anything else they may do. And then when it's time to go back home, they go back home.

• 1:12:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  They bring some of the savings that they made in America. They bring the know-how that they learned in America.

• 1:12:42Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  These people who usually are very resolute and very creative, they may open a business that may have something to do of what they learned here in America or in any other country. And all of a sudden, they're investing in their maybe poorer community that in the process is making their community better. And this guy will go back next year to work again. Or maybe he moves from the farm to the city.

• 1:13:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  He wants to do that. And he keeps going back and makes that country and his town and his country. Better. This is the beautiful thing about immigration. When you use it to solve problems. Right. You cover the needs of America in this case. But in the process, you are making the countries around you better and richer. If the countries around you are richer, in the process, you are richer. Yeah. Too. Yeah. So should be the notion that every country, of course, should be investing in their own citizens. But if you invest in ways also in the other countries, in the process, you are helping yourself.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  But you have to have a firm belief on that. And that proves the world has getting much better post- post-World War II. Of course, we have issues. Yeah. When we open commerce, when the nations began, you know. Yeah. Sharing. Trading, yeah. Wayhouse, ways to trade to, to, okay, not everybody can produce wheat. Not everybody can produce corn. Not everybody can produce, okay, that's, that's what trade achieve. And the world you would could argue is better today than was seventy, eighty years ago. But we need to keep believing in it. It's gonna be problems. It's gonna be issues. It's gonna be certain moments that, hey, this is not too fair for me. Yeah. Okay, you sit in the table, you talk, you negotiate, and you keep moving forward.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  You don't begin bullying everybody else because you think it's your right to bull, to be a bull. No, you do it talking. You do it negotiating. You do it what is good for me, must be good for you too. Hmm. Cannot be me, me, me, and only me. Well, when we go that way, the world becomes not so safe anymore. Right. We need to, the only way I'm gonna provide the world where my daughters will be okay once I'm no longer here, if it, if, is if I work as hard to provide for others in the same way I work hard to provide for my own. Hmm. This should be the model of everybody. If I provide for my daughters is great,

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  but if I provide for others at the same time, I know I'm living a world where my daughters will be better and safer and happier. I have no doubt about that.

• 1:15:31Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What now? After this. Everybody has that oddly specific thing that they're curious about. Maybe it's restoring old watches. Maybe it's Japanese ceramic making. Maybe it's watching someone explain why one bridge in a remote area of Norway is secretly better than all the other bridges in the world. YouTube always has exactly what you're looking for, even when you didn't know you were looking for it. With YouTube Premium, those deep dives feel even smoother. You get ad-free viewing, but you also get background play when you need your hands free. And you get offline downloads, so you can keep watching wherever you happen to be, even if you happen to be off the grid.

• 1:16:15Trevor Noah?

  It's everything you already love about YouTube, just somehow even better. Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is Smart Downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, "Ah, I forgot to download anything!" And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, "Download, download, download, download." You're on the plane, "Download, download, download, download." There's no Wi-Fi. "I wish I downloaded." Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are just on the internet. Smart Downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch. So even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear.

• 1:16:59Trevor Noah?

  If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Make work less work. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  Every family has one. The person who says, "Oh, I don't want anything this year." Cool. Super helpful. Here's the fix. Coop Sleep Goods. It's the rare gift that gets used every single night instead of shoved in a closet by January. Coop's Holiday Gift Guide is now 25% off, packed with bestselling adjustable pillows, cooling sheets, and toppers. And while you're there, grab one for yourself. I mean, you've been powering through this whole year on fumes. You've earned it. Every order comes with a 100-night trial, so there's no guesswork. Give yourself a damn break. Get 25% off the Holiday Gift Guide for a limited time at coopsleepgoods.com/comedy.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  That's C-O-O-P, sleepgoods.com/comedy.

• 1:18:30Trevor Noah?

  How do you maintain your hope? Because I've been lucky to know you for many, many years. And every time I see you, it's like an emotional whirlwind for me, you know? Because one day, you're giving me like fresh jamon that I don't know where you got it from, the most delicious cured ham I've ever had in my life. And you're just like, "Trevor, you got..." And I'm like, "No, I'm not eating that." You're like, "Today, you're gonna eat it." And you've just like put it in my face. And then the next day, you're telling me about the biggest challenge that you face in a small town, in a small country that is devastated, and the logistical things that are stopping you. How do you, how do you maintain your hope? Because it, you move from disaster to disaster.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Because I believe it's more goodness than, than hating the world. What happened goodness and goodwill.

• 1:19:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  And the common good is very humble and it's very, doesn't have a big voice. It's very, keeps doing, keeps working. Beautiful acts of kindness happens without nobody very often realizing. But, but when you see the world, the world functions. It's things we need to do better. But we need more of those people that do goodness and work towards improving what's not good.

• 1:19:48Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  But then it's other people that don't work to fix what is wrong. But they only thrive, use bitching about what's wrong.

• 1:19:58Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  And began blaming anybody away.

• 1:20:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  From what is wrong.

• 1:20:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  And the world is almost divided in these two types of people. And seems the people of goodness with a soft voice, with, with acts of, of greatness and, and goodness that nobody sees. Maybe those people need to have a bigger voice.

• 1:20:19Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Those people need to, to be louder. Because seems the hate is what has a big voice and it screams. And with very short sentences, it's able, it's able to rally everybody.

• 1:20:33Trevor Noah?

  That's true.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Or you are with me, or you are against me. No, I went through this in the Middle East. The first day after Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7th. Well, Central Kitchen was there in all the kibbutz, in all the little villages, feeding the people.

• 1:20:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  And I had people, why are you there and helping Israel? Because it's the right thing to do. And because the people of Israel in this moment needs our help. The day after we were inside Gaza and I had people telling me, and why are you in Gaza? Well, because the people of Gaza needs our help too. Not all Palestinians and all Arabs and Muslims were responsible for what happened on October 7th. As I don't make every Israeli or every Jewish of what has happened in Gaza. That they can understand how President Netanyahu allow to happen, what has happened in Gaza.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  I wish that was a bad dream, but that has happened. And we destroyed the future of almost 2 million people. But then they asked me, but are you pro-Israel or are you pro-Palestinian? I am pro both. I am pro both of the good people. Because in the same days, I will be crying with one person and telling me how much they suffer and how much they suffer also seeing the suffering of the others. And if I don't tell you who they are, I'll tell you, it's people on both sides. So it's more people of goodness that sometimes they don't speak up enough. And it's the people of hate that they are the ones that have the mic and seems is the only people that matter and count. I want people that don't make me take sides. I want people that believe like me that this is wrong, but this is wrong too.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  And what we need to be working is what is right. What is right is where people don't fight each other, where people respect each other. You wanna live in a place with dignity and freedom? Okay, but the other people want to live in a place with dignity and freedom too. So I support your right to live in freedom and dignity and not fear attacks by anybody. Okay, I agree with you. But you have to agree with me that these people too deserve dignity, respect, and don't live on fear of drones and bombs falling over their heads. What is good for you, my friend, must be good for me. Cannot be me and fuck the rest, has to be we the people. That's why those three words is something we cannot forget.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  One of the biggest gifts that probably the creation of America gave to the world are those three powerful words: we, the people, all the people, all the people. Not the we that we like, we, all the people. If we believe in that and we fight for that, the world is gonna be in a good path. But in the process, we're gonna have hiccups or things worse than hiccups. But we should not give up on this simple belief, we the people. That even when the people that brought that, maybe they felt we the people us. This has taken this kind of fascinating moment in history, which a lot of people believe in what we the people meant. I still believe it today and I'm gonna fight to make sure that we the people in the future has a true meaning.

• 1:23:48Trevor Noah?

  You know, when you speak about this as passionately as you do, I can't help but think to myself and wonder, how does Jose Andres, the man, find his solace and his stillness? Like, you know, because I've had the pleasure of meeting your one daughter, I've had the pleasure of meeting your wife. And the one thing I will say-

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  One of my three daughters.

• 1:24:10Trevor Noah?

  Oh, one of your three daughters, yeah. And one of the things I remember I picked up was, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong,

• 1:24:18Trevor Noah?

  your wife felt next to you like the most solid, peaceful,

• 1:24:29Trevor Noah?

  you know, celestial object a human can imagine.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  Patricia, yeah, she is.

• 1:24:34Trevor Noah?

  It literally, and I remember thinking to myself, I was like, is this the only reason he can do what he does?

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's definitely my son, my rock, my, I'm like this comet that sometimes doesn't know in what, what direction is moving. But obviously, she's,

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  she's been that and so much more, right? It's almost thirty-three years now. We married over thirty years ago, but we've been together thirty-three. And obviously, she's an amazing friend, amazing mother, an amazing wife, friend of friends. We all need those people, right? We need to remember that we are only as good as the people we have around us. We all need good people that makes us better, that also tell us, hey, this is not the way.

• 1:25:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  My wife is that person. But then I've been very lucky that I'm surrounded by friends, that they always invested in me probably more than I've ever invested in them. And for that, I'm always thankful. But we are all the product of all the people, even those teachers, we don't remember their names-

• 1:25:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  That they had an influence on us. And thanks to them-

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  We became who we became. That's why we need to be thankful to those that whatever is the interaction we have.

• 1:25:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Everybody is giving us something. And we become who we become thanks to those moments.

• 1:26:04Trevor Noah?

  And how do you think you've managed to find the balance of being a great contributor to the world, but then still maintaining your family and you being a father and a husband? Because you know, that's something you'll often see when you read people's biographies or when you hear from their families, they'll go, my father was a great man to the world, but wasn't the greatest man to me. And then like I see your daughter and she, the way she laughs about you and the way she talks and she teases you and then she follows you. I remember when your daughter was telling me she was going, what country was she going to? Her first place was, I remember going, this is crazy.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was in Chad, in the border with Sudan, and then she went to Yemen.

• 1:26:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And I remember being like, like what life is.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Twenty one.

• 1:26:48Trevor Noah?

  The passion that she had in and around this and the way your wife dealt with it. I'd love to know like, how as a family you found this balance and how you as a human being have found the balance? Like, how are you still able to give to those around you and not only give to the outside world?

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  It's not, obviously friends, family, friends are everything. Obviously, I have a day work, which is my restaurants, which.

• 1:27:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I mean, we didn't, you see.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  If I could, I will, you know, they can't run probably without me, but they're better if I am around because everybody, obviously, my teams, my parents want me around.

• 1:27:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  And I have joy around in my restaurants and I'm being the chef I am. But then sometimes you feel gets in the middle of the other passion I have, which is well, Central Kitchen, but then gets in the middle of the other passion I have, which is making policy around food that will improve the world. And then also, you know, I'm a, I try to play golf, but I know I will never become a pro. Is your golf better than your pickleball? No, no. Your pickleball was good, man. My pickleball is okay. I mean, anything that has a kitchen and pickles. I mean, if I don't perform, uh, obviously, forget about it.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  But, you know, um, uh, obviously, I try to enjoy, as I told you at the beginning, uh, every single moment, and it's important. But then you go moments of, of, for me, uh, last two years, they've been, the last four years, they've been very hard. I mean, in, in, in Ukraine, I saw, you know, kitchens that they, they were feeding with Volzhentrakitchen or not. And we were being hit by, by drones and, and people got injured or worse and, and they perished. And there you began seeing the realities of, of trying to be in the real world. Right. In Gaza, we got seven members of Volzhentrakitchen in what technically was one of the, uh, supposed to be a very safe mission. Yeah.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Even we were working in a very complicated space. Obviously, I take the, uh, on my shoulders, the, the moral responsibility in a way of what happened, because maybe we were not there. Um, nothing would, would ever happen. But then, I think it was my daughter, obviously, who told me in a moment I was, uh, very sad about living. I need to leave Ukraine, or I, we need to leave here, or it's like, Daddy, how we're gonna be changing the world without taking some risks? At the end of the day, you can be watching what people are going through, through your TV and the comfort of your sofa. Or you can say, well, I, we wanna change the world and improve the world. We're not gonna do it from the sofa or from, uh, New York, uh, UN building.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  We're gonna do it with, uh, people of the world shows up and is next to the people going through the mayhem of the world. And with boots on the ground is the only way you're gonna be. Changing the world. So for me, very often, and one of the reasons I keep going to missions. Um, that I don't think if I don't go ever again after I've been fifteen years.

• 1:29:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Um, a big percentage of my life dedicated to it. I don't think anybody will blame anymore. But I don't do it what others will think, or I I do it in a very selfish way for myself because every time I go to those missions, only by being present there and watching around me. Uh, I see that in the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity always shows up.

• 1:30:12Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  And that gives you hope. Uh, in moments that everything is mayhem and that you will think everybody is giving up. Because everybody should run, only take care of themselves.

• 1:30:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  You see that you have people there that they are don't only take care of themselves and their loved ones. But that they take their personal responsibility on the shoulders of taking care of entire communities. Even when they have absolutely nothing.

• 1:30:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  You see those people that they are becoming something so powerful. So superhuman like that you only feel like you wanna be there watching those people. Because I get a lot of energy uh from those moments.

• 1:30:52Trevor Noah?

  There's two things. I know I'm gonna have to let you go soon. Um, two things that I wanted to talk to you. One is just a question. But can I just say, you brought me this. Can I, no, can I tell you something?

• 1:31:03Trevor Noah?

  I've thought about this for maybe like, I wanna say fifteen years of my life.

• 1:31:09Trevor Noah?

  Like, this is a, not this specific comic, but this is Spider-Man, like multiple Spider-Man com- comics, and it's you.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  With the same one?

• 1:31:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but it's you helping him. Yeah, different covers, but it's you helping him i- in a mission and it's, it's, but it's you. And it's a thought that I've had for such a long time. I've gone. Why don't we make heroes of the people who are doing the most heroic things? Like, I know we have to go, but just, just help me understand. How did, how did this come to be?

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  I don't know, well, because the wonderful people of Marvel love food. They love Bolson Drak kitchen, I guess. They, they, they've been following us for a long time. It happened also with DC Comics. So in one year, um, in one year, I've been cooking with Superman and Aquaman and, and Wonder Woman and Flash, uh, feeding lionfish, uh, and fishing with Aquaman and

• 1:32:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  in a seahorse, catching lionfish to feed the people of the Caribbean. And now Marvel, um, has put me in, uh, next to Spider-Man when my restaurant in Hudson Yards, Mercado Little Spain, is under attack by Electro. Uh, and all of a sudden Spider-Man shows up and, and I'm there alongside the Spider-Man fighting, fighting Electro. And then at the end-

• 1:32:30Trevor Noah?

  Were you, were you a comic book fan as a kid?

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Oh, I have a big comic collection.

• 1:32:34Trevor Noah?

  This must, oh, this is.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  And I, I came by, used from South by Southwest in Austin and, and they used announce that Marvel, uh, is putting me in a number in the fall, uh, uh, with Avengers. So the when, when, I still to this moment, I think they're doing a prank on me. And that they're gonna do a very big ad saying, this is the fool that thought he could be in a, in a comic with Spider-Man. You know, life sometimes is about these little moments and these little dreams. But as you said, this is not, this is an homage to, to all the people that

• 1:33:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  every single day, when nobody's watching, they wake up with a very simple idea of helping others. So even, yeah, I'm, I'm there with Spider-Man. I think what Marvel wanted to do is use to, to, to, to give a big round of applause to the millions around the world that they don't give up and that they are always there next to the people.

• 1:33:30Trevor Noah?

  Last question, I know you gotta go. Um, I just wanted to know this about food.

• 1:33:35Trevor Noah?

  Food is such an interesting thing because it's what sustains us. It's one of the first things a child will compliment their parent on. If you say like, why does mommy or daddy love you? They'd be like, because they feed me and they give me food, you know? But you have interacted with food on a spectrum that I think few of us have. Your restaurants serve some of the most decadent, beautiful, delicious food that people will ever experience. And then you are cooking local food, which is often delicious as well, in places where someone would assume there is no joy. When you think of food, what does food mean to you?

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you mentioned about our mommy and daddy feeding us. But the first gift we receive in the form of a tangible is when we come to the world and our mom brings us to her body or our grandma or our father give us baby bottle. But the first gift is in the form of food, mother's milk. And I think our faith and our relationship with food is still on that magical, beautiful moment, even if we were unaware. I mean, I have, I collect cookbooks too, and many of them are centuries old. And one of them is from eighteen twenty-six and is a Frenchman.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  And I don't quote French people in public often, but they're good cooks after all, we have to recognize. But this guy, Briat Sabran, in the first edition, he didn't sign the book because he was too afraid of what his friends in Paris would think about him. But this one guy that gave us an amazing, amazing quotes. And one of them was, tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.

• 1:35:21Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing gets more powerful than that very simple thought that at the end, the way we love to live life, that's a matter only if you eat hot dogs like Peter Parker in the streets of New York. That's great. I love hot dogs. And you should be proud of it. Food is something that really tells a story of who we are in powerful ways. And the same philosopher said even a more powerful phrase that both together very much are like the commandments of food. He said that the future of the nations will depend in how they feed themselves. So from culture to science, to who we will feed people in the moon,

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  to food as art, food as a social gathering, food as Thanksgiving, food as history, food as health, food as immigration, food very much touches everything. And you realize that sometimes everything just starts in a humble plate of food that you may have in a faraway place, sitting next to a stranger. That's some of the most fascinating moments you can experience in life.

• 1:36:30Trevor Noah?

  You know, you just made me realize this is one of my favorite conversations. You've always been one of my favorite people. The only mistake I made was not having food for our conversation. I apologize.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  I just landed, I just landed. I get empty, but I have my book.

• 1:36:43Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I apologize.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  My new book, Spain My Way.

• 1:36:45Trevor Noah?

  I'm actually, are you gonna leave that for me?

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  This is for you, but I don't think that's it. No, this is not even the reading yet, because we are waiting, it's arriving by boat.

• 1:36:53Trevor Noah?

  Okay, I want it.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  But Spain My Way.

• 1:36:56Trevor Noah?

  I want it, I want it. One day I should go to Spain with you. I just wanna go somewhere random with you.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  You two come in with me to Spain.

• 1:37:03Trevor Noah?

  Just somewhere, you'll invite me, you'll come back again. Jose Andres, muchas gracias.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Amigo, thank you. It's a pleasure to be in your presence.

• 1:37:10Trevor Noah?

  Thank you so much, man. Safe journey.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:37:17Trevor Noah?

  Apple Card is designed to support your financial well-being. With unlimited daily cash back on every purchase and the ability to track your spending on your iPhone, Apple Card helps you lead a healthier financial life. So you can stress less about money and focus more on enjoying life. And you know, that makes me think about something that I learned pretty early on in life. When I first started earning money, and I mean real money, not just the kind where you're doing like an odd job or hustling, I remember feeling this strange mix of excitement and pressure, right? Because on the one hand, you're like, wow, I can finally buy things. And on the other hand, you realize, ooh, I can also mess this up. What do you do? It's your salary, it's your life.

• 1:38:03Trevor Noah?

  And then I remember someone once told me something and it stuck. They said, money is not just about what you earn, it's about what you understand about what you earn. And at the time, I didn't fully get it. Because when you're younger, you think financial success is just more money. But then you start noticing something interesting. You meet people who earn a lot, but are constantly stressed. And then you meet people who earn less, but seem calm and in control, like they understand where their money is going. And that's when it clicked for me. Financial health isn't just about having money, it's about having clarity. It's knowing what's coming in, what's going out, and not being surprised by your own life.

• 1:38:48Trevor Noah?

  I remember the first time I could make a purchase that actually meant something to me. And it's not just because of what it was, but because I knew I could afford it without worrying about it afterwards. That feeling, that's different. It's not excitement, it's peace. And I think that's what most people are chasing when it comes to money. Not the biggest purchase, not the flashiest thing, just the ability to make a decision and not carry stress with it. Because money stress is sneaky. It doesn't show up when you're broke only, no. It shows up when things are unclear. And once you start removing that uncertainty, that's when everything changes. You think differently, you spend differently, and you live differently. And suddenly, money becomes something that supports your life

• 1:39:34Trevor Noah?

  instead of something that sits in the background worrying you. So remember, Apple Card is good for your wallet. It's designed to support your financial wellbeing. It's a no-fee credit card that lets you track your spending on your iPhone. Plus, you can get unlimited daily cash back on every purchase, stress less about money, and focus more on enjoying life. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com.

• 1:40:24Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.