Ian Bremmer: Who Is Actually Running the World?

Political scientist and author Ian Bremmer joins Trevor and Eugene to break down a world that is starting to feel a lot less predictable. What happens when American influence is no longer the default and tech companies begin to rival governments in power? Together, they unpack what that shift looks like in real terms, why the old rules are no longer holding, and what it means to be heading toward a “G-Zero” world, where no single country is in charge.

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

• 0:04Trevor Noah?

  This is why you should always lie to your AI. I encourage people all the time.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  To lie?

• 0:09Trevor Noah?

  As much as you can.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Tell me more.

• 0:11Trevor Noah?

  And every time you type into your AI, like whatever you use, I always encourage people to just throw it off the trail sometimes. Just be like, I'm a father of seven and this is my life and you know, this is what's happening.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  But you are a father of seven.

• 0:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but if you're not a father of seven, you get what I'm saying?

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:27Trevor Noah?

  Just be like random things. I live in Bulgaria and this is my story and this is my world. But you do live in Bulgaria.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean.

• 0:34Trevor Noah?

  You just don't tell people that. You know, I thought I was worried about the future. I should be worried about the present. I've got two state actors here. I'm trying to help you.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  What you mean is a gen provocateur.

• 0:51Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 0:58Trevor 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.

• 1:33Trevor 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.

• 2:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, booked forever, forever. This episode is brought to you by Verizon.

• 2:25Trevor Noah?

  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, you can snag once-in-a-lifetime experiences like NFL tickets across the globe,

• 3:10Trevor Noah?

  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.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  And also, there's words you're not allowed to use on this podcast.

• 3:42Trevor Noah?

  Which?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Long story short, just long story.

• 3:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  You know, long story short. We want the long version.

• 3:54Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55Trevor Noah?

  Short story long is what we would like.

• 3:59Trevor Noah?

  That's what we're looking for. Good to have you here. Thanks. Ian Bremmer. I, it's funny, I was thinking about how to describe you. And I was like, you should just ask the man himself because I just think of you as a thinker, which I hope doesn't reduce you down to just one activity. But you are one of my favorite thinkers in the world. And that's how I came across you. I actually think the first time I came across your work was on Twitter. And I remember being like, who is this? My best work is on Twitter. I mean, isn't that all of us? Yeah, exactly. My short-form work. The books, I see. The tweets, my friend. Ah, those 160 characters. How you nailed it. How you nailed it. No, seriously, and I remember even at the time,

• 4:43Trevor Noah?

  noticing that you approached every topic or every idea with a...

• 4:50Trevor Noah?

  A different bent is the best way to put it. It always feels like you're thinking about thinking differently. And then even when I was getting ready for this interview, I was going like, wait, but how do you think of yourself? What would you say like your primary job? Like if a five year old was asking you, Mr. Bremmer, what do you do? What would you say to them?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  I'd probably say I try to understand how different countries around the world interact with each other, where the world's going. I'm a political scientist. I wouldn't say that to a five year old.

• 5:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  That's bad for a five year old. But that is what I think of myself as. I don't think of myself as like a president of a firm or entrepreneur or any of those other things. I've always been, ever since I majored in political science as an undergrad, I thought to myself, oh, this is cool. This is the one I want to learn about. I'd never traveled anywhere. Suddenly start traveling around the world. Oh, that's awesome. Those people are really different than what I thought they were, and I want to get that. And so if you study humanity at that level, then you're kind of a political scientist.

• 5:48Trevor Noah?

  On the lowest level, or rather on the simplest level, I think of it like, there was a time, I remember reading a book about this, I think it was like in the eighties or somewhere there, when American companies were working with Japanese companies and they didn't realize how many of the things they considered respectful were disrespectful in Japan. And then whenever they had to go to Japan, they had to give them a manual to say, hey, I know this is how you see the world, but in Japan, this is how they see the world and you need to interact with them according to their worldview. And when I read a lot of your work, that's what I find myself thinking about is I go, we're living in a world where even on a geopolitical scale, countries sometimes don't

• 6:33Trevor Noah?

  seem to realize that other countries think differently to them. Is that a safe assertion?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Completely. And not only that, but over time, these things are fluid. You know, when I started in 1989, when I started my graduate. Degree, career. That's when the wall came down.

• 6:49Trevor Noah?

  Berlin Wall.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the rest of the world had a view of the United States in the context of like that Cold War and winning the Cold War and those ideas. And it's only been thirty five years. And the view of the United States around the world has changed radically over that period of who we are, of what we do and don't stand for. Hmm. That's, that's super interesting, right? And, and so generations changed too. The generation that remembered what it was like when you stood for something or you fought for something.

• 7:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Generation thinks like, well, that doesn't matter anymore.

• 7:24Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Right? So, I mean, think about where China was thirty five years ago.

• 7:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, you go there and everyone was riding a bicycle and now they're building better tech than we have in the United States.

• 7:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Like, so the, it's not just this idea of, oh, countries are static. And I need to help you understand that when you go to Japan, it's different. It's also that your, your own place is changing and how you're perceived as being is different than it used to be.

• 7:48Trevor Noah?

  How far do you think America is from how many Americans think about it currently in the world?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I think it's.

• 7:56Trevor Noah?

  Like, like, like, take us, take us through a little journey. So let's talk about that period. There's the period where America comes out of these, these wars, physical and otherwise, right? The Cold War is a war, World War, Vietnam War. But there's this moment, like, America has this idea of itself. And the world has an idea of America, you know? And I think some people are still sort of set in that and stuck in it. But it's clearly changed. What do you think has been the biggest shift?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  There have been a few.

• 8:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Uh, one, a big one, is that America used to be the place that wanted to trade with everybody.

• 8:35Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Free trade.

• 8:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Now tariffs are the principal tool that the Americans are using economically. And, and it's not just about Trump. I mean, most people in the US, Democrats, Republicans are saying, no, no, no, no, we don't want free trade. We want like, you know, stuff that's built much more here. And we want more manufacturing here. And, you know, you think as well about immigration. And my grandma came through Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

• 9:01Trevor Noah?

  Where did she come from?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Uh, originally, they are Syrian Armenians.

• 9:05Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, and so they came over and she's even on a little bench, on a little.

• 9:09Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow, that's amazing.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Kind of cool to see.

• 9:12Trevor Noah?

  Still now.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I haven't been today, but I think so. Unless someone ripped it out.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  On these two cold days.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  She's out there in a bench.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Still there.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  My old grandma.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  If you're out here, great, then catch me and walk.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  You and your textures.

• 9:31Trevor Noah?

  Eugene loves textures.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  He does. So, you know, and I think of the Statue of Liberty as a pretty iconic thing. For the United States.

• 9:41Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  I mean, clearly, that doesn't reflect who the United States is today. Right? I mean, like welcoming immigrants from all over the world.

• 9:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, that's changed.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Give me your tired, your huddled masses. That is nowhere close.

• 9:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, now it's give me your people who have a million dollars to invest or five million dollars to spend on citizenship.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:00Trevor Noah?

  That's the new thing now.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yes, sell me your golden visa.

• 10:03Trevor Noah?

  Sell me your golden visa.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Right? And also, let me see your social media history.

• 10:08Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yes.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  By the way.

• 10:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  The last five years. You know, when I first saw that, I didn't see the context. Of course, you'd immediately think, oh, that's China.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  You would think that.

• 10:17Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  From around the world, right? You know, or you think it was Russia or some other authoritarian state that controls information. Turns out, it's the United States. Most other people around the world would not have thought. That's not, that's not comport with their view of the United States.

• 10:33Trevor Noah?

  I'm just thinking about how

• 10:38Trevor Noah?

  how powerful the idea of a place is in that it can be so powerful that people don't notice when it is doing things that it said it did not stand for. Because what you just said, I don't know why that, that, it just like jammed something in my brain.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  I saw the reaction immediately.

• 10:58Trevor Noah?

  No, it literally jammed something in my brain where I went, if you put out a news headline tomorrow and said, China is going to be scrubbing people's social media for anyone who comes into the country, they're going to look through their social media for five years and they're going to get access to your phone. How would most people react? They would go, I'm never going to China.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they'll be like, of course I expect it.

• 11:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And they'll be like, what kind of country does this?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Bringing my phone, gotta bring a burner, all that kind of stuff. You know, it's a communist country, you don't trust them authoritarian. You know, the United States is, these, these things are fluid. Nations are fluid, governments, these all things, our identity, what do we stand for? Who are we? I mean, maybe the most consistent thing since I was growing up is money. In terms of what the United States stands for.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, the dollar.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  The almighty dollar.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Um, but, but I, you know, when I grew up, the US didn't only stand for the dollar. It stood for other things too. And I think that's becoming a challenge.

• 11:55Trevor Noah?

  You're always writing books about moments in time.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And tweets, don't forget tweets.

• 11:59Trevor Noah?

  I'll never forget the tweets.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  When you guys first met.

• 12:03Trevor Noah?

  Our meet cutes. You're, you're always writing books about moments and ideas that speak to those moments. You know, a power crisis, um, you know, how the world is moving at a certain moment in time. I, I always wonder, you know, especially from authors who tap into these, these moments in the zeitgeist. I always wonder what they're seeing that we're not seeing that leads to them writing that book. And, and I'd love to know like what you're seeing now that would inspire a book that you would be writing for the future. What, what, what's, what's capturing your attention and your imagination? As someone who studies the world.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Maybe the, so the, the book that I wrote that probably was most prescient was back in 2011. And I'm going to answer your question, it's one to give you a thought about. And, um, about the G zero world. And this idea, not that I had some crystal ball, but that it seemed so over determined by big structural factors in the world. By the fact that the Russians, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we said that we wanted to bring them in. The NATO Russia Council, the G seven plus one, we never really wanted to bring them in. They were angry about it, they blamed us. And we said we wanted to bring China in, we did, but only if they were going to become Americans. Only if they actually accepted our economic system, they became free marketeers, only if they accepted. Right.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  If they, they adapted their system and they became much, much more powerful, but they were still Chinese. So we weren't happy about that. And then the United States increasingly had a whole bunch of people saying, well, all that stuff that we used to do, like, you know. Sheriff of the world and architect of trade and promoting democracy. We don't really buy that stuff. So you put all those things together. It seemed to me wildly over determined that the world wasn't going to be Pax Americana. It wasn't going to be G seven or G two or G twenty. It was going to be an absence of global leadership, that the US wasn't going to play the role it used to. But no other country or group of countries could come together and replace it, at least not for a period of time.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And so it's it seemed to me wildly over determined, even if some of these things were going to change, that the train had so had so much momentum pulling out of the station and going downhill that that the G zero was going to come. So I wrote that because, you know, a book should be something that stands up for a while. And the thing that I see now.

• 14:26Trevor Noah?

  Wait, before you move on from that, before you move on from that, I'd love to know how people responded to it at the time.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:31Trevor Noah?

  Because I find a lot of these books and these ideas are welcomed when they meet their moments.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Oh, in hindsight.

• 14:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but when you when you release them, I'd love to know how people responded to you writing a book, basically saying, not only would America not be the de facto, you know, respected and loved power in the world, but power itself would diffuse, you know, would find itself diffusing in a in in this kind of way. How did people respond to that?

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Um, I think they thought it was interesting.

• 15:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  They thought it was intriguing. I think it played with a lot of different strands that that people were picking up and looking at. There were a whole bunch of people that were looking at one or two pieces of that puzzle. But most people at the time thought I was taking it too far.

• 15:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I can imagine.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Most people thought, no, no, no, maybe it'll go that way. But actually, we see a G two, it's going to be US-China, or actually, it's still Pax Americana. And the US isn't in decline. I'm like, no, the US doesn't have to be in decline, but if it doesn't want to do these things, you know, then it is it is personally removing itself from that role. It doesn't mean that the dollar suddenly is no longer the reserve currency. It doesn't mean the US doesn't have, you know, all of this military capacity. But it still has to be willing to play that role. So, yeah, I mean, I would say it it did fine. It didn't undermine, you know, sort of my work or anything. But it wasn't like wildly accepted as, oh, yeah, we all buy that in five, 10 years' time, that's happening.

• 15:57Trevor Noah?

  It's interesting to me that that that people who work even in governments don't seem to understand.

• 16:04Trevor Noah?

  Concepts and ideas that in my opinion should seem obvious, like one that really struck me was the relationship between China and Africa, right, all the countries in Africa.

• 16:15Trevor Noah?

  The Biden administration would say, we see China striking up deals with, why are African countries dealing with China? They shouldn't be dealing with China. They should be working with the US. And you'd see all of these people come out and say these things. And I went, but America has abandoned Africa.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  They're not doing anything on the ground.

• 16:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  There are over a million Chinese living across Africa.

• 16:37Trevor Noah?

  It's that, it's over a million now.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Well over a million.

• 16:38Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:39Trevor Noah?

  I didn't know it was that high.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was something like 8,000 Japanese, the last time I looked at it, and over a million Chinese.

• 16:45Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  The Japanese asked the same question, we need to do more there. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. But, you know, every single person that's on the ground, those are relationships.

• 16:53Trevor Noah?

  But now, okay, but help me understand this. How is it that a country can understand this until it doesn't? Is it because they take it for granted? Is it because they think that's the way it always will be? Like, how did the US ostensibly understand the value of going and building bridges physically and metaphorically in these other places? And then all of a sudden go, it doesn't matter anymore? And then wonder why like China would take over?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  I mean, two, two different types of answers. One's external, the other's internal.

• 17:24Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  The external answer is that when you have a country that goes from everyone's riding bicycles and you aspire to have like a washing machine to, to a million, you know, to, to a billion plus person economy where they're middle income. And, and suddenly, and they've been growing at over 10% a year on average for 40 years.

• 17:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  At scale, like that's never happened before. So, I mean, you even had, when Biden first became president, you may remember this, where he had this like statement on China where it's like, they're never going to compete with.

• 18:01Trevor Noah?

  Oh yeah, I remember this.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  And it's because he hadn't been there. He hadn't been there when he was, when he wasn't serving.

• 18:08Trevor Noah?

  But do you hear what I'm saying? You're telling me that a president, not just of any, a president of the United States, looked at a country that most of the world was looking at as like a close competitor in terms of power and went, nah.

• 18:25Trevor Noah?

  How?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  They think they rip us off. They take things that we make, they make them a little bit better, they steal intellectual property, all of which has been historically true. But today, Trevor, you've got Europeans that are cutting deals with the Chinese saying, "We're willing to let you invest in our country, but only if you engage in technology transfers to Europe."

• 18:45Trevor Noah?

  To Europe?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  From China.

• 18:46Trevor Noah?

  Imagine that.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  That wasn't happening even three years ago. And now it's happening. So these things, the point is these things change quickly. So what's the next thing? The thing, if I was to go back to your earlier question.

• 18:59Trevor Noah?

  What is, what is, what is happening now that you see could be happening then?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think one of the biggest things is that technology companies are becoming essentially sovereign as actors in the West. They are the ones that are not just writing the regulations, but they're actually creating the algorithms that they're deploying real time. They're experimenting on society and the economy and national security. And, and I think that within five, 10 years, some of these technology companies are likely to act like states on the global stage, that their level of power and influence will make them geopolitical actors. Not in China. In China, the state is controlling AI and the state is controlling what tech companies can do.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  But in the United States, really, that development has, has been just turbocharged. And I don't see the, the willingness or the capacity in the US government to do much about that soon. And yet it's moving really, really fast.

• 20:01Trevor Noah?

  It's moving very fast.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  So we need to start asking ourselves, well, what does a global order look like when some of the principal actors are countries that do or don't have elections, but with citizens that they're meant to provide for? And some of them are companies with CEOs and owners and shareholders and business models, which don't look anything like. Governments, and we know that governments, some are rich and some are poor and some are more closed and authoritarian and some are more open and democratic. We don't even have models to understand what different types of companies are and what their business models are and their alignment with governance or not. So that's a, that's a real mind fuck if you want to think about where the world is going.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  And, and I think we need to start, like, my field doesn't even have, like, if you went to college and studied political science or international relations, there wouldn't be, you'd have American politics, you'd have comparative international relations, you wouldn't have like a, a branch that would look at companies as geopolitical actors. And yet, I, I would argue that we need to have that now.

• 21:09Trevor Noah?

  I don't know if it's the same, but could it be similar, obviously in a way more modern way, but could it be similar to what the world experienced, you know, like in and around, like the Dutch East India Trading Company and, because there was a time when the ships that were trading around the world were owned by

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Companies.

• 21:29Trevor Noah?

  Companies that were almost more powerful than some governments because they carried the spices, they carried the gold, they carried the people, they carried the, do you know what I mean? And, and their influence and their power was such that they could shift your fortune. They decided who's who. If they were on your side, they would give you a loan as a country. They would decide where your military goes or doesn't. Do you think, is it that or do you think it's even?

• 21:51Speaker 02

  I think it's even bigger than that. And the reason I think it's, the reason I think it's bigger is because if we imagine just a few years down the road, and you and I have both seen some of these presentations

• 22:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, we have.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  By the way, together. Um, and, and, and the fact that you're going to have AI that is trained on our data, which means it will know us better than anyone, better than any government knows us, better than any, any spouse, member of our family, doctor, lawyer, accountant, what have you. And we're going to spend all of our time being intermediated by that AI.

• 22:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Well, the company that controls that AI is going to have much more influence over us individually and anyone else in a society that is deployed with that AI than any government will. And I I think that now that may cause a reaction, it may cause a revolution, it may break a state, it may force the state to nationalize them. I don't know, but that is the trajectory we are presently on. And that's way beyond talking about any East India trading company. That's like you're not just your citizenship, your entire humanity, you're going to become more than or less than Homo sapiens, you're going to be programmed by this thing, you'll become kind of a hybrid human being in some ways. But it won't be

• 23:13Speaker 02

  because of your relationship with the government, a passport, a citizenship. It's going to be because your relationship with that AI, which is owned by a company, which is created by a company. That's a that's a wild evolution of a geopolitical model that you and I have grown up with, just kind of not even questioning what the assumptions are.

• 23:32Trevor Noah?

  This is why you should always lie to your AI. I encourage people all the time to lie as much as you can.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Tell me more.

• 23:40Trevor Noah?

  As much as you can. Every time you type into your AI, like whatever you use, I always encourage people to just throw it off the trail sometimes. Just be like, I'm a father of seven and this is my life and you know, this is what's happening.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  But you are a father of seven.

• 23:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but if you're not a father of seven, you get what I'm saying? Just be like random things. I live in Bulgaria and this is my story and this is my world.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  But you do live in Bulgaria. You just don't tell people that.

• 24:05Trevor Noah?

  You know, I thought I was worried about the future. I should be worried about the present. I've got two state actors here. I'm trying to help you.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  What you mean is Asian provocateur.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  What you're saying is actually very interesting because in South Africa, on the 16th of December is a day of reconciliation, which has been Dingaan's day before. It was commemorating the Zulus turning on the on the Dutch, on the Afrikaner, basically, after they send them on a conquest to go fetch cattle from the from the Sutu king. But One professor was interviewed on radio and he was saying that it is not about the history itself. It's it's it's it's that the history being taken away from the curriculum of a schooling system makes people lose their culture. Now, when everyone in the country that has eleven official languages starts speaking one language, it's gonna be very hard for them to believe that they are different.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  And he says that mistake was done by Japan at some point where they focus too much on math and science, all the STEM subjects. And he says they paused and hit the brakes and they're like, we're introducing arts and culture back into society again. And as you say now, our interaction with America and how we know America is through pop culture, right? Uh, fast food, um, movies, music, cigarettes, alcohol. And that's all we know. And for a long time, that was American culture. But you fast forward to thirty years from now, I mean, from then to now, if a South African visits America, there's very little that they see. In fact, we sometimes criticize other things and go, oh, we are far, far, far ahead. Far ahead of this, yeah. And that was always never the case.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  And also you go to South Africa and more, more and more kids speak less of their home languages or indigenous or vernacular. And I think what you're speaking to is it's almost like, and like Trevor's saying, we're feeding into this homogenous society that we're gonna end up being, which will not need the state. Exactly. We'll not need a president to tell people what to do. They'll just find it from a, from a computer. Yeah, the algorithm that you have.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  And the president have maybe the thing that most determines

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  your community, your connectivity, who you are, how you think, not your nation, not your actual physical community.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Your authority in your house does not lie with you anymore as the parent. It lies with the computer because they can ask the computer what the story is.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  One of the great values of the United States that I have always found has been the locality. Like when I grew up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, my entire world was my family and just a few blocks around me is the public school that I could walk to and all those kids. And they came from different countries, but we were really, really tightly knit. That that obviously is gonna be blown apart when each of those individual kids has AI.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Which is one of the reasons I think that this new Australian law that is saying under sixteen,

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  no mas.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  I I think that's clearly that should be global.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  No mas is a boxing term for when you've been, you're like, I can't take anymore. You say what? No mas.

• 27:04Trevor Noah?

  Is that someone trying to say no more?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, yeah, no mas.

• 27:07Trevor Noah?

  How did that start?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  I guess when you bend the knee.

• 27:11Trevor Noah?

  No, no mas, no mas. No mas.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I don't know how it started, but it's a boxing term, right?

• 27:16Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  If you've had enough, you're like, ah.

• 27:19Trevor Noah?

  Do you think it's too late, though? Like, some people say, oh, the cat's out the bag. It's too late for Australia to say kids can't have social media and that. Because now, because now there's the kids. No, no, I'm just asking.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  No, no, yeah, yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Too late for hope? Never too late for hope.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Never, yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  I don't expect a question like that from Trevor.

• 27:34Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I'm asking you.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  I know.

• 27:35Trevor Noah?

  I'm asking this.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  I was so disappointed in him as well.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Were you?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I looked at him.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  I can feel it from this, from both of us.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  A father of seven?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  From Bulgaria?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  And no hope? I mean, look what he's made of himself from those humble background.

• 27:49Trevor Noah?

  It was, it was actually a man by the name of Ian Bremmer who taught me to ask questions that you yourself wouldn't necessarily ask and to think in ways that you wouldn't necessarily think to get a better strategic understanding of how the world might work.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:04Trevor Noah?

  That's what he taught me.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  That's, that's extraordinary.

• 28:06Trevor Noah?

  No mas. Yeah, you should meet him.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I should meet him. I was gonna say, you should meet him. He sounds like a great guy. He really does. I don't think we can do it, of course we can.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Now, can we do it in the United States?

• 28:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, can, can anything happen anymore in the United States? And I don't mean this in a facetious way.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:20Trevor Noah?

  But like, can anything happen in the United States?

• 28:24Speaker 02

  People believing that the US was so broken, that the political system was so corrupt, so sclerotic, uh, is what got us Trump. Most people that voted for Trump thought that democracy was more important than the people that voted against it.

• 28:42Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Because, because for them, the idea, and it's in the polls, they, they read, not, most people didn't think that the election was about democracy, but for those that did, more than voted for Trump than voted for Kamala in the last election. And it's because those people thought that the, the deep state, the administrative state.

• 28:58Trevor Noah?

  The system.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  The system was so broken, just like my mom used to. My mom, when she was alive, you know, she didn't finish high school. She cared a lot about me and my brother. That was her whole life. And she's like, these guys will never take care of you. Not, not the government officials, not the CEOs, not the bankers, not the media, none of those fancy people. I gotta fight for everything. And if I have to steal, I'll steal because it's my kids, right?

• 29:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  And, and I, you know, the, you have so many Americans over the past decades that feel that way about the government. That's what got you Bernie. It's what you got you Mom Donnie. It's what got you Trump. It's the same thing. Why did Trump decide that he was gonna welcome Mom Donnie in the White House? Because fundamentally, he gets that that's part of what got him there.

• 29:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. He was saying, he said, like, we agree on a lot of stuff.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 29:46Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  You know, both in principle, saying we wanna stick it to the man. Now, Trump, of course, is also the man. So sticking it to himself.

• 29:55Trevor Noah?

  It's amazing that he's able to occupy both roles.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  He tries.

• 29:57Trevor Noah?

  You know? Yeah, no, in, in people's eyes is that he goes, I am the persecuted, and yet I exist in the realm of the persecutor. Like, it's a, it's an interesting dichotomy that he, that he gets to occupy in that way.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  I, I, when I saw the, the felony convictions and the mugshot, that's when I was convinced Trump was gonna win.

• 30:19Trevor Noah?

  Wait, really?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 30:22Trevor Noah?

  Because that, because that made him seem like it is, the deep state is a thing? It can happen to anyone.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  The system was out to get him. Like, of all of the bad things that he did, of all of the real political cases that were out there and should have been brought, of the impeachments that were real, of the Republicans that said, no boss, right? It was the most ridiculous case that would not have been brought up as felony charges against another American. It was politicized against Trump. That's where he got his felony convictions. And, you know, his entire election was a grievance-based election. It's like, you know, they're coming after you. I'm standing in front of them, you know? Let them come after me. And they do wanna take him down, right?

• 31:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  And he was almost assassinated.

• 31:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  And it was this close.

• 31:07Trevor Noah?

  It's this world of like, everything. It's, it's interesting that you say the thing about same, because I've seen people bristle at that comment. If you say Bernie and, and they go, how, how can you say? But, um, AOC had a, a live on her Instagram, I think it was after, um, I think it was the midterm, I forget which election it was, but she had done really well, and most Democrats hadn't. And then she asked, just her, her followers online, she said,

• 31:39Trevor Noah?

  Are any of, have any of you voted for me and for Donald Trump? And if so, please tell me why? Because, you know, she was sort of posing this question. She went, I, it seems like we're completely different. How would you vote for me and him? I don't understand that. And it was fascinating to see the responses that people gave. They said, while the two of you are not politically aligned, you both agree that the system is broken.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  It's broken.

• 32:04Trevor Noah?

  And you both present yourselves in an authentic way. Not honest necessarily, but authentic, which was an interesting semantic difference. And they were like, and we like that you both disrupt what was because it wasn't working for the rest of us.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:21Trevor Noah?

  And that was, that was an interesting insight to get from people themselves to say, oh, we're now living in a time where, America especially, but in the rest of the world, you're seeing it as well. The system has pushed people so far that they're no longer incentivized by what's safe because it hasn't brought them safety. It hasn't brought them security. It hasn't brought them sustenance.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  The American dream no longer works for them.

• 32:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so they've gone, so then let's break it.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  More Chinese believe in a China dream today than Americans believe in an American dream.

• 32:54Trevor Noah?

  Wait, is that, is that true?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  That is absolutely true, and that was not true when you and I were kids. So that's a radical transformation. We started this part of the conversation by you saying, can you still do things in the United States?

• 33:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Trump is living proof. You can still do things in the United States. Number one, him personally, with the greatest political comeback in American history.

• 33:13Trevor Noah?

  Truly.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  But beyond that, we, I would argue that we are in the middle of a political revolution right now. Trump is intending to ensure that there are no more checks and balances on his behavior as the executive of the United States. We see that with the way he is trying to weaponize the so-called power ministries, the IRS, the FBI, the Department of Justice, to do his will.

• 33:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  In a way that he thought they were weaponized against him. You see that with his efforts to ensure that the principal enemy to the United States are his political adversaries. That's a political revolution. I, I, I don't know that he's going to be successful. And personally, I hope he's not. But I do hope he's successful in eliciting sufficient pushback from people that want to really change things.

• 34:04Trevor Noah?

  Okay. That's interesting, just this idea of inspiring some sort of movement, some sort of idea, some sort of... Help us, help us understand like, how to even begin thinking about these things? You know, like, you're a big fan of strategic thinking. And what I like is how you, how you break this down. I think a lot of people would consider themselves strategic thinkers and based on your definition, they wouldn't fall into the category. Because I think most of us would think that if you ask anyone, "Are you a strategic thinker?" And we're like, "Yeah, I think, should I walk on 42nd Street or 45th Street? I think about that all the time. It's my strategy." And you're like, "No, no, no. How you see the world is a strategic."

• 34:47Trevor Noah?

  Help us understand why you think it's so important to be a strategic thinker, regardless of what station you occupy in life. Let's start with what it is.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  I, I, I think it's wanting to first define a problem before you act in response to it. Right? That, that the idea of something is uncomfortable and therefore I lash out, that's not strategic thinking, right? That's pain reaction.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  There are lots of problems, lots of challenges, lots of opportunities in the world, right? You couldn't respond to climate change until you had a population around the world that recognized, "Oh, here's the science. Here's what's happening."

• 35:29Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  "We've, we've got the following carbon in the atmosphere and it's leading to these changes." You can choose to decarbonize. You can choose to invest in new technologies. You can choose to adapt. You can even say, "Actually, we're getting so much benefit from the economic outcomes of globalization with oil and coal that we don't want to do that other stuff, maybe." There are lots of different effective ways to respond. But you can't even start to respond until you have identified the environment that you're in, the real honest-to-God environment you're in.

• 36:04Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  And that is true in climate. It's true in technology. It's true in geopolitics. It's true in the economy.

• 36:11Trevor Noah?

  It's true in life, I would say.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  It's true in life.

• 36:13Trevor Noah?

  Even in a, in a, in a personal relationship, you know? It's first understanding what the situation is.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Who you are, where you are. Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yes, the terrain and then have a battle plan.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, because too many people want to get into the debate about what we should do before they've actually discussed where we are. And so like this whole discussion of Trump good, Trump bad. Let's first understand how we got to the point of Trump, because Trump is not the reason the United States is in the present situation. Trump is a beneficiary. Trump is a symptom. And Trump is an accelerant. But Trump only happens in a political environment where very large numbers of people believe that the system is already broken. So to be a strategic thinker about what needs to happen in the US, you have to understand that. And that makes you then think, well, maybe the political establishment, as we've been dealing with it for the past decades. Yeah. Is not the answer.

• 37:10Trevor Noah?

  We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

• 37:15Trevor Noah?

  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 $35. For game day, add made-in-house wings, frozen pizzas, and 365 brand chips and dips. The limited-time bakery lineup brings the season home

• 37:58Trevor Noah?

  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 40, 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. 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.

• 38:42Trevor Noah?

  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. 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 wifi. "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.

• 39:26Trevor Noah?

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

• 40:09Trevor Noah?

  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 Luxe 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. 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 four favorites at Quince.

• 40:54Trevor Noah?

  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.

• 41:24Trevor Noah?

  People are always hopeful of younger leaders having better ideas. Is that true in politics? And do you think it will be true for the US as well?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Um, well, I think younger people are increasingly the majority. So whether or not they have the answers, they will be the answers. So understanding those demographic changes, super, super important. Right? Like Saudi Arabia, I was just in Saudi Arabia a little bit ago.

• 41:48Trevor Noah?

  What's it like?

• 41:49Speaker 02

  It's so different than 10 years ago, than 20 years ago. I mean, it's, it's literally, they're going through like a, a reverse Iranian revolution. Now, now they have leadership, which is of course deeply confident. And it's a monarchy.

• 42:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  And it doesn't broke political opposition. But they are transforming how societies work. It's not just that women drive, it's that they work. It's that they're educated, they're going out. They're like, there's a dating culture in Saudi Arabia now. It feels normal to an outsider in a way that 10 years ago, it felt like an alien repressive society.

• 42:28Trevor Noah?

  Now, you see, this, this is something that I feel like you're the perfect person to speak to about this. Because you have to think of it, this is literally your job. And this is what you consult on, and this is what you work in, this is what you write about, this is what. How, how do you think any given person in any given country should think about other countries? And the journey that they're on in terms of getting to the place that we think they should get to? I know that sounds like a word jumble, it's like a word salad.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  There was a lot there, Trevor.

• 42:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Father of seven.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, from Bulgaria.

• 43:00Trevor Noah?

  I haven't slept in a long time, guys. So I think of it like this.

• 43:06Trevor Noah?

  Many people in the United States would say, nobody should do business with Saudi Arabia. No one should go to Saudi Arabia. No one should do anything in and around Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia doesn't have free speech and they oppress gay people and it's a terrible place for women, etc. They'll say all these things, right? They'll say them. Some of them being very true, some of them maybe outdated. They've changed, but people haven't changed knowing what has changed, right? I remember asking someone this question, not being pro Saudi Arabia at all, by the way. I just said, but America wasn't always pro gay rights, right?

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Correct, obviously.

• 43:40Trevor Noah?

  So, do you think America should have been boycotted and sanctioned then? And people were like, oh, well, no.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  But sanctions on South Africa, of course, worked, right? Because here was a country that really didn't want to be isolated.

• 43:57Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  And helped make them.

• 43:59Trevor Noah?

  But did it work? Or did the apartheid government at some point realize they were just running out of steam?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Both.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  No, they certainly moved, but because of the sanction.

• 44:07Trevor Noah?

  No, but that's what I'm asking.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  I mean, it accelerated the process.

• 44:09Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  There's no question. Without that international pressure, right? It wasn't going to move so much. And, look, Americans, young people in America, feel a lot differently about Israel and Palestine today.

• 44:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Than they did 20 years ago.

• 44:19Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  You know, I'm growing up in the United States, Israel, principal democracy, and still a whole bunch of forefathers, parents, you know, saying, hey, what happened in World War II? That, that, that's why they have a state. That can never happen again. You have to support that. Today, you've got Israel as by far the strongest country militarily in the region, able to determine outcomes with comparative impunity against its adversaries. And you have Palestinians who are living with next to nothing and they feel like the little guy. They feel like the oppressors. There are a lot of young Americans that automatically are just not going to align with the stronger power.

• 45:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, right.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Irrespective of where right and wrong and history and the rest play. So the, the point is, these things change. And, and this, I think this is kind of like a throughput of the conversation that we're having.

• 45:12Trevor Noah?

  No, it is, it is.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  It's not just how you think about other countries. It's also about how you think about other countries and your own country over time. What's the trajectory? Are you making progress? No, the arc of history isn't always towards progress. It has to be moved by people, by leaders, towards progress. And right now, in the United States, we're living through a very uncertain time. If you'd asked me, nineteen eighty nine, if you'd asked me in nineteen eighty nine, when Gorbachev was in the Soviet Union, asked me to describe the Soviet Union as a country, is it a dictatorship or not? Is it an empire or not? And I would say, I don't know, because it was in process, right? It was, it was going through an extraordinary political revolution.

• 45:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  And it could have collapsed, it could have not, but it was all pregnant with possibility. The United States today is like that. Damn.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, same with South Africa with the sanction, it could have gone either way.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Could have gone either way at the time.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  And most people think apartheid lasted very long. It wasn't actually very long, because obviously for it to become a republic from the British, giving it to the Afrikaners, they realized that sanctions will take them back half a generation, actually, because they had just acquired all this wealth.

• 46:21Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And for a way to keep the wealth was to obviously relinquish power, but still keep the levers of power. And we're dealing with it now, thirty years after the first elections. So nothing much has changed, and you're right, it's just people adapting. And I think it was just young ideas of the people who were in government at the time of the apartheid government who said, look, strategically, if we think about this, if we relinquish power, appease the West, and then put these people in power, we can still control the money. And it was true.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  And was true for a long time, actually. Becky, it was certainly true.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 46:53Trevor Noah?

  And even to your point of that, it's like Nelson Mandela had to be, it's funny, when you talk about people's perceptions of things changing over time. Nelson Mandela was widely seen as the person who orchestrated the impossible. He threaded a needle that was impossible to thread, because he said, Power is going to shift over from a minority to a majority. There will be no widespread bloodshed. There won't be any war. There won't be any purging of people.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  There can't be pogroms against these people.

• 47:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there won't be any Idi Amin. There won't be anything like that. They will still be involved in the echelons of power.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:31Trevor Noah?

  And at the time, people went, oh, this is the only way it could be done. Because the West, for instance, might just shut South Africa off. It might sort of do like, like turn us into a Haiti, for lack of a better term. Where they go like, no, they would though. They go, they could have just shut down South Africa and go like, we're putting sanctions on you. Even though you have freed yourself, we're putting sanctions on you.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:52Trevor Noah?

  And he did that. But it's interesting to see how, like a generation later, there are many people who go, he did the wrong thing.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:59Trevor Noah?

  It should have been a revolution.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Mandela affected us.

• 48:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Because if you think about it properly, after the first elections, there were two terms that ran concurrently and two races heard them differently. The first one was transitional government. So white people still understood that they still had the levers of power. You had F E W D flag, Sting being a secondary president.

• 48:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  And then Rainbow Nation was for the black people. All of us were together in this whole thing.

• 48:24Trevor Noah?

  I love the Rainbow Nation.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  One had no power. And guess which one we went with?

• 48:28Trevor Noah?

  I love the Rainbow Nation.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're still in a transitional government, whether you like it or not. And all 10 years later.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Again, it's the domestic and the international. And you have to look at the internal and the external. And, you know, if the United States is going to be Israel's protector, no matter what, then the behavior of the government and the way that the people react is going to be different than if suddenly they had the view that, oh, my God, the Americans might actually be turning against us. And then we're in real, we're in real trouble at that point. Because we no longer have that support. Right? And that's true for so many different countries around the world that are going through significant transitions. The reason why the United States is so unusual is because the US is going through a political revolution at the same time that it is the most powerful country in the world.

• 49:09Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 49:12Trevor Noah?

  That's really interesting.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  So that so many countries.

• 49:16Trevor Noah?

  Because commonly, because commonly it would happen when things aren't going well.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  So many countries around the world are not happy with what the US is doing, but they don't want to get into a fight. Because it's dangerous for them, and not just Mexico, not just Canada, but the Europeans, right? I mean, when publicly, when they're meeting with the Americans, they're trying to find a way to, oh, yes, you're brilliant, and we got to find a way to work with you. We appreciate all your efforts and we'll get to the right peace deal with Ukraine and we'll get to the right trade deal between the two countries. Only the Chinese have hit the Americans back hard and the Americans backed off.

• 49:52Trevor Noah?

  So when we, when we're looking at that world, you know, you said that first rule, first understand the lay of the land. First understand the situation before you react or respond to it.

• 50:05Trevor Noah?

  We are currently in a situation where, as you said, you know, power is diffuse. People can work in different worlds, like, you know, a good example is America being like the number one exporter of like soy to China. And then Brazil, I think, basically taking that spot from them.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  And then the Americans taking it back.

• 50:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Now.

• 50:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because now going like, we're going to work that deal. We're going to find who we pay with that. It's, it's such an interesting, complicated puzzle that's constantly moving. So what is step two? When you, when you have the information that's only applicable to now in this moment, what is step two of strategic thinking?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Well, let's first recognize why step one is so hard today. Because if you're living in an environment where the basic, like the block and tackling of just what the information is, is completely divided on the basis of your political tribal affiliation.

• 50:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Then you can't get to step two.

• 50:54Trevor Noah?

  How many times have we had this conversation? Can I tell you, it, it doesn't matter who we've spoken to, whether it's comedians, whether it's news anchors, whether it's politicians, whether it's analysts, whether it's political science, it doesn't matter who it is.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:09Trevor Noah?

  Almost everyone has agreed on one thing. And that is one of the greatest threats facing society today is the fact that we are not getting the same information. Not that we don't agree on it, just that we're not getting the same information.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  And so you can't do strategic thinking. If you are not together at least able to understand the lay of the land.

• 51:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Not what the solutions need to be, just the basic issues.

• 51:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  The facts around a vaccine and its efficacy, the facts around an election and its outcome, and the fact that it was or was not free and fair. These are fundamental things.

• 51:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  That Americans today are incapable of agreeing on because their information ecosystems are completely different, are politicized, are treating them like products. Because we're not going to do strategic thinking as an American nation absent that. Not possible. And we will therefore slip farther behind our competitive environment, our competitive advantage to other countries that can do that strategic thinking.

• 52:09Trevor Noah?

  So when you see something like that as somebody who studies the journey that countries are on and how nations rise and fall, is it absurd to think that America could sort of like eat itself from the inside out if everyone believes that nothing is real and nothing works and nothing? Because at some point, what people stop doing is they stop believing, they stop caring. And then they just, they sort of just like give that power to something or someone else. You know what I mean? People just walk away.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I think as someone who's traveled all over the world and has spent most of my life studying other countries that have gone through transitions, when the US, as I've grown up, has been much more stable, and so people think, oh, it's always going to be this way. You recognize that these are ephemeral points.

• 52:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  That the US could go in a very, very different direction, that the institutions that you think are strong might not stand, that the leaders that you think will stand up for something might not stand up for something. And that could lead to widespread social movements in the United States, but it could also lead to wide repression and violence. We need, I don't think that those things are imminent or likely today, but I recognize their possibility. You have to, anyone that has studied Latin America, or the Middle East, or Eastern Europe, or other, or Southeast Asia, anyone that has studied any of those countries, even like Brazil has gone through so much similar politically from what the United States has recently. And no, very few Americans would say, oh, our country's like Brazil. No, actually, these political dynamics are very similar.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  And if you end up with a political class that feels like if they lose, they lose everything. You heard Steve Bannon say this the other day. If we lose, we're all going to jail. If they really feel that way, if it's not just about losing an election, but if we lose, they're investigating us, they're throwing us in prison, ourselves, our families, maybe.

• 54:02Trevor Noah?

  Well, now you don't, now you don't even want to allow an election to become. Why take the chance now?

• 54:08Speaker 02

  You have to control the outcome when it becomes about everything.

• 54:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's terrifying.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  It's terrifying, and that happens in so many different countries. You cannot tell me that there is something so exceptional about the United States, so unique in, in human history, that it could not happen in the United States. It's a country that had a civil war, where it literally tore itself apart over ideas. And, and it could happen again, of course it could.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  There's that phrase that always scares me, the political class and what it breeds, right? I think we don't talk enough about that. Yeah.

• 54:41Trevor Noah?

  What, what elements of it? Does breeding make you uncomfortable, which part?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Once you have people that will cling on to power by any means necessary, then they start determining about, I mean, how the culture of that country is going to be like. The one person that's gonna get into power, who's gonna slip in after all is said and done, is gonna wanna stick in there, and we see it in this country, right? Someone brings in their relative, they get power, then they have the people that are around them that have political power as well, then it becomes a little cabal in a class that goes and negotiates deals with other countries, but they're not necessarily acting for the country. Then they start determining who's a figurehead that stands in there, but they're the ones who control the levers of power.

• 55:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I mean, in South Africa, we see it as well, where it's like, one of the great fears of any leader is losing the power, not because they want to do things for the country, but because they're scared of what will be done to them.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  To themselves.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:28Trevor Noah?

  Because of what they've done.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yes, but obviously, in our country, it went with, um, it, it was political struggle, credentials first, and then it became political dynasties. You know, children of people who went and struggled, and then obviously there's billionaires.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  I mean, President Trump was clearly willing to go a lot farther than I think anyone around him, his advisors, the Republican leadership, had imagined that he would at the end of the first term, when he lost to Biden.

• 55:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  When he lost a free and fair election, both in terms of calling the Georgian election officials and saying, you gotta do something for. In terms of January six, all of these things, which is why so many Republicans turned against him with that second impeachment. Unprecedented in US history. That is exactly the sort of thing that people underestimate. And it's not just about Trump. When you see some of the decisions that are being made by the Attorney General right now, it's inconceivable in today's environment that the US Attorney General would open an investigation against a member of the Trump administration in good standing. And yet, that's exactly what an Attorney General is supposed to do.

• 56:35Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  That's only changed in the last year. And yet, there are so many examples of that happening in other countries around the world.

• 56:42Trevor Noah?

  When you're analyzing a lot of this, I've noticed in a lot of your work, you sort of you sort of take the approach that I feel like a doctor does with with medicine or with surgery where they they they almost don't have like an emotional feeling towards a cancer, for instance, or they just observe the thing.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 57:02Trevor Noah?

  Do you get what I'm saying?

• 57:03Speaker 02

  I do get what you're saying.

• 57:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, a lot of the time I'll read your work or I'll.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  I'm a little disturbed about it, but I get what you're saying.

• 57:09Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, because because I wonder if you it feels like you've had to find a way to observe something unemotionally and then then respond with your emotions if you wish to. But first of all, this is what I see.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm glad you put it that way because, I mean, at least the doctor analogy, doctors are human beings. They're not robots, they're not autotons, they actually really care about their patients. But first, they have to do no harm.

• 57:34Trevor Noah?

  Exactly.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  First, they have to try to understand and respond to what it is they're dealing with. Now, I could never be a doctor because I can't handle blood, right? And so many people say that. But it turns out I can actually emotionally handle all sorts of political distress. I don't get wound up about it.

• 57:51Trevor Noah?

  A lot of people can't.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  At all.

• 57:52Trevor Noah?

  A lot of people can't.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  And I have no problem. By the way, I personally believe, and I've said this publicly, that Trump is unfit for office. I believe that for reasons we can talk about if you want. But I have no problem when Trump does things that are legitimately successful. When he does things that are more successful than Biden, and there are many of them, I have literally no emotional problem.

• 58:12Trevor Noah?

  That's what I mean.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Saying that publicly.

• 58:13Trevor Noah?

  But that's what I mean.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  It's obvious that that is the case, and people get mad at me. You know, people that think that, well, wait a second, hold on, hold on, you like, you can't say anything positive about Trump. But what do you mean? Like, if he's successful, then you want me to call balls and strikes, right? Don't you want me to tell you what I actually think? You just want to be your monkey? As, you know, Jon Stewart used to say.

• 58:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but where do you, but where do you, where do you think you got that from? I mean, living in a country where, as you said, it's become more and more tribal in and around politics, but where do you think you got that from? And what do you think you're holding on to?

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Well, first, I, I grew up with nothing, right? I grew up in the projects. I wasn't part of some political elite in the United States, so I didn't feel connected to that. Secondly, I traveled all over the place, starting when I was a kid, 16, I went to the Soviet Union.

• 58:56Trevor Noah?

  Why?

• 58:57Speaker 02

  Because I was a, I was in college, because I was pushed ahead when I was younger. And it was an opportunity to go someplace for someone that had never been anywhere. And the Soviet Union, behind the iron curtain, and then you find out, wait a second, the kids that are here are a lot like the, like me. And, and I get really offended. Like, I know that there are a whole bunch of people out there, like, you know, you shouldn't think that just because you're black, you think this way, or just because you're a woman, you think this way. A lot of people think that because you're an American, you think a certain way. And I, I get hugely offended by that, personally. Like, the idea that I would hold certain political beliefs and values just because of what country I happen to randomly be born in. That's like a crazy thought, right?

• 59:38Trevor Noah?

  Well, your grandmother will argue the random part, but.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  But that was my grandmother. I'm not my grandma. I didn't make that decision.

• 59:45Trevor Noah?

  It is so funny. I remember talking to somebody about this once, and I said, one concept that has, has truly, truly, truly always evaded a certain part of my brain is like patriotism in, in, in the sense where people are, you know, they go like, my country. Then I'm like, I'm not saying don't love your country, but you also have to admit, it is pretty random that you didn't choose it. For the most part, people didn't choose it.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm Catholic, not my fault at all. And there are a lot of weird things about Catholicism that I do not support, but I grew up as a Catholic and I don't want to renounce it.

• 1:00:18Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm saying. It's just like, it's this world where you go, just this random thing happened, and I'm willing to accept parts of it and be proud of it, but also I, I admit the randomness of it. I am American, which is random, but it doesn't mean I have to only think one way because of that.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  I'm an American, I'm also a Scorpio. Right?

• 1:00:37Trevor Noah?

  No, that explains a lot, though.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  I know it does.

• 1:00:39Trevor Noah?

  No, that explains a lot. I mean, it's more than that.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  I'm a Scorpio, so.

• 1:00:42Trevor Noah?

  Classic Scorpio. Yeah, I knew that. Classic Scorpio as well.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, see? But equally random.

• 1:00:47Trevor Noah?

  I don't know what any of these things mean. I just learned you must just say that. When anyone tells you their star sign, the first thing you must do is like, ah, classic, and then you say the star sign. It doesn't matter what it is.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Classic Sagittarius.

• 1:00:57Trevor Noah?

  You just say that all.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  See, that, that's what you did there. Classic Sagittarius.

• 1:01:00Trevor Noah?

  Classic Sagittarius.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  But I am a New Yorker. And that I chose.

• 1:01:04Trevor Noah?

  There you go.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  And I put a lot of time into that. And I really believe in being a New Yorker. And I was offended at the beginning. You remember that guy that was on LinkedIn? Who Seinfeld called some asshole on LinkedIn?

• 1:01:14Trevor Noah?

  I don't know this way. What happened?

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  At the beginning of the pandemic.

• 1:01:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  And, and one of the, like, this, this influencer on LinkedIn. And that is actually what he was known for. Was being influencer. He was well-known. Um, said that he was, that New York was never gonna come back. This was it for New York.

• 1:01:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I remember this. I remember this.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  And I was so personally offended by that.

• 1:01:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  You know, like, if you told me that America was over, I would, that, I'd be clinical about that.

• 1:01:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  But New York, I am passionate about New York.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  If only people knew there was a chink to your armor. Your politics and mass murder, yeah, not emotional.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  But New York.

• 1:01:43Trevor Noah?

  New York, ah!

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Trevor Noah?

  Lincoln! Kill!

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Kill Lincoln! Who is that asshole? I couldn't believe it. I mean, this is such an amazing city.

• 1:01:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and Jerry wrote this whole thing about, like, go out and see what it's gonna be. It's like one, just one, one cycle of experiencing this. And it was, it was actually a beautiful, like, like piece. Like an F you. Go out there and see what it's like. You, once you've lived in New York, you can never live anywhere, was the, was the idea behind it.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 1:02:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, cuz this guy was like, New York's done. And Jerry was like, okay, go.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Go somewhere else?

• 1:02:14Trevor Noah?

  Go anywhere else.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Trevor Noah?

  And when you've had a few weeks of this and a few, you're gonna see what's gonna happen to you. You're gonna come back to the city. You're gonna, and honestly, almost everyone who left, came back. Anyone who could, sort of came. Everyone went to Miami, everyone went to Florida. Everyone came back to New York.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  I'd agree that, look, there is a real affordability crisis. Yeah, but that's not saying the people who could afford. It's a hard place to live if you're poor. The people who could afford. I still loved it. Yeah, the people who could afford were the ones with, I don't like it. And it's like, nah, you're gonna.

• 1:02:43Trevor Noah?

  But maybe what you guys are explaining is why the world has fallen in love with America, because we think the whole America is New York.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Trevor Noah?

  Like a melting pot of cultures and ideas and it's fast and it's moving and anything is possible. If you make it here, you can make it anywhere. Do you feel like that about New York? Is that why you are?

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Because I think New York is everywhere.

• 1:03:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  It's everybody's here and everyone walks and everyone takes the subway. And it's a pain in the ass and it's smelly and sometimes it's a little dangerous and there's grit. But, but we all, but Ameri- human beings, it's, we want to overcome. Right? We, we give our best when there's some pushback, when there's some resistance in the band. And it's not, New York does that every day, all the time. It does it when you're sleeping, it's still noisy. It does it when you wake up in the morning. There's nothing easing about this place.

• 1:03:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  But, but every single thing, every piece of progress that you make in New York, you earned it. You got, you, you had to work for it.

• 1:03:38Trevor Noah?

  It's a grind.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  It's a grind.

• 1:03:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the place is a grind.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  But it's rewarding as hell.

• 1:03:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  And the people are so cool and they're from everywhere. You have no idea what they do. You don't know who they are. You can bump into anyone in New York. It doesn't matter.

• 1:03:49Trevor Noah?

  Well, I've said, one of the things that I think makes New York such a special place is the fact that you can't opt out of many of the shit things of New York. And so because of that, like in South Africa, I noticed, I know it's a crazy thing to say, but we, we, we had load shedding, right? The power blackouts and like the government because of, because of corruption, they didn't build up the power stations the way they should have. It's a whole long thing. Long story short, we have these.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  You said you can't say that.

• 1:04:14Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean?

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Long story short.

• 1:04:15Trevor Noah?

  You, you're right.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  You said long story long, literally before we started.

• 1:04:18Trevor Noah?

  You can't say long story short.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:19Trevor Noah?

  You can't.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:20Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I can't.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  You can't.

• 1:04:21Trevor Noah?

  I see.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Because you're our guest.

• 1:04:23Trevor Noah?

  But you can.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  You, you're our guest. I will still expand on the story.

• 1:04:26Trevor Noah?

  The one thing that could not be said.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Okay, fine.

• 1:04:28Trevor Noah?

  You can't say.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  Literally is the one thing you said.

• 1:04:29Trevor Noah?

  The rules of the administration.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  It was the rule. There was only one rule.

• 1:04:32Trevor Noah?

  No one is above the law except.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  Except the lawmaker.

• 1:04:35Trevor Noah?

  Ah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  That's how it works.

• 1:04:36Trevor Noah?

  Política de él.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  It's kind of like the United States.

• 1:04:39Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  What it is.

• 1:04:40Trevor Noah?

  It's a revolution.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  I've just pardoned.

• 1:04:42Trevor Noah?

  In the house.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  I've just pardoned myself.

• 1:04:44Trevor Noah?

  I see.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  That's what I've done.

• 1:04:47Trevor Noah?

  So we started having these rolling blackouts in South Africa. Terrible thing for the country economically, terrible thing for people, couldn't get around, traffic lights were out, you name it, stores would go down. But it it created the strangest thing that I think most South Africans never considered.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Chinese solar panels.

• 1:05:03Trevor Noah?

  That too.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:05:05Trevor Noah?

  And it was, by the way, China's killing it because of that everywhere in the world, even internally, they're just like the solar farm game is on another level, shout out to China. The the thing it created was a commonality that you couldn't escape. Every South African, rich, poor, young, old, black, white, Indian, you named it, experienced the electricity going out.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  At the same time.

• 1:05:26Trevor Noah?

  At the same time, it was this thing that all of a sudden connected you. And that's what I think New York does is like, you can't escape the traffic. You can't escape the subway, you can't escape the walking, you can't escape the cold or the hot or the humid or the smells or the sounds or the, you can't. The people. Do you remember when Jeff Bezos, remember when Jeff, no, when Jeff Bezos, remember when Jeff Bezos wanted to build, he he wanted to build a helipad on his apartment building or something and New York was like, where? And he was like, no, I want my helicopter. And they're like, nah, buddy. Come come to the through the tunnel like all of us. No, no, they're like, no, buddy, there's no helicopters here, no, no helicopters are flying over the city like that.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  And nine eleven was that, of course.

• 1:06:06Trevor Noah?

  Yes, that changed everything. They're like, no, none of this.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:06:09Trevor Noah?

  But my, but that's my point is like, I think what it's created is a city where while they're still definitely classed, will determine what you can and cannot do in different way. But still, members' clubs haven't really blown up in New York, like where you pay to be part of. Because the cool is still like the thing, you know what I mean? You go to a bar where people want to stay in line.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:06:30Trevor Noah?

  You know, if it's a really cool thing.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:32Trevor Noah?

  Half of New York is just people waiting in a line for a bagel they've heard about.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  I stood in line today and I was like, I don't like this poverty mentality.

• 1:06:38Trevor Noah?

  You see, you think of it as that. In New York, it's sort of like a cool thing.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  It's an experience.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  There's a bagel place around the corner from my house, one of the most well-known bagel places in here. It's called Apollo Bagels. Shout out to Apollo Bagels. They just opened like six months ago. And there's always lines around the block. And so when Mumdani won.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  As mayor and people said, it's gonna be breadlines. I went outside and I took a photo of the breadline. And everyone was smiling and there's like dogs and everything. I'm saying, oh my God. Breadlines in New York. The Mumdani effect is already in place. And of course, because it's social media, people think I'm serious.

• 1:07:13Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Like, well, what do you mean? He's not even mayor yet, you idiot. I'm like, yeah, you gotta stock up.

• 1:07:18Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  There isn't even gonna be bread when Mumdani becomes mayor.

• 1:07:21Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  We need more of a sense of humor.

• 1:07:24Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you, I wish there was like a joke filter that you could put on the internet to tell people. Other than writing, this is a joke at the end of, I don't know. It's just lost its, you know?

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  You have to just, you have to just own it.

• 1:07:37Trevor Noah?

  You have to own it?

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  You have to just get right in and let people come at you.

• 1:07:39Trevor Noah?

  This is a man who's not worried about being shot in the streets. I will own none of these things, Ian. I will own none of them.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:45Trevor Noah?

  I tweet far and few between now. Cause no one, literally, to your point of not understanding a reality. That has become part of the reality fracturing. Is that humor has lost its context. Humor has lost its, oh, you were making. And then I've even seen people go, even when they find out it's a joke. Well, you shouldn't make that joke.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Cause someone might not have a sense of humor.

• 1:08:08Trevor Noah?

  Cause it might be a breadline. It's like, yeah, but that, that was the joke. That was the thing that we're living in. But I, but I don't wanna forget, wait, what's step two? Cause we said step one is understanding the lay of the land. What do you do then? When you're strategic thinking, what do you?

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Once we all have a common thread.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  It depends on, no, that, that, it depends on who you are and, and where you wanna go. The, the reactions of different actors, once you understand what the problem is or what the opportunity is.

• 1:08:37Trevor Noah?

  That's when you, so you just make your choice.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  What's your discount factor? How much does 10 years in the future matter to you compared to tomorrow?

• 1:08:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  How much flexibility do you really have as opposed to, do you pretend you have? Right?

• 1:08:49Trevor Noah?

  I mean, is this how you live like you're, how much do you apply this to your daily life?

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 1:08:54Trevor Noah?

  Like, give me, give me an example of just like.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  My man was in a queue for a bagel.

• 1:08:57Trevor Noah?

  He wasn't in the queue, he took a picture of the queue.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  I was in the queue.

• 1:09:00Trevor Noah?

  Oh, you were in the queue.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  I, I took it as a participant.

• 1:09:02Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like it's good to participate.

• 1:09:04Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, I don't know. Well, you called it.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Exhibit one.

• 1:09:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, no, you called it. He was in a queue.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Trevor Noah?

  Was the bagel worth it?

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  The bagel, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:09:11Trevor Noah?

  Some people say that these things. Feel like they're worth it because of the queue.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Because of the queue.

• 1:09:15Trevor Noah?

  Others say that that's not true. What do you think?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  I am, I believe that the experience is part of it. Yes, absolutely.

• 1:09:20Trevor Noah?

  So it's like a theme park ride?

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, like if you buy a nice bottle of wine and people tell you it's a nice bottle of wine, you're gonna feel it's a bit of olive wine because of the experience of having gone through that.

• 1:09:28Trevor Noah?

  When they tell you there's only four hundred of these in the world.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Trevor Noah?

  It's like I went to um, a theme park. I went to Six Flags. And I used to go to Six Flags all the time before anybody knew who I was. Why they call it Six Flags? I have no clue why they call it Six Flags. There's just Six Flags there.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  There are six.

• 1:09:43Trevor Noah?

  Literally. There are six flags.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  I think there are six.

• 1:09:45Trevor Noah?

  What's on the flags?

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Different colors, actually.

• 1:09:46Trevor Noah?

  Yes, different colors. Okay, okay. It's not like flags of countries, just little triangle flags. Okay. But I used to go all the time and you know, you you wait and then you ride the roller coaster and you do your thing. After I got the Daily Show once, I was going and then they like saw that I was coming and they're like, hey, are you, you coming to Six Flags? They're like, oh, you don't have to wait in any of the lines. And I was like, oh, I mean, now I've achieved. This is, this is what I've worked for in life.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  And it didn't mean as much to you.

• 1:10:08Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you?

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:10:10Trevor Noah?

  One of the worst experiences I've ever had, for a few reasons. One, I didn't realize how much of a theme park was fun. Because you stand in line with your friends. With your friends. For hours and just talk and laugh and you get bored together. You hear screams the whole time and you keep going like, I wonder what this is gonna be like for me. Mm hmm. And then when you walk to the next ride or back from it, now you're decompressing, you're thinking about it. We went on, rode the same ride like four times back to back, only rode the best rides, didn't stop at any other rides along the way. We had headaches and we learned nothing more about each other as friends. It was the shortest theme park day I've ever had.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Wait, why headaches? Did you read that wonderful?

• 1:10:50Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what hap- you guys have gone on a roller coaster, no one talking to you. You went back to back to back. Back to back to back to back to back to back. There was the New York Times.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Um, interview uh, with the woman uh, who had, she was a little disabled.

• 1:11:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  And she wanted to take her, like she had a, she couldn't walk properly, so she needed to have like, you know, sort of a walker or something like that.

• 1:11:10Trevor Noah?

  Oh, so it wasn't, okay, okay, got it.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Um, and she wanted to bring her daughter to um, to Disney and it was a huge, huge thing and she had to save up and it was, and and it described her entire experience.

• 1:11:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Compared to the experience of the guy. Guy that brought his family that could like pay to make sure they have, you know, a guide in advance.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  And talked about how Disney in America, when Disney was started, it was the great equalizer. It was the one place that like, you know, was meant to be this idealist experience that everyone together could have together.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  And now it's not.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Once you put on the Mickey or Minnie ears, we're all equal.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  And it's not, and it's not at all. And, and that is, there's still a few bits of it, like for example, the fact that the characters run around and everyone can take photos with them. But for most of the experience, it's become completely segregated.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  It has.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  And so, and, and that, and people, people don't like that. Shocking. They don't like that in, in aviation. Shocking. They don't like it in sports. Shocking. And New York is one of those places which is a great leveler. There's so much about the city that no matter how much money you do or don't have, how much power.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Fewer things you can escape.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  There are fewer things you can escape. And, and, and it's, and I, but I do think that there's self-selection. I think a lot of people that like this are people that have decided that is strategically interesting for them.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what I was about to say.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  And I'm not sure that's true for everybody.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Exactly that.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  I'm sure a big part of it is.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  People who are in a position of privilege, you can complain about those colors. Exactly. Like a poor person who's gotten two days off to take their family there and they've been saving for a year, they would love to go on all the rides. But for you, because you're cosplaying and you're thinking, I love the struggle of waiting in line and having one turkey leg at a time.

• 1:12:47Trevor Noah?

  That's not, that's not what I'm saying. First of all, that was a poor impression of me.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  I, I'm sorry. Yeah, I felt it.

• 1:12:53Trevor Noah?

  I, yeah. I've seen, I've seen you, I've seen you do much better impressions of me. That was a terrible one.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  First of all, I'm so sorry.

• 1:13:00Trevor Noah?

  That's not bad. That's not bad. No, this is what I'm saying. It's not about, it's not about.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  It's better than any impression I would have attempted, which would get me canceled in a lot of places.

• 1:13:08Trevor Noah?

  No, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it's that. I'll disagree with you on this. I don't think it's that. It's not about, um, idealizing a struggle or, it's not that.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Cosplaying.

• 1:13:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's under, it's rather understanding.

• 1:13:22Trevor Noah?

  Some, okay, so think of it like with with parents, you and I have spoken about this. Uh huh. One of the strange gifts that comes from having a parent who doesn't have money is that when they say no to you for something that you want. Hmm. It's because they don't have money. Hmm. Mom, can I have that toy? No. Why? We can't afford it. Mom, can I have that cereal? No. Why? We can't afford it. Those clothes? No. Why? We can't afford it. It's a really simple response to a request. Uh huh. Right? It is hard to think that there's a world that exists that would create some sort of friction or terrible relationship when you have to explain the no for no reason. Does that make sense? Yeah.

• 1:14:06Trevor Noah?

  So there's people who have money and the kid goes, can I have that? No. Why? Because no. But why? Because I said so. Wow. Because I say. Now, I'm not saying that one is a gift in the in in the nicest sense. Yes. But everything in life comes, you know, my my motto is every gift is a curse. Yes. No matter what you say. A big country, good for you, also bad for you. Good luck uniting a big country. Yeah. Oil, a curse. Exactly. It's a curse. It's a curse. Yeah, you got oil is like, you know, and we've got to talk about Venezuela's oil, by the way. I want to know what you think about this whole saga, but like, but what I what I mean about these things is I didn't realize, I don't want to wait in lines more, but I didn't realize what I was getting by being in the line. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:51Trevor Noah?

  I genuinely didn't realize it. And I I think the same holds for like a New York or one of those places is you don't realize what the hassle of having to be on the subway does for you as a person until you don't have it. Most things that are a hassle have some sort of benefit that you aren't able to appreciate until you remove the hassle and then you go, oh, shit. There was a, there was a side of this that I didn't know.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  So this brings me back to the strategic thinking question.

• 1:15:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  And how one goes the second step. And, and the fact that New York has this great equalizer forces people to behave in ways that are somewhat similar. There's one thing that I can think of that is a great equalizer. No matter who you are, no matter what your station in life is, no matter how rich, how poor, how powerful, how powerless. There's one thing we all have.

• 1:15:35Trevor Noah?

  Dendruff.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  We have the same exact amount of it as well. There's time.

• 1:15:38Trevor Noah?

  Time.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  It's all we have. It's all we have. That's the great equalizer. And so really, once you understand the environment, the opportunity, the challenge. The thing that you most need to key on is how do I respond to that in terms of how I want to be spending my time?

• 1:15:56Trevor Noah?

  Oh, oh, I like that.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  And I spend a lot of time personally thinking strategically about that. What are the things that I want to be doing? How much do I want to travel?

• 1:16:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  How much do I want to engage in the following ways with the following people? What do I want to spend my time doing? I've organized my company that way. I organize the people that work with me that way. The kinds of things I work on and I don't work on.

• 1:16:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  It's all about the, the time that I'm actually spending.

• 1:16:21Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere because we got more What Now after this.

• 1:16:25Speaker 04

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app at participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, Seven Up, Inc.

• 1:16:50Speaker 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 best-selling 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. That's C-O-O-P, sleepgoods.com/comedy.

• 1:17:43Trevor Noah?

  Do you ever have to advise governments? And I know you work with companies, but do you ever have to advise governments?

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  I talk to foreign leaders all the time.

• 1:17:50Trevor Noah?

  Do they take your advice or do they just listen to you?

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  You know, I think for many of them, I'm kind of like a geopolitical therapist.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Because these are people with no time.

• 1:18:02Trevor Noah?

  What a line.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  They're the busiest people. They're the busiest people. They have no time. The fact that they're giving you an hour or a half an hour if you're a head of state is like the most valuable thing they could possibly give you. And what they spend most of their time working on is really, really pressing, immediate, narrow problems. And what they really want to be doing, because they're head of state, or they're a foreign minister, or what have you, in a position of real authorities, they want to be able to spend a little time thinking about how the world is changing. And that's really what I think we end up spending most of our time doing, is giving them a little bit of that that they don't have. And I'm not blowing smoke up their ass. I'm not telling them what they want to hear.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  I'm very happy if we have disagreements on stuff because I don't need anything from them, you know? I'm not working for them. I'm not taking money from them. It's just a sharing of information.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  For a person like you who's met every sort of powerful person in the world, I suppose this question might be a bit weird because revealing our strategy when we do this podcast, we always think our guest must not feel the transition between them having a normal conversation with just anybody and being interviewed. It's not an interview. So they must get through a pathway. They can get through what they do and then we can just also understand who they are. So what strategy did you think you're going to use to get through to who we really are as hosts of this podcast? When you're thinking about it.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  I feel like I know Trevor a little, both as a public figure, but also because we've met informally a few times. I feel like we're simpatico. I certainly have a warmth towards his curiousness and his knowledge and interest in policy and global stuff, which meant that I... And I didn't have a strategy. I'd have a strategy, I'd have much more of a strategy, but someone I've never met before. I don't know who they are, I don't know what engages them, I don't think that there might be a gotcha, that kind of thing. Here, it's much more, no, no, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna see what Trevor's gonna talk about, and I wanna be maximally open to that. And I want it to go whatever direction is gonna be most interesting. And that's okay. And that's what I do on stage with an audience.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Like, I don't necessarily know exactly what I'm gonna talk about, but I see the audience, I see what they react to, and then I move. You know? And so, I mean, we moved a lot because I said something early on that I saw really touched Trevor.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  Right? Um, and that was really interesting. That was a moment where suddenly he was like, oh, wait a second. Technology does this. I hadn't considered that before. Changed his worldview a little bit. Oh, let's mind that, because that's a point of friction, but also curiosity, right?

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Open mindedness is a big part of, uh, strategy, right?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Open mindedness is essential to strategy.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  Uh, again, not necessarily open mindedness in, in understanding yourself.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  But, uh, open mindedness in like, ha- the fact that everything external is changeable. And any opinion that you hold about the rest of the world, you better be open to having it change, because even if it's not changing now, it will change in the future. You will, like, you're gonna be wrong about almost everything over time. That's what they say about predictions. You know, make a prediction or offer a timeframe, never give them both. Right?

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  And, and so, like, these things change. I wrote a book called The J-Curve. And it was about a relationship between a company, a country's openness and its stability. And at the time, countries that were most open were also most stable. A big piece of that was because technology was helping to drive that, the communications revolution.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  Like, if you had access to the internet, that was a threat to authoritarian states, but it was a strength for democracies. Today, um, top-down technologies are much more consolidating and much more powerful. The surveillance revolution, the data revolution.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  If you're a big monopoly platform or a government with access to data, you have a lot more influence and you can create a lot more stability, you have a lot more power.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  The J-curve today looks more like a U. This was a seminal thing that I spent years of my life on. It was really important to my career. I teach it now and I tell my cl- my students, it's no longer applicable.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  It's changed, it's wrong now. And so, every single thing that I've written about, I have to be ready for it to be wrong. At some point, it will be, because the world's changing.

• 1:22:13Trevor Noah?

  I feel like this is such a liberating.

• 1:22:17Trevor Noah?

  It's just a liberating viewpoint to have in life. If we if we all felt like that, because I think.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  It's kind of geopolitical Buddhism.

• 1:22:25Trevor Noah?

  It really is, though, but because if we if we hold on to our ideas as if our ideas are us. Then we are afraid to let go of our ideas because we feel like we're letting go of a piece of ourselves. If somebody challenges our ideas, we feel like they're challenging us.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Trevor Noah?

  But if you can, as you say, separate yourself from the idea. Then it can change.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Trevor Noah?

  It can be challenged.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Trevor Noah?

  It can be wrong.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Trevor Noah?

  It can move, it can shift, it can, do you know what I mean?

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  It's essential.

• 1:22:50Trevor Noah?

  It can create a world.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  It's one hundred percent that. I I think also interpersonal relationships are a good training ground for that. I think for you at that age to go all the way to the Soviet Union. And meet other young people and exchange ideas. I'm sure when you came back to New York, to your peers, you were someone else, right?

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  Well, at the time, it was going back to Boston, which is where I was living back then. Yeah, it was completely different. I I had felt like I had like this huge experience that had opened my mind to stuff that I thought wasn't possible before.

• 1:23:15Trevor Noah?

  What was the thing that shocked you the most? I I know you said when you were there, the kids were the same as you, but what do you think shocked you the most? From what from what you had been told about the Soviet Union. What changed Ian's mind when he was actually there?

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  I I think the fact that they knew as little about me and us as I knew about them. I thought that somehow, because I hadn't traveled anywhere and because I knew how cloistered I had been, again, projects, public school, just a few blocks. I thought that would be true of other kids, that they'd know a lot more. Because they were like, I was going to Moscow, and that was a big city with millions of people. Absolutely nothing. So, for example, do you remember the Sharper Image?

• 1:23:52Trevor Noah?

  The the gym?

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  The store.

• 1:23:54Trevor Noah?

  What was?

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  The Sharper Image. It was a weird little store that sold.

• 1:23:58Trevor Noah?

  Everything.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  Gimmicks, gadgets.

• 1:24:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it was like.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Little gadgets. So I I there we used to have in the days before smartphones and all the rest. Um, we had cordless phones. And and the Sharper Image sold a cordless phone. That, you know, you could probably talk, you know, they had a little like antenna.

• 1:24:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  So you could probably talk fifty feet away from the base. But this cordless phone was not only cordless, but it also was waterproof and it floated. So that you could have a phone call in your pool.

• 1:24:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, in your pool.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  In your pool. And I remember having a conversation about like the different stuff that because they all wanted like Levi's jeans or Marlboro cigarettes. That was like the big thing, access to that kind of stuff. Bring ballpoint pens because their pens suck, you know, all that kind of thing. And I was telling them, I said.

• 1:24:48Trevor Noah?

  Can you bring for me ballpoint pen?

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  Ballpoint pen, Mozhna.

• 1:24:51Trevor Noah?

  Please, Ian, I need ballpoint pen.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Would be very nice. I pay much money for ballpoint pen.

• 1:25:01Trevor Noah?

  Wait, what pens did they have?

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I mean, they were like Skillcraft pens, but down three notches. You remember those?

• 1:25:08Trevor Noah?

  My brain can't imagine a world without a ballpoint pen.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  I know. And it hasn't changed very much. Like, we still make those. They're still cutting edge in 2025. Ballpoint pen, they really work. See, we were early to that game. They were, they were late, apparently. So, and this is why they're in Ukraine today.

• 1:25:22Trevor Noah?

  To go get ballpoint pen.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  They have all the ballpoint pen.

• 1:25:25Trevor Noah?

  I can only imagine you had customs, two suitcases full of ballpoint pens and blue jeans.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  So we were, you know, we're talking about all the stuff and I tell them.

• 1:25:33Trevor Noah?

  Me perfe of goods.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Let me see your pockets. So they, they were talking about this. And so I told them about this story. There's a store at Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market. Quincy Market, as we'd say back in Boston, a little touristy area. And there was, there was a sharp image there. And I said, you know, they have these stores. It's not cheap, but they have all this crazy stuff. I said, what kind of stuff? So I told them about it. I said, well, there's a, there's a light, there's a lamp. And if you touch the lamp, and it's a metal lamp, it'll turn on. They didn't believe me. Didn't believe me. I had no way of showing it. They didn't photo. I told them about this phone that you could use. First of all, the idea, phone, phone has to have a cord.

• 1:26:06Trevor Noah?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  Okay. And, and you wouldn't use a cordless phone in your bathtub.

• 1:26:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, of course not.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  But, but there are people, my aunt had a pool. My aunt, she built a house and she was like the one middle-class person in the family. She built a pool. I told them about this.

• 1:26:18Trevor Noah?

  Always the rich uncle.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20Trevor Noah?

  Always the one rich aunt or uncle.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  They did not believe that this was possible, that you would have, that a private home would have a pool in your backyard. And you'd have a phone call and it wasn't, like, this blew their minds.

• 1:26:30Trevor Noah?

  I love that you thought you were blowing their minds with the phone. It's cordless. You can talk anywhere. And in the pool even. And they were like, wait, wait, you have your own body of water in the back of your house? No, no, no, no. Look, Ian, you can fool us with some things. How can Man Midlake just be at the back of his house?

• 1:26:50Trevor Noah?

  You have tanker traffic on this. It is a crazy concept when you think about it.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:56Trevor Noah?

  But having a swimming pool is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever. One of the things that I found out about that like blew my mind was you can draw a direct line between places that have a shit ton of swimming pools in their houses and the racism laws that were in the country.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:27:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. In the United States, almost nobody had a swimming pool. And then they changed the laws and they said black people could swim in public pools. And then remember like.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  And then suddenly white people said I gotta have pools.

• 1:27:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and then obviously there was the fights and there were, you know, people, was it Mr. Rogers who had his friends' feet in the pool with him, if you remember that, and people were like, Mr. Rogers, how could you do this, you're gonna have the black man in this little pool thing with you. And then pools did this in America, all of a sudden, people were like, alright.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  I'm not going public anymore.

• 1:27:46Trevor Noah?

  Not only did private pools blow up, public pools started getting shut down. People were like, well, maybe we shouldn't fund public pools. South Africa as well, public pools used to be like the thing. I grew up swimming in a public pool. And then after like democracy fully, like when it, people were like, ah, maybe we just.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Swim at home.

• 1:28:06Trevor Noah?

  We just swim, everyone just swims at home.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  The cordless.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  And yet another thing, we need civic spaces. We need civic spaces.

• 1:28:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  Places where we can meet these people, these kids.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Public phone, I mean, floaty phone, yes.

• 1:28:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so you're with the Russians, you're telling them about the public phone.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  No, it just blew their minds. And I just, the fact that I hadn't, there were so many different components of that story that I hadn't remotely considered would be strange or interesting to them. And it allowed us to like have this wild, open moment about how different we were, but we were the same kids.

• 1:28:37Trevor Noah?

  What, having that experience, combined with you doing what you do, what do you think we misunderstand about Russia right now in this moment in time? And I say this as somebody who is always, not always, maybe for like the past like six years, been fascinated by how America has misread Russia over the years and then acted based on that misreading. Is there something that you think the world doesn't understand about Russia right now?

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  Well, just how disrespected they feel. I mean, this is a country that's lost empire. This is a country whose total economy is smaller than Canada. This is a country that used to take such pride in having the best culture of anyone in the world, that all of their college kids had read all this incredible literature and knew all the top arts. And now the government has stopped investing in this completely in science. They had the world-class scientists, Soviet Union collapsed, and all these American companies would go and IBM and Boeing, and they'd hire the best scientists, mathematicians, and they don't have that anymore. And, and it, you feel this sense, they have such pride, such Russian pride in their nation, in their history. It's not about money. It never was about money.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  You know, remember, this is a whole system of, you know, they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.

• 1:29:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  Right? But the personal connections and the history. And this is a place that, yes, there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of tragedy, but you get through it because there's a sense of responsibility and greatness. And they have lost so much of that.

• 1:30:07Trevor Noah?

  I know you can't predict another reality, but do you think it would have been different if the US and the world had done a better job of bringing Russia in post?

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:30:18Trevor Noah?

  You think it would have been?

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  And I also think it would have been different if their own oligarchs that were connected were not so rapacious, were not so kleptocratic, did not rip everybody off and take that money out of the country for themselves. Both of those things. So the economic shock therapy that the Americans offered to them was nowhere near what was useful for them, given the ability to strip out the wealth. And also the fact that the Soviet Union dropped in America's laps. You kind of won it, you didn't fight over it. It wasn't like World War II where you almost lost your way of life for everybody. Here it was like, well, we don't need to rebuild these guys. We rebuilt the Japanese, we rebuilt the Germans, these were our enemies. It wasn't just our allies, we rebuilt them. And then we created the UN. That was American.

• 1:31:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  I mean, it's quite funny, because now you have Americans saying, "UN, globalists." Those were actually our morals. They were our ideals. I'm very proud of the UN.

• 1:31:09Trevor Noah?

  The League of Nations?

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  I love having it in New York. And I, I think that one of the reasons why Americans today don't like the UN, especially elites, is because we feel a sense of shame that we no longer are living up to the values and standards that we create. And so, yeah, I think those things really matter. And I think that we did not cover ourselves in glory in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed because it was, because we were doing so well. We were kings of the world. Everyone just was going to be like America, so we didn't have to do anything. Let them come to us.

• 1:31:44Trevor Noah?

  When you look at Venezuela today,

• 1:31:49Trevor Noah?

  I was joking with Eugene about this the other day, and I said,

• 1:31:53Trevor Noah?

  as much as America will say certain things, it is funny how half of the stories slash all of them sort of end in oil. Doesn't matter what it is.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Trevor Noah?

  You know, they'll be like, oh, Iran, terrible regime and the plotting and the oil. You know, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, this evil person, weapons of master oil. You know what they're doing? Gaddafi. Oil. Gaza. Oh, my God. Nigeria. Oil.

• 1:32:20Speaker 02

  But that's why we don't care as much. No, that was the counterpoint.

• 1:32:23Trevor Noah?

  That's true as well, though. But I'm saying being in there, if there's somewhere America goes into, though. Oil. Oil.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:31Trevor Noah?

  I'm sure it's not that simple. I'm sure it's not that simple. But if you are, and you are literally, somebody who studies this for a living, what do you make of this situation?

• 1:32:45Trevor Noah?

  Are these the actions of a country that might end up fighting another war with a country that happens to have oil?

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:32:52Trevor Noah?

  No, you don't think so?

• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  First of all, because Trump, I think, really does fundamentally understand that the US has gotten involved in a lot of very expensive, long wars, and he's willing to do anything to stop that. He doesn't want boots on the ground and many years on him.

• 1:33:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  I mean, he ended the war in Afghanistan by cutting a really crappy deal with the Taliban, but at least the end of the war.

• 1:33:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  Right? And then Biden was kind of stuck, actually, ending, ending the war. But Trump made that happen. And, and so I think the likelihood that, that Trump, under any circumstances, would say, okay, let's send a whole bunch of young men and women to go and fight in another country. I don't think he'd do that.

• 1:33:28Trevor Noah?

  The funny thing, though is...

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  They'll send them in the US.

• 1:33:30Trevor Noah?

  I think it's, yeah, the funny thing, though, is I think it's more money thing. I don't know, do you, do you remember the, the, I think it was around Syria when Bashar al-Assad was, he launched one of his, one of, one of many of like his most heinous campaigns, it was just like a moment.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Is this chemical weapons, or you mean before that?

• 1:33:47Trevor Noah?

  I think it was around that time, but there was an image of a young child on, on the cover of the New York Times, I think it was, on the front page. This child in his like ashen face, just post like a strike or something. And I think it was Ivanka Trump who showed the image to Donald Trump. And he was so moved by her being so moved that he said he's gonna respond. And then they, they bombed a few parts of Syria, right? And then afterwards, he came out and they were like, oh, is this gonna be a full scale? And he came out and he was like, he's like, we're not, we're not, he's like, we bombed them and he's like, you know how much it costs? One, one rocket, I can't believe, he's like, had I known, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have sent it. I wouldn't have shot it. One of these, I wouldn't have shot, I wish I could take it back, he's like, I wouldn't.

• 1:34:32Trevor Noah?

  And it was interesting to me that he, from what I observe of him, is more against war because he doesn't like the country spending the money on it.

• 1:34:44Speaker 02

  I, I think he's gotten more used to it, as we've seen with Iran.

• 1:34:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  And the, the 12 day war, I think he's gotten more used to it with all the rockets against the, the ships, the, the little tiny boats that are bringing the drugs. I also think that personally, this is a guy who did everything he could using his personal connections to avoid the draft.

• 1:35:04Trevor Noah?

  The bone spurs.

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Yes, and he understands that that was something that one should avoid. That war was scary for him, and war is scary for a lot of young men and women. So I, I think he comes to that, I mean, honestly, historically, whatever it is. I think there are lots of reasons why they're talking about going in. I think that for Marco Rubio, who comes from Florida and has a very strong Cuban constituency and a bunch of Venezuelans too, and they see this as a dictatorship, and they see Cuba as a dictatorship. And he's always wanted to remove these brutal leaders. And he thinks if you get rid of Maduro, then you can also start the. With Cuba, he might not be completely wrong about that, but it's not an immediate direct effect.

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  I do think that the oil matters. Rick Grinnell, who was the special envoy without portfolio for Trump and was involved in the first administration, as well as ambassador to Germany for a while, you may remember, tall guy was a Fox News guy. He was engaged on the Venezuela brief at the beginning of the administration, had been talking to the oil companies in the US and was trying to see if a deal could be made that, you know, would allow them, would have them, you know, crack down on the drugs, but would get the Americans to actually invest more broadly in Venezuela. Also, a lot of illegal oil going, evading sanctions from Venezuela using these ghost tanker fleets.

• 1:36:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  Through Cuba to China.

• 1:36:29Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  By the way, same tankers that the Russians and the Iranians use, which is why Putin called up Maduro to support him after the Americans seized a tanker.

• 1:36:40Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  Because it was like, wait a second, we use that tanker. So it was kind of interesting. I, I absolutely think that because the Grinnell effort didn't work, that now, you know, you're seeing this is, this country has more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

• 1:36:56Trevor Noah?

  Geez, I don't know that.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  More proven oil reserves, more than Saudi Arabia, more than the United States.

• 1:36:59Trevor Noah?

  Geez, I didn't know that.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  And so Trump certainly, if Maduro is gone, with whatever military government is immediately in charge and maybe some transition eventually to someone that could be elected, the deal he's gonna, he doesn't care about democracy in Venezuela. He cares a lot about cutting an investment deal where the Americans are gonna get a big piece of that oil, just like the critical minerals deal that he forced Zelensky to sign if he was gonna keep providing intelligence and defense support to the Ukrainians.

• 1:37:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  So, yes, I do think the oil plays, but I don't think it's been the principal driver.

• 1:37:32Trevor Noah?

  I, I wonder when I hear some of these stories.

• 1:37:36Trevor Noah?

  If, I mean, I don't know if it was ever true, but I, but I sometimes wonder if America has given up its moral authority and moral superiority to be able to like, say these things in, in the world. I actually think to, um, I think it was, I think it was Israel's prime minister or somebody high up in the government who came and gave a speech at the U N. You know, when people would complain, they're like, oh, Israel did this and you, uh, when they, when they bombed in Qatar, right? And they were like, oh, to do this on another nation's soil. And then they were like, well, America did it. And they listed off like a few other countries and like, they did it. They're like, so how are we different? And it was an interesting moment because it was, it was weird that

• 1:38:21Trevor Noah?

  the response to why did you break the international law was we all do. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:38:29Speaker 02

  Of course I do. And, and it is, on the one hand, the fact that the United States has historically held itself up as some exceptional indispensable nation.

• 1:38:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  Means that even though the Americans have given so much more in foreign aid, even though the U S have played so much more of a leadership role in the IMF and the World Bank and doing so many things that really matter and philanthropy also and promoting Americans to do that. But the, when the hypocrisy happens.

• 1:38:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  And let's face it, for the U S, the hypocrisy happens at huge scale in Iraq, you know, or in Abu Ghraib, right? And, and you know, or, or in Guantanamo.

• 1:39:05Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  And so many examples of this, or with the global financial crisis.

• 1:39:08Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 1:39:08Speaker 02

  You know, so many examples of this. Then suddenly all of these other countries are pointing fingers. And, and, and the Americans were never as much of a shining light beacon on the hill as we put ourselves out. And let's face it, we almost didn't get involved in World War Two, and that would have been a huge mistake. We were late to the game and it was only because of Pearl Harbor and, and, and, you know, it was the America first concept started then with Lindbergh and the movement of why would we care about these Europeans way over there.

• 1:39:38Trevor Noah?

  Has nothing to do with us.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  Really far, has nothing to do with us. Here are shades of that today, right? In the national security strategy document, for example, and with. Trump saying you guys have your problem, Ukraine's far away. Um, but still, if you had to compare the United States with what the Chinese would do globally, or what the Russians would do globally over the last fifty, sixty, seventy years, you would unbalanced take the US. Now, the question is today, would you still make a strong call for that?

• 1:40:09Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  Not as clear. A lot of countries around the world would say that the United States has become actively adversarial. A lot of countries would say that. The Canadians would say that, which is crazy.

• 1:40:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Canadians never say anything mean.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and now they do. And they won an election on that. And their population is saying, we got to find a way to just work more with the Europeans, work more with everybody than the Americans. And they're so incredibly integrated with the US economy, it's not like, and security.

• 1:40:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  It's not like they have much of a choice, but it's hugely popular in Canada to say, we can't, we can never go back to the trusted relationship we used to have with the US.

• 1:40:42Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 1:40:43Speaker 02

  And their tourism down to the US has fallen off a cliff. They're really upset because they feel like we no longer stand for the things that they thought we stood for. And if the Canadians feel that way, who are basically Americans, just a little colder, right? Then how do you think the other people feel that don't have those relationships with us?

• 1:41:01Trevor Noah?

  Huh.

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  That's sad.

• 1:41:05Trevor Noah?

  What are, what are some of the questions you have now that you haven't yet found the answers for?

• 1:41:11Speaker 02

  In the world?

• 1:41:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, just things that you're pondering and puzzling through, but you haven't yet struck on a satisfactory answer.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  Uh, oh, I want to know when artificial intelligence can provide answers on a large number of topics that are as good or better than human beings. I want to know what that does to political power. I want to know how the Chinese Communist Party deals with that when Xi Jinping is supposed to be like the oracle from which all information comes down. Is it repression? Does it change their system? I'd love to know that.

• 1:41:46Trevor Noah?

  Maybe, maybe they'll just have like a They'll just, their AI, I think their solution is the easiest. They just have to make sure that their AI just says, like you say to AI in China, "Hey, what's happening here?" Or "How do I fix this?" And then their AI must just be like, She says. I just asked she and she was saying that you should put your, yeah, put the cupboard together like this. You know, she actually told me how this works. Chat CCP.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 1:42:12Trevor Noah?

  Sometimes it would be like, that's what she said. That's a nice one. That's what she said.

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  That also works.

• 1:42:18Trevor Noah?

  That actually works.

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  Together. We've got a show here.

• 1:42:21Trevor Noah?

  I mean, this is, this is doing something. No, honestly, I genuinely think this is just me with my, just wandering through the streets brain. I have no company, nor do I have any credentials. I think AI is going to be a greater detriment to free nations than to nations that have a stranglehold on their politics and their populations. Because there, they can work to constrain the thing. Whereas in the other one, they're like, ah, it's like, let it go and see what happens. And then it's like, oh, okay.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  Well, that was the whole point. That's why the J curve became a U.

• 1:42:58Trevor Noah?

  That's, that is the whole point.

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  That's what I mean, though. That's what I'm saying. But I'm not sure those are free nations for very long. If it turns out that the companies control the algorithms, the AI, and suddenly you're not a citizen, you're actually just a product of a business model.

• 1:43:09Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay. So that's one thing you're pondering. You have an unelected leader all of a sudden. Yeah, you do.

• 1:43:14Speaker 02

  I mean, a second big thing I want to know is what happens with the social contract when people that are white collar, knowledge, labor, increasingly no longer has productive stuff to do.

• 1:43:23Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you, that is one of the biggest ones that people take for granted. Because it's exactly that. It's a social contract that keeps us all moving along. And when it's gone, think of everyone in an office whose job is only about moving information around and remembering it and dispersing it. And if your company makes a system that does that everywhere, I, maybe you can tell me this. Because I, I, I've never gotten a satisfactory answer from CEOs and from companies. I go, why would you do this?

• 1:43:59Trevor Noah?

  As I understand.

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  Why would you do what?

• 1:44:00Trevor Noah?

  As I understand business, the point of a business is to provide some sort of service to somebody who will then pay you for it. But like Henry Ford understood, you need the people who can buy your thing.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:44:15Trevor Noah?

  So he paid his workers a certain amount of money and he made his car a certain price so that they themselves could buy it.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, his first consumers.

• 1:44:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but if if companies are gonna make themselves fully AI. AI will advertise, AI will plan trips, AI will do the work, then where where's the business?

• 1:44:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that is a huge, that's a huge question. And, you know, you worry that, first of all, some of these people are so racing ahead, are so short term in their orientation, that they're not worried about that, just want to get there first and cash out because because the the models and the money that's being raised is so extraordinary.

• 1:44:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  That's driving the economy. And second, of course, there's a collective action problem to it. If you don't do it, someone else is going to.

• 1:45:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  Right? So there's the race level of it. You know, and and then there's also the disbelief. It's it's it's the view that, yeah, there'll be other jobs. There's always other jobs. Something else will come up.

• 1:45:15Trevor Noah?

  I do believe that, but I think the issue, to borrow from what you were saying, is time.

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  And government.

• 1:45:21Trevor Noah?

  Everything can be figured out. The problem is, do you have the time to figure it out? Do you get what I'm saying? If everyone loses their jobs over a hundred years, let's say the job of candle maker goes away over a hundred years. I think people will be fine. But if tomorrow, a job that is done by a lot of people disappears instantly, you you don't have time to figure out what the next job is.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  I hope that's right, and I think that's right. But of course, it didn't work out that way for horses. Right? I mean, you know, suddenly you have steam power and the horse population goes down to ten percent of what it was in one generation. Because, you know, horses are then useful.

• 1:45:57Trevor Noah?

  Population might.

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  Well, I I hope not. I'm just saying that I know that when you suddenly have technology that surpasses the total capacity, the total productive capacity of that entity.

• 1:46:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:09Speaker 02

  You no longer need the entity.

• 1:46:11Trevor Noah?

  No, but this is where I this is where I I think, honestly, on a human level, I do think we will create a new thing. Because all jobs are invented. The issue is, I don't know that we'll have the time. This is where I'm agreeing with you. I go. You do it too quickly and then, you understand what I'm saying?

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Trevor Noah?

  What do you think you would do in, in the revolution?

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  Making candles.

• 1:46:33Trevor Noah?

  No, like genuinely, like, do you, do you, do you, do you ever think about, like Ian, what do you think you would? Do you think you'd be like part of helping? No, I honestly wonder that. You don't think about this at all?

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  No, no, I don't think about it.

• 1:46:42Trevor Noah?

  Like, let's say it all goes to shit, the thing's falling apart, the people now is like, where do you see yourself in the mix?

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  I always think.

• 1:46:47Trevor Noah?

  Frontlines, planning.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  I'd be a dissident.

• 1:46:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh, you'd be a dissident?

• 1:46:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Because, I mean, if you think about back in the Soviet Union, before the collapse.

• 1:46:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  There were lots of people that tried to do what I do. They just didn't do it like for money. They didn't do it legally because it was illegal. So what did they do? I mean, they, you know, they did samizdat literature. They do like informal coffee house conversations, but they still tried to bring truth to people, to their fellow citizens.

• 1:47:14Trevor Noah?

  I like this.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  So if that were to truly happen in the United States, I'd still do what I do. I would just do it less effectively and I'd be repressed for it.

• 1:47:21Trevor Noah?

  You'd be on the frontlines, Eugene?

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  I, I, I think that with everything that changes, things have been changing since the beginning of time. But I think it's the people that have institutional memory that are lamenting the change sometimes. I think the younger generation is not as worried about the changes that we're facing. I mean, there's kids who don't even know what a house phone looks like.

• 1:47:40Trevor Noah?

  Well, this is, I hear what you mean.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  So what we are lamenting is the world as we know it. It's no different from how when you're in a queue, you were lamenting being in a queue.

• 1:47:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  You remember?

• 1:47:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like the world that didn't exist. You don't have an idea of the world that didn't exist.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  I'm thinking, what we are doing now, we are almost, um, we are here to preserve what was. Even in conversations like this, we, there will always be a job for these kind of people. It's almost like the books of the future. There'll always be people who remember how things were and will try in their small circles to keep things the same. The person who bakes the bread themselves, although.

• 1:48:17Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  So this idea sharing will always be, and we've been saying this, that what we're not realizing is the portals to this information for the future is digital media. The podcasts, um, the, the Youtubes, people in hundred years' time.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  If they want to really know how things were done, just like how people are making handcrafted binders for books. They will go and listen to how things were done. There'll be a person who's interested in disseminating the information and getting things done. But what we can't stop is things changing. They are always going to change, especially if there's money involved. Change is inevitable. And like you said, it's a race now. If you don't do it, someone else will.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  Did the Bob Iger, I think, was right about this is you you've never. No one's ever been successful trying to stop technology from happening. So I mean, it's not about saying we're not going to do it. It's going to happen. The question is being aware of what it is.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  And trying to align yourself with it. How do you want to spend your time, given how fast it's changing?

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. And then what's like a third question you have? So the first one, the the second question was about AI.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, the third one is about um whether or not we are going to have increasing global governance to respond to global challenges, right? Um, so you you think about how so much of these new technologies, how fast they move. Are we going to have a US-China agreement? The way we did after the Cuban Missile Crisis between the US and Soviet Union, so that we didn't blow each other up. We created a hotline. We didn't have any arms control until we almost blew up the world. Do we have to wait before we almost blow up the world to have agreements on how we're going to try to manage?

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  Collectively, these new technologies that are incredibly powerful to advance humanity.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  But also are really dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. Bad actors that would want to create, you know, a bioweapon or that would want to, you know, sort of knock out an economic marketplace or flood the world with disinformation and fake videos. That can't just be handled in a country by country basis. There are adversaries out there. We need to make sure that we're not using them against each other. And right now, we don't have any AI arms control. We don't even have the beginning of that negotiation. And so we don't we don't have twenty years for that, you know, and and so this administration is going to have to engage. Very interesting. You probably saw that Trump gave this long speech at the UN this year back in September.

• 1:50:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the one where he said like, basically, you guys suck and

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:55Trevor Noah?

  Was it was, I mean, there were funny parts of the speech.

• 1:50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:58Trevor Noah?

  It's the one, the escalator speech.

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the escalator speech. It was really interesting. At one point, he actually said, there was something he said, a new program that he wanted the US to start that he asked the UN to be a part of, which you'd never expect him to do that.

• 1:51:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  He said, I'm really concerned about the spread of bioweapons, and we want to have like a new US-led global initial initiative on that, and the UN has to play a role. Now, that, he didn't come up with that. But the point is, he didn't kill it, and no one around him killed it. You can't do this stuff unless there's some kind of global cooperation.

• 1:51:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  It can't just be America first on protection of the world from these advanced technologies. There are some things in the world we still have to cooperate on.

• 1:51:35Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  And yet, we're not moving in that direction right now. Almost none of the big political trajectories are towards more cooperation. It's all towards fragmentation. It's all towards picking a side. There's some stuff that we need to actually work together on. So I'm really interested to see, how does that start to happen? And does it, does it require a big crisis?

• 1:51:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  Or, or can we start to actually plant some of the seeds to allow for that without?

• 1:51:59Trevor Noah?

  So, just so that you leave us on a good note, what have you seen geopolitically that's given you like a fuzzy, warm feeling?

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  Uh, the fact that as the United States is playing less of a global leadership role, that other countries around the world actually don't want these institutions to fall apart.

• 1:52:18Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:52:18Speaker 02

  They're not, they may not be able to be the United States themselves, but they want these things to work.

• 1:52:24Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  They want countries around the world, even China, it's like, no, we still want the UN. We still want to pay our dues for the UN. We want this or, we still want the IMF. We still want the World Bank. We still want their programs. We still want the World Food Program. We think these things are important. We still want trade agreements. Well, so if the US isn't going to be able to do all the trade right now, well, then the EU and Mercosur will try to sign something up, and India will work with, you know, Australia, and there's more of that. So there is an effort to create more resilience in the system. And it's not, everything is not just about, oh, my God, the United States isn't going to be Papa, and so we all have to cower and be on our best behavior.

• 1:53:02Speaker 02

  Or this is going to strike us. No, there's, there's actually more than just the US out there, and a lot of it is trying to find a way to ensure that we still have stability.

• 1:53:11Trevor Noah?

  I love that. It's what I, what I told my seven kids, now that I'm not around. You guys are gonna step up and you're gonna do something for yourselves.

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  I'll take three, he'll take four.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Can we move to where?

• 1:53:22Speaker 02

  Bulgaria.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  You bring a whole lot of ballpoint pens and...

• 1:53:26Trevor Noah?

  Oh man, that's my favorite one is the ballpoint pens and the blue jeans. Just you doing that in... Did you ever go back and meet any of those people?

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Oh god, yeah, of course.

• 1:53:35Trevor Noah?

  You did?

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh man, that's amazing.

• 1:53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was really cool.

• 1:53:38Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

  Not on LinkedIn.

• 1:53:40Trevor Noah?

  No, when did you first go back and connect? Like, who did you like?

• 1:53:42Speaker 02

  Oh, it would have been, I mean, probably three years later, two years later, eighty-eight, I think it was.

• 1:53:46Trevor Noah?

  And you went back and then you...

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I stayed, I was pen pals with these kids. Again, this is pre-internet.

• 1:53:51Trevor Noah?

  That is so cool.

• 1:53:52Speaker 02

  So you're then writing notes to these kids. Yeah, it was wild.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  With your fancy ballpoint pen.

• 1:53:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, right? Just flossing in their faces.

• 1:53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:59Trevor Noah?

  Dear Vlad, I write this to you elegantly and with the smoothest precision that a ballpoint pen can provide.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  And then Vlad was like, dear...

• 1:54:11Trevor Noah?

  I'm glad, that's dope. That's really beautiful. Well, thank you very much for joining us.

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 1:54:16Trevor Noah?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Great to see you, man.

• 1:54:17Trevor Noah?

  And thank you for showing us a new way to see the world.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:20Trevor Noah?

  I think that's, you know, that's honestly one of the things that you've changed most in my life, which I appreciate. It's just the idea of like, learn to see it, meet the people who don't see it the same way you do, talk to them about why, understand it, and then, then you go from there. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  That means something, right? Thanks a lot to me.

• 1:54:38Trevor Noah?

  This was really fun. Thank you.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's really cool.

• 1:54:42Trevor 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 Harduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

• 1:55:12Speaker 04

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc.