Malcolm Gladwell: Do Fairytales Make Adulthood Harder?

This week, author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell joins Trevor and Eugene for a conversation that starts with big social theory and then delves into whether Disney movies have been quietly gaslighting our childhoods. From the idea that your parents are basically just middle managers for your grandparents’ personalities to the invisible shortcuts and assumptions that shape how we see the world, Gladwell does what he does best, spotting hidden patterns in the ordinary. And Trevor does what he does best, poking holes, grounding theory in real life, and refusing to let a big idea off the hook too easily. Part pop culture autopsy and part intellectual rabbit hole, this episode makes us overthink the things we love and love the things we overthink.

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

• 0:04Speaker 00

  This should be a business for the three of us. I would, I think you, all of us should contribute to the, to the reimagining of these flawed classics.

• 0:12Trevor Noah?

  What, the Disney ones? Yeah, but here, okay, but have you watched the newer ones?

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Well, I've watched.

• 0:18Trevor Noah?

  Because they, no, because they have been reimagined.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  We did.

• 0:20Trevor Noah?

  I didn't want to spoil it for you because I figured you were going.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  We did Moana the other night.

• 0:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  But it gets really violent. I'm like.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  That's what it's like, that's what it'd be like to be young, female and black.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  When your friend is a chicken and Juan is a pig. And you're stuck with an older guy.

• 0:39Trevor Noah?

  A guy.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  With a catamaran and your grand is a ghost and your grandfather ran away from your dad and he's a spirit of the seas.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  The chicken.

• 0:47Trevor Noah?

  Eugene watches a lot of Moana, as you can tell.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Juan, yes.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  How old?

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Uh, my daughter's turning 17 this year.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Oh, seven, you're, you're years away from this.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  What?

• 0:58Speaker 00

  From Moana.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  We watched it the other day.

• 1:00Trevor Noah?

  Can you not tell? What do you mean, can you? You're assuming that his daughter is the one who wants to watch it.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Oh, you say.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  I was the one who said.

• 1:09Trevor Noah?

  She has to put it on for him.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Make way, make way.

• 1:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, she's the one who's putting it on for him.

• 1:21Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 1:32Trevor Noah?

  In fact, here's another reason Malcolm Gladwell, you should be pro pickleball. I know your views, I know your views on golf.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40Trevor Noah?

  I know how much you hate the fact that like golf takes up inordinate amounts of spaces and it's like, it's unfairly apportioned to the, pickleball turns one tennis court into four pickleball courts.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Wait, is that true?

• 1:54Trevor Noah?

  That is completely true.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Four?

• 1:56Trevor Noah?

  Four.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Quadruples, the output.

• 1:59Trevor Noah?

  It quadrupled.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  There's a lobby for one to be turned into a.

• 2:01Trevor Noah?

  And, and, I did, I did, and. Most pickleball games, most, are generally played by four people. Most tennis, like, get togethers are two people. So technically.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  It's really eight, eight X the productivity of the space.

• 2:16Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  I wish you could come see a match.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  All right, all right.

• 2:21Trevor Noah?

  No, that's, that's why I think you would love it.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:23Trevor Noah?

  It is, it is the sport of the people.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  All right, all right, all right.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  There's a point at which.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  If I ever start banging the egalitarian democracy drum on behalf of.

• 2:39Trevor Noah?

  But it is though, I think that's what it is. How you been? What, what, what have you been up to?

• 2:43Speaker 00

  I have been, um, well, I, as I said to you before, I now have two children.

• 2:48Trevor Noah?

  Yes, congratulations.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Thank you. I have two daughters, yes.

• 2:51Trevor Noah?

  Started late and you've just kept going.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  I started late, I kept going. I might have to, I think I'm stopping at two. They are enormously entertaining. I am, I spend an enormous amount of time consuming children's, um, television and, um, music.

• 3:06Trevor Noah?

  What's your favorite show? Bluey, Cocoon Melon, Peppa Pig?

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Well, the good thing, there's a lot of Peppa Pig going on in my life right now. Although I'm trying to phase it out. We, we're on to the Disney movies.

• 3:17Trevor Noah?

  Hey.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  We've, and I discovered, I'm discovering all these things that other people discovered many years ago. So I'm going to, and this is the thing about parenting is it, parenting is the, um, is the, is, it rides on the illusion that you are discovering for the first time what the rest of the world has known for like, you know, millennia. So I have discovered that like, the early Disney movies are 50 times better than the most recent ones.

• 3:43Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Like, I never saw these as kids, so I'm seeing them for the first time. So I've watched a lot of, for example, Snow White. And first of all, Snow White is astonishingly good. But the best part about it, and this is actually, because I've been, part of a larger thing I've become very interested in. The best part about Snow White is all of the, and also even more so probably with Cinderella.

• 4:10Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Is their willingness to go on these tangents. Like in Cinderella, there's like 20 minutes on the mouse, playing with the cat Lucifer. And they leave the whole story, set it over here, and it's just the cat and the mouse. And the self-confidence of the filmmaker. They're like, the kids will, are happy to put Cinderella to the side and just go with the mouse and the cat for 20 minutes. And they'll come back to us. We have such confidence in our story and our storytelling ability. And I feel like today, when you watch the newer ones, there's never any of these digressions.

• 4:45Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  And what is they don't understand how kids' minds work, or even, pardon me, how human beings' mind works. Well, you know, this is a comic in comedy, right? It's the digressions that often get you the biggest laugh.

• 4:58Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  When you veer off the path, boom, right?

• 5:01Trevor Noah?

  But I think conversations are the same.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Are the same.

• 5:03Trevor Noah?

  I think, I think in everything, the surprise is what actually gets you going versus where you thought you were gonna, you were gonna get to. But it.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  So why don't they do that with the kids? Why, why can't, why did they forget the digression?

• 5:14Trevor Noah?

  I think it's a, I think it's a market economics thing. I think they've, I, I have this fight oftentimes with people who work in new television, right? Especially in streaming. I think they read data wrong. That's my opinion. Is that they, they look at the data and they go, oh, if, if it's not engaging in the first two minutes, then people are not gonna watch. And you've got to catch their attention. And people like short content. And people like this, and people like that, and people. But they've. 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.

• 5:59Trevor Noah?

  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.

• 6:12Trevor 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.

• 6:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, booked forever, forever.

• 7:00Trevor Noah?

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• 7:04Trevor Noah?

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• 7:49Trevor 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. Get all these assumptions based on data, but data, as you know better than anyone, you can read data however you like, and it can tell you the story you wanted to tell you. So I think a lot of the things that are being made today are being made with the idea that people don't have an attention span, but I don't think that that's true. People still have attention spans. The difference is people now have more choice than they had back in the day,

• 8:35Trevor Noah?

  so they don't tolerate shit in the same way that they used to, that we used to. Do you know what I mean? So I think... Maybe it was like a little bit of arrogance or like or just confidence on the side of like old Disney. But I also think no one was telling them, oh, the data says you got to move on.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, nobody was giving them instructions. The other thing that's interesting is that the mistake that data makes is that they don't account for the fact that the audience might change its mind. And audience is changing. The moment when an audience changes its mind, and when I say changes its mind, I simply mean when they go from, they might go from indifference to engagement, from puzzlement to joy, to just some shift. And again, I'm sure you've experienced this a million times because you lived this in some sense in your live performances. That moment, and that moment doesn't always happen at the beginning. In fact, it's sometimes it's way better if it happens deep into the performance and you can tell. Why are you guys pointing at each other?

• 9:34Trevor Noah?

  We both, Eugene and I met doing stand up.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:37Trevor Noah?

  That's how we met in South Africa. How many years has it been? Twenty now? Yeah, twenty years ago, we met, we basically started stand up comedy in the same week.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Same week, yeah.

• 9:45Trevor Noah?

  In the same venue. And that's like our origin story. And it took many years, then we became friends.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Trevor Noah?

  But what you're saying now.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:54Trevor Noah?

  Is exactly, that's why, this is exactly what we've been saying.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  The shift.

• 9:59Trevor Noah?

  But it's exactly the way you said it there.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Even this morning, we had the same conversation about something else that we go.

• 10:03Trevor Noah?

  Is that sometimes the reward is not that you get it immediately, it's that you don't know when it's going to happen and then all of a sudden you go.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  That's it, this is it.

• 10:11Trevor Noah?

  Wow, I'm into something. You know where that happened to me recently? Have you watched, maybe your girls are too young, but I think they'll still enjoy it. Have you watched Demon K-Pop Hunter on Netflix?

• 10:22Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I've seen it.

• 10:24Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you? K-Pop Demon Hunters or, yeah, K-Pop Demon Hunters, I think. I started this movie. In the first like three minutes, I was like, ah, this is not for me. And then forty minutes later, I was sitting there on the couch, completely mesmerized, completely entertained, just like bopping along, just like, like every day, that's just me like singing along, just like, you're my soda pop, you're my banana soda pop. I can't explain it.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:50Trevor Noah?

  But it's what you're saying.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:52Trevor Noah?

  I gave it a chance. I went with it. And now I got the reward. But if if I if I succumbed to that initial instinct, that three minutes, four minutes, I would have gone, this is not for me.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  But that's very, oh, sorry, Malcolm, that's very similar to what stand up comedy really is. It's like raising children. You suspend disbelief.

• 11:11Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  And you just go with the flow and be able to be surprised at some point.

• 11:16Trevor Noah?

  Or you just bump into something.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Because that's that's what happens when adults watch children's shows. They first start resisting. Then they go, no, well, no, dog is not talking. And they go, wow, Blue is actually. Blue is a Blue is a boy. Blue is a girl is is what's going on here? Then you become more involved because you've suspended disbelief. But it takes a long time. And that's what happens with comedy. The first five minutes, you're trying to express yourself and you're trying to go to people. Forget about your job. Forget where you parked your car. Let me take you to another planet.

• 11:45Trevor Noah?

  Who is your favorite character? Like yours, not your girls. There's got to be something you watched where you're like.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Because in this recent iteration, because I never watched any of this as a kid.

• 11:54Trevor Noah?

  But that's what I'm saying. You never watched TV as a child.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  No, no, I honestly didn't watch TV.

• 11:59Trevor Noah?

  Malcolm Gladwell didn't watch television as a child.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  How?

• 12:02Trevor Noah?

  He lived in like a like a learned household.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  I didn't watch television until I got to college.

• 12:07Trevor Noah?

  At all.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Well, barely. I mean, I would go over to a friend's house every now and again and watch like a football game. But I know I knew nothing. I mean, I would fake it.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  You said that you've never watched TV?

• 12:18Speaker 00

  No, no, no, at the time. So if you talked to me in high school, you would have thought, well, he had a television. But I was just reading about I was just reading about these shows and faking it.

• 12:26Trevor Noah?

  You think that you had watched television?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Oh, man, this is so funny.

• 12:30Trevor Noah?

  You see this week on the A Team, oh, the A Team.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  No, it's not that hard to it wasn't that hard to do. And I would I for you, I was a huge basketball fan and football fan in high school. And I had I had never seen a professional football, a basketball game. And I had only seen like an incredibly small number of. But I could, to this day, I can talk about the nineteen seventy era San Antonio Spurs. I never, my favorite player was the Iceman, George Gervin. I never saw George Gervin play. I would read about him in Sports Illustrated once a week. And I constructed George Gervin in my mind. And I would read these, to this day, I can quote, he was, George Gervin was this, he was a kind of spectral figure. He was, again, I never saw him, but this is what I

• 13:17Speaker 00

  learned from reading about him. He was, he was the greatest scorer in the game in the mid 70s. And he was, he was very, very, very thin. And he had all these kind of, he was not a great athlete, but he always kind of wily moves. And he would give these incredibly cone-like bizarre quotes to the media. And my favorite one was when he was explaining his ability to get to the basket. Whereas I be not too fast from here there, otherwise my game be zigzagging, uh huh. Which I, as a 12-year-old, I read-

• 13:49Trevor Noah?

  So you never heard that voice? That is the voice you heard? But those were the words he said?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Yes. Whereas I be not too fast from here there, otherwise my, my game be zigzagging, uh huh. And I remember, so I'm, I'm 12, I'm in, I'm in rural Ontario in Canada, in a little farm school with like a lot of Mennonites. I have no TV. I have no conception of what a professional basketball game is. And I read that quote and I just, and I just think, this guy sounds so fantastic. So I have a, in my, growing up, I have a big poster of George Gervin.

• 14:20Trevor Noah?

  Who you had never seen play?

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Never seen, to this day, never seen him play. I mean, he's long retired, but I read it out again, like there's some mention of George Gervin.

• 14:28Trevor Noah?

  You have no yearning to like go find like a tape or go-

• 14:30Speaker 00

  I don't want to ruin it. It was way better in my imagination. You know, I, cause I, that, imagine if you're working off that quote. So he's not fast from here there, but his game be zigzagging. You can imagine in your mind how he gets to the basket, right? And he's like, he's literally, I have my picture, you know, the picture on my wall. He's 6'7", 6'8", and if he's 160 pounds, I'd be stunned. He's, he's a, he's rail thin. So he's like slipping his, slipping and sliding his way through it like, you know, doing some, I don't know, I never saw him, but like doing some weird thing with his hand. That's, so like, my, I mean, and I became hooked on, to this day, I'm a massive basketball fan, but that was its origin was, was, I know all the stories of these players.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  I just don't know anything about-

• 15:16Trevor Noah?

  I mean, that's the most important thing, isn't it?

• 15:18Speaker 00

  It is the most important thing.

• 15:19Trevor Noah?

  Not really, it is, because that is the story. Like when we talk about a legendary game, if you go like Liverpool, AC Milan, you're talking about the story.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:26Trevor Noah?

  That's what you're doing.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I do that every time with football, every time, because I hate football.

• 15:30Trevor Noah?

  Oh god, I hate how he does this.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  But I've learned where to jump in. Let's make an example there.

• 15:35Trevor Noah?

  I hate this.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Let's say you talk about a coach that.

• 15:37Trevor Noah?

  I can't believe you're gonna make me entertain this.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Wait, what's your favorite football team, by the way?

• 15:41Trevor Noah?

  Liverpool.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Liverpool.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  How did it come to be Liverpool?

• 15:44Trevor Noah?

  So.

• 15:47Trevor Noah?

  I I grew up. Oh, man. You know what? Let me give Eugene his example, so he doesn't mess up my world.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  No, no, you're doing quite well. Go ahead, please.

• 15:54Trevor Noah?

  I'll I'll give you the example.

• 15:57Trevor Noah?

  Have you seen how Liverpool plays?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Jeez, you know, anyway, carry on, yeah.

• 16:01Trevor Noah?

  This season with Arne Slot. And just like since Arne Slot came. You've seen an evolution in the game.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  But before there was Arne Slot. Anyway, carry on, yeah.

• 16:11Trevor Noah?

  This is what he does.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:12Trevor Noah?

  He's never watched. He doesn't watch. He doesn't care to watch. He doesn't care. And then I've seen him inflame people around us.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:20Trevor Noah?

  Because he'll they'll get agitated. Because they'll they'll think he's agreeing with them or disagreeing with them. And then I have to stop him and go, Eugene doesn't know anything about the sport.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  I'd be zigzagging, uh huh.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Otherwise.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  You forgot the otherwise, which is the crucial.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Otherwise.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  That is the cr- in the construction of that sentence, the otherwise.

• 16:42Trevor Noah?

  So, okay, I'll tell you how I became a fan. So.

• 16:46Trevor Noah?

  It is a long story, but it'll it'll it'll it'll tell you a lot.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  We've got time.

• 16:50Trevor Noah?

  Okay, thank you. I didn't grow up liking soccer. In fact, I I I quite hated it.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Trevor Noah?

  Because it was the thing that interrupted my ability to play video games on a television. So whenever I'd wanna play TV games, as they were called when I was young. Then my uncle and all these people would walk in and be like, ah, turn that off. We want to watch the game. And as a child, I used to think that the game was like three, four hours long. I was just like, this never ends, right? So I didn't like it, didn't like it, didn't like, because we had one TV. And that TV was taken away from me by football. Fast forward many years, ironically, video games bring me back to the sports. So a series gets released called FIFA and it's, you know, it's a soccer game. I play that, I start loving the game, like you. I start falling in love with players who have never watched. Because I see them as digital recreations running across my screen.

• 17:40Trevor Noah?

  Who is this person? You know what I mean? Like I'm Miroslav Klose, who is this German? I love him, the way he headers the ball, the way. And I get sucked into this world, which is a facsimile of the real world. So when I talk to people who like love football, they know what I'm talking about. And then at some point it would break down because they would go like, oh, where did you? And I go like, oh, no, I don't watch the game. I just play the video game. Some people would would would be happy. Others would feel like I betrayed them. They feel like I catfished them.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Sounds familiar.

• 18:10Trevor Noah?

  So, so then, I think like from there, I started falling in love with the game.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  With the real game.

• 18:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, with like the real, real, real game.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:19Trevor Noah?

  And then.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  But you're not, are you watching Premier League in South Africa?

• 18:23Trevor Noah?

  It was on, but I couldn't get it. And I think that's part of it.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:26Trevor Noah?

  You had to have like a premium television, you had like satellite TV, that type of stuff. So you fast forward many years and I've now become a fan of players, coaches. And like random, you know, collections. I don't support teams at this time because I was like, a team doesn't care about me. They would sell a player without consulting anyone. I would see friends around me distraught. Literally, I've seen it even now in like the NBA, people, how could we trade? How could we trade Luca? How could we? And I'm like, well, it's not we, they did it to you. You're sad now. And so I remember thinking, the one thing I do not want is to be part of this inherited sadness. That I have nothing to do with. So I would just support players, I'd go around with them.

• 19:10Trevor Noah?

  Then one day, I fell in, through the video game, I fell in love with a coach by the name of Jürgen Klopp. German coach who was coaching a team called Borussia Dortmund. And Dortmund, what I loved about them is they were the underdogs of the German league. They were playing against a team called Bayern Munich, who were the most powerful, richest, they won every year.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  So they were top of the heap in the Bundesliga.

• 19:30Trevor Noah?

  See, this guy knows the Bundesliga, you see what he did there?

• 19:33Trevor Noah?

  He got me excited and I remembered he doesn't care. But for that moment, you got me excited. And they challenged and they won and they did, they, you know, to borrow from the movie 300. They showed that a god could bleed. And I loved what Jürgen Klopp had done. Then Bayern Munich basically pillaged, bought all the players from that team, other teams bought the players. The team didn't become, Jürgen Klopp left, he went to Liverpool. At the same time, Liverpool in the game, the video game was becoming better because they had like a bunch of players who were amazing. Fernando Torres, Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling, all of these guys. So I was loving the players in the video game because it was great to play with them. Jürgen Klopp goes there. Then I became friends, like closer friends with another South African who loved Liverpool.

• 20:15Trevor Noah?

  He wouldn't stop talking about Liverpool, but he would show me cool things that were around Liverpool. And then the first live game that I went to was a Liverpool game, but it was in New York ironically. And.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Have you been to a Liverpool game in Liverpool?

• 20:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I have, I have. It's like church.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Is that the one where they sing You'll Never Walk Alone?

• 20:31Trevor Noah?

  You'll Never Walk Alone.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 20:33Trevor Noah?

  I just got goosebumps.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so that.

• 20:34Trevor Noah?

  Welcome, you're so good.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  That video, there, there's a, there's a, there's like a shortlist of like five YouTube videos that I just endlessly watch whenever I need some kind of. And there's a video of the crowd singing, do you know, I don't know, there must be many. Must be many, but do we, should we, should you explain that?

• 20:54Trevor Noah?

  Please explain to me, yes.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  The context is, it's a song by, is it Jerry and the Pacer? Who sings it originally? Someone who sings it originally?

• 21:00Trevor Noah?

  No, man, what's his name, Ryan? It is.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  It is Jerry and the Pacer. But they have a terrible, they have a tragedy of.

• 21:07Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yes, the Hillsborough disaster.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  And they adopt that song.

• 21:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Oh. And then they sing it every time, they sing it at every game.

• 21:15Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  And the whole crowd in that wonderful way, the one thing about English football that, again, I know nothing about it, but I know that they love to sing, that collective singing. And collective singing is one of the most emotionally powerful things human beings do.

• 21:29Trevor Noah?

  It really is.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  It's like choral music, it's like.

• 21:31Trevor Noah?

  Voices in unison, yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  And they sing this song and there's a, it's a video online and it's just like, I'm in tears like a minute in.

• 21:38Trevor Noah?

  You get it.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  And I have no connection with Liverpool.

• 21:41Trevor Noah?

  You get it, my friend. The first time I heard that song live.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:45Trevor Noah?

  I was actually in Ukraine and I'd gone to watch Liverpool in the Champions League, like hearing it live like that. And it was the Champions League final, they were playing against Real Madrid. And I will never forget that moment, you walk. Into the stadium. And as we walked in, they started singing it. They they they first play it on like the the P A system in the stadium.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06Trevor Noah?

  So you hear the like the original voice like when you walk and then the crowd starts picking up.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Sing more of it, come on.

• 22:14Trevor Noah?

  Well, it's like when you walk and it starts and it plays through the storm. Hold your head up high and then the crowd starts coming in. And don't be afraid of the dark. Sing it, Ryan. I know you wanna sing it. And like.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  No, no, no, carry on, carry on, no stop.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Such a great song, by the way.

• 22:38Trevor Noah?

  Everyone, this is the part where everyone must.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, everyone.

• 22:41Trevor Noah?

  Everyone.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Fifty thousand people are singing this thing. It is just like, it's devastating.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Malcolm, you're almost winning me over here, come on.

• 22:48Trevor Noah?

  The best part of the song in every stadium and every game.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:52Trevor Noah?

  Is it stops.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 22:54Trevor Noah?

  There's a part where like the.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  The music stops.

• 22:56Trevor Noah?

  You so I don't know if you I don't know if they stop it or if you can't hear it. Maybe it's the magic that makes me think that. But all you then hear is the crowd. Cause it it gets to like the bridge and then the chorus, you know what I mean? It's like walk on rain, walk on. And you feel it reverberating through the way and you'll know and it's just like and then the whole crowd. You, man.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  But even.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  I'm just listening to you guys.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  On top of that. I'm not gonna be corny. The message is so beautiful.

• 23:26Trevor Noah?

  It really is.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  In response to this tragedy, this idea of singing a song, all of us singing a song saying you'll never walk alone. It's like, you know, to it's it's a song to the essentially to the families of the victims, right? We're with you.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  The tribute.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  It's so beautiful.

• 23:42Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Really is beautiful. It's what it's it's it is music at its best in that kind of.

• 23:47Trevor Noah?

  Yes, and all of these things drew me to the club because what I also loved about that story was. That song, the club, everything. It was like one of the, not first, but it was, it was one of the more significant stories where people realized that a, a tale could be told about a group of people that wasn't true, that could affect how other people see them. So at this disaster, like the press at the time, Ryan, you'll correct me at any point when I'm wrong here. But like, was the press at the time, they, they, they basically, the mainstream press blamed the fans and blamed the people who had died and they were like, you're the cause and blah. And then it came out that it wasn't, it wasn't their fault and it was, what, what did the police have to do with it again?

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Uh, the police lied and said the Liverpool fans caused the stampede.

• 24:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  So it was a stampede.

• 24:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but they said the fans caused it.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  It was a badly designed stadium too, isn't it? It's a defect.

• 24:39Trevor Noah?

  It was everything, but the point is they blamed the fans. They didn't just go like, hey, let's see what happened and we don't know. They blamed the fans. And so part of it also became this, this rallying cry against, you know, an establishment that was unjust.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. And in that moment, we're talking about, are we talking about the seventies? When does this happen? Wait.

• 25:02Trevor Noah?

  Ryan.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Ryan, I can appeal.

• 25:03Trevor Noah?

  Just shout Ryan, anywhere in the world, if you have a Liverpool question, you shout Ryan and he'll answer it.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  I think it was in the early eighties.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Oh, early eighties.

• 25:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:13Trevor Noah?

  But it is, it is goosebumps. And so now, to get to the end of that, the reason I love Liverpool, the way they play football, the fans, when you go to Liverpool, like Liverpudians.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  What are they called?

• 25:28Trevor Noah?

  Liverpudians.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  The Beatles.

• 25:30Trevor Noah?

  The funniest people, the most interesting people, the, the cult, I, I can't.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  The accent is fantastic.

• 25:38Trevor Noah?

  It really is amazing. It really is.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Can you do it?

• 25:40Trevor Noah?

  I can't do a perfect, no, if I talk to, there's a comedian, John Bishop, if I talk to him for a while, I can stop picking it up, but then I lose it. Cause you know, like English accents, if you, if you mess up one part, all of a sudden you're like.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Back to default.

• 25:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you're in like Birmingham now and they're like, no, that's Brummie. And you're like, ah, wait, wait, say it again, say it again, say it again. And you just, you have to find like a few keywords.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  I was sitting in a coffee shop this weekend and there were two people from Manchester. Young, young, and they, one was just moved here to work and one was visiting her. And they were talking that accent. It was just so fantastic. Describing New York through a Manchester accent is just like, I was just, I just stopped working and just eavesdropped for like an hour and a half. It was just amazing. But anyway, yeah, no, you, they're very specific.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  You know, those, those, you can locate the, you know, the region.

• 26:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Really, through the accent on its own.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. You know, there's a linguist at Columbia, John McWhorter.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  And he, he can, he can tell, I always call him up if I have any kind of, and play him tape of people talking. And he'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, that person's from, you know, they're, they're from Baltimore in the, and they grew up in the seventies, right? Or they're from, he has that for, and I've been trying to force him to write a, encourage him to write a book about America, a history of American accents, where he describes the whole, an audio book, where he walks you through how you can tell the difference between someone from Southern Kansas and someone from, you know, Nebraska, or, you know.

• 27:05Trevor Noah?

  Those stories are always the most fascinating.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  And he, he, he's also, he's this incredibly fascinating guy. He's a black guy, heavily into Broadway theater, linguist, kind of a little bit of a provocateur. He is incapable of being uninteresting. He just, everything he says, my favorite thing is I will go to, I'll go to see his little office at Columbia. I've gone a couple of times and I just play him tape and I say, what's going on here? He goes, well, I bet he's off to the races, right? I played him a tape of, of, I might have told you this story before. I was doing this thing on, on Tom Bradley, the black mayor of Los Angeles. And I was listening to all this tape of him. He was the mayor in the seventies and eighties. If you listen to him, he sounds like a white guy.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  And I was like, well, that's weird because if you were a black mayor today, you wouldn't sound like a white guy. So I go to John and I say, well, what's going on here? He's like, well, you know, there was a period in, in, in American life where if you were a black person and you wanted to succeed, you had to sound like a white person. And that ends in, and he tells me the moment that it shifts. Like you can listen to, there's a moment where, being a black public figure, no longer required you to sound white, but required you to sound black, whatever, local, regional, otherwise you would, you know, you went from being. In the, before that moment, you would be seen as illegitimate and, uh, you know, uneducated if you sounded quote unquote black.

• 28:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  After that moment, you would be seen as inauthentic, as front, as pretending to be someone that you weren't.

• 28:39Trevor Noah?

  Hmm, and what was the catalyst?

• 28:41Speaker 00

  The catalyst, I forgot, it's sometime in the late sixties, early seventies, I've forgotten the specifically, but it has to do, as you can imagine, with the rise of kind of black empowerment, black nationalism.

• 28:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Black empowerment, um, it's this, it's this incredibly crucial shift in the way white people view black people and the way black people view themselves.

• 29:02Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  This country, and it's marked linguistically. And so Tom Bradley was a vestige, he's born in the teens, so he's a vestige of the earlier, you listen to him, like, I mean, this guy is like, black, black, he's not light-skinned, he's a, you know, and he was the most powerful black politician in the country for years and years, and if, if you, if you never saw a picture of him, you would think he was white. It's, it's just so fascinating to me.

• 29:28Trevor Noah?

  I love, I love, I mean, Eugene, how many languages do you speak?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Well, as many as possible in South Africa.

• 29:36Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, but I mean, seriously.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  How many in South Africa?

• 29:38Trevor Noah?

  No, no, because he's like, he's like one of my favorite linguists.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Are you serious?

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yes, South African languages, yes.

• 29:43Trevor Noah?

  He's phenomenal with languages.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Wow. Wait, how many languages are spoken in South Africa as a whole?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Eleven official, which the eleventh one is a sign language, and the other two, the other one is.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  And how closely related are they?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Well, so there's Ngoni, uh, which is Zulu, Kosa, Sintebele, they sound almost alike, and Swati, and then there's Sutu, and there's the northern Sutu, and then the southern Sutu, which is Zwana and Zepedi, so they are all almost, uh, interlinked, but if you don't know how to tell the difference, you wouldn't be able to.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Why, why is it you know so many of them? What, what is it about your life that led you to master nine of them?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Well, I grew up in a, in a township, like many South Africans at the time. And in our section, it was a Tzonga section, where my grandfather worked in the railroads. So he came from Nelsbridge, where they speak Siswati. So he came all the way to Pretoria. And then in Pretoria, they put him in a section where Tzonga people live. So he had to learn Shetonga.

• 30:41Trevor Noah?

  Which isn't like mainstream.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Not very mainstream. So there's two languages that are not mainstream, Shetonga and Chivenda, which is more north and the other one is the other side. So he had to learn that when we grew up, it was just a language that he would speak with his friends around the neighborhood. And then when we would go to school, we'd go to another section that speaks Isizulu. And the school that I went to, I had to learn Isizulu. But to get to that school, I had to go through a section that spoke Isutu. So, so to, to, to navigate your way from home to school and to understand what my, because I was very nosey, to understand what my grandfather was saying with his friends. I would often eavesdrop and I would ask him, what, what, what is that, what is that? And before I knew it, I could speak all the languages. And my mom was a nurse. So in hospitals, she would be called all the time to come and translate for the doctors who couldn't understand the language.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  So the language just became normal.

• 31:29Trevor Noah?

  Do you mix them up or do you stay with one language when you're speaking it?

• 31:32Speaker 02

  I choose to stay with one, but it becomes easy because I sometimes speak Shetonga with him. And he thinks he doesn't know Shetonga, but he speaks very well Shetonga.

• 31:40Trevor Noah?

  No, I understand, but I mean, but that's, but that's fluency in a language. But here's the thing that I've remembered is we have 11 official languages. I would argue most people in South Africa speak two, three maximum for the most part. So like when I'm, I'm always fascinated by people who speak like way more languages. Cause I go like, how do you? And then I'll ask him for the vocabulary and the words, but the accents that you're saying, I find super fascinating because it's a story.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:06Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? We, we, we forget that when somebody speaks with an accent, there's a story that comes with that accent. Like always.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  It it it is almost the same in South Africa, what your friend was trying to explain to you when languages and accents started losing what their value was to the people that spoke the languages. So migrant workers would try, their kids would assimilate to where they were.

• 32:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  So they would lose the language. So people who come who speak Isiswati are from the Kingdom of Iswati, which is formerly known as Swaziland, will be closer to people that live in the Nels Strait, which is the east. But when they come to the north, they will stop using that language. And there's also a historic kind of side to it where uh King Shaga, King of the Zulus, had a brother that he sent. His name was So Shanani, that he sent up east, to go to Mozambique, to go conquer there.

• 32:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, northeast.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Then he never, he never left. He he found it interesting and he loved it. With his little tribe, he built a nation and those people started speaking a dialect of what the people there were speaking, which was a mixture of Portuguese and their indigenous language, which was called Shitzonga. But then when people were being derogatory towards his brother, they said Shanani. And then the people were called Shanans. And then that language started dying out because people were ashamed to be called by the majority group that they're called. Basically, if you call someone that, you call them a defector.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 33:24Trevor Noah?

  I I love these things because.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  I do, I think it's fascinating, yeah.

• 33:27Trevor Noah?

  So so to your point. Um, one of my friends, yeah, she like was like deep in, um, she studied this for acting school, like in the UK and then came out here. Ella, you know Ella, Ella Belenska, fantastic actress, and she like learned all these things. And she like took me on a journey, like you're saying. So she can, she can show you how the New Orleans accent, you can trace it back to like an actual French accent.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 33:55Trevor Noah?

  And if someone does it well, you'll go, that's not possible. I I've even had a friend show me that like with Jamaican.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:01Trevor Noah?

  And then like take Jamaican and then stitch it to parts of England, but then also stitch it to parts of India. And then you end up with a Jamaican accent.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:10Trevor Noah?

  And you're just like, damn, it's amazing how you you you're telling a story every time you're speaking.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Because those, all of those, Jamaica had lots of Indians.

• 34:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Lots of Chinese and heavily Scottish, the white, the. Initial kind of white immigration into Jamaica was Scottish largely.

• 34:26Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have like, it's why so many Jamaicans have Scottish last names, right? But the, uh, the, that you get that, you can see the, the elements that combine to create. Actually, I knew a Jamaican girl once, not Jamaican, well, she was, she was, well, she's complicated. I met her, she lived, she grew up in Miami. Her parents were, family was Jewish. Her grandparents were, had lived in Cuba and then had moved to Jamaica. So she had, her accent was Miami, Cuba, Jamaica, Jewish. And I could listen, she was, I could listen to this girl all day long. I just like, everything else about her just like faded into, I just said, just talk.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  It's just incredible. And like, you know, every, every, you know, when someone's speaking, normally I, my question, the question in my mind is, what word is coming next? With her, it's not just what word is coming next, it's what's the word gonna sound like? Because it was so utterly unpredictable. I'd never heard this before. Anyway, she was.

• 35:30Trevor Noah?

  Wait, but I just realized, we didn't get your answer. What was, what was your, what's your favorite children's character? You haven't watched the movies.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Oh, going all the way back. Uh, my favorite.

• 35:39Trevor Noah?

  What's that? Cause you just watched now. So like now.

• 35:45Trevor Noah?

  Just be honest, Malcolm.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Well, I'll tell you, I'm getting annoyed.

• 35:52Trevor Noah?

  That's a good place to start. This guy, I just wanted the character and then he gladwelled us.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  No, no, no.

• 35:57Trevor Noah?

  I just wanted the character.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  I'm getting there, I'm getting there, I'm getting there. I'm, the, the whole blonde, blue eyed Disney heroine thing, which I know is a cliche, is driving me crazy.

• 36:06Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  It's really, really deeply annoying. But you're watching. Why is, why are they all the fairest dams in the land? Like enough already, why can't, you know, in the original Cinderella, Cinderella is just like an ordinary. Girl, like she's just a kind of, you know, she's no different than anybody else, but she gets lucky. And then Disney comes along and insists that she has to be a bombshell. Why does she need Marilyn Monroe? In the original fairy tale, it's way better. And it was, she's just an ordinary girl.

• 36:36Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  Who has a fantastic thing happen to her. And so if you're a kid and you listen to Cinderella, you're like, oh, my goodness. Amazing things could happen to all of us.

• 36:44Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Disney comes along, makes her into Marilyn Monroe and says, basically, unless you're, unless you're drop dead gorgeous and have a heart of gold.

• 36:56Trevor Noah?

  It's not happening for you.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Not happening for you. And if things don't happen for you, it's because you're not good looking enough. And you've done some evil thing. So my daughter is saying, you know, we're watching Cinderella. And I'm just thinking, oh, my God, what is, what, can they let up already on like, can someone even just have dark hair? Why does everyone have to be blonde? What is, what crazy Germanic, like, like Aryan fantasy is being worked out in Walt Disney's mind as he's doing this.

• 37:24Trevor Noah?

  I mean, you just said it. That's hilarious. You just, you're like, who, what is going on in Walt Disney's mind? This Aryan, yeah, you just said it.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Anyway.

• 37:34Trevor Noah?

  We know how Walt Disney felt, so I mean, do you know what I mean?

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know. I knew nothing about Walt Disney.

• 37:40Trevor Noah?

  About how anti-Semitic he was?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  I did not know that.

• 37:42Trevor Noah?

  Oh, damn. Oh, I thought like you would, oh, yeah, Walt Disney, man, hella problematic. Yeah. Tell us more, Trevor.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  I had no idea. I assumed he was Jewish.

• 37:54Trevor Noah?

  Why?

• 37:54Speaker 00

  With the last name, I mean, in Hollywood in that era.

• 37:58Trevor Noah?

  Did I not know that Disney's Korean?

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Could I tell you?

• 38:03Trevor Noah?

  This is from Poland?

• 38:04Speaker 00

  By the way, here's the, here's the craziest, this is my, my personal experience of the, my current. So I love, I, I have to know where people are from.

• 38:13Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  I have to. First question I always ask everyone is literally, I need to know where you're from. I need to know what your background is. I need to know, do you know what the language that you speak? I need to know that in order, it's just, I don't know if it's a bad or a good habit, but it just is an important one. It's important for me to know, did you grow up outside of Pretoria?

• 38:30Trevor Noah?

  I grew up in Pretoria.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Oh, in Pretoria?

• 38:31Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  That's important for me to know.

• 38:33Trevor Noah?

  My grandfather's the one who came.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  And you're? Johannesburg.

• 38:36Trevor Noah?

  Johannesburg.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Okay. Important for me to know. So I'm watching the Billy Joel documentary on HBO and I don't know, I thought he was Italian. Is that crazy? I thought he was an Italian guy from Long Island. So I don't know, have you watched this documentary?

• 38:52Trevor Noah?

  No, I haven't.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  It's fantastic. So like we're 20 minutes in and it's like, of course we were Jewish. I'm like, and I suddenly wake up, wait, Billy Joel is Jewish? And then, so I'm like, oh my God, like this is like rocking my world. And my, my wife, who is half Jewish and from Long Island and is like, you know, Billy Joel was in her hometown. She worships Billy Joel. My, she plays like uptown girl for my four year old constantly. So my wife was like, what, you didn't know he was Jewish? I was like, no, I thought he was Italian. Then it keep going. And like in the second part, you learn that his family, his grandfather was a, he's come from this high born, sophisticated, intellectual, German Jewish family. They were industrialists.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  They owned a big garment manufacturing plant in Nuremberg. The Nazis took it over and the, the stripe, you know, the striped pajamas?

• 39:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  That the Nazis turned that plant into a plant that made those striped pajamas. So if you look on the label of the striped pajamas, it says Joel.

• 39:58Trevor Noah?

  No ways.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And then, so then also you realize.

• 40:02Trevor Noah?

  They kept the name of the.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course they did.

• 40:05Trevor Noah?

  That's, that's weird.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  The label's already there, so.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  They already had.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  You know, the Germans.

• 40:08Trevor Noah?

  It's weird that they put labels on. I'm sorry, I'm, I'm focusing on the wrong part. This is just like a weird.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  But then you understand, so I always wondered, why did Billy Joel? Cause I would, there's a famous, you ever watch Inside the Actors Studio?

• 40:20Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Okay, so there's the one with him, which I saw years ago, is one of the greatest ones of all time.

• 40:24Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  And you realize, oh, cause he would play all this classical music. You're like, he knows all this. I was like, so I was trying to compete. I thought he was like working class Italian from Long Island. What, how does he know Tchaikovsky from memory? Like, it didn't make any sense to me. But now I was like, oh, his father was a classically trained pianist. Because of course they come from this incredibly sophisticated family in Europe. I totally located him in the wrong place. So for me, who loves to locate people, this is like so destabilizing. And then in the documentary, and this is the problem with the documentary. So my first thought is, okay, now that I know this fact, why isn't the whole, and he has a falling out with his father. His father disappears. The whole documentary should be about his father. The whole thing is about, Billy Joel's whole life is.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Kid of this insanely sophisticated intellectual German Jewish family, who are Holocaust escapees, comes to Long Island and reinvents himself as like a Long Island street hood. But he can't pull off the reinvention quote unquote successfully because he's too sophisticated.

• 41:28Trevor Noah?

  He plays Chicago.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Too smart and he plays Chicago. So that's the story. And what his father disappears from the family. And what's he doing in his whole life? He's chasing this, this vanished father who represents this, the sophisticated side that he has kind of lost contact with, right? And there's a moment in the dark and they only give you 30 seconds of it, which drove me crazy. Where you, he finds his father years later, who's living in Vienna. And that song Vienna Waits For You, it's about his father. It's about finding his father in Vienna. I didn't know that. No one told me that. I just thought he went to Vienna on holiday. No, no, it's about his father. So then, you know, you know that song? Vienna Waits For You.

• 42:06Trevor Noah?

  If I hear it, I'll probably know it. I don't know any songs by their titles.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  It's one of the most beautiful of all the Billy Joel songs. And I heard it as a kid and I was like, I was, you know, almost moved to tears by it. But I just thought he's random, you know, I just thought he's a random, he's a Italian kid dreaming about Vienna. No, his dad's living in Vienna. He discovers his dad in Vienna. He goes there, writes the song. And then they show you, he's at this concert and he show him, they show him saying, Dad, if you'd come up and if you want to play. And then they cut to, they have two grand pianos pushed together and Billy's on one and his dad's on the other.

• 42:38Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  And it's like, we don't, they only, they gave us 10 seconds of this and they should have given us 45 minutes of this.

• 42:45Trevor Noah?

  We need the Gladwell cut, that's what we need. We need, we should actually just do this. You know what? I'm, I'm gonna pitch you a business here. You, you just go in and we just Gladwell everything. So we Gladwell Disney movies, we Gladwell documentaries, we Glad, because clearly there's the Gladwell cuts. And, and you basically go off on your own tangents.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  The one that you would have loved to see. I don't want to, it's not just the Gladwell cut. I think the three of us, this should be a business for the three of us. I would, I think you, all of us should contribute to the, to the reimagining of these flawed classics.

• 43:14Trevor Noah?

  What, the Disney ones? Yeah, but, but here, okay, but have you watched the newer ones?

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Well, I've watched.

• 43:20Trevor Noah?

  Because they, no, because they have been reimagined.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  We did.

• 43:23Trevor Noah?

  I didn't want to spoil it for you because I.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  No, no, we did Moana the other night.

• 43:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  But it gets really violent. I'm like.

• 43:29Trevor Noah?

  That's what it's like, that's what it'd be like to be young, female and black.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  When your friend is a chicken and one is a pig. The, and you're stuck with an older guy.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  A guy.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  With a catamaran and your grand is a ghost. And your grandfather ran away from your dad and he's a spirit of the seas.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  The chicken.

• 43:50Trevor Noah?

  Eugene watches a lot of Moana.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Do you, as you can tell.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Who, one, yes.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  How old?

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Uh, my daughter's uh turning seventeen this year.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  Oh, seven, you're away, you're years away from this.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  What?

• 44:00Speaker 00

  From Moana.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  We watched it the other day.

• 44:03Trevor Noah?

  Can you not tell? What do you mean? You're assuming that his daughter is the one who wants to watch it.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Oh, you say, oh, yeah.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  That was the one who was saying.

• 44:12Trevor Noah?

  She has to put it on for him.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Make way, make way.

• 44:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, she's the one who's putting it on for him. I, I actually feel like, you know what the Disney movies? One of the issues I actually have is, and maybe this is like the Gladwell part of my brain, is I go.

• 44:27Trevor Noah?

  I think Disney did a major disservice to an entire generation that has grown up on it. Because it gave us a false idea of how things turn out.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Happy endings?

• 44:38Trevor Noah?

  But not just happy endings, it's like the way things turn out, like. I'll talk to a lot of people who'll go, oh, the world, I can't believe this, I can't believe, they can't believe Trump won. They can't believe this is still happening, they can't, then I'm like, but why can you not believe it? And then, for me at least, I go, if you've grown up your whole life being told that the good guy always wins. That the damsel always gets saved, that the, you know, then when you go out into life, you're like, don't worry, you just wait, Trump. Oh, you'll see what happens to him by the third act. You'll see what happens to him, it's only him, and then it's like, it's not a matter of time. That's not actually how the world works. Do you get what I'm saying? And I think those movies are partially to blame for that.

• 45:21Trevor Noah?

  And I don't know if you would know this, maybe you know deep, but like, a lot of them were based on stories that didn't have those endings. You do know that, right?

• 45:27Speaker 00

  I know, they changed them.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Donald and Walt.

• 45:30Trevor Noah?

  No, no, but, but seriously, they, they were not happy endings, they like, I think in one of them, is it Sleeping Beauty or Snow, she just dies.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  She is actually dead.

• 45:37Trevor Noah?

  She is dead?

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sleeping Beauty, she is dead.

• 45:40Trevor Noah?

  So they're just kissing a dead body?

• 45:41Speaker 00

  The original Grimm Brothers.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Is there a word for that in the English language?

• 45:45Trevor Noah?

  What is it? Oh, necrophilia.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Say it when you're other eleven languages.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  It's called this tomb, boo.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Oh man.

• 45:56Trevor Noah?

  You know, that's another one. You know, the thought that I had about that? The thought I had about.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  I'm still recovering.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  And the expressive. Do they all have? Was it you putting that on? Or is there something in that language that is more expressive and?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Well.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Because there's some languages that are.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Half the language, but it's doom.

• 46:22Trevor Noah?

  There's definitely half in the language.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  It's half in the language.

• 46:24Trevor Noah?

  It definitely is. Like the name for flip flops. My paka pat.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  That's better. That is so much better.

• 46:32Trevor Noah?

  Because it's the sound that they make when you walk.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  So much better.

• 46:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  So much better.

• 46:35Trevor Noah?

  Paka, paka, paka, paka, paka.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  It's doom.

• 46:40Trevor Noah?

  But that does sound like a dead body. If you think about it, okay, think of, imagine if you had a dead body and you dropped it on the ground. So, okay, I will, I will hold the dead body. You're gonna say the word as I drop this dead body. You got it? Oh, God, oh, man, this, this body's so heavy. Oh, goddamn, oh, no, I dropped it. Doom.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Wait, what's the little transition of doom?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  It's doom.

• 47:04Trevor Noah?

  It's a corpse.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 47:06Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but I'm saying, what sound does a dead body make when you drop it?

• 47:11Speaker 00

  Exactly that.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  It's doom.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  There, there should be an aggressive program to incorporate, like, my mother uses this, this is Jamaican word for, it's not quite a rascal, it's a lovable rascal, but it's more than that. It's gentle.

• 47:26Trevor Noah?

  Gentle?

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Gentle.

• 47:27Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  And she would, some of my fondest memories as a child are doing something that was clearly wrong. And my mother calling me a gentle and it, what it meant was, what you did was wrong, but I.

• 47:39Trevor Noah?

  I love you.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I like that.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  No, no, it's more than I love you. It's not that I, I forgive you and I love you. It's that I recognize that the core of that behavior is something I would like to keep alive and cherish.

• 47:50Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  That's what it is. The gentle is like, the gentle, the gentle is, is, um, the gentle will save us if we're, if we're all imperiled and like, the overlord is making. Is the one who will, you know, it's the Nancy figure. It's the, it's the classic in, in sort of African folklore. The idea of the mischief maker who could save the day.

• 48:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Right?

• 48:12Trevor Noah?

  It is not inherently bad.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:15Trevor Noah?

  But it causes so much mischief that we don't like it. But in a time of need, it will step up.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 48:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  That particular thing, that's just a lovely word. And I, I taught it to my daughter because she's a gentle. So she now uses.

• 48:26Trevor Noah?

  Which one?

• 48:28Speaker 00

  The old, the four year old. She now uses gentle. It makes me so happy. She accused her mother of being a gentle. I was like, here's an all. Your mother is not a gentle. That's actually not what Kate is.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Causing chaos in the household. Oh, man.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  But like those, my, the, all those little, those, those little folkisms. Cause this, my mother would have, who's turned 94 yesterday.

• 48:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Would have learned that from, uh, you know, the, the, the nanny she would have had in the little tiny place in the middle of Jamaica in the thirties would have been the, who was an older woman, would have been probably the daughter or granddaughter of a, of a, of someone who might have been born in Africa. Because remember.

• 49:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  West Indian slaves were, um, because they all died off. They were constantly bringing in new ones. So you could be, actually be the granddaughter of someone who came from Africa. So that's an African term that just gets, um, just, just enters straight into the Jamaican vernacular. So it's like, it's this hilarious thing that now I'm, the language of our household is echoing.

• 49:39Trevor Noah?

  But that's beautiful, man.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  It's really beautiful.

• 49:41Trevor Noah?

  I always feel like we've got to do that more.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's why my point, we need to, you guys should come up with a three or four words, which you just try really, really hard to introduce into the American vernacular that are better. That actually have some objective advantage.

• 49:55Trevor Noah?

  Okay, we'll do that. That will, that'll be our work.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  That'll be your work.

• 49:58Trevor Noah?

  That'll be like our job. We'll work through it and we'll figure that. I'll, I'll make note when you say something and I'll be like, I think that's what we can get people saying.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  You know, when, you're right. Actually, you know, when I realized that it's actually, he actually speaks more languages than he lets on. And actually we miss speaking the language and I think people that have known him for longer over here don't know that he speaks the languages is when we drift off and we speak Isizulu or Shetonga.

• 50:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. We'll just switch into.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  And then you just see everyone going.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  No, but you know, the weirdest thing.

• 50:26Trevor Noah?

  He's from there. He's not.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  He's from there, we found him!

• 50:32Speaker 00

  And then Ice like shows up.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  It's like, oh, he's not an American.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Get out!

• 50:40Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 50:42Trevor Noah?

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

• 50:47Trevor Noah?

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• 51:32Trevor Noah?

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

• 52:17Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 52:20Trevor Noah?

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• 53:03Trevor Noah?

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• 53:48Trevor Noah?

  It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 54:04Trevor Noah?

  Oh, the, the, um, that journal thing. Do you, do you think that that is sort of what has informed how you write, how you think, how you? Because I've always felt like you're a mischievous reporter. Like, you don't, let me tell you what I mean by that. Like, I've, I've met many reporters in my lifetime. And like, even like the old, old, old-school ones, like from the Brokaw days, you know, like Tom Brokaw, like, and they, they have a, well, let me tell you something. When you're searching for a fact, you have to know where a fact starts and where it ends. And you search for the story, and there's something about that you have to. And there's like a, there's like, oh, okay, I, I get this. And then this journalist today. You are one of the most mischievous journalists I've ever met. And I think that's part of what I like about your thinking, your writing, your vibe.

• 54:48Trevor Noah?

  But do you think you kept that because of what your mom said?

• 54:51Speaker 00

  Well, it's, I think, first of all, thank you. But I think it's because my, it doesn't feel mischievous to me because my parents were the same way.

• 55:01Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  My mother is still, who's, she's turned, just turned 94. She's in a nursing home in Canada and she writes for the nursing home newsletter.

• 55:10Trevor Noah?

  That's amazing.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  She sends them to me and, you know, they're like really interesting, thoughtful. But like half the time she's like, you know, picking a fight with some.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Or doing some, I just really, she's just, in a very, in a very nice, respectful way. She's causing trouble still. She's always, she's always, she's a troublemaker. She's always been a little bit of a, you know, like there's, there's something in her.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  And I think that's a, there's something, an immigrant is someone, you know, which all of us at this table are immigrants. And my mother was an immigrant, three, three times over, or twice over. I think an immigrant has that, has that impulse to, because they, they, they're willing to shake up their life, right? And so they, once you've made this, the most, the most, once you've made the most important of all decisions about shaking up your life, which is I am leaving family, friends and culture and going somewhere else. Then everything else seems trivial in comparison, right? Like, you know, you've done the, you've done the hard thing, like what else, you know, you've, you've already thumbed your nose at what every, what everyone else in your circle is doing. You've left.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  So like now you can, it's why, it's why, why are comics so often from, you know, either, either immigrant groups or marginalized groups? Because they've, they've already done the big thing, right? After, it's, it's easy after that.

• 56:36Trevor Noah?

  I wonder if it's augmented by whether or not you chose your immigration?

• 56:42Trevor Noah?

  Because when you were saying that, I was, I was trying to think through and I went, I actually feel like. There's almost two camps if we were going to make it binary. I think there are some immigrants who are the opposite of that.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 56:53Trevor Noah?

  There are many immigrants who are like, no, I do not shake, I do not, there's no mischief, there's no, my only goal is to fully become this new world. Because I don't necessarily have another choice.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:06Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean?

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:07Trevor Noah?

  But then I wonder if like you're more likely to keep that mischief when your choice was the thing.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:12Trevor Noah?

  Because if if you shake up your world, you're mischievous, but if the world shakes up your your life, then you not you not you don't necessarily have that same thing, I think. Does that make sense?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Hmm, it does.

• 57:23Trevor Noah?

  Like, I think there's some people where they go like, my parents came here because they wanted to da da da da.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:28Trevor Noah?

  Those parents are generally more like shaking up the world. Then there's some people who go, yeah, man, my parents came here because they had to, something happened. And I find sometimes, not always, but sometimes those people are like, listen, I, this this is not my choice.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:43Trevor Noah?

  And so I don't want to be shaken up again, so I'm not going to be in a position where I can be shaken up.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there are ways that you always see how those groups that have migrated from somewhere that they loved and that they miss have always just rebelled a little bit. In the way they cook food or stealing off speaking the language inside their house and sometimes not losing their accents. Because my grandfather was big in not trying to lose his accent.

• 58:08Trevor Noah?

  Like actively trying.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Hmm. Actively trying.

• 58:11Trevor Noah?

  That's a funny thought.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Because even the friends that he kept, even well into his old age, where people that came from the same province as him, that spoke the same language, then he would keep, they would play cards together.

• 58:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  And insist on speaking the language and just sounding like they were back home when they were not. You know, so there is that little part, he would also make his own built on, you know what built on is, like beef jerky?

• 58:33Trevor Noah?

  Beef jerky, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, he would insist on, which drove my grandmother crazy. He would just hold on to those two things because what he hated the most was the fact that when his parents died.

• 58:45Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Right? He had to go live with his uncle.

• 58:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  So when he moved in with his uncle, he lived with him for a while and then when it was time for him to get his ID card, he couldn't use his father's surname. Which was Ngomani, so he had to use his uncle's surname, which was Kozza, which was my surname now. Yes, and then all of his life from when his first grandchild was born, he insisted that we call him Grandfather Ngomani.

• 59:10Trevor Noah?

  So he wanted to hold on to the thing.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  The language.

• 59:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  What his dad taught him how to make jerky and also the language.

• 59:16Trevor Noah?

  But you see, that's that's sort of what I'm saying.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:18Trevor Noah?

  If you think about it.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:19Trevor Noah?

  Because it was taken from him.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Twice.

• 59:21Trevor Noah?

  He did not have the inclination to lose it or to shake it up.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:25Trevor Noah?

  His inclination was, hold on to it as much as possible. I want to keep that accent, that last name, that food.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:32Trevor Noah?

  Because it was taken from him.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:33Trevor Noah?

  But I feel like there's like a, there's a mischievous luxury that comes with you being the creator of your little tornado.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 59:41Trevor Noah?

  And it's just like, you know what I mean? It's just like.

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, I have something, this, having, hearing your list, Eugene, talk reminds me of this thing I've been thinking about. Which is that you've talked now on several occasions about your grandfather.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  So part, this is a two-part theory. Part one of the theory is, all of us explain who we are with some reference to our families, right? It's a common thing.

• 1:00:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  But I've noticed that when people do this, they always pick one. So you never hear someone say, rarely, I get this from my mom and this is my dad. What you, what you get is, when they're talking about something, say, oh yeah, that comes from my father. And they talk father, father, father, father, father, father. And then you come back to them five years later and they're like, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, and the dad's disappeared. You can't do both at the same time.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  No, you can't. So, and then part two of this series, I thought of this for a while. And then, because I was noticing it was so, this is the, the theory of asymmetrical parental attribution. You can only do one parent at a time.

• 1:00:39Trevor Noah?

  Theory of asymmetrical parental attribution.

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  You can only do one parent at a time.

• 1:00:42Trevor Noah?

  At a time.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  But then I decided, no, no, no, don't like that theory anymore. Then I decided.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Well, you just decided randomly?

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I kicked the theory out of it.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Okay, let's go.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Theory boss. And I've decided, I think the mistake we make, I don't think parents, this is why I'm coming back to it.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  I don't think parents are the right place to make sense of someone. I think grandparents are. In other words, if I were, if I'd never met you either you before, and you sat down and I gave myself 10 minutes to get to the essence of you psychologically.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  And I had a choice. I could have you talk only about your parents, or I could have you talk only about your grandparents. My point is, the grandparents is a far more revelatory conversation. Because there's so much noise with your relationship with your parents. You're blind to it. You, it's complicated for all kinds of other reasons. There's siblings in the mix. You can't figure it all out. But if I get you to talk about your grandparents, there's a kind of purity in the way we see our grandparents. And when I think about my, I can locate myself way more easily in my grandparents than my parents. And I think of my kids, and I can locate them much more easily in their,

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  in my parents and my wife's parents than I can in us. And I think grandparents, because we've sort of gotten, this would have been 100 years ago.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  This would have been commonplace because we were living with our grandparents. And we had, but now it's like a harder thing to grasp because they're not, they're absent in a way they weren't before. But um.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  You think perhaps maybe that's why they're called grand?

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, they are grand, they are.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  They're like the ultimate of parents.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  The ultimate of.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  The pinnacle of parents.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  But I mean, I, but I just loved that you were talking so much about your grandfather because it's, it's, it's rare that, not rare, but it's, people don't spend enough time, I think, talking about that layer of their heritage.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  I think mostly sometimes, that's very, you're good. Have you thought of writing a book?

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  So this is not a profound theory.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  In life, as an author, you would kill.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  This is just a random observation, but now I'm curious, no.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  It is. You are so right.

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  Does that make sense?

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  It makes hundred percent sense.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  You're right when you say it's the noise between yourself and the parents. And also, there's no one greater than your parents at the time that your parents are in your life. So people who have enriching childhoods, which is what I had up until the age of six, was when my grandparents were around.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Because it almost allowed me to see my parents as children as well.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Because they had someone older who could tell them, you don't do that. Because disciplining was not a thing when my grandparents were around. I would get away so much more. But then, when my grandparents passed away,

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  my parents almost had to step in to become the parents. And they became the villains of the story. Don't do this, don't do that. And also, you miss the person that let you get away so much more. And I had to pick, in my memory, the parts that I remember the most, you know, sitting under the table. My grandfather used to be like, you're gonna end up on TV one day. And I was like, why? Because when I was five or six, we got our first television set. The news would play in English and he would say, watch what my granddad is gonna do. Then he'd say, tell us what they said there. Then I would just listen, listen, and I'd be like.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Wait, would you say it back in English?

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  Or would you say?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  No, I'd say it back in Tonga.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  So you would translate it?

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  You see, this is what, you see? I didn't even know that, but there you go.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Then he said, you are gonna end up on television one day. And my mom held on to that forever and ever and ever. She used to say it over and over again, and it happened. So I remember those little moments and I'm like.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  So not only, what's interesting is not only do you see your grandparents more clearly than your parents, but your grandparents maybe saw you more clearly than, uh, than your parents did. They also, because in that, it goes in both directions, because they don't have the clutter either. Apparently, because there's so much, now that I'm a parent.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just Gladwell us and gloss through that.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  There's so much clutter. When I look at even my own kids, there's so much in the way of seeing them clearly. There's so many, so much crap you bring to that relationship with your, with your kids, like, that is irrelevant to who they are. You're so intent on turning them into versions of yourself that you forget they're, they're not, never will be. But the grandparents are free of that. They're, they, they get to see the kid for who they are, right? That was, I remember that, I knew, I knew my, um, I didn't know my, my, my grandparents all died before I was. And they were always living in other countries. But I always felt that there was a kind of clarity in the way they saw me. And it was, yeah, it was like uncomplicated.

• 1:05:27Trevor Noah?

  Is there a part of you that wishes you had your kids sooner in life so that they could have had that?

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, the biggest mistake.

• 1:05:33Trevor Noah?

  Really?

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  I may was not was waiting so long. But on the other hand, I'm chiller than I would have been. I find parenting to be completely unstressful. I think that's because I'm older. I find it hilarious when they act up. I find it, and I also let them do whatever they want.

• 1:05:50Trevor Noah?

  So you, in a way, you are the grandparent?

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  I am the permissive grandparent. There's no question about that. Yeah.

• 1:05:54Trevor Noah?

  That is amazing.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  And, you know, maybe that has consequences. Who knows? I won't be around for them.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  I'm kidding.

• 1:06:04Trevor Noah?

  Wait, so who is your favorite kid's character? I was about to say, who's your favorite kid? I was like, oh my god. No, what? No, I wouldn't do that.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  I dare you.

• 1:06:12Trevor Noah?

  I wouldn't do that. Louis? You can't know this soon. You'll know, but not this soon. Have you decided yet?

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Do I have? I'm struggling with this one. I know.

• 1:06:22Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm saying. Don't think, just, there's got to be one that makes you happy inside. Because you've watched, you've watched Peppa Pig.

• 1:06:28Speaker 00

  It's Peppa Pig's grandfather is hilarious to me because.

• 1:06:33Trevor Noah?

  Peppa Pig has a grandfather?

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  And he's so funny because he's just like, he is so, there's a certain kind of, that's my, you know, my, my father's family, I feel like they were 100 people like Peppa Pig's father and Peppa Pig's grandfather. It is just like, takes me back to going to England as a kid and like, they're all that way. And they have that, they capture that really beautiful thing about kind of the way the English speak, which is they love being vague about everything.

• 1:06:58Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:59Speaker 00

  I'll just have a spot of tea.

• 1:07:01Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  Right? What's a spot? We're not gonna, is that a cup? They're not specifying anything. And everything is like in this kind of vague, like euphemistic language. That's what I listened to as a kid and I just love it. I just think it's fantastic.

• 1:07:15Trevor Noah?

  When you hear that, it just like takes you back to that.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  Takes me back. My dad would do that. My dad was, was. Incredibly delightfully inarticulate.

• 1:07:24Trevor Noah?

  Just couldn't.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Inarticulate.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  Inarticulate, like, which is why I was so obsessed with expressing myself because I've said this so many times, if you live with a father who is completely inarticulate, what do you do? I spent my entire time as he's speaking, as a kid, like rewriting the words in my head. No, no, no, don't say that. What you mean is this. You should say this. Like, come on out with it. What you mean, what you're looking for is this. This is what's going on in my head as a kid, but I'm listening to him. And he wasn't incredibly smart man, but just like not interested in mastering, you know.

• 1:07:57Trevor Noah?

  He was rebelling.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  Tell a joke and would, he, the first time he took my mother on a date, they go to some big, you know, student thing at the University College in London, and he stands up to tell a joke and he forgets the punchline. And my mother, this is the first date, my mother's sitting there, she's like, what, what just happened? This guy takes me out, this white guy, first of all, this white guy takes me out. By the way, my father, my mother's a twin and her twin.

• 1:08:26Trevor Noah?

  Identical twin.

• 1:08:27Speaker 00

  Identical twin. Went to the same UCL a year before. And my father asked my mother's sister out, who turned him down, but said, my sister is coming.

• 1:08:36Trevor Noah?

  That is hilarious.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  So you imagine the psychological kind of circumstances of my mother. So not only is she's like, I think he might prefer my twin, A, and B, he's just made a fool of himself in front of like a hundred of his parents. Anyway, they were happily married for.

• 1:08:52Trevor Noah?

  For many years?

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  Fifty, whatever, sixty years.

• 1:08:54Trevor Noah?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Was it weird having a mom who has a twin? I could imagine the mischief, the gentile I would get up to.

• 1:09:01Trevor Noah?

  But why do you think that?

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Because I would have someone who looks like my mom but doesn't behave like my mom. You know how many times I'd wish my mom had a twin Jane life, where my aunt would come over and rescue me.

• 1:09:13Trevor Noah?

  Well, you're going to like use your mom for shenanigans, like your mom's sister for shenanigans?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Let's not use moms.

• 1:09:19Trevor Noah?

  You were going to.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  My mom were talking about you.

• 1:09:21Trevor Noah?

  You're going to.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Why we use.

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  It's not that generation that's interesting, it's the next generation. So your mom's twin sister's children are your half siblings genetically?

• 1:09:34Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  So that's interesting.

• 1:09:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh geez.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:09:38Trevor Noah?

  Well, I've never thought of that, actually.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Share the same mom.

• 1:09:41Trevor Noah?

  Oh geez.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  So, all of my, they're first cousins who are actually half siblings. And it's just really interesting. I, there's a kind of comfort level that you would have with a sibling.

• 1:09:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  But it's a first cousin.

• 1:09:57Trevor Noah?

  But how different was your mom from your aunt?

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  My mom is...

• 1:10:02Trevor Noah?

  Or your aunt?

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  They look, they look exactly the same to the point where, and they did that thing. My aunt was living in Jamaica, my mom in Canada, and they would independently, and without telling each other, wear the same clothes, change their hairstyles.

• 1:10:16Trevor Noah?

  We were talking about this the other day, this is so wild.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  Freaky twin thing that happens. So they always looked identical. So I would mistake them.

• 1:10:24Trevor Noah?

  You yourself?

• 1:10:24Speaker 00

  And then my, we would go to Jamaica to visit and my mother would drive around with my father. And everyone in the little town would think that my aunt was stepping out with a strange white man.

• 1:10:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh man.

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  Shenanigans.

• 1:10:39Trevor Noah?

  Who was inarticulate and who couldn't find the punchline, it was like, that's him!

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  Wearing a suit and tie, like, you know, an English guy with a big beard. And then, uh...

• 1:10:49Trevor Noah?

  Explain yourself! And he's like, well, it appears there's quite an unfortunate coming together of stories that might confuse two people, or groups, rather, who think that me... Ah, you're dead.

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  No, no, it's lovely. But my, but my grand, but, but the other flip side of it is that my mom's twin sister marries a Jamaican guy, but who is basically my father.

• 1:11:13Trevor Noah?

  No! No ways.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  They're not, he's not a Jamaican.

• 1:11:17Trevor Noah?

  Jamaican version of your English dad.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  They find, which makes sense, they're the same person.

• 1:11:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  So they, they find, they're exact, in fact, my father and my uncle knew each other before, and my uncle was actively, successfully pursued by odd. But they're, they looked the same, they were, they had the same interests, they, it was, the whole thing is just uncanny.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  In the Xhosa culture, if there's a twin, one must lose part of their pinky so people can identify them easily.

• 1:11:47Trevor Noah?

  God damn.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they must cut part of their pinky.

• 1:11:49Trevor Noah?

  The brutal version.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  But there are other cultures, I'm not sure which one it is in South Africa, where if you marry one twin, you have to marry the other.

• 1:11:55Trevor Noah?

  Whoa.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  Because chances of the other one being happy without the other are very low, unless they meet someone who's like you.

• 1:12:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  So you have to do polygamy in that way to keep them together and to keep the other one from making another man miserable. So the fact that your aunt married someone similar to your dad and your dad almost dated her first.

• 1:12:13Trevor Noah?

  Is the only reason she has her pinky.

• 1:12:20Trevor Noah?

  Don't press anything. We've got more. What now after this?

• 1:12:27Trevor Noah?

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

• 1:13:12Trevor Noah?

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

• 1:13:57Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 1:14:00Trevor Noah?

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

• 1:14:45Trevor Noah?

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

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  What's up, sports fans? I'm Rachel Damita, here to tell you about my show Courtside Club. If you love hoops and hot takes, then you're in the right place. Want to hear about Katelyn Clark's unstoppable rise in the WNBA? How stars like Wendy and Luka Doncic are dominating the NBA? Or maybe you just want the tea on this week's most viral sports moments. Don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of it. So grab your popcorn and come hang with us. Courtside. You can listen to Courtside Club wherever you get your podcasts. Oui et ah.

• 1:16:02Trevor Noah?

  You know the thing you're talking about, about like us taking the articulate thing with with your dad? I've always wondered, there's a, I've always, I've always wanted to learn, or I've tried to learn about like astrophysics and it's so complicated and math throws me, it's too much for my brain, but I like to try and learn about it. And one of the more interesting ideas for me is entropy, right? The idea that everything energy wise is always trying to get to a state of sort of like middle is the best way to describe it in my brain. And when you say that, I always wonder if that's all we're doing as like species and

• 1:16:45Trevor Noah?

  humans and is people don't realize that their kids are supposed to sort of like balance them out. So if you are loud and crazy, there's a good chance your kid might be like really quiet, especially if you have like one kid, they might be like really quiet and timid. And then if you are inarticulate, your kid is going to be extremely precise and good and a wordsmith and, do you know, I even wondered that with, I wondered if COVID was the ultimate natural experiment, which I know you love, by the way, just natural experiments.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Not COVID.

• 1:17:14Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean? No, not COVID.

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  I was about to say.

• 1:17:17Trevor Noah?

  No, because, because what COVID did, in some ways, COVID showed us that the human experiment has been successful in that one thing could not wipe us all out.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:17:29Trevor Noah?

  Some people died very quickly, some people didn't even get a sniff. And we don't really know why. You know, there's obviously things, people like comorbidities and weight and age, yeah, but once you remove that, there's some instances where people just, they were just gone. And then others on the opposite end of the spectrum with, and then the middle people got sick and whatever. And I was thinking about that going, it's like this fascinating, beautiful, sort of like hedging of our bets that we do as a, as a species.

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Trevor Noah?

  Where you're supposed to be a little bit different, try this version, try that version, and then if you have multiple kids, they must all try a different version, different version, so that the species has the best chance of surviving. Do you know what I mean? Like, I've always wondered that as like a.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  It's the great, for your, it's one of the great puzzles in psychology. Was trying to figure out, and it goes exactly to your point. Why are siblings so different? Because they shouldn't be different.

• 1:18:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Speaker 00

  They have same parents, same genes, same, same home environment, same, but they're like wildly different, right? And that is because, yeah, the impulse is to differentiate, not to, is to take the exact same experience and interpret it in radically different ways. And I see it already with my two daughters, like the younger one is fashioning from exactly the same environment is fashioning a completely different experience for herself.

• 1:18:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  It's nature versus nurture.

• 1:18:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but even beyond that, it's, it's a safety mechanism. One of the, one of the rabbit holes I've been, you know, going deeper and deeper into over the past few years has been, has been like monopolies and consolidation. I'm obsessed by it. And I'm obsessed by it because we, we were never really taught about the effects. Like most people in society, if you go monopolies, they'd be like, I guess it's bad because we were told it's bad. But for most of us, if you say like, why is it bad? They, we don't really know like why, you know, someone might be like, oh, prices and whatever. One of the best examples of why it's bad, sort of ties into this, is

• 1:19:27Trevor Noah?

  in America and in many parts of the world now, if one species of chicken gets sick.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  Okay, they are.

• 1:19:34Trevor Noah?

  They could all go, they could all go.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Monocultures, yeah.

• 1:19:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, there's one family in Germany, I think, or something that owns, I think it's a type of egg, but it's like, it's basically the egg, if that makes sense. And if something goes wrong with that egg, or if there's a disease that affects that strain of chicken and that species of, it's gone. Yeah, but it's gone.

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  This is the story, in my last book, I told that story about the cheetahs. The cheetahs, there was an extinction event for cheetahs, like whatever, thousand years ago. And we think that the cheetah population of the world might have got down to one.

• 1:20:14Trevor Noah?

  What?

• 1:20:15Speaker 00

  It might have been one mother who, one pregnant mother who survived. And that's why every cheetah today is genetically identical. Which is why cheetahs have such incredible disease, you know.

• 1:20:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they're struggling even now.

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  They're prone to disease. Oh my God, they're so prone to disease. It's really, really hard to keep cheetahs alive in captivity. Because even minor infections were just, there's certain kinds of minor infections, which that particular cheetah type

• 1:20:39Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:20:39Speaker 00

  just happens to be susceptible to, and so they're all susceptible to it. So there's a kind of coronavirus that normally, normally animals shrug off, shrug off, but it's fatal to cheetahs. And then we had a huge problem a couple of years ago with keeping, but in the wild too. Cheetahs are like, they're sickly and they're, it's because they're all the same. And their, their sperm is degraded. It's just cousins, mating with cousins over and over and over and over and over again. They're so identical, like, that you couldn't do, you know, when you do a skin graft. The reason they figured this out was they were puzzled by why cheetahs were getting so sick in zoos. And so they did a simple skin graft where they took two cheetahs, different cheetahs, and they just took skin from one and grafted it onto the other.

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  And under normal circumstances, the skin would, the graft would be rejected.

• 1:21:27Trevor Noah?

  Oh, rejected.

• 1:21:28Speaker 00

  Because it's different, like you can't take slap on a graft.

• 1:21:31Trevor Noah?

  Ah, someone's.

• 1:21:31Speaker 00

  You'd have to give them all kinds of immunosuppressive drugs.

• 1:21:34Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  No problem.

• 1:21:35Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:36Speaker 00

  The other cheetah just accepted the graft and they realized, oh my God, they're twins. And it's like, they're all twins, cheetahs.

• 1:21:42Trevor Noah?

  It's just like, it's just one family and that's it.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  It's just one big cheetah family. But those are, those are, and I, I use that in that book because I was describing, I was writing about this community, this little wealthy town, which is known as Popligro, I don't give its real name, that had a suicide epidemic at the high school, local, that went on for years, a very serious one. And my argument, the argument in the book and the argument of the researchers who studied it was that. The problem was that the community had become a monoculture. The kids were all the same. They're all pursuing the same goals. They all wanted to go to Ivy League schools, be attractive, play sports, work really hard, win their parents' approval. And that's not normal for adolescents.

• 1:22:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Speaker 00

  The normal, in a normal high school, there's 10 different social groups, each of which have different goals. And if you fail at one group, you just slide into another. There's always a home for you, right?

• 1:22:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Speaker 00

  And if you didn't, in this high school, if you didn't fit this perfect model, the one perfect model, then you were considered to be a failure, right? And that's how the suicide epidemic got started. All these kids.

• 1:22:50Trevor Noah?

  To just eliminate themselves because they didn't fit into the general population.

• 1:22:54Speaker 00

  Thinking that there was no point. I'm not, I can't live up to the standard, right? We, so in the pursuit of excellence, and everyone would agree, this is one of the greatest high schools, public high schools in America, one of the loveliest places to live in America. There was this disaster because they forgot how incredibly important this kind of diversity that you're talking about is to successfully functioning societies. You can't have, especially teenagers, you can't put a teenager into a system where there's only one model of success.

• 1:23:23Trevor Noah?

  I think we're experiencing that with everything. And it's, so one of the, you know, sometimes in life you'll have an experience that isn't necessarily special, but it has an outsized effect on you. One of those was a trip that I took, was my first time ever going to Paris. It was like a few years ago, you know, it's pretty late in life if you can travel. And I went to Paris and there was this whole thing. And what I found most interesting about France's history was how they, imperfectly, but, but still in a, in a really beautiful way, sought to encourage the idea of the difference. Like, and, and what, the reason it stuck with me is because it was like art.

• 1:24:08Trevor Noah?

  They were, they were like, if you're an artist, you have, you have a purpose. The French government would pay you to just make art. Just make it. Good or not good, we'll decide later. Your job is to make art. And then the government will buy it and then we'll go from there. Sculptures, you name it, you name, sometimes it was music, sometimes. And what I, what I kept thinking was, what is gonna happen to our society if we're allowed to get to a place? Where the only way we measure success is one metric. What is, what is gonna happen to our society when? Every kid wants to be the same thing, because the only way we measure success is through money or through a certain type of power. And so, no one wants to be a teacher, no one wants to be a nurse, no one wants to be. Do you, do you know what I mean? Like, what, what happens when that becomes a homogenous society? Does it mean? We then lose our edge?

• 1:24:53Trevor Noah?

  Like, when we're all the surgeon? Or when we're all the accountant, or when we're, like, what happens to us? That's what I, and when you put it that way, I go like, oh, yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Trevor Noah?

  We lose our edge.

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I mean, there, there are still. I mean, thankfully, there are professions. I, I do this thing. As part of my kind of job. Where I find people who I think are interesting and I just interview them. Um, sometimes for twenty, thirty hours. Until I find the story. I did this last summer with this incredible woman. I'm doing it right now with this, um. With this anesthesiologist, this Canadian anesthesiologist from Atlanta. Who is the most, I love this guy so much. He, he looks like, he's so handsome, first of all. And I really, that's not relevant, but it is, it is kind of relevant. And he is.

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  We don't judge.

• 1:25:50Speaker 00

  He has, and he is, he is so articulate that. That sometimes I'm listening to him and I'm just like, I, I can't improve on this. This is, you know, because I'm used to having the voice in the head.

• 1:26:02Trevor Noah?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:03Speaker 00

  And he, he just expresses himself so beautifully and, um.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  It's just everything. I mean, it's perfection. In another era, he would be a famous rabbi or a, you know, he, but he's a doctor. He's an intensive care specialist. And he describes his, and what I'm really interested in is just, I want to know what his life is like. What is it like? He goes into intensive care for shifts of seven days where he's on, basically. And it's the most intensive care is the hardest and most intellectually demanding, he says. And I think I agree with him of this medical specialties. And you folk, you have someone who is in real trouble and you are locked in for your seven day stretch with that person.

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  And his, and the reason I'm saying this also, his metric of success is incredibly specific. And it's outside all these, I know, I'm sure he cares about money like all of us. But like, if he wanted to make money, this is a dude who could have made 10x on an old street. Right? He, he could have been famous, I'm quite sure, if he wanted, he's never going to be famous. He's a doctor at a research hospital in Atlanta. Like, his, the thing that he uses to judge his contribution to society is, is the degree of kind of intellectual and physical effort he puts into keeping someone alive during his seven days on.

• 1:27:34Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:34Speaker 00

  Right? And as long as there are professions like that, that allow people to have their own very specific definition of success.

• 1:27:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:42Speaker 00

  We're okay.

• 1:27:44Trevor Noah?

  As, as long as they exist.

• 1:27:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, not, yeah, will they always exist? But there, there are these little pockets where, you know, I, I'm about to say something incredibly morbid.

• 1:27:57Trevor Noah?

  Stum.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  Because, yes, yes. How do you say that word again? Stum, stum, stum.

• 1:28:05Trevor Noah?

  So S T U feels like a.

• 1:28:06Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 1:28:08Trevor Noah?

  Stum.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:28:09Trevor Noah?

  It smells like a drum, like a big drum being stum.

• 1:28:12Speaker 00

  It's a dum.

• 1:28:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and then, and then the drum really stum.

• 1:28:16Speaker 00

  Oh, stum.

• 1:28:17Trevor Noah?

  Ah, there you go.

• 1:28:18Speaker 00

  Okay, all right, all right. Okay.

• 1:28:20Trevor Noah?

  Stum.

• 1:28:22Speaker 00

  So my mother is 94 and I've been thinking, because I can't help myself. I've been thinking about her obituary. Right. Right. She's not, she's a long way from dying, knock on wood. And but she talks about, you know, so I, she was talking about what she wanted to be cremated. I was like, why are you doing this? Anyway, so I was thinking, what would I, what would I say? Many, many, many people will come to my mom's funeral. So what would I say? Because it's gonna, you know, I'm gonna have to. And I, and one of the things I want to say in about her and her life is that she's someone who lived a small life. Meaning that she could have lived a big life. She could have, she could have been famous. She could have made a lot of money. Brilliant, driven, ambitious, you know, woman.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  She chose instead to define her life, much like that doctor I was talking about. She's someone who, her whole life is a series of relationships in which she has taken care of people or been important to people for decades. And there are now, you know, countless people who have been in contact with my mother in an intimate way, going back 50, 60 years. I remember as a kid, there would be people coming into our living room who had never seen before, just to sit with my mother and share. And I would listen to these conversations, very personal things about the things. That's her life. That's what, it's the way she chose. And she's, so she chose to live a small life.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  And the idea of valorizing the small life is, I think, really important. And a society that, that, that loses sight of the, in many ways, the contribution of the people who live small lives is greater than the contribution of people that have big, big lives. Society doesn't work without like that, that layer, right? So that's what I, I've been thinking about. That's what I would like to say is I, by choice, she lived a small life and it was, she's not dead. It's horrible. Why am I doing this? But that's what I would like to say. That's her, about her. That's her legacy, I think. And it's a really beautiful one.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  And it's not done. She's still doing that thing, only in a nursing home in rural Ontario.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  I think what what you speak about is

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  what a lot of people crave now.

• 1:30:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  The simplicity of life as well.

• 1:30:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes we're like, no, we wanted organic. You know, I want that real small farmer that makes those, you know, if it's not in season, then I will not have it. I think ultimately inside with all the conveniences that we have now and all the abundance that we have now. We still crave to forage. We want to go and find out. We want to sit for thirty hours with a human being and just hear what they have to say.

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  And go through the weeds until we find the treasure, you know, and I find that with great friendships, that's what friendships are about. We're we're having this conversation about how to approach anything, whether it's an episode or comedy. And we're saying that if you're not willing to go and whack the weeds until you found the Garden of Eden. Then you've just lost what he likes to call the friction of life.

• 1:31:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:33Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but it's it's the small, I I like the poetry that you've expressed it with.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Me?

• 1:31:38Trevor Noah?

  Because no, Malcolm.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:31:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Trevor Noah?

  Yours as well.

• 1:31:42Speaker 00

  Yours as well.

• 1:31:43Trevor Noah?

  Yours as well, definitely. No, but I but I mean, no, but I mean, in talking about your mom specifically, because like. There's a beautiful to to go back to football. Sorry, Eugene.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:31:53Trevor Noah?

  But to go back to football.

• 1:31:56Trevor Noah?

  One of my favorite things about about Liverpool.

• 1:31:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:00Trevor Noah?

  Is how many opposing players and teams will say. Man, you don't want to play at Anfield. And they don't just mean you don't want to play the away game. They often refer to the fact that the fans are a twelfth player on the field.

• 1:32:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:32:20Trevor Noah?

  And Mikel Arteta, the coach of Arsenal, who used to be, I mean, one of he's one of the best players who's played the game. Talks about his playing days. And they asked him about where to play and what was tough. And he's he he has the story where he he recounts how tough going to Anfield was. And what made Mikel Arteta brilliant was that he could see the whole game. He could always see where players were. He was that kind of player. You know, as the point god in that way.

• 1:32:45Trevor Noah?

  And he says when he went to Anfield, the fans would start singing, the fans would start chanting. And he says you would lose your teammates.

• 1:32:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:32:55Trevor Noah?

  He said you would just lose them. You'd be like, I'm I'm alone. He'd be like, wait, where's everyone?

• 1:32:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:59Trevor Noah?

  Where and in that, what I I think that's another thing that I loved about Liverpool. I think a lot of football fans will have this with their teams generally. If if it's a great team and great fans is there's a beautiful synergy between the big and the small. Every football player, every basketball player, every, doesn't matter what athlete they are, they will tell you that when they had to perform their sport with nobody around, there wasn't a thing.

• 1:33:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you could hit the ball. Yeah, you could shoot. Yeah, you could jump. It wasn't the same.

• 1:33:33Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:34Trevor Noah?

  But the the the little people, they were doing the biggest thing. It's just that we sometimes don't see it that way because of how we like aim the lens. Does that make sense?

• 1:33:44Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:33:44Trevor Noah?

  Like, the fans are making, to your point, English football. One of the reasons I think it is the biggest of the leagues in the world, the biggest, is because of the fans. It's because of what they make it. It's because of what they, yeah, there's people playing football all around the world. People kicking that soccer ball, doing their thing. But like that that that little, and that's what I mean by the valuing. I love that you said that because I

• 1:34:09Trevor Noah?

  not to be ominous about it, but I just worry that we'll get to a place where there is no valuing, there is no. You know, I do, I do think of like as a child, I love how many fights kids used to have in my school when we're talking about what do you want to be? Lots of fights. What do you want to be? I want to be this. I'm going to be a fighter. I'm going to drive a fire. I'm going to. There was this idea that society had that like all of these avenues can provide you with a value that is valorous in its in its pursuit. And then like now, and it's not the kids' fault, but a lot of the kids, you go, what do you want to be? And they'll be like, famous.

• 1:34:43Speaker 00

  Rich.

• 1:34:44Trevor Noah?

  Rich. And I'm like, what are what are we showing them and teaching them? Because rich and famous is a byproduct of doing a thing well, I often think. But they aren't aiming for that. Oftentimes, they go like, famous, rich, whatnot. And then a person who's in that position has to be like, oh, but what of that do you want? What of that are you looking for? What of that? You know what I mean?

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Trevor Noah?

  And so I like, I would love to know like with your with your girls, do you have a preconceived notion? How how do you think you're going to do it? Are you? Like, are you already going, oh, I hope they would be this or not? Or are you seeing things in them where, because I'm sure you can't, you can't like resist it? But is there something where you go?

• 1:35:18Speaker 00

  Oh, with my girls, I'm doing the thing that I swore I would not, which is that I, all I, I, I'm obsessed with how well they'll do with sports and will they be good runners? And so I spent a lot of time scrutinizing their running form.

• 1:35:36Speaker 00

  My, I've decided my little one, who is super focused and who, by the way, is ripped. I mean, it's a horrible thing to say about a two-year-old, but I'm sorry, she is ripped.

• 1:35:46Trevor Noah?

  She's built for this.

• 1:35:47Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, I've never seen a child like this. She looks like, she, this is, and she loves like lifting heavy things and she's super kind of disciplined. And I, we took her to the track and she got in her lane and ran the, she ran 200 meters in her lane at two. And stayed in the, there was lane discipline and she ran the curve hard and eased up on the straight. I mean, it was like.

• 1:36:12Trevor Noah?

  Instinctually.

• 1:36:13Speaker 00

  It was, it was the single greatest moment of my, of my brief parenthood career. So all, that's all I care about. Um, do they, you know, because you know, if you're running, you want to be a forefoot striker. You want, you should land on the front of your foot.

• 1:36:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes, so you can.

• 1:36:29Speaker 00

  So I've been looking very closely to make sure whether they're natural forefoot strikers. They are. And, um, and I'm trying to make sense of, you know, are they quarter milers, half milers or distance? You know, that's an important thing because I got to focus. And I'm terrified they're going to be good at the sports I don't want them to play.

• 1:36:46Trevor Noah?

  Hmm, like pickleball?

• 1:36:48Speaker 00

  Tennis, well, tennis. I don't want the time suck sports. This is the big mistake one makes. Swimming, uh, tennis, uh, gymnastics, uh, uh, any of these things that require tons of travel and like six-hour practices.

• 1:37:08Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  No, you destroy their childhood.

• 1:37:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Speaker 00

  All right.

• 1:37:09Trevor Noah?

  Why are you doing that?

• 1:37:12Speaker 00

  Soccer, fine. I'd accept soccer because I think it would be fun to play. But I really, I mean, track's perfect. It's just ideal. It's like one hour a day. It's like fun hanging out with other runners. That's what I want for them. So that's all I do is I think about their running form, really.

• 1:37:30Trevor Noah?

  I love that you admitted you're like, I turned into what I promised.

• 1:37:34Speaker 00

  I've run everything I wanted to survive.

• 1:37:36Trevor Noah?

  I have become everything. Actually, this is something I wanted to ask you. So the, the, the podcast thing that you did, talking about like trans women in sports. Yes. Oh God, you should put your hand on your head.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  How ripped were they?

• 1:37:51Trevor Noah?

  Because, so talk, talk me through this a little bit because I like you as a person. I love your writing and I know, I think I know you as like the, let me call you the artist separate from like the, the human. But when I was watching this, I even said to Eugene, I was like, this is like the least Gladwellian way to handle a situation. I was just like, and then I was like, do you think like this now because you have daughters? Do you, do you think it's shaped you? Explain to me what happened there. Did people get something wrong? Tell me, tell me what happened there.

• 1:38:17Speaker 00

  Four years ago, five years ago, there was a pant, there's a sports conference that happens every year.

• 1:38:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:24Speaker 00

  A sports analytics conference. They were going to have a panel on trans participation in sports. And they said, do you want to be the moderator of the panel? Now, right there, any intelligent person would have said, of course not. There's zero upside to moderating a panel.

• 1:38:39Trevor Noah?

  This is a landmine.

• 1:38:40Speaker 00

  It's a landmine. What does Malcolm say? Yeah, sure. So I'm the moderator of the panel and there's a guy named, a South African, Ross Tucker, is, is the sports scientist who believes very strongly that trans women should not participate in the female category. And there are two, Joanna Harper and another people who are arguing the opposite side. I'm the moderator and they tell me beforehand, do not get us in trouble, whatever you do. Just like get through this. I was like, all right, let's just get through this. So I sit there and the audience is like split in half, half or one. So whenever one side says something, they go, rrrr. The other side says something, they go, rrrr. It's just a minefield. I'm sitting there like, what did I get myself into?

• 1:39:23Speaker 00

  So we managed, there's a moment in this conversation when Joanna Harper, one of the, one of the pros, pro participation people, says something which would have been, you know, when you're interviewing someone and there's a, there are moments when someone says something which is an opportunity to jump in and like, it gets to the heart of the matter.

• 1:39:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 1:39:41Speaker 00

  She said something that got to the heart of the matter. And my instinct as a journalist was to say, oh, this is the moment. This is what people were, this is, and I said, as I go, I could say, it's too complicated. I don't, the crowd's nuts, I sit on my hands. Nothing happens.

• 1:39:57Trevor Noah?

  Do you remember what she said?

• 1:39:58Speaker 00

  Yes. She said to Ross Tucker, Ross, you have to let us win. And what she meant was, she was conceding the point that our trans women have a genetic advantage over biological women. Our trans women have a biological, a genetic advantage over biological women. And, but what she was saying was, that's not the issue here. The issue is, it's a broader symbolic thing for trans rights.

• 1:40:23Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:40:25Speaker 00

  And it crystallized the whole argument because it was why the argument can't be won, because they're both after different things. One side are people who are trying to protect the purity of women's sport, as they would say, and the other side is someone who's trying to make a human rights argument about a disadvantaged group. It's two arguments, they're never, ever going to meet. And in that moment when she said that, it crystallized why this was an impossible problem to resolve. I, my inclination in that moment was to say, oh, I could have jumped on that, we could have had, we could have, we could have, I could have used this to explain the fact that this is an irresolvable argument. I don't say anything. Fast forward four years, Ross Tucker, who has, out of his place in Johannesburg, has

• 1:41:09Speaker 00

  this podcast, which is listened to by a very, very small number of people. It's a super fa, it's my favorite podcast, super fascinating nerdy podcast about the science of sport. Lots of rugby talk, lots of, you know, he did a whole episode once on shoes, which was amazing. So I'm on Ross's thing and I say, in a minute, we have, we spend 45 seconds reminiscing about this panel. And I say to Ross, you know, that moment, I really should have, I regret not, that would have been an incredible moment to jump in and, then we go on and talk about other things. And then I wake up and I'm like, I don't know what happened. I did five minutes on me on Sean Hannity.

• 1:41:48Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, you were everywhere.

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  I was everywhere.

• 1:41:49Trevor Noah?

  No, you were everywhere.

• 1:41:50Speaker 00

  I had no idea what happened. I was like, what just, what's going on here?

• 1:41:54Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, you were everywhere.

• 1:41:55Speaker 00

  J K Rowling tweets at one point like, oh, my goodness. And I was just paralyzed. I was like, nothing. I was reading all the stuff that was saying I said stuff that I didn't say. People are going nuts about it. And I was like, oh, Jesus. So I just shut up.

• 1:42:11Trevor Noah?

  You know, every time I see that happen, there's like a thing inside me that like, does like, you know, because there's a there's a specific knowledge you have about how these situations unfold. If you've been a part of it. You know what I mean? I've experienced this before where literally like I've woken up and half of the world has an opinion of me. Then I'm like, wait, what did I say? Where? And then it expands beyond what you've ever said or what you've ever done. And by the time, and it's that old churchal quote, right? That a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.

• 1:42:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:47Trevor Noah?

  You helpless is a perfect world. Could you just sit there going like, wait, what? No, no. And it expands and it goes and it goes and it grows and it grows and it grows and grows. And then now people are using it to say, you know, like people who are very anti-trans are like, ah, you see?

• 1:43:02Speaker 00

  He agrees.

• 1:43:02Trevor Noah?

  Gladwell agrees. And not only does he agree, he shows you that he's terrified of telling the truth. He's and I was like, Malcolm Gladwell is not terrified of telling the truth.

• 1:43:11Speaker 00

  That's a moderator on a panel. I mean, and they under strict instructions not to ruffle any feathers. And then made and didn't think I was on Ross Tucker's. I didn't think anyone would listen to Ross Tucker's podcast, other than people who were, who were good for Ross. I mean, I love Ross. He's, I think he's brilliant. And I've been following him for years, but I didn't think it would be, you know, who thought that podcasts recorded in Johannesburg or Cape Town? By the way, this is like, this is Johannesburg, Cape Town. Can I just pause on this for a moment? Just subtly change the subject. There's this thing that always occurs to me, which is.

• 1:43:51Speaker 00

  Sao Paulo, Rio.

• 1:43:53Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  Right? Sydney, Melbourne.

• 1:43:56Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:43:56Speaker 00

  Johannesburg, Cape Town.

• 1:43:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Speaker 00

  In all these instances, people have this urge to say, yeah, Melbourne is New York and Sydney's LA. Sao Paulo is LA and...

• 1:44:10Trevor Noah?

  No, Sao Paulo is New York.

• 1:44:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, Rio is LA. Sao Paulo is New York. Or Johannesburg is New York and Cape Town is LA. Cape Town is not LA. The only thing that LA has in common with Cape Town is there's a beach and a lot of rich white people. That's it.

• 1:44:26Trevor Noah?

  That's it.

• 1:44:27Speaker 00

  The urge to make everything about that's New York and that's that just drives me to distraction. Have you never... Is there no other way we can describe these places but to say...

• 1:44:35Trevor Noah?

  I think it's a... Is the word a heuristic? Is that what it is? It's just like a shortcut that people are using.

• 1:44:39Speaker 00

  But it's not even... They're only useful... Heuristics are useful when they actually have some basis in reality. In what universe would you go to Johannesburg and say, this feels like New York to me?

• 1:44:49Trevor Noah?

  No, I'll tell you how. Okay, I'll tell you how. At all. I will... Don't go to there, join in with him. I'll tell you how. I'll tell you how. So, I think what people mean by that is that the vibe and the energy of the cities are generally defined in one way versus another way. So, okay, I'll give you an example. So Johannesburg, New York, Sao Paulo, etc. Those are like the hubs of business. That's where the people consider life to be fast. That's where there is no lounging about. That's where there is no chilling. That's where the... You know what I mean? There's this idea of like, you come here, you do business, you get things going, you keep it moving, you got it. Rio, Cape Town, LA. Eh, tranquilo. You know what I mean? It's like a... There's a feeling of like beach vibes and chilling. No, no, no.

• 1:45:34Trevor Noah?

  But it's all in relation to the other.

• 1:45:37Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 1:45:37Trevor Noah?

  And by the way, I'm not... You're not crazy for thinking this because I feel like that whenever people would say... It would always irk me when they would go like, it's the size of 20 elephants. Then I was like, hey, man, stop doing this.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  But Americans love this, the size of five football fields.

• 1:45:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I'm like, hey, man.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  Who's out here?

• 1:45:55Trevor Noah?

  So in that regard, I also... I'm just like, I don't get why you use... But I do understand why people do it because those cities...

• 1:46:03Trevor Noah?

  Let's put it this way.

• 1:46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:05Trevor Noah?

  If you loved L A and you were leaving it, you had to leave.

• 1:46:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:09Trevor Noah?

  And you were gonna go live in Johannesburg or Cape Town and you loved everything about L A.

• 1:46:14Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:46:15Trevor Noah?

  You would be better off betting on Cape Town.

• 1:46:18Speaker 00

  You love Malibu.

• 1:46:19Trevor Noah?

  And if you love Rio, you would be better off betting on, and if you loved Sydney, you, that's, that's all I think it is. Even if it's fifty one forty nine.

• 1:46:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, you would just, there's just a bet. You would have a better chance of.

• 1:46:35Speaker 00

  But this is, I will, I will just say that this is a case where the heuristic gets in the way.

• 1:46:41Trevor Noah?

  Effect.

• 1:46:42Speaker 00

  It, I like, like, I like heuristics when they help us.

• 1:46:45Trevor Noah?

  Cool.

• 1:46:45Speaker 00

  Get over the hump instead of, all right, then we can go from there. But sometimes they block us and they get in the way.

• 1:46:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Speaker 00

  And I feel like this is getting in the way and like.

• 1:46:53Trevor Noah?

  What do you think it's getting in the way of?

• 1:46:54Speaker 00

  It's getting in the way of appreciating another culture for what it really is. So as opposed to saying, what, what's offensive to me about this with Johannesburg and Cape Town, for example. So we're, cause you guys know this city very well, is like, these are the people who use this heuristic don't know anything about this. And I think in expressing that heuristic are creating an obstacle to learning more.

• 1:47:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:47:20Speaker 00

  Right? It's like, oh, it's just New York is a way of saying, okay, I've satisfied my, so I can go, I'll see a couple of sites and I'll leave. As opposed to really like thinking in a complicated and interesting way about what is, this is a city unlike any other. All these cities are unlike themselves fundamentally. And the, the, the, the biggest obstacle is outsiders coming in and pretending they have an understanding of something that they have no understanding of. That's what I object to. Like, I don't pretend to understand Cape Town. I went there once. I, all I know is got a, it's insane real estate, right?

• 1:47:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:58Speaker 00

  And, and then I speech and that hill that you walk up and down.

• 1:48:02Trevor Noah?

  That hill that you walk up and down.

• 1:48:05Trevor Noah?

  But, no, but you know, I, one thing I don't want to let go of, cause I, I think you said something that's nuanced, difficult. And in my opinion, very important. You said something about the conversation that was happening on that stage when people were talking about trans women and sports.

• 1:48:22Trevor Noah?

  And I think it's something that people don't like to acknowledge in many conversations that we have in society. It's that people on two different train tracks acting like they're fighting about the same thing, but they're not actually. Cause I that the way you the way you framed it there, I was like, yeah, people are arguing across each other. And so you can never reach a conclusion if you're not arguing.

• 1:48:45Speaker 00

  It's impossible.

• 1:48:46Trevor Noah?

  But you're not arguing the same thing.

• 1:48:47Speaker 00

  It's irresolvable. It's irresolvable. It's like there's two competing values and you have to pick which one in this moment you think is more important. And if you're going to pick one, then I think you have to accommodate the interest of the other side.

• 1:49:00Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:49:00Speaker 00

  In other words, if you're someone who thinks that trans women should not participate in the female category, you have to go out of your way to be an advocate for all other aspects of the trans agenda.

• 1:49:11Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:49:11Speaker 00

  That's your obligation. You're going to you have to be able to say, okay, I am. I know that this is something that means a lot to you. I I'm not going to back you on this, but I promise you I'll back you on everything else. And the flip side is also true. I think that if you are someone who wants that kind of participation, you have to go out of your way to acknowledge the importance that you're basically saying to people who care a lot about sports and women's sports in particular, that I I'm asking you to give up something here and I will go, I will bend over backwards to make that sacrifice easier for you. There has to be that accommodation. And like I said, I don't, there's no, I, you know, I'm, my position on this is I acknowledge both sides. It's really hard.

• 1:49:54Speaker 00

  I happen to be a huge track and field fan, so it's really hard for me to make the sacrifice of giving up the female category in that same way. But I also understand that that's a problematic position to hold, particularly for a group that is under, that is imperiled and and so, you know, my, my answer is for the moment, because I also acknowledge that my mind might change. Right? I was writing about Castor Semenya 10 years ago and I had a different position than I had now.

• 1:50:22Trevor Noah?

  How did it change?

• 1:50:23Speaker 00

  The science of people at that moment did not understand the degree to which the question, this is a technical question. If I, if I, she was, she's not trans, she's DSD, so she was intersex. The question was if I, if you suppress the testosterone of someone in that condition, do you equal the playing, do you level the playing field?

• 1:50:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:47Speaker 00

  There was a belief back then that you could level the playing field. Now, the science seems to be that you, there's still a considerable

• 1:50:57Speaker 00

  historic, kind of historical advantage.

• 1:50:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:00Speaker 00

  So it's more complicated, right? But that side is, it's super complicated. All you can say is, if you're gonna pick one side, you have to accommodate the other.

• 1:51:09Trevor Noah?

  I think, you know, for me, where it lies is,

• 1:51:14Trevor Noah?

  I often find that we're stuck in these situations and these conversations because we allow ourselves to suffer from a lack of imagination. And the reason I say that is because we act like what is always was and will always be.

• 1:51:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Trevor Noah?

  Okay? So I look at people now arguing hard, the women's sports, and I go, if I was to rewind time and go back decades and decades and decades, I would argue that those same people would be the ones going, women can't do sports. Women can't, and, and we, we would see that. Do you know what I mean? There was a time when women were stopped from getting into sport. Like, people were like, no, a woman can't box, a woman can't run, a woman can't, no, no, no, no, no. What do you mean, women's sports? Women's public bathrooms, that was the one that like blew my mind the most. Was in America, people used to fight against women using a public toilet. They're like, no, you go, what are you doing? That's for the men. You go home. What are you doing?

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  Was that to stop them from not going too far?

• 1:52:11Trevor Noah?

  No, it was just like this idea of like, it, it, it just didn't make sense because of the way things were.

• 1:52:17Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 1:52:18Trevor Noah?

  Same thing with black people. There was a time when people were like, so you're saying black people? Quick story, my my dad at some point ran like a small little restaurant would be a strong term. He cooked food for people and they came and like ate it. It was a tiny little place in Johannesburg, just outside of Johannesburg, actually. And I asked him, I was like, oh, what happened to the place? He's like, oh, it got shut down. I was like, what happened? He's like, they shut it down because I wanted to serve black patrons and white patrons. Then I immediately was like, ah, my father, the saint, ah, what a legend. Then he was like, no, no, no, I don't care about the race thing at all. He's like, I don't care. He's like, it just didn't make sense to me. And he's a very like, he's Swiss German. He was like, this makes no sense.

• 1:52:59Trevor Noah?

  Black people and white people eat the same things and use the same cutlery and all the same. What are you doing? It's also terrible for a business. And what the apartheid government wanted is they wanted my father to build an additional bathroom just for black people. Because they were like, white people and black people should not use the same bathroom. This is scientific. That's what they even said. It's science. And then my dad was like, no, sorry, I'd rather shut down the restaurant because this is crazy to me, right? So he had his own reason, which I guess aligned with good, but he was, he doesn't even accept it when I go, that was a good choice. He's like, no, it just doesn't make sense. Now, when I come back to the world of imagination, I go, if we acknowledge that the things that are weren't always,

• 1:53:42Trevor Noah?

  then we acknowledge the possibility that something new could be, right? The Paralympics is an example. I remember when the Paralympics first started, like first first started, people went, this is crazy.

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  They changed the minds now.

• 1:53:55Trevor Noah?

  What you now, have you seen how big the viewership is? Have you seen how big the endorsements are? You go to a city or a town when the Paralympics is on, the advertisements change, there's major campaigns. It's no longer even, it's not, it just moves over to the Paralympics. You get what I'm saying? And in the Paralympics, I found some of the most creative thinking because they went, how do we, to your point, how do we find? A a a measure of fair in in in a thing that we've also invented in terms of fairness. So they're like, how how do you say that a person missing a leg from the knee down?

• 1:54:34Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:54:35Trevor Noah?

  Who do they run against? Somebody with the same thing. But what if that person has no legs? But it's only from the the the hip or not from the hip or an eye or a hand? And they were like, you know what? We're just gonna work to figure this thing out. We're just gonna work to figure this thing out. Because I think they, whoever was organizing this, remembered the original idea of what the sport was supposed to be.

• 1:54:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:54:54Trevor Noah?

  It was a competition between people. And they were participating in something that we've imagined. It's not real, guys. Like, this is not, do you know what I mean? It's not gravity. The rules and the lines that we draw in a field.

• 1:55:07Speaker 00

  There's a wonderful quote to this very point, that sport is the uh willing acceptance of arbitrary constraints.

• 1:55:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes, that's exactly it. So here's an here's an example I I I was thinking of when I when I was going through this. I went.

• 1:55:25Trevor Noah?

  We make it seem like in some sports, it's just man, woman. Man, woman, right? That's it.

• 1:55:33Trevor Noah?

  But then, in another sport, we'll go, no, no, it's not just man, woman. It's also age. Age is important. Age, yes, the under the under sixteen World Cup.

• 1:55:40Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:55:40Trevor Noah?

  Oh, why do we have a different category for? Well, they're younger. So who says they should get a different category? But we accept that.

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:55:47Trevor Noah?

  Right? Boxing for me is probably one of the craziest.

• 1:55:51Speaker 00

  The classes?

• 1:55:52Trevor Noah?

  Guys, at some point, and you can clearly see when people want to make concessions, they'll make them. If you think about it, technically boxing should have just been, you fight him, the winner's the winner. And then at some point, someone went, bro, I'm skinny, man. Come on, this is not fair. I can't beat that guy. And they didn't go like, well, then you're out. They went, all right, right. We're gonna make a class.

• 1:56:12Speaker 00

  Skinny to skin.

• 1:56:12Trevor Noah?

  For these feather light people. You guys who has lightest feathers.

• 1:56:16Speaker 00

  Don't I love that about boxing, though.

• 1:56:17Trevor Noah?

  But that's but that's my but this is what I'm trying to say.

• 1:56:19Speaker 00

  And running?

• 1:56:20Trevor Noah?

  No, but this is but this is what I'm trying to say is like, imagine we we have a sport where you can come in weighing feathers all the way to heavyweight. We've given and it's not one, it's not two, it's not three, it's not four, it's not five. The weight divisions do this, they do this, they do this, and no one would say to you like, that's crazy. That's so many divisions.

• 1:56:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:42Trevor Noah?

  I wonder why we never engaged in these conversations.

• 1:56:44Speaker 00

  You know who the worst offenders are? The swimmers who they've just created a sport to maximize the number of medals they give out. There's like the fifty meter freestyle, the hundred meter freestyle.

• 1:56:53Trevor Noah?

  But that's what I mean, it's arbitrary.

• 1:56:54Speaker 00

  It's like, it's like, what? They're gonna have like, they're gonna have before it's all over, like ten different freestyles.

• 1:56:58Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:56:59Speaker 00

  The hundred and fifty.

• 1:57:00Trevor Noah?

  Can you do it like a butterfly? Can you do, I have a whole stand up bit about that where I'm just like, what is this? You're doing it less efficiently and you get more medals.

• 1:57:07Speaker 00

  No one ever uses those strokes outside of competition. That should tell you something.

• 1:57:10Trevor Noah?

  You see? So now what I'm, what I'm saying about these conversations.

• 1:57:12Speaker 00

  You seem strangely quiet on the question.

• 1:57:14Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, but what I'm saying about these things is we, we forget, I think we forget that everything exists in the time that exists and it becomes the norm. Because that's what it is in any given time. But if we stop imagining possibilities, then we're gonna be tied to what is now, but not what could ever be. And so when I, when, that's funny enough, that's like when I, it's, I think that's where you've influenced me in my life is like a Gladwell way to think, I always think is like, yeah, but, but where was it? And what is it? And what is it trying to be? The fundamental thing sport is trying to be is fair. However, some sports, if we're honest, are inherently unfair, like to use, like the

• 1:57:57Trevor Noah?

  Casta Samina thing, I remember going, people would say, oh, but she has an unfair advantage. I'll be like, yeah, so does LeBron James. If you are like seven feet tall, you have an unfair advantage in basketball. We should ban you from the sport. You know what I mean? If you are Michael Phelps, you have an unfair advantage that your body doesn't produce as much lactic acid, we should ban you from the sport. But we don't. We celebrate those people because we go, you're a freak of nature. Well done. But then when other people are the same freak of nature, then all of a sudden, you know what I mean? And so I, I think that, that's like the thing that frustrates me in some of these moments is, I'm not saying there's a right way and a wrong way and a this way and a that way. But it's like, you know, man, if you can find a way for more people to participate and

• 1:58:40Trevor Noah?

  you can make it as fair as possible, like the UFC does, like boxing does, I will fight, I will watch two skinny men fighting and then I will watch two of the bulkiest men fighting, or for that matter, women in UFC. And I don't go like, yeah, this.

• 1:58:58Speaker 00

  You should have been the moderator of this panel. You would have survived much.

• 1:59:06Speaker 00

  Jesus, what was I, do you think, what was I thinking?

• 1:59:10Speaker 02

  But, no, but I.

• 1:59:11Speaker 00

  No good deed goes unpunished.

• 1:59:13Trevor Noah?

  No, but I actually think that's what it is.

• 1:59:14Speaker 00

  That's what it is.

• 1:59:15Speaker 02

  But I think, I think in, in institutions mainly, and which I think sports federations and sports organizations are big, long institutions that have institutional memory of how things were done.

• 1:59:26Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  Two things will always alter the course of any institution. It's either the people dying out or commercialization coming in. Cause I think when you add money, there's incentive now to accommodate and find creative ways to extract money from sponsors to sponsor the Paralympics.

• 1:59:43Trevor Noah?

  You're not wrong.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  You have the same with, let's add more backstroke, side stroke, kick stroke, knee stroke.

• 1:59:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because they would get rid of that if people stopped watching it and there was no money and so they would be like, all right.

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and that's what people are finding a problem with now with the Olympics. People watch the Olympics and go, what am I watching? What is this?

• 1:59:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  Because also it doesn't equal out. So you see, if every discipline that exists in the Olympics, right? Exists in the Paralympics, then I would be sold. If there was, if, if there was shooting and, and for, but with people with something that they normally wouldn't have.

• 2:00:16Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  I, I would be, I'd be fully in. But when I feel like there's concessions being made and I'm like, I'm not watching the, the full thing. And that's the thing that I find with soccer fans is they watch male soccer.

• 2:00:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Speaker 02

  But then female soccer is all.

• 2:00:32Speaker 02

  They don't watch fully. You guys are not fully participant in football.

• 2:00:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I think you're missing the point.

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  Are you?

• 2:00:38Trevor Noah?

  No, but I think you're missing the point though. See, I think, this is where I think you're missing the point.

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:00:44Trevor Noah?

  There are some people like Joseph O P, our friend, we had him on the podcast. He watches everything, everything, everything, everything, everything.

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  Female under sixteen, young kid.

• 2:00:50Trevor Noah?

  But you see, before you run to that and you go like, oh, a football fan is inconsistent because they watch men's soccer, but they don't watch women's soccer. I also don't watch other leagues. I don't watch the Turkish league. They've got great teams, Galatasaray, Besiktas. They've got great teams that I see in the Champions League. I don't watch the Portuguese league. I don't watch the Italian league. Serie A has had some of the greatest champions that have ever existed. I don't watch the Serie A. I don't watch the South African league. There's many leagues that I don't watch. So I don't think we can quickly say, oh, you're not supporting women's sport because you don't watch that. But you also don't watch other leagues. Do you get what I'm saying? I think the more important thing to ask ourselves is why people are or aren't allowed to just like be part of a thing before we even get to commercialization.

• 2:01:32Trevor Noah?

  Because I'm not saying that everybody must watch the same thing the same. What I'm saying, what I'm saying is if a skinny ass man is allowed to be a boxer, a man who weighs less than a bag of cement is allowed to be a professional boxer, a man that I can pick up and throw to the other side of the room. He'll beat me in a fight, boxing, but I can lift him. If that person gets accommodated, why can we not accommodate a trans woman is what I'm saying. That's all I'm saying because.

• 2:02:02Speaker 00

  I've never thought of boxing as the most egalitarian. Any human being can dream of growing up and being a boxer.

• 2:02:08Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you something? Golf is one of the most egalitarian sports ever invented. I know you hate it, but it's one of the most egalitarian.

• 2:02:13Speaker 00

  I hate golf courses.

• 2:02:14Trevor Noah?

  Courses, of course. No, no, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  Almost had the PGA coming for you as if you haven't been enough trouble.

• 2:02:20Speaker 00

  Trevor, I'm in enough trouble like.

• 2:02:23Trevor Noah?

  And you can speak your mind, Malcolm. You don't say that we scared you. No, you can speak your mind. No, I look at golf. Golf has one of the craziest systems ever invented, the handicap system, where you as a golfer who has just started can go and play against somebody who is a professional and you can beat them on the same course, hitting the same ball. How did they do that? They adjusted the scoring system to account for what your level is versus what this other person's level is.

• 2:02:55Speaker 00

  It's beautiful.

• 2:02:56Trevor Noah?

  It's beautiful and it's imaginative because what golf could have easily done is said, no, that's how it works. But they realized in the strangest egalitarian way, which no one thinks of as golf being because it's like the rich sport, et cetera. They went, we want people to be able to have as much fun as possible.

• 2:03:12Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:03:12Trevor Noah?

  Playing with and against whoever.

• 2:03:14Speaker 02

  Yes, but there's a difference between hitting something and hitting someone.

• 2:03:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but what I'm saying is you can.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  A nineteen year old can hit a ball same as a sixty five year old.

• 2:03:21Trevor Noah?

  Not true.

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  But then, no, I'm saying that it's a ball that they're hitting.

• 2:03:24Trevor Noah?

  No, but it's not true.

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  Punching to their faces.

• 2:03:26Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but what I'm saying is you can make those, that's exactly what I mean by accommodations. Why do we have a youth division? Why do we have a seniors division? Why did we even do that? I can tell you now, a seniors division did not always exist in sports. And then it did.

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  Enter commercialization.

• 2:03:40Trevor Noah?

  But that's, so that's what I mean by imagination is I go. If we think to ourselves that it stops where we are currently in time. I don't care what it is, technology, uh, you know, education, then I go like, man, then we. We've like, we've become that homogeneous society. We've become that high school that all thinks the same way.

• 2:04:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:04:01Trevor Noah?

  Like I go, there is, you, you can find a way. If you believe that you can find a way, I'm not saying it'll be easy. I'm not saying it'll be obvious. But if you say no, if your answer is no completely, then I'm like.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  No to skinny men fighting.

• 2:04:14Trevor Noah?

  So you.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  Soft men in boxing. No.

• 2:04:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is.

• 2:04:19Speaker 02

  Nah.

• 2:04:20Trevor Noah?

  We can create a category where skinny men fight skinny men.

• 2:04:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 2:04:23Trevor Noah?

  And that's what they've done. And so I go, then how are we?

• 2:04:26Speaker 02

  Which category do you think we should create now to solve everything else?

• 2:04:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, no, you see, to lie and say that I have the answer now, I don't have it.

• 2:04:32Speaker 02

  You know what I love about you?

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  Your dimples, one.

• 2:04:35Trevor Noah?

  I knew you were gonna say that.

• 2:04:44Trevor Noah?

  No, but I, but that's, that's, that's exactly what I mean is like, I go, I don't. But we, to your point, we can't get there if we don't have the messy bumbling along discussion. This, this season in the Premier League, I don't know about all the leagues, the rules changed.

• 2:05:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:03Trevor Noah?

  Do you know how old football is as a sport? But the rules changed now. They said if a goalkeeper holds the ball for longer than eight seconds, it's now a corner kick.

• 2:05:11Speaker 02

  No way.

• 2:05:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I didn't grow up with those rules.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  Eight, eight seconds.

• 2:05:15Trevor Noah?

  He acts like he cares.

• 2:05:15Speaker 00

  That's defined as changing the game. Every, changes everything.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  Eight seconds?

• 2:05:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:20Speaker 02

  We shaved off eight seconds from the hogging.

• 2:05:22Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  Wait, so that wasn't, that wasn't a thing before?

• 2:05:24Trevor Noah?

  That wasn't a thing before.

• 2:05:25Speaker 02

  So the goalkeeper was allowed.

• 2:05:27Trevor Noah?

  The goalkeeper, goalkeeper could hold the ball once they caught it.

• 2:05:30Speaker 02

  And still do that thing.

• 2:05:30Trevor Noah?

  Technically, you were just supposed to get rid of it, but there was no time. The ref would just be like, you took too long. But they made it a rule now. Now, I'm saying if an old sport like football can still introduce new rules in twenty twenty five, then I think all sports can look at introducing ideas that can include everyone. I don't think a kid who has one leg, yeah, let the kid run. Let's find a way for that kid to run.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  No, technically, they.

• 2:05:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but you can find a way for them to run.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:56Trevor Noah?

  That's what I'm saying is magical for me. Uh, there was this thing I remember, like, you know, I love video games. And um, I remember when I was, when I was at Microsoft, like I've worked with them for a while, like in, you know, the hardware and all of that stuff. One of my favorite things was helping them think about like controllers that kids with disabilities could use. And they were showing me this stuff as like they'd bring a kid in who has a disability. And the kid would go like, I now use my feet to play Street Fighter, which seems ridiculous. It seems crazy.

• 2:06:24Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:06:25Trevor Noah?

  And then you see them and you're like, damn, you know what I like in this moment? You're a gamer and I'm a gamer.

• 2:06:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Trevor Noah?

  The point of a controller wasn't that you could only play a game with you at hands. The point of a controller was that it helped you to control something that was happening on the screen.

• 2:06:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:41Trevor Noah?

  And once we realized.

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  Like the moderator five years ago.

• 2:06:45Trevor Noah?

  You feel like Malcolm?

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  Cause a disability must be outside playing with other children.

• 2:06:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but when they.

• 2:06:50Speaker 02

  Now they're finding ways to play more inside by themselves.

• 2:06:52Trevor Noah?

  But that's not the point. No, they're not playing by themselves. Most of their kids are online. And now if you're the only kid.

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  Other people, other kids with disabilities are online.

• 2:06:58Trevor Noah?

  What I'm saying is if you can't be online with your friends who are online, you're now isolated.

• 2:07:04Speaker 02

  They changed the rules in a way that allowed the person who previously had a disability to no longer have a disability.

• 2:07:10Trevor Noah?

  And so what I'm saying is if we are gonna live in a simplistic binary world. So should trans women compete with women? Then I'm like, why are you making it seem like there's only two? And I mean this honestly, like as categories.

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  So you'd want to have a trans category.

• 2:07:25Trevor Noah?

  This is how crazy it would be. Imagine if you rewound time. There was someone who said. Ah, uh, people who swim butterfly shouldn't be able to swim with people who swim. And they were like, yeah, let's just do butterfly category and a breaststroke category.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Why is it in your voiceovers, people who are stopping things sound boring? And the people that

• 2:07:44Trevor Noah?

  Because people who stop

• 2:07:45Speaker 02

  That let things happen like, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:46Trevor Noah?

  Because people who stop things are boring, Eugene. That's why. We've got to imagine, bruh. You've got to imagine.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:53Trevor Noah?

  Okay, let's, let's imagine it. You have to stop saying Yeah, yeah, because that's

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but let's imagine.

• 2:07:57Trevor Noah?

  You know why? Disney movies.

• 2:08:00Speaker 00

  It all comes, it all comes back.

• 2:08:02Trevor Noah?

  It does, though. It's Disney movies.

• 2:08:04Speaker 00

  They've ruined us.

• 2:08:05Trevor Noah?

  It's Disney movies.

• 2:08:06Speaker 02

  Marco feels like he was the part where he was watching Snow White and the, it was the rat and the twenty minutes long, he was like

• 2:08:12Trevor Noah?

  Oh, this was the cat and the mouse that went off for twenty minutes?

• 2:08:16Speaker 00

  I loved that.

• 2:08:18Speaker 02

  With the zigzaggy.

• 2:08:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay, so wait, wait.

• 2:08:20Speaker 00

  Otherwise, otherwise.

• 2:08:21Speaker 02

  Otherwise.

• 2:08:23Trevor Noah?

  So now, be- before we let you go.

• 2:08:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:08:27Trevor Noah?

  Who is your favorite?

• 2:08:28Speaker 02

  Between the two of us?

• 2:08:29Trevor Noah?

  Animated character.

• 2:08:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:08:31Speaker 00

  Oh, uh, I can't answer. Why am I having such difficult?

• 2:08:34Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm just asking.

• 2:08:35Speaker 00

  No, I told you. I said it was Peppa Pig's grandfather.

• 2:08:38Trevor Noah?

  Peppa Pig's grandfather.

• 2:08:39Speaker 00

  Who, who brought back, yes. Peppa Pig's grandfather is my reigning current. Um, and it might be, I'm also fond of Maleficent, who my daughter describes as magnificent, which is so great. You know, she's the witch in, what is she the witch in? Which one?

• 2:08:56Trevor Noah?

  Uh, she's got the curly.

• 2:08:58Speaker 02

  She's got the horns.

• 2:08:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:00Speaker 02

  What is, isn't?

• 2:09:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  Maleficent. It's Snow White, it's Snow White.

• 2:09:03Trevor Noah?

  Is she from?

• 2:09:04Speaker 00

  No, she's in, um, Sleeping Beauty.

• 2:09:06Trevor Noah?

  Oh, she's in Sleeping Beauty.

• 2:09:07Speaker 02

  Sleeping Beauty, yes, yeah.

• 2:09:08Speaker 00

  And for some rea- so today, my daughter went to school in a dress that was festooned with just, just with Maleficent.

• 2:09:16Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 2:09:17Speaker 00

  I don't know who, what.

• 2:09:18Trevor Noah?

  Has she watched the spinoff or she just likes her as the villain?

• 2:09:22Speaker 00

  Well, she's fast, what she, what happens is every time Maleficent comes on the screen, who she calls magnificent, she, um, she turns to me, she goes, and I'm not speaking, she goes, hush daddy. Don't say anything. She doesn't want, she's so riveted by the possibility of drama involving Maleficent. That she wants to make sure that I don't step in and like, rain on her parade. Meanwhile, she's watched it like seven times. I'm like, I don't say anything. I'm just sitting here. But, um, no, she's quite militant in her, uh, in her watching of, uh,

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  What's your favorite cartoon character?

• 2:09:58Trevor Noah?

  Me?

• 2:09:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:59Trevor Noah?

  Of all time?

• 2:10:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:10:01Trevor Noah?

  Ah, now you put me on the spot because I haven't been watching them recently like Malcolm has.

• 2:10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but old school, new school.

• 2:10:07Trevor Noah?

  Let me think, let me think. Do you have a favorite?

• 2:10:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Remy from Ratatouille.

• 2:10:12Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's an interesting choice.

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  I mean, it was like I can create a human joystick.

• 2:10:17Trevor Noah?

  Huh, I see what you did there. I see, I see what you did there.

• 2:10:21Speaker 02

  Ability to stop him.

• 2:10:23Trevor Noah?

  I see what you did there. Nicely done.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  I thank you. Nicely done. You know what I like about you? You're willing to admit when I'm right.

• 2:10:31Trevor Noah?

  Malcolm Gladwell, thank you for joining us.

• 2:10:33Speaker 00

  Thank you. This is very fun.

• 2:10:34Trevor Noah?

  This has been a lot of fun. I hope to see you again.

• 2:10:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:10:37Trevor Noah?

  This is really great. Thank you.

• 2:10:39Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:10:43Speaker 00

  That was fun.

• 2:10:46Trevor 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.

• 2:11:16Speaker 04

  What's up, sports fans? I'm Rachel Damita, here to tell you about my show Courtside Club. If you love hoops and hot takes, then you're in the right place. Want to hear about Katelyn Clark's unstoppable rise in the WNBA? How stars like Wemby and Luka Doncic are dominating the NBA? Or maybe you just want the tea on this week's most viral sports moments. Don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of it. So grab your popcorn and come hang with us. Courtside. You can listen to Courtside Club wherever you get your podcasts. Oui et ah.

• 2:11:48Speaker 05

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