The Reality of Fiction with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss her new novel and how she approaches the alchemy of writing fiction. The three also discuss the challenge of exchanging opposing ideas in today’s world, when joke telling may be crossing the line, and why Chimamanda declines to be on social media.

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

• 0:00Trevor Noah?

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• 0:35Trevor 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.

• 1:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, booked forever, forever. Like I always said, and I mean, this is something that I learned in South Africa. Because we have such a large Nigerian population. I always go like, Nigerians were the first Africans who taught me to believe in myself. Do you know what I mean? Like every other African that I met always had like a certain level of like, how are you doing? It was like, ah, I'm okay, you know, I'm fine. Like, you know, we even say in South Africa, you'd be like, ah, nyang nyang, which means like I'm, almost like I'm begging. I'm begging my way through. I, you know, I'm getting by. I try, I, you know? And Nigerians, I remember like, literally were the first ones who were like, you're not trying, you're doing. You're doing it, what do you mean you are trying? Are you not winning? And I was like, I mean, yeah, I mean, they're like, no, you're winning. Don't say you're trying when you're doing it.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Why? Hey! Hello! Hello, yes! What's your name, Christiana? Christiana. Umamnonga.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Seven?

• 2:31Trevor Noah?

  Hello, Trevor! How are you?

• 2:34Speaker 02

  I'm... I'm well. I'm tired.

• 2:37Trevor Noah?

  Tired?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  You don't look tired, you look great!

• 2:40Trevor Noah?

  You look fantastic, but wait, wait. Tired from life or tired from...? No, I always feel like you should ask people, because sometimes we ask people, "How are you?", then they'll say, "Tired", you think they mean they haven't slept. But what they mean is, "I'm exhausted."

• 2:52Speaker 02

  They're about to take their own life.

• 2:54Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, why we not... Don't think of it like that.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  No, I'm on book tour, I've been travelling.

• 2:59Trevor Noah?

  That's what I mean, yes.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  I just assumed you would know that that's what I meant.

• 3:03Trevor Noah?

  I don't assume anything when people tell me how they are.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Some people find it invigorating, like going on the road, talking about their work. Okay, alright.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Really?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  No!

• 3:12Trevor Noah?

  It's true, actually.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Trevor, we have people here that are like, "I love it."

• 3:14Trevor Noah?

  No, some people, some people are, they're just like, they are... They're like, "I love getting out there."

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Meeting the people!

• 3:20Speaker 02

  No, I do, I mean, but after five days of doing that, when you haven't really slept, and I don't sleep well when I'm travelling, I don't sleep well in strange places and in hotel rooms. I left Seattle at 4:30 this morning.

• 3:34Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, yeah, then you shouldn't be tired.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so... So I'm not at all suggesting that I don't like meeting my fans, because I actually do.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  But no, it's... But it's a good problem to have, so...

• 3:46Trevor Noah?

  Sometimes I think the phrase "good problem" robs us of our ability to like feel what we're feeling, like, you know what I mean? Sometimes people will say it to you, almost like you're not allowed to feel something because of the position you're in relative to another position.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  They have to be grateful for the problem.

• 4:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, people are like, "Wow, but these are good problems", and I'm like, "No, no, it's just a problem."

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Just say it sucks.

• 4:06Trevor Noah?

  I don't think it needs to be a good one, or... And I mean this for me, I'm just completely projecting, by the way.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  But I think it depends on the context, though. I think for me, it's a way of saying, "It is a problem."

• 4:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  But I kind of like that I have the problem.

• 4:20Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Which is to say that I kind of like that people are interested in the book. Right? If they weren't, I would not be travelling for the book, so... But I don't think, well...

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think when you say a good problem, you're already saying the problem part, no? I think if somebody said that to me, I would not take it well.

• 4:41Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  I'd be like, you do not get to decide for me what my good problem is.

• 4:44Trevor Noah?

  Then we're on the same page. Okay, no, no, no.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  As long as you're just, because sometimes there's like this hu- you have to embrace humility. You have to like coach, couch everything you say and.

• 4:54Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  It's this, but, but I'm grateful. You know, that thing that you have to do. But sometimes you'll be like, travelling sucks, I hate hotels. I don't like the food, I miss my family.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  I don't do that fake.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:05Trevor Noah?

  Oh, by the way, we poured you a fresh one if you wanted. Thank you. Right now we poured it. It's up to you.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  I got this from Seth Meyers.

• 5:17Trevor Noah?

  Christiana and I were chatting earlier about, first of all, your, your name and the fact that you are, I think in many ways, a dying breed, right? You, you said, you said it beautifully. You said a literary giant.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yes, a literary.

• 5:32Trevor Noah?

  You just go Chimamanda and people are like, oh, oh, wow.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  You just have to say one name.

• 5:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like being Beyonce, but in the world of books. Do, do, do you know what I mean? There's no denying any type of art that comes with fame then comes with the pressure. And in a, in a weird way, I feel like art, for the most part, not to be highfalutin about it, but like, art is almost supposed to be like bumping up against things all the time. It's, it's sort of, is accepted but not accepted. Challenging, but, but you know, but still accessible. It's, it's like, it's like in this weird space. How do you feel about your fame relative to what you're doing? Like, do you, do you feel it hinders you or do you feel like it, it liberates you?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Neither. But hold on. So, but do you think, so are you suggesting that fame means somehow that, that fame corrupts art?

• 6:20Trevor Noah?

  So I think what happens oftentimes is fame interferes with how art can be perceived. That's what I think it does, right? So I'll speak through the lens of, let's say, stand-up comedy alone. Any comedian who's like worth their salt will tell you the difference in how an audience perceives a perspective or a joke when the person, when the comedian is famous is very different. Because now they're not listening to what you're saying, they're trying to listen to it through the lens of them having a perception or an idea of who you are and where you are in relation to them. So they don't go funny, not funny, insightful, not insightful. They'll go, that's, that's stupid for you. And I'm like, what do you mean that's stupid for me? If I told, I would have told that joke 10 years ago, although I like that style of joke.

• 7:03Trevor Noah?

  And they'll be like, yeah, but come on, you're Trevor Noah, you. And I'm like, no, no, you see, that's, that's where I feel like you're making the mistake.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Like if you make a joke about traffic, people are like, well, you can get a helicopter, which I often say.

• 7:14Trevor Noah?

  Exactly. You love saying that. You love saying that. No, but I mean, I think of it like, like, you know, and sometimes we only afford this to artists, for instance, let's say actual painters, when they're dead. I love how much gravitas is awarded to, let's say Picasso for a random napkin sketch. People are like, oh, look at this, Picasso sketch. And you're like, guys, it's like a stick figure. Yes, but even in it, you can see it harkens to his, his, his view of the world. I'm like, guys, the guy was just sketching on a napkin. Yes, but it was Picasso's sketch. Do you understand what I'm saying? So how do you feel about it?

• 7:48Speaker 02

  About fame? I, I don't think about it really. I mean, but here's why. I think of fame, and it's such a strange thing. I don't even know what to do with my face when I'm saying, I think of fame. It's kind of like, I don't know what honest to just think, but it's just, um, I, I don't think of, when, I think that when I'm writing fiction, because that's, for me, there are distinctions in what I do and in how much they mean to me. So fiction is the thing I love. Like, I really think it's my vocation. I think it's the reason I'm here. I really believe that. I really believe that I have an ancestral gift.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  So with fiction, nothing else matters. When I'm writing, I'm not, I'm not, I don't remember that I'm supposed to be this famous person when I'm writing fiction. When I'm done writing fiction and I'm editing it and someone else is sort of, you know, there's an editor looking over it. That's when I sometimes have to think about audience, but even then I almost never change anything. Because for me, fiction is almost, it's sacrosanct. I don't think about my audience. It's truly almost magical, honestly. But the other things, I can tell when people are bullshitting me, when people say, I love your work. And I'm thinking, no, you don't. But you actually don't.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Have you told anyone that?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Some, yes.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Good, I love that.

• 9:09Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow. That is the most Nigerian thing I've ever come across.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  She's a real Ibo woman.

• 9:14Trevor Noah?

  No, I mean, I'm sitting next to, this is like, wow.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  It's too much for them.

• 9:18Trevor Noah?

  No, I mean, this is amazing.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  But you know, but, but I think it can be a good thing, right? For someone, and usually it's, it's, it's my wonderful Nigerians. Oh, Chi Manda, I love your work. And I, so I said to him once, I was like, which one have you read? He said, I've read them. I said, which one have you read? He was like, um, the, the one about Biafra. I said, okay, what happened to me? So he starts laughing. So he starts laughing and then he tells me, I'll read it, I'll read that. And then when, when it's people, when, when it's non-Nigerians. You know, usually I can tell, but then I'm, I'm slightly gentler because, you know, sometimes non-Nigerians don't know how to handle the sort of Nigerian directness.

• 9:57Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  But I think in general, because I, I, I want it to be read, I've always wanted to be read. And, and I really do feel very grateful. You know how you said people have to say that? But I am actually quite grateful to be read. But I think fame was never a thing that I sought. And in some ways also because I'm not on social media, because I, I, sometimes I'm still surprised, just like, oh, so that person actually knows me. So I'm not, yeah, it doesn't occupy me.

• 10:25Trevor Noah?

  Was, was that a, was that an intentional choice to not be on social media?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:29Trevor Noah?

  What, what was it?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Um, self-preservation.

• 10:35Trevor Noah?

  Huh.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  So not in a high-minded way, by the way. Just because I know that I will get into fights with people. And it will not end well. So I thought.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  So you, you're the person, you would reply if somebody at you and says something.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I would find where you live and come to your house.

• 10:54Trevor Noah?

  You know, that's how we met.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wait, what?

• 10:57Trevor Noah?

  That's how, that's how.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I'd love to tell the story, it's crazy. When Trevor first got his job at The Daily Show, he had um, a guest on that I didn't agree with, that I thought he shouldn't have had it, I stand by that.

• 11:08Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  And I.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Does this guest have a name perhaps?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, Tommy Loren.

• 11:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And it was like a super viral interview and there was lots of reactions and

• 11:19Speaker 01

  credit to Trevor, he came across tweets where I was critical of him in a very respectful way, I think. I was kinda.

• 11:25Trevor Noah?

  How you were critical?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I'm not critical, I was just discussing, I was.

• 11:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  I was just, I was discussing the fact that he'd had this guest on his um, show. And cause he disagreed with me, he followed me. He was just like, I don't think she's right. Cause he, he stands by why he had the interview, which I love about him. And he, someone reached out to me, like, oh, Trevor's, Trevor Noah's a fan. Do you wanna, what have you thought about working at the show? And the Nigerian in me was like, ah, this man is trying to trick me.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  And tell me off. That's the first thing I told my person, I was like, I've got this email, I think this man is trying to trick me and he's holding a grudge. Cause I said he shouldn't have that girl.

• 12:02Trevor Noah?

  That's hilarious.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  But there was like that.

• 12:03Trevor Noah?

  No, but I see why though.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But, but it was, but we engaged in a few conversations where he was like, you know, you've made me think, I don't necessarily agree, we had a few exchanges, not disrespectful ones, but like, Trevor's very kumbaya, but I'm a child of Biafras, I always wanna fight. So there is that, I think there's that, not tension, but.

• 12:20Trevor Noah?

  No, no, it's great.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Different things to.

• 12:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's, it's completely great. I think like what, what I connected with you on was most important for me is like, I, and you know this, even till this day, I don't care about agreeing with people. But I love a well-structured argument, I love an idea that makes me think.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:37Trevor Noah?

  And then something for me to butt up again. I actually find it boring when people all hang out in a group and agree with each other. I personally think we're losing a lot of that.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:46Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Trevor Noah?

  Like we, we live in a world now where we go, I don't agree with you, so it's finished.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Trevor Noah?

  And I'm like, no, but. Guys, if I was to get rid of everyone in my life who I didn't agree with on an issue, I would have no one in my life.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:00Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yes, this is a gospel that needs to be preached more in America.

• 13:07Trevor Noah?

  You think in America particularly?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:10Trevor Noah?

  Tell me more.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  This is not the case in Nigeria, for example, and I would argue in most of Africa. People know that you can disagree with a person and still have a relationship with them. I think what's happening in the US is a kind of, you know, this kind of practice of purity, this kind of, you know, you have to, you have to have this particular views, otherwise. And then the moralizing of opinion. So, somebody feels a certain way about something. It's not just that you think they're wrong, it's that you think that they're bad people. And I think that that moralizing then means like, because you think this way, you're a bad person and I cannot talk to you and you cannot be in my life.

• 13:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  I think it's a particularly American thing. I really think so. And it's, and it's quite contemporary. I mean, it's, it's recent. I came to the US in ninety seven. I don't think America was like that when I came to the US. I think it's recent.

• 14:00Trevor Noah?

  Do you find it like that?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Um, well, I came to America in two thousand and fourteen. And I say this a lot, and maybe I'm coming from like a Western lens of being in the UK and communicating with my friends in UK. I think in the UK also, people are wearing their politics more. Or whatever their label of, whatever you identify as, whether Republican, Democrat, socialist or whatever. And that is being at the front of a conversation in a way that is tainting how you can experience a person in real life.

• 14:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  In a way that I didn't feel when I first came to America.

• 14:34Trevor Noah?

  When you first came.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  When I first came, yeah. Because remember, I came when Obama was still in power.

• 14:38Trevor Noah?

  You're not, you're not wrong, actually.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I, I came at the tail end of Obama. Everyone assumed Hillary would win. And to be a Trump voter was a very quiet thing. I mean, we only discovered there were so many voters when the guy won. Because everyone was, it was just those red hat people over there. You never thought it was a people around you. And I think there became this scrutiny after Trump won. Like, did you vote for him? Did you vote for him? I think you voted for him. Like, that suspicion.

• 15:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Or people who were. An active mourning that Hillary wasn't president. And then it it changed changed the timber of our interactions in a way that I don't think we've recovered from or gone back to. And I think that's even deepened now in his second term.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 15:17Trevor Noah?

  And and you know, I I I always try and grapple with this. I try and figure out, especially now because I spend more time in South Africa than I've done over the past ten years. So when I was doing The Daily Show, most of my life was just in America and in the US. I couldn't really leave much. And now I get to spend more time going back to South Africa and traveling around. And one of the biggest things I've realized is in America, more than most places I've been to, people wear their politics as their culture. But where I'm from, your culture is your culture.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 15:45Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? So no one would dare say where I'm from, I am a Republican or I am. No, no, no, I'm Xhosa, I'm Zulu, I'm Tzana, I'm Beedi.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  But that's also because our politics in Africa is not ideological, though.

• 15:58Trevor Noah?

  Oh, what do you mean? What do you mean by that?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  But it's not, though. It's, I mean, is there in South Africa a party that you could say is on the left and on the right and in the center? Based on their policies?

• 16:08Trevor Noah?

  You know, now, I know it sounds crazy, but because of Trump, they're emerging in some ways. But previously, there wasn't. Let's put it this way. All the major parties in South Africa will have very similar um promises or ideals. They just have differences on how they believe they're gonna get there. So most of them wouldn't argue that healthcare is a right. They all go like, no, no, we, everyone should have healthcare and there should be free education and but then they'll argue about the permutations of how to get there. And I think that, you know, in agreeing with what you're saying.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm just thinking about what I I think that this kind of polarization, even that word I don't like, I think it preceded Trump. Interesting. I think Trump made it was, but do you, I mean.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I I think I it was, I felt it with Trump.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe, maybe that's a result of like the bubble I was in myself.

• 17:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  And I just think we're in a time where people feel really defensive about what they believe. And there's not much step base for negotiation.

• 17:13Trevor Noah?

  I felt I felt a lot of that reading your book, like, I mean.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Which we actually read, by the way.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  You did read it.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we read it.

• 17:19Trevor Noah?

  I loved it so much. Oh, I loved your work. Your book was fantastic. I loved it.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  I love that one you just did.

• 17:26Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I read it, cover to cover. This is how much I read it. I remember the first, maybe like the first fifty pages, I thought it was a, I thought it was like a memoir. I know this is crazy to you, please don't get me wrong. I opened and I was like, oh, is this like your nickname? And are you telling me your real story? No, I'm being serious. And then I.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  He thought you were a cheer.

• 17:47Trevor Noah?

  I started Googling your, your father. I was like, oh, I knew he did statistics. I didn't know that he was this mega rich person. And I was like.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  She's old money.

• 17:55Trevor Noah?

  I was like, yeah, I was like, what do I not know about this person that is now changing how I see this and I'm reading the book? And nothing that I'm Googling is coming, is coming together. No, because I think in the way that it's written, it really felt like a personal account. You know, from how, like, most of the time, when I, when I read a novel, it is told sort of third person. Then she went and did this, then they were. This felt like a me story from the beginning.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're immersed into this world of Covid.

• 18:20Trevor Noah?

  Yes. Covid.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  And the people arguing.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  I'm so amused that you then went to Google. Wait, this doesn't sound right.

• 18:26Trevor Noah?

  No, I, I, I was, I was, but I, I, I would love to know what inspired, or like, because you live in a world of fiction, you can go anywhere.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:38Trevor Noah?

  Because you live in a world.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  You do know that there is such a thing as the first person narration.

• 18:42Trevor Noah?

  No, no, I do. I understand this. I understand this completely. But what I'm saying, oftentimes, the first person narration isn't so closely tied to the author. I love that you find this so amusing. No, I, I'm just saying for me.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  But also, it's a wonderful compliment. Can I just say that? Because it means that you still believed this world that I created.

• 19:03Trevor Noah?

  Only for the first fifty pages.

• 19:07Trevor Noah?

  By the time we got, once we started getting to like Zekora's story, and once we were in like, you know what I mean, Kadiatu stories, I was, I was like, okay, I'm, I knew what was happening. Give me some credit. But I'm just saying, for the first fifty, I was like, this is a very, I even was planning, my first question to you was gonna be like, how do your friends feel about the stories you've revealed about them? The things you've said about their sex lives. I was like, wow, I mean Africans are generally conservative. How can you?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Africans are so private.

• 19:35Trevor Noah?

  I was like, you've told this your closest friends, the sex that she's having with her husband and. Oh, wow. And the fact that he ravaged her in a way that she had never been ravaged. I was like, damn, this is. Wow.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  He said that it felt like sneaking into a diary entry.

• 19:50Trevor Noah?

  It really did feel like that.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Initially.

• 19:52Trevor Noah?

  So I would love to know the why, because you talk about the world we're in now, and you mentioned it as well. How much of the world we're in now influences or influenced this book? You know, and you going, I think, like, why is the book set in and around Covid? It takes place right before Covid and then into Covid and then sort of out of Covid. Why does it take place then? Why does it take place, you know, at liberal American universities? Why does it take place in this moment in time is what I'd love to know.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Because I'm interested in this moment because I think, well, Covid. Covid is, I think for a writer, Covid is gold. Because especially lockdown, lockdown was so surreal, so unique, so original. That you cannot but use it. It's like perfect material because you can do anything with lockdown. And I think people reacted to lockdown in such different ways. So you kind of start with lockdown was your canvas and you can really do anything with it. So I remember, I'm not sure, I didn't set out to, I don't even think of it as a Covid novel. I think of it as, because Covid in some ways is, is only a. So you want a character who's looking back.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  You want a character who I'm very interested in looking back. I'm very. I'm almost addicted to nostalgia. I'm kind of always, you know, and I'm kind of melancholy as well. Covid just felt to me the perfect setting to have that character look back. Right? So she's locked down, she's alone in her house.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  And she's, she looks back. So, so I think if Covid hadn't happened, I suppose I would have, maybe I would have made her. Fall sick and then be in hospital.

• 21:33Trevor Noah?

  Okay, you wanted to, you wanted to isolate her to look back on her life?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:37Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yes. It's not that I think that Covid had any, well, it's up to the reader. I was going to say, I don't think Covid has any. Particular meaning in the novel.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  But I but I think it's to say that the sort of authorial intent was not to make um Covid a character, really, but to make Covid backdrop. Because I think that Covid, I don't think I've written, if I, this is not the Covid novel, because I think there's just so much more that would have to be in it to make it the Covid novel, if that makes sense.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand.

• 22:13Trevor Noah?

  What what novel would you say it is then?

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Um, Love, Dreams, um, um, a certain kind of melancholy longing.

• 22:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's, I think it's my most grown up novel, which is to say that it's my most, um, the novel in which I'm most willing to acknowledge, even embrace uncertainty. And I don't need to have all the answers and I don't need to, um, I don't need to, you know, have it all together.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  I feel like I had a sense of responsibility with Half of a Yellow Sun, for example. And with Americana, I was setting myself free from being the good daughter of literature. It's like, I'm just going to do what I want and I'm going to, and now I feel like I've grown up, so dream counts.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, of course, it's also my diary, as Trevor said.

• 23:14Trevor Noah?

  It feels like it to me.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 23:16Trevor Noah?

  It really does.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  It's the best thing I've had.

• 23:18Trevor Noah?

  No, it really is.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  I find it so adorable.

• 23:21Trevor Noah?

  It feels, you know, and you know why it feels like a diary is to what you're saying about like love, right? Every single one of the stories in the book, I think, are are in many ways an honest reflection of how we experience love in our lives. Funny enough, men and women, I I was, I was, I was honestly intrigued by that part of the book. I was going.

• 23:43Trevor Noah?

  Was it an intentional choice that you made to sort of keep us blind from how the men were experiencing the love and only have it be how the women were thinking that the men were experiencing the love?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Because I don't know how the men were experiencing it.

• 23:56Trevor Noah?

  Wait, what do you mean by that?

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Because it's a book about women's lives.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  So that's interesting because like Darnell and you know, all of these horrible men in the book, their interior lives.

• 24:07Trevor Noah?

  They were all horrible.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  I found that, listen, it's my reading.

• 24:10Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  What? I find a lot of them horrible.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 24:16Trevor Noah?

  What did you find the most horrible?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Well, you guys know I'm anti-men in general, but like.

• 24:20Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yes.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Um.

• 24:22Trevor Noah?

  It was.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, my life is just filled of brilliant women.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, okay, because I have some pretty good men in my life and I don't know that I could have that rule.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Are they like brothers, family members?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Friends.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Friends. Yeah, I just speak to them during nine to nine to five.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Well, really, back to Trevor's question, who did you, yes, we know that you're.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Okay, so in terms of who disturbed my spirit the most that like left me vibrating a bit, Kwame. Hmm. And that's because I'm postpartum myself and those scenes of Zekora, like knowing her mother in a new way because of the vacuum of that man not being there was really beautiful to me because I've, me and my friends talk about all the time, like it took us becoming mothers to actually see our mothers as girls and like it's a thing, it's a dialogue we're constantly having. Um Kwame, because of how he behaved and how his family behaved, that created a resentment. I'm like, that's a, that's not an honorable person. So to me, that's like a horrible man.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  That's lovely. No, I love that you're thinking about such things as being an honorable person.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the whole idea of being in love is that you are not in fact sophisticated. I mean, there's a kind of lowering of your, just every imaginable barrier and guard that you have when love happens, I think. And Kwame.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Okay, I mean, could we have some empathy for Kwame? I don't know.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Oh, it just tell me, can you go into that a bit more?

• 25:56Trevor Noah?

  I would, I would love, no, I'm now intrigued.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  No, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what happened.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  But on the empathy point, when people listen to this after they've read the book.

• 26:05Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Why would, what would evoke empathy?

• 26:08Speaker 02

  I mean, I think, I think the question with Kwame would be why?

• 26:14Speaker 02

  I mean, what do you think happened? Something, I just feel like something must have happened to him. Speaking of trauma and trauma response, maybe it was a kind of exaggerated trauma response.

• 26:24Trevor Noah?

  This is what I felt while reading the book as, as a man.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:28Trevor Noah?

  I felt like it was.

• 26:32Trevor Noah?

  And I, I'd love to know your perspective as the author, but it's like.

• 26:36Trevor Noah?

  Everyone sees love from their point of view, you know?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:39Trevor Noah?

  Everyone in every story that they tell makes sense from their point of view. So whenever someone's telling me their love story, I've met very few people who tell me the love story where they are the villains in it. I meet very few people who are aware of the elements that they contributed. And I, I'm always intrigued by that. I'm always intrigued by how people will tell you a love story where they, they, they, they've just been slighted. The world has done them wrong. They just keep bumping into these wrong characters and it's, and I'm like, yeah, I know this may be true. But there's only, that's only one half of the story.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  But is this, do you mean women and men?

• 27:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 27:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, completely. You don't, you don't agree?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  No, I'm just curious. So men tell love stories about how they were.

• 27:24Trevor Noah?

  Completely. I think the difference with, with, with men for the most part is. Because we aren't really comfortable with our emotions and naming them and we don't spend as much time in them, especially with our friends. We may, I think we, we will water them down or, or we'll compress them into a simple feeling like anger. I'm angry. You know, we'll very seldom say like, I felt ashamed. We'll very seldom say like, I felt inadequate. I felt, no, we'll, it's just angry. You know, it's a simple one. But I, I think men will tell very similar stories, similar stories to, you know, to, to, to the ones that I found in your book where. I'll say to a, a man, friend, what happened? Yeah, she was this and she was that and it wasn't gonna, it wasn't gonna, and I go like, okay, but what?

• 28:09Trevor Noah?

  I understand you, but what was the we?

• 28:12Trevor Noah?

  Right, because every love story has to have a we.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, Trevor, but I'm just worried that we're sort of going into the both sides territory. I think that there are some relationships where one person is an asshole.

• 28:22Trevor Noah?

  Oh, completely, yeah, that's that's completely true.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  And that asshole may not acknowledge that they were the asshole, but it doesn't mean that they're not. I just feel as though, um, reading this book that's about women's stories about men. I'm struck by how it's it's been out, um, I don't know, two weeks. I'm struck by how many people have said to me, what about the men? What about the men's stories? Which is what Trevor is doing.

• 28:46Trevor Noah?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn't say that. We can rewind the tape. I didn't say that. I did not say that.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  You did, you did.

• 28:52Trevor Noah?

  Don't you dare get me.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  You did, no, no, no, no, no, you said, you said, how, no, you said, how do the men? No, you said something about what about the men's point of view?

• 29:00Trevor Noah?

  I didn't say what about the men's point of view. I would never say that. What I was asking you, because remember you're the author, you're omnipotent. So what I was asking you was if you chose to keep it opaque on purpose. So you didn't give us the answers about why that happened. The answer doesn't have to do with like the man's point of view, but it's the answer nonetheless. So many of the characters, they don't know why it happened. They they, the person disappears, but they never get the closure, they never get the answer. They they're left with this ghost that haunts them. And so what I was asking is like, if you did that on purpose. I don't, I don't want to know like, oh, but what was his version of it? I'm more intrigued by why you left us with characters that were sort of unresolved in the answer that they were looking for. That's what like I found, I found like a hook. Does that make sense?

• 29:44Trevor Noah?

  And I think there's a difference between the two.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  No, there isn't.

• 29:49Trevor Noah?

  Ah, okay.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  That was very cleverly done. But no, because, but anyway, it doesn't matter because I'm, I'm. It just struck me because I think that there is a kind of expectation we have, I think, that in reading that we, maybe even unconsciously, that we still look for the men, if that makes sense. I think if it were a book about men telling their stories, that I don't think as many people would have asked me, well, what did the women think?

• 30:20Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  I would have.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Not that.

• 30:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, you definitely would have.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  But we all know that you're different. But anyway, so Trevor, what else do you want to know?

• 30:33Trevor Noah?

  No, I want to know everything. I I would actually like to know as well, like. You know, and maybe it's because of Christiana's, like, I mean, just presence in my life as a person. I think you were, other than my mom, probably the woman who's given me the most insight into the, like, just like the nitty gritty of like, like ugly womanhood, if I were, if I'd call it that, you know?

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:55Trevor Noah?

  As inequently as that's. Unvarnished, completely. And this book, in a really weird way for me, felt like an extension of the conversations I've had with Christiana. And like, when we're talking about the inner workings of a woman's body and, and how it's, quote unquote, betraying her in some ways, and how it's not doing what it's supposed to do for her. And, and then like, even the frustration, you know, there's, there's one, there's one line, which I'll misquote, but it was essentially something to the effect of how, I forget which character was saying this, but they were basically saying, there was almost like a resentment in the fact that their future and the dream and the life they were looking for was tied to men. They couldn't achieve that dream without the man being attached to them.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of my favorite lines is the character that basically says, "When you marry, when you get married, they leave you alone, even if you divorce them." I was like, this is so brilliant Nigerian logic, but it's the truth, because like, so many of my friends just said, "I just got married for freedom, freedom from the question, from the judgment."

• 31:57Trevor Noah?

  Oh, because your family leaves you alone, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Now you're in your husband's house, I'm not even gonna complain about the things you do, because you're under his dominion.

• 32:04Trevor Noah?

  Right, right, right.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  So to speak.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  And it's.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  And often you're actually not.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  You're not.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  But it's a perception people have, right? So you're in your husband's house, nobody knows what you're doing, what, what sort of life you actually have. So for many women, it's a kind of freedom, really, in a strange kind of way, in a perverse kind of way. Obviously, we want to live in a world where a woman doesn't need to do that to achieve freedom, but if you live in a society that imposes that kind of thing on you.

• 32:29Trevor Noah?

  It would be nice to be in a society that doesn't impose that.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  But that's the reality.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yes, which is why it can then be a kind of strange freedom.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Which is so unvarnished, because that's not necessarily a thing, even as direct and honest as us Nigerian women are, is what we'd say in a forum that is not private, you know what I mean? It was just like, I felt like in moments, you're in the inner sanctum of the things women say to each other that they don't tell other people, that I sometimes tell Trevor.

• 32:54Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh. I felt, I felt like that about a lot of it, and I actually had that as a question as well, was.

• 33:01Trevor Noah?

  You know, it's strange when it's a novel. I feel like when it's nonfiction, it sort of has a very direct approach. With fiction, like most art, it's at the discretion of the artist. How much are they revealing to you and how much are they not? How much of the book are you intending as a direct commentary on society? And how much are you allowing to live in a complete fantasy? Like, are these rich Africans on purpose? Are they interacting with white liberals? And if, because I think you're very intentional, I'd love to know like the why. Like, what are you hoping to reveal to us through those things? You know, it becomes so much more complex, but why do you choose it?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  I really don't know. See, this is the thing about writing fiction. I don't like the why questions. Because there's a lot that's not. I am intentional, I hate that word, about lectures and essays. Right, I can tell you what I had in mind for the danger of a single story, for example.

• 34:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  But with fiction, it's different. It's, it's, um, so rich African, because it's true. I mean, because I'm interested in, so I think I write about things that I'm interested in, obviously.

• 34:18Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  So when you talk about academia, American academia, I'm interested in that. It's also a world I kind of know because I've spent time there. And so I can write about it with a kind of authority and authenticity, I think.

• 34:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  But it's also because I'm interested in all of the permutations of American academia. I think Dream Count, I, I, I don't like the why questions. I think you could say that Dream Count is, I think in some ways it's part satire, especially the bits that are about academia.

• 34:50Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Right, but I think as satire always does, there's truth there. Like, I'm kind of holding up a slightly mocking mirror to certain things that happen. But I, I mean, there's also, obviously, I'm writing realism, and so. It's kind of, you know, when you say the people who read Dickens. Um, and there's a sense in which you could say reading Dickens is can give you a clearer sense of of London at the time, clearer than reading history. Do you see what I mean?

• 35:23Trevor Noah?

  I know exactly what you mean.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I so I kind of like to think that that's what I am doing with my fiction, which is. I'm creating art, but there is of course also a kind of um social and political component to it.

• 35:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I I'm not, I don't set out to. I like to think that my points are more blurred in my fiction. So in other words, if I had to write an essay about American academia, I think it would be very blunt.

• 35:53Trevor Noah?

  We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break.

• 35:58Trevor Noah?

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

• 36:39Trevor Noah?

  You see, YouTube Premium can automatically download recommended videos for you based on what you already watch. So sometimes I'll get on a plane, I look at my phone, I'm like, ah, I didn't download anything. And it's like, no, YouTube already thought about this. They packed entertainment for me in my little lunchbox. And with background play, I can lock my phone, switch apps, and whatever I'm watching just keeps on going. So. If you like YouTube, you will love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heat waves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV.

• 37:25Trevor Noah?

  Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love. From Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, to Dirty Dancing, to Top Gun Maverick. From Alias to The X-Files. It's all here and all free. Go where the TV is always good. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 37:47Speaker 03

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• 38:23Speaker 01

  I'm interested because we kind of started this where we're talking about, you know, you don't look at the fame, you don't think about audience.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  For fiction.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  For fiction. Are there moments when you're writing fiction when you're like, that feels, I can't go there?

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Never.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Never?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  So you, it's kind of, there's a fearlessness that comes with the fiction?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I call it a radical honesty.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  And that's the only way that I can feel happy. Fiction really makes me happy when it's going well, really makes me happy. And, and I can tell when, and I, you know, there are a few times in my life when I've held back in my fiction. And I, I can tell, you know, I can tell that I, um, in some ways, it's like letting yourself down. I can tell.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Can you say when you felt you held back?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  In some of the stories and the thing around your neck, I think that I, you know. I held back in a way.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Why did you? I know you don't like the why questions, but why did you?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  No, this is a different one, a different, different kind of why question. Um, I guess because I this, I just felt like maybe I just shouldn't go there. Maybe I shouldn't be as honest as I think. Maybe I shouldn't let this character be its full self in a way, um, his or her full self. I don't know. But anyway, the point is, I think if I learned anything from doing that, it's that it just doesn't make me happy. It doesn't feel true. It doesn't feel authentic. So some of those short stories I don't like, actually. But no, dream count, no, I, I don't hold back. I, I go where the character takes me. It's a revelation.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  You have some very direct.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  From above. Yes, but I also think I feel so strongly about literature and about fiction. I think it's our last frontier. This is, it's only in literature that we can learn things that we cannot learn anywhere else. So journalism cannot tell us about human motivation. Journalism cannot go deep into like the terrain of the human heart, which I think is really key for almost everything in the world. I mean, I really think the psychology of people can explain so much about the world. I mean, just the psychology of the people who are in leadership positions. I think, you know, Jonathan can't do that. Politics doesn't do that.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Um, to write nonfiction, especially about other people's lives, is to be constrained by certain things that you cannot possibly know. But I think fiction lets you just, it's, it's, it's the essential thing, I think, that we need when it's done well.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  That kind of.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  As was done in this case.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say that brings us to one of the characters in the book is based on a woman who exists in real life. Can you tell us a bit more?

• 41:06Speaker 02

  So, um, yes, inspired by her, the legal department of my publishers.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Inspired by?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we need to use the right language.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:13Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, so inspired by, so I remember when I, did you, did you follow the story of Dominique Strauss-Cann?

• 41:19Trevor Noah?

  I didn't actually.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Really?

• 41:21Trevor Noah?

  No, I now went and read up on it backwards.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:24Trevor Noah?

  It wasn't, I don't think it was really that big in South Africa when this was happening.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  It was big in the UK, it was big in Europe, it was a big story.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Yes, and in the US, I mean, until the case was dropped. So this woman who was from Guinea and who walked as a hotel housekeeper accused him of, of raping her. So she walked, she, she walks into the room to clean it and there's a naked white man running toward her. And I remember when I first heard about it, I I was just riveted by it. And it was also very melodramatic. He was he was arrested, he was already inside the plane about to fly to Paris.

• 41:56Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Where he would then have started his campaign for president. It was almost a done deal that he was going to be the next French president. And so he's arrested and Americans, as as is the want, did this very dramatic thing of parading him in front of journalists, which I hate.

• 42:13Trevor Noah?

  The Pope walk.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  I just, I think it's a terrible thing.

• 42:15Trevor Noah?

  Why? Why are you?

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Because I think, especially when it comes to the sexual assault cases, we really have to be very careful to get it right. Because the world is so deeply immersed in misogyny that the people looking for the smallest reason to discredit a sexual assault case.

• 42:33Trevor Noah?

  Huh.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  And so you imagine the misogynist just aching to say things like, see, this is wrong. We don't know if he did it or not. You're already parading him. I wish they had kept it very quiet. I wish they had gone to court. I wish they had found him guilty. I wish they had publicized the evidence. That would have made me very happy because then I think the story would have ended differently. But anyway, so he's arrested. And he's let out on bail. And then we're all kind of looking forward to the to the the the trial. And then at some point, the case is dropped. And the case is dropped because they said she had lied on her asylum application. And I just remember thinking, I was just shocked. I really was. I almost couldn't believe it.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  And also just the way that his lawyers talked about her. They just kept repeating liar and lied, lied liar.

• 43:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  And for the average person watching this, your assumption is going to be that she lied about what had happened. And I think this was also very, I think they deliberately did that. But in fact, they said she lied about her asylum. And and and my thinking is, what we're saying to women is, if you ever expect to get justice for sexual assault, then you better be perfect. Like, you better be sinless.

• 43:51Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Which therefore means you better not be human, because we're all flawed. I found it, it really, I I felt hurt, actually. And also very angry. So I wrote this very angry essay, um, nonfiction.

• 44:04Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm, very blunt.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Of course, you know, my point was this is bad. And I I think I framed it in a kind of, America is not like our, you know, not not like Nigeria, not like Guinea. In Guinea and Nigeria, the big man would probably not be arrested at all. So that America did this was wonderful. I felt very heartened by it. But America has disappointed me. And in some ways has failed this woman. And but I didn't think I would write um fiction about her. I didn't plan to. So when I started writing this novel, again, a character came to me. And and so I think it means that even without knowing it, I carried her with me. And then suddenly, something drops into your life and changes it forever.

• 44:47Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  That I, for me, there was just a great sadness there. Like, I felt, yeah, I felt so upset on her behalf. But anyway, so I wrote this character, who is not really her, because I've invented this character's past life. I've invented this character's interior life. But I have kept the one story about um Nafisata Jalloh, that's her name. The the story that Nafisata Jalloh tells about what happened in that hotel room, I've kept as close as possible to that version. Because I just think that um it's it's in some ways, I think it's a way of paying tribute to her. But also, it's about so many women like her. It's about, you know, women who are powerless and who are not allowed to have dignity.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  The way she was, the way they talked about her, just it it wounded my African spirit.

• 45:40Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  You know?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  My parents were all in Wote.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Only Woteem. It just, it wounded.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  It pained, it's like it pained.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  It wounded me, because I just thought, this is so wrong. And even the interviews that that, I mean, I I I kind of fictionalized it in the novel, but there's an interview where I'm watching and I'm thinking, they haven't done this right. English is not her native language.

• 45:59Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  And so you're asking her about something so intimate and so difficult in a language that she doesn't really speak well. It cannot go well. In some ways, you're setting her up to look as though she's lying. And I remember a friend of mine who said to me at the time that she had watched the interview and she said, oh, I don't believe her because she was so dramatic. She was using her hands too much.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  And that made me very angry as well. I thought, first of all, you don't understand, there's an African world in which that is not dramatic.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  We just articulate all the time.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  That is the norm. But also, this woman was trying, was, she was put in a position where she had to make up for what she lacked in, in lan, in sort of, in her ability to express herself.

• 46:43Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  You know. So anyway, all of that is to say, this character is inspired by Nafisa Tijalu, but isn't her.

• 46:53Trevor Noah?

  You know, it's interesting that you say the thing about the, the public trials and all of it. I, I don't know if this is still true, but I believe in Germany, when a case is happening, when it, you know, when you're being investigated, the press isn't allowed to report on it. And they have a very strict system that tries to prevent the press from sensationalizing the case in any way. So it's supposed to be the way you're saying, which I actually, I actually think would be good for everyone involved. Because I think, number one, there's nothing worse than a public trial. Because it does not have any of the respect nor the expertise of a trial. Right? The most recent example, let's say like the Diddy thing. The amount of random stuff that now comes up doesn't help anything.

• 47:38Trevor Noah?

  So what happens is someone can put up a fake piece of a fake, you know, deposition or whatever it might be, and it sullies somebody's case that's not involved with that. Do you know what I mean? But it just.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  The spectacle of it all diminishes the gravity of what's happening.

• 47:53Trevor Noah?

  It just creates noise and it creates, another example is the Luigi Mangione.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Oh, but we like to see Luigi.

• 47:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but what I was saying is, but I was going like, you tell me, you tell me how you have that trial when. Publicly, they've already said.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:05Trevor Noah?

  You know, the shooter and when he shot. And how do you now then have a trial of somebody?

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:11Trevor Noah?

  When when that's already been done.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:13Trevor Noah?

  And you see, it's interesting when you say that and you talk about the perp walk.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:17Trevor Noah?

  I can think of maybe at least ten examples in the book where the fiction of this book still comments on the realness of of of America. And it's like like a critique on it. So, you know, uh, American academia, how people are discussing issues in and around the world and how they how they feel they can and cannot have the discussions. Um, the justice system.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  The character says in America, money is justice.

• 48:41Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Which was very powerful to me because you just sue.

• 48:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that's like.

• 48:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Yeah, and I I should say that I agree with the character in my just utter horror of this.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:51Trevor Noah?

  I remember when I came to the US and they would say things like, oh, something terrible happened. But like, but the family got money. You know, somebody was shot maybe and then somebody be like, oh, the family got money. And I'm thinking, yeah, but why are you talking about it like that sort of, I mean, somebody died.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:07Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but fundamentally, that's what America was based on. And I think every culture thinks that justice is the thing that the culture most values. You don't you don't think so. Think about like, if like, OK, if I think about like some parts of South Africa. I remember talking to Kaya about this, like, um, friend of mine from South Africa. And um, his dad was, his grandfather was a chief in the village. And if they found some, very seldom, but if somebody stole something or if they did something wrong, you just get beaten, right?

• 49:38Trevor Noah?

  You would, you know, you would, you wouldn't get arrested, you wouldn't get put away, you wouldn't, you just get beaten. And then they would talk to you and say, please don't do that again. That's all it was. And him and I were joking about it, saying, it's interesting how in that setting in particular, in like a village, you know, where many of our grandparents grew up. That was the thing that you like.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Wait, so what was valued violence?

• 49:58Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, no, it was the other way around. Our culture valued nonviolence and our culture valued like the culture itself. It was like a very like, that's not the thing that that we want. Do you understand what I'm saying? If so, if the violence, the violence takes away from you, the thing that the culture holds most valuable, I find. So in some parts of the world, time is the thing that they really look at. Other places in the world think that shame is a more powerful tool. So their their their sentences may not be as long, but how they handle the case i- is worse. But I feel like in America, because money, whether we like it or not, money is like almost the foundation of America.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:38Trevor Noah?

  They go then, if we give you money, you have been made whole. And the other person lost money, so they've really been punished.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  And also now money being speech.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  I mean, in this country, I mean, obviously, yeah. Citizens United. But anyway, let's talk about Dream Counters.

• 50:54Trevor Noah?

  But I feel like Dream Count is everything.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  I agree with you.

• 50:57Trevor Noah?

  Like, for instance, academia, let's talk a little bit about that.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:01Trevor Noah?

  It felt like the book was making a criticism of how America's liberal academia treats discussions.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Contrarians.

• 51:12Trevor Noah?

  Contrarians, arguments, et cetera. And I like I I I found myself reading it going like, I was like, oh, I wonder how much of this Chimamanda thinks, or is it just the character that's thinking? Like, what what do you think of the current state of America's academia? And how students are taught to think or not think?

• 51:30Speaker 02

  I think that's fairly obvious.

• 51:32Trevor Noah?

  No, is it though?

• 51:34Speaker 02

  I think I think it's a very, and actually, I it's a reading that I agree with, which is that, yes, the book is is clearly not enthusiastic.

• 51:45Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  About the form and even the function of American academia today. I mean, obviously. But so you have a woman who's Nigerian and who doesn't know anything about that whole thing.

• 51:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Who comes looking for something better than she is, right? So she's come from, she's come from a life in Nigeria that she thinks she kind of wants to atone for.

• 52:07Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  In a way. And so America becomes this, I I want to find something noble and beautiful and good and honorable. Because America is aspirational still, even to to to people who.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  You know, know that it's a very complicated place. There's still an aspirational element to America. So she comes and she wants to do a masters and she wants to study pornography. I think we should be able to say that.

• 52:32Trevor Noah?

  You can say that, yes.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  So pornography, pornography. Um, and she, so, so it's interesting for me, it's the writer, to look at this world from the point of view of a person who just does not know it and is not familiar with it. So this person is just taken aback, surprised, just like, you know, what is going on? And also then she becomes so disillusioned by it. I think if someone wants to read that as a cautionary tale, I'm not opposed to it.

• 53:04Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  I mean, this is what can happen, which is you can make people lose that thing in them that wants to be better and dream and, and aspire. You know, there's something actually I think quite cynical about, and, and, and it's not, it's not an obvious cynicism, but there's something quite cynical about the way that academia operates. It, it doesn't feel to me, um, I don't know, there's something, the beautiful things that are lacking. So it's not just about, it's not just about letting our imaginations be free and, and we should be able to exchange ideas.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  It's also just more fundamental things like compassion, you know? And I don't even like to use kindness because that word is so overused and always by people who are spectacularly unkind. So I will not use kindness, but compassion. Do, do you?

• 54:09Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm with you.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, empathy.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Yes, the ability to, to understand that there are multiple points of view in the world. It's a very strange thing because, and, and I'm a person who grew up on a university campus. So academia has always been part of my life. Like it's my, I'm, I'm, I get into a university campus anywhere in the world and I'm already at home. Like it's just, I feel comfortable. And, and you will think, and this is what it was like in Osaka when I was growing up. It was a place of, of, um, Of manyness, of, you know, it was multi ideas, people.

• 54:45Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  And that's not the case in America. It's not the case at all. And and sometimes it's difficult to talk about because I, you know, it's you don't want to, sometimes one doesn't want to agree with one's enemies.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  So then people.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  And who are your enemies?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  That's amazing. There are people on the, there are people on the political rights in this country who I think just espouse the most ridiculous ideas, but who also criticize American academia. And I think there's truth there, but that, but acknowledging that kind of, I just think, oh, my lord.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  But my, my, my feelings come from a different place. Comes from love, comes from wanting this thing that I love to be better. That's where it comes from.

• 55:40Trevor Noah?

  How or what would your advice be if, let's say, there's a, there's an aspiring author or even just like a student who loves your work out there, somebody who is in academia right now, they, they come to you and they say, Chimamanda, I, I hear what you're saying about empathy and seeing another person's point of view or, but I feel like this person who I disagree with, the thing that I disagree with them on is the fundamental humanity or existence of another human being, per se, because that's what I've heard a lot of people say. They'll go, no, no, no, it's, this is not a difference between thirty percent tax and twenty percent tax. I'm, I'm disagreeing with somebody who fundamentally believes that black people should not get this or that this group should not get that or that, you know what I mean? How would you encourage them then?

• 56:23Speaker 02

  But I don't, I don't even agree that that's the case.

• 56:25Trevor Noah?

  You don't agree that that's the case?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  No, because I think that we have.

• 56:28Trevor Noah?

  Wait, that they're feeling that or that, which part are you not agreeing with?

• 56:31Speaker 02

  No, I'm sure that they feel that.

• 56:32Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  But you, that you feel something doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't. And I, I think that when you widen the definition of something. So this is somebody who believes that black people should not have, maybe that person just feels, maybe that person supports school choice.

• 56:50Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  But and I, and this is an exact example, actually. I know somebody who is very upset because somebody supports school choice. And then the very strange conclusion was that this person who supports school choice doesn't like black people. That's not, I mean, you you could feel that, but that's not, that's not necessarily rational thinking. So I guess my point is, it's either people have become incredibly terrible in the past twenty years, or something has changed in the way in our capacity to have compassion, to be more broad minded, to to think in more complex ways.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  My point being that twenty years ago, I don't think we, that this was happening. In other words, universities were places where you could still exchange ideas. You weren't terrified of saying something because some, you know, you'd be blacklisted for saying the wrong thing. So whi- which is it? Is it that there are many more people now who fundamentally

• 57:53Speaker 02

  just have these really odious beliefs about other human beings? You said that, you said something about wearing, wearing our politics more closely. Is that what it is? And has it then tainted the way we look and the way we judge and and the conclusions that we draw?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  So, as I say often, I have a very dim view of human nature, it's very Hobbesian. So I've always thought people are terrible and I still think they're terrible.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  I don't think that's true.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I I really, ask this guy.

• 58:23Trevor Noah?

  Christina works on it's guilty until proven innocence. That's how she works with all humans.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Talk about generational trauma. I always say to my, like, my father and his two brothers miraculously survived Biafra. And considering what they've gone through, they are such good and compassionate and empathetic and non-suspicious people. You would think I went through the war. But then what I tell my therapists is that the gener- generational trauma is that I'm hypervigilant. I'm probably speaking nonsense. But what I do say is some people have a more dim view of human nature. And if that is true, because the, because I I'm, I always say, you know, there are racists, racists need their outlets, sometimes their Twitter. Like, there are some people who have odious points of view.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  There's people that do not see my humanity.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  How do we go from there? Because I think there's, maybe there's an in-between.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I don't think that those are the people we're talking about, though. That's my point.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  So in, I mean, in these circles that, you know, so people in on university campuses who.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Um, you know, who don't feel comfortable saying what they think. And not the crazy racists on Twitter. The crazy racists on Twitter do not interest me because I don't think it's even worth. I mean, there's some people that you shouldn't even bother engaging with or trying to change their minds.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  You're not talking about the fringe or the.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  You're talking about maybe the, the, the masses, the collective in the middle.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  And, and the reason that, yes, and I think it's important to say that because sometimes I think that instead of talking about that, we, we then sort of reach for the fringes as examples.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  As a justification for.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, it's kind of also like saying that people who think that women, there are in this country, many people who still, I mean, the people in this government who do, who think that just by virtue of being a woman, you're somehow incapable of certain things, right? I mean, I don't mean those people. So the, the atmosphere on university campuses today in this country, um, just seems to me. And so when Trevor says and someone says, well, I can't speak to them because fundamentally they believe something that is so. And so that's my point. I'm thinking, did, did many people suddenly turn? Or did our, our own perception change? Because these people that somehow have become sober that you can never speak to them again.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  They're kind of in your circle. I mean, they were there twenty years ago, right? I mean, they, they're not in the fringes of, on Twitter, um.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  They're in your community.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And so what is it that has happened? It just feels to me a kind of, um, confusing extremeness of, of, um, of reaction and perhaps maybe of opinion.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  And I, I not, I don't fully understand it, but I don't trust it. So I don't, I don't.

• 1:01:15Trevor Noah?

  Okay, yeah, okay. Okay, so I'll, uh, this, this is how I think about it. One, I think social media dramatically changed our perception of where people sit in reality, right? It gave us a flattened view of people because that's what gets the algorithm, it's what ropes us in. So I will see the worst of you because the worst of you is what inflames me the most. Or I'll only see the best of you because it attaches me to you. But the nuance is, is, um, it's boring, you know? So, and they show you this with the algorithms. Like if you sit down with the engineers, they'll show you if somebody writes. It's a it's a lovely day outside. It'll go nowhere. If you say best day ever, it goes somewhere. And if you say worst day ever, it goes somewhere.

• 1:01:58Trevor Noah?

  But if you use adjectives and descriptors that are like, they don't evoke something extreme, it doesn't really do anything. If you wrote a little tweet about a president and you said, you know, this president's not great, but they're also not the worst. And I guess everyone has their flaws. It's not gonna go anywhere. You go, this president is destroying this country. They are the they're the worst thing. And I think that started to filter into the discourse in American politics. And I think politicians, I genuinely put a lot of blame at their feet. Because I think American politicians spent a lot of time using the language that really only wrestlers should use about their opponents.

• 1:02:39Trevor Noah?

  You know, so they would come out there and they would say things like, I remember the the you weren't there at the Daily Show yet, but in our in our first few years, we went to um, we went to New Hampshire for the primaries. And I remember being so shocked at how Lindsey Graham's team was buddy buddy with Hillary Clinton's team. And Lindsey Graham would send Hillary Clinton birthday messages and talk about her family. When you saw these people on a stage speaking about each other, they they didn't even mince words. They would say, this person is gonna destroy this country. They're killing this country. That, you know, and I've spoken to people who are far smarter than me in the world of politics, and they say it all started with Clinton around the Monica Lewinsky. They said that's when American politics became personal and like, quote unquote, evil not evil, you know?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Did they say it was created by Newt Gingrich?

• 1:03:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. But I think that's where it became a thing. So if your leaders are saying, you see now, this is where now we come back to other politics. One of the things I've loved about going back to South Africa frequently is realizing that even in the the doldrums of of fighting in in in politics, I've never heard a politician say the other person is a devil, or they're destroying the country, or they they don't agree with how they're doing it. They'll say they're incompetent at their job, they haven't met service delivery, they they but I I really, I maybe my memory.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Kind of.

• 1:04:00Trevor Noah?

  Those those attacks, the think think of the things that people have said, right? About other politicians. And then think of how incongruous that is with them and how they are with each other. They have lunch together, they have dinner together, they they, right? What then happens is their fans then adopt a thing that they don't believe in. But now the fans are the ones who control the theater of it all, the spectacle. And I don't know if you, there's a really amazing documentary I watched about Vince McMahon. It's fascinating, even if you don't like wrestling, I recommend everybody watch this thing.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  I was going to say, who is Vince McMahon?

• 1:04:35Trevor Noah?

  Vince McMahon is the man who basically made wrestling what it is today, right? I promise you now, don't you, it's even better if you don't like wrestling, in fact. Go and watch it. And one of the most revealing-

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Trevor, life is so short.

• 1:04:47Trevor Noah?

  Oh, let me tell you-

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  So much I want to watch and I haven't.

• 1:04:49Trevor Noah?

  I would not recommend this to you if I did not believe it would give you an insight into America that very few documentaries can, right? Because one of the main things it shows you is how like, there's a, there's a point where, long story short, the wrestling federations are splitting. And the wrestlers decide, before these, like a few of the wrestlers leave, they decide they're gonna give each other a big hug on the stage and they're gonna, they'll basically drop the facade. And you should see the crowd and the way they react. The crowd, I was like, but surely they know that it's not real.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  So the crowd got very angry.

• 1:05:23Trevor Noah?

  The crowd got, they were furious. They were, they were like, how, how could you? How could Shawn Michaels hug, you know, Triple H? How, how, it was, and I was like, oh yeah, this is, this in many ways is what I think has happened with American politics and to your point, the discourse. The leaders said, these are my, these are our enemies. People then adopted that. How do you now discuss with your enemy?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  I think we're, I think we're putting too much blame on politicians.

• 1:05:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh no, I'm not putting all of it.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  And not enough responsibility on-

• 1:05:56Trevor Noah?

  On individuals?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then also, I mean, which came first? What you said about social media, I, I agree more with, which is,

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  yeah, I mean, this whole politician thing, you think everybody watches politicians, I mean-

• 1:06:08Trevor Noah?

  I think everybody's affected by them. I think Donald Trump has shifted.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he's running a cult.

• 1:06:14Trevor Noah?

  No, but still, but aren't they all in some way, shape or form?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  The Democrats is a bad cult.

• 1:06:19Trevor Noah?

  No, but it's still, but I'm saying like, let's take the Democrats away. Let's look at people, because the Republicans also weren't great. Obama, Trump.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, culty.

• 1:06:26Trevor Noah?

  Right? We talked about it with Josh, where he said, that's why he calls him White Obama. He says, and people get angry and I understand why, but on that episode when we talk about it with Josh, we. It's because.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Calls Trump White Obama.

• 1:06:37Trevor Noah?

  So he, he says, what, what Obama represented to so many people, especially black people. Trump represents to like so many white people where they go, ah, this is our moment. This is our, the, the, the sort of lost dream, the lost idea. And it's, it's a comedy premise, but he's not going, these are the same people. He's just saying for them, that is their promise.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  You say one, one speaks to the darkness, the other speaks to the light. There's an overlap in their voters and they both speak to some aspirations, but in different ways. That's the argument, you know?

• 1:07:10Trevor Noah?

  It's hope, but in different directions.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:07:13Trevor Noah?

  Obama goes, hope.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  You're not sold. I love it.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm not.

• 1:07:17Trevor Noah?

  I, I mean, Chimamanda is not sold on anything, though.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  I like it.

• 1:07:21Trevor Noah?

  No, I mean, this is.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  This is not true. That's, that's good. This is, this is true.

• 1:07:25Trevor Noah?

  The same way Cristiano is not sold on, I, I don't expect to sell you on something.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  No, I am sold on something. No, I'm just thinking about it and whatever. It's not interesting to me.

• 1:07:40Trevor Noah?

  So, yeah, so I, I will say this for the, I think it's a lot harder. I understand where a student or any person comes, and I, to talk of empathy, I understand it in, in, in all ways, to be honest with you. I can see somebody who goes, no, this, this country, we, we have to completely change this and it's gone to the dogs, quote unquote. But then I also understand somebody who says, a lot of the language you're using or a lot of these ideas, you don't even know where they came from. So you may be thinking of it just through the lens of school choice. But for many people who have dug into the trenches of where ideas come from, you start to realise that some of the ideas are innocuous in their sound. But where they were, where they were written, you know what I mean?

• 1:08:25Trevor Noah?

  Like how they were created.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  That's fair, that's fair. But the person who, who supports school choice does not know.

• 1:08:31Trevor Noah?

  I agree with that.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  This history.

• 1:08:32Trevor Noah?

  I agree with that completely.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  And then there's the assumption that that person should know. And then that person is judged on that. And then that person is ignored and blacklisted. But that person does not know.

• 1:08:41Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  And it's also this new world where you're not even allowed, I mean, curiosity is dead. And I, you know, as a person who just, I love learning. And I just keep thinking, what, what have we lost in this new sort of world where people don't even, even to ask a question, you're uncomfortable. I remember when I spoke at um, an Ivy League university, which will be unnamed. And um, and so I, I had a few of the students in a sort of private meeting where I just, because I, I like to know what young people are really thinking.

• 1:09:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Away from the grownups. And so we started talking and, and then I said, you know, I knew if you're like uncomfortable to say what you really think. Everyone was like, no. And then one person goes, yeah, but sometimes, and suddenly all of them were like, yeah, sometimes. And even that struck me because I remember thinking we've gone from that kind of almost forced conformity to suddenly thinking, okay, maybe it's, maybe I can actually say what I'm really thinking.

• 1:09:45Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Right? And there was something about it that just made me sad. Because I thought they were graduating. And I thought, what have they lost out on learning in the four years they've been here? Because they've been too unsure, uncomfortable about asking questions. And again, so what I mean about these, these kids are not the fringe on Twitter.

• 1:10:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:10:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  But they already know that I better be careful, otherwise somebody will think that I'm.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  A person who hates black people.

• 1:10:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, no.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  Do you see what I mean?

• 1:10:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  And so I don't know, it just made me, it just made me so sad.

• 1:10:22Trevor Noah?

  Do you think that's a byproduct of who actually holds the power in universities? You know, like you see funding being pulled, you see

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Trevor Noah?

  rich donors saying, if you teach that, then I'm pulling my funding if you.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, I think a large part of America's academia problem is money. There's just so much money that, um, I mean, even the, even the entitlement of the students is about money.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  I mean, the school fees are high.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  They're high, right? They're high. And so students feel like, well, I've bought this. I mean, when I was, when I taught, I taught creative writing at Princeton when I, when I was doing a fellowship. And I remember a student coming to me and saying, you gave me a C. I've never gotten a C in my life. And I was like, uh huh, how is that my problem?

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  I said, can we, I can show you why. I mean, so I thought if, if the student had come to me to say, I want to prove to you that you've kind of, you know, here's why I should not get the C. Here's the thing on my paper. But no, the student said, I have never had a C in my life. This is my first C, and so I want you to change it. And so my first thought was, you know, I don't blame you. Maybe your father gave money to Princeton. But my dear, this is your grade because this is what you wrote in your paper. And we can discuss your paper. But you know, I feel like, so it's money, money, no, really. And then, you know, they have so much money and the endowments, but there's, you know, people are giving them money. And so they have special dinners for them. And so money, I think, is a major problem. And that's happening so much more.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  This whole, you know, I'm going to, I will, I will withhold my, my, um, my promised grant.

• 1:11:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  If you don't do, and then I think Israel, Israel, Palestine has really made that so much more, you know, whether like if you're doing that therefore. And I just think, I also just wish that universities were not so beholden to people who have money. Because then they, I think they would be more. Courageous.

• 1:12:16Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  I think there's very little courage left in the public space. That's what I mean about longing for. I I'm like on my log going dream count. I want I'm longing for what is noble, what is beautiful. I want heroes. I want people I can look up to and admire and learn from. I think there's a large part of me that is disillusioned, disappointed, even heartbroken. I hide it in sarcasm, but it's all there.

• 1:12:46Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:48Trevor Noah?

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• 1:14:12Trevor Noah?

  Do you think there's a part of you that not wishes or I wonder if you know this this happens to everyone in the public space. You and I were talking about this. I have experienced this. Almost everyone has. There will be a moment where it feels like you are a hero. And then it feels like the natural part of that journey is to now be the villain or to have like, you know, and I don't know if it's art imitating life or vice versa.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  So like you're placed high up that the only

• 1:14:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like, you know, like I think about how if you and I had a conversation, I remember our first conversation, it was like I was speaking to Jesus. Not really. That's how people, they're like, wow, you're gonna speak to, oh, wow, I, oh, I ask her how, how, but it was, it was such a, in a beautiful way, but it was really, but people were like, wow, oh, I, and you know, your words were gospel and this whole thing. And then I remember saying now to people, I was like, oh, I'm gonna speak to Chimamanda. And they were like, woo, yeah, it gets you in trouble. Just so you know, you might get in a little trouble. There might be the, and I, I

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  That's interesting to know.

• 1:15:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, I, well, I mean, you're not on social media, I guess, but I don't know if it's because people wish for it to be the natural progression, or if sort of going to what we started with, your fame

• 1:15:36Trevor Noah?

  sort of metastasizes for some people where they wish for you to be. They create an idea of everything that you must think. And if you deviate at any point from what they think you think, then they go, the whole thing must come down. Does that make sense?

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  That's interesting. How would it get you in trouble, though?

• 1:15:54Trevor Noah?

  How would what get me in trouble?

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  Talking to me.

• 1:15:56Trevor Noah?

  Well, everyone has a different opinion on why. Some people will be like, oh, you're gonna talk to her. She's anti-trans. How, I mean, are you gonna talk to a transphobe? And I'm like, I don't think Chimamanda's transphobic. And they're like, oh, oh, oh, you better check. Then someone else will go, oh, she's right wing leaning. And I'm like, I'm pretty certain Chimamanda's not right wing leaning. And they're like, no, you see what she says about anti-cancel culture. And then I go, okay, now, this is me as Trevor. What I always try and do for myself is I try and At all costs, form my own opinion on something and then allow the world to in some way, shape or form bump up against that opinion. Cause I don't live in isolation.

• 1:16:35Trevor Noah?

  But when I read your, your piece on how we, it wasn't cancel, you said something was beautiful is about, um. Uh, was it purity or forgive me, I remember the message, but not all the words. But it was, I remember reading it thinking, damn, this is a really insightful, messy and honest view on how we're dealing with conversations in society. You're failing a purity test and we're writing people off. And you know, I've said this to you a thousand times, Christiana, I go, guys, it's not sustainable to lose your whole family because your uncle said this thing. I was like, politicians will come and go, topics will come and go, the people in your life hopefully won't. I'm a big fan of that, right?

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  This is the reason I'm not on social media.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  I come for it from a different perspective. I think I hate how in America it's like, you're right, you're left, you're right, you're left. Cause I think people contain multiple ideological positions on some issues on some like right wing leaning on what? Left, there is no one.

• 1:17:33Trevor Noah?

  Yes, yes, but it's buffet politics.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  I don't know, what, what are right wing ideas? I mean, right, even, even, even that has shifted, right?

• 1:17:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Which, which is why it's not about, and I agree with you that nobody, we're not, we're not pure. I mean, we, you know, and especially when you're a person who comes from, you know, um, the reasonable, reasonable regions of the world. That is Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East. You kind of understand, you know, you have uncles who, I mean, I have relatives who still think that women really should not be working outside the home. And you know, and then there's me. And we still happen to get along. Yeah. And I think that there are certain views that um some of my views have changed as I've become older.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Even I think in some ways my feminism has changed. I think, for example, when I was younger, I didn't want to talk about women's bodies. Because I felt that this is how this is how they stigmatize women. I felt like, no, nobody should talk about PMS. Because they use that to justify excluding women. They'll say things like, how can a woman be president when she has PMS, she's going to press the button, right? But now I realize, actually, men press the button without PMS as an excuse. So maybe women are still the better choice, right? If we can just get their hormones stable, then we're fine. But men, my god, no PMS and they're just doing crazy things. So but that has changed for me.

• 1:19:03Trevor Noah?

  I can list people in every field, comedians who say, I mean, now I say a thing that's a joke. It used to be agreed that this was a joke. We all knew that this wasn't real. It's fiction. I do not want to kill my mother-in-law. And now someone goes, oh, for you to be furthering the idea of violence. You're like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, like Jimmy Carr says it really beautifully, the British comedian. He had this thing that he used to play at the beginning of his shows in response to this. And he'd have a message that would come on and it would say, hello, I'm Jimmy Carr and I'm a comedian. I want you to know that I'm going to be making some jokes about terrible things tonight. But remember, these are jokes about the terrible things. These are not the terrible things. The jokes are not making the terrible things and the jokes are not changing the terrible things, but these are the jokes about the things. So have a have a good time. These are jokes.

• 1:19:46Trevor Noah?

  And but I was amazed that even he had to like put that in his show. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  But I do think, though, that I can tell you that the certain jokes I will not laugh at, that certain things I refuse to laugh about.

• 1:19:58Trevor Noah?

  But that's fine. That's comedy. It's like there's some people who don't like spicy food. I judge them, but I I don't mind that they do.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  No, I think, no, I don't think that's a good analogy.

• 1:20:05Trevor Noah?

  Why not?

• 1:20:06Speaker 02

  Because when I say I won't laugh, it's not like, oh, it's just my taste. It's more that I think, in some ways, similar to what you said about school choice.

• 1:20:14Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  About how that people who know that maybe deep down in the language or in the foundation of that idea, there's something that's actually quite, you know, toxic on.

• 1:20:23Trevor Noah?

  Something pernicious, isn't it? Yeah.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  So that's what I mean about the certain jokes I won't laugh about because I just I think that there's certain jokes that are not just jokes. I think sometimes people are not laughing with you, they're laughing at you.

• 1:20:37Trevor Noah?

  Ah, but I think this is a dangerous road to go down because you're you're a fiction writer. So someone could say to you, Chimamanda, your book. We ah with this cannot exist in because it is not, it is.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  No, no, not cannot exist. So ah here's the difference.

• 1:20:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  I will not laugh at that joke, but I'm not going to say you cannot say that joke.

• 1:20:54Trevor Noah?

  Okay, no, no, no, but then we're on the same, but that's what I mean by, that's why I'm saying it is taste. So comedians, and we love even doing this as comedians, we'll be in a show, we'll watch a comedian tell a very racist joke, we'll go. That's funny and it's racist. And as comedians, we say the the the craft of what the person is doing in terms of making a thing funny, they've done. But we're also acknowledging the roots of it. It is racist. The same way I can look at like food. Yeah. And I go like, yeah, this food is poisonous, but it's delicious. Do you know what I mean? And so I I think, no, I think we're on the same page there. I I'm not saying people should laugh at everything, the same way. I don't think people should enjoy every book or every point of view, etc. However, yeah, that's that's why I think, you know, we actually, we're saying the same thing.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. But no, but Trevor, I want to go back to you. You asked me a question about making a decision sort of almost solo on your own versus. And I I don't think of it as as that kind of clear cut dichotomy because I don't think it's even possible.

• 1:21:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I wasn't saying clear cut. I was saying more like, how do you find the balance? Like, what do you think the responsibility is? Because.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Trevor Noah?

  I don't think it's clear cut, but you you you you you exist somewhere on that spectrum.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  I exist on the, I'm sort of lean, I lean, right wing leaning, I lean towards thinking.

• 1:22:11Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  I I really believe in sort of lucid thinking.

• 1:22:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  So and I like clarity and I, you know, I'm a writer. I also like words to mean what they mean. I like clarity of language. I like clarity of thought. I like thinking about things. And, you know, from the time I was a little girl, I I just was never a person who went along with what I was supposed to to to do or believe. I've always kind of wanted to do it. I want to sit with this for a while and think about it.

• 1:22:42Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  But also I want to make decisions based on knowledge and information. So I'm very keen on learning. Like, if there's a subject and so I want to go read about it.

• 1:22:50Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  You know, so A I, I've been reading books about A I, I don't know what the hell that's about. So now I know things like this generative A I, there's predictive A I, and did you know about the training models?

• 1:23:01Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  But so so when I say make up my own mind, it's not that I just sit there with nothing. I want to I want to gather information and then I want to process it for myself.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  You're a student.

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm a student and I always want to be a student. But what I can tell you is that I'm never going to be swayed by criticism. Never. That's never going to happen. I am the daughter of James and Grace Adichie and it's not going to happen.

• 1:23:27Trevor Noah?

  Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  That's it. That I have my opinions. I can I can, and you know, and I can have conversations with you about why I have those opinions. And I'm also very keen to know why you disagree.

• 1:23:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  You know, if you're if if you're a person who can actually make coherent sentences about why you disagree. So, yeah.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  So you encourage the discourse and the dialogue.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  But it has to be grounded in, I guess, intellectual curiosity. And it seems like from reading your essays and your work, a mutual respect.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  The affront to you is just like, don't be disrespectful, which is how I would don't disrespect me or I'm gonna leave.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes. If there's disrespect, I will not take it. I'm just not going to. And I think also, I mean, I remember once saying to somebody, you know, I was loved.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  And I am loved. I had the best parents in the world. So I do not need to campaign for your love.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  You know, I don't need to do, I don't need to change myself for you. If you like me, I'm happy that you like me. If you don't like me.

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  I'm still me. And I wish that that was easier for more people. Especially women.

• 1:24:32Trevor Noah?

  There's a line in the book where one of your characters is basically talking about,

• 1:24:39Trevor Noah?

  I think like how the world is shaped. And they basically say something to the effect of,

• 1:24:47Trevor Noah?

  it's almost like, America doesn't know that the world isn't America.

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  Yes. Only America is America.

• 1:24:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and I remember having this discussion with a friend of mine, who was taken aback because they really felt offended and I understood why. It was.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Trevor, is there anything you do not understand?

• 1:25:02Trevor Noah?

  No, I try to understand most things, genuinely. I think everything is.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  That, by the way, was a joke.

• 1:25:07Trevor Noah?

  Oh. Everything is, no, everything's understandable, but I'm just like, agreeing is different, I think. So, I remember.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  You would make a good fiction writer. This is actually how we were supposed to see, you know, you're supposed to kind of understand everybody's point of view without necessarily agreeing.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  It's because he's biracial and he was born in apartheid.

• 1:25:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I think, I think so.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  He didn't fit anywhere, so he had to understand.

• 1:25:28Trevor Noah?

  No, I think so in many ways, I think.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  The different vantage points.

• 1:25:30Trevor Noah?

  I've been forced, I've been trained from my birth to be that way as a person. So, I had no one way of eating food. I had no one way of celebrating a Christmas. I had no one way of speaking a language. I had no one way of my hair looking, my face looking. I had no one way of my country being. I had, so I've never believed that there is a one way. You get what I'm saying? So, so I remember like, one of the first ones that came to me was, I remember, I told this as a joke in one of my shows long ago, but I said, I always found it interesting that people would mock someone with another accent. But I go, but somebody who has an accent, it means that they're fluent in another language. And that, that was something that, so for me, when you talk about understand, I would always go, yeah, if somebody has a funny accent, it can be funny,

• 1:26:12Trevor Noah?

  but don't ever forget that it means that they speak another language fluently. That's why they have the accent. And so, when I, when I think of these things, I was, I was doing shows in the Middle East. And my friend said to me, hey man, I mean, don't, aren't you conflicted? You go to the Middle East and you do shows and, and I said, what, what do you want me to be conflicted about? And they said, well, I mean, you know, their views on gay marriage. And I said, it's interesting that you asked me this because America's views on gay marriage are not as old as you think. Like, this is a now thing. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we have to remember homophobia is alive and well in America.

• 1:26:50Trevor Noah?

  But what I'm saying is, what got me with that was, I was saying, I'm not dismissing it, far from it, you know what I mean? But what I'm saying is, it's interesting how, for me, when America has finished with an issue, has decided a place, it then now goes, that is correct now for the world. So, before gay marriage is accepted in America, Americans go like, no, gay marriage is, no, God, Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Come on, we all agree on this. America says gay marriage, and then America goes on a conquest around the world, pointing at every country to be like, where's your gay marriage? And then I go, guys, how old is the UAE as a place? Like, as an actual country? How old is it? And I go, if you look at the advancements they've made, in the time that they've been

• 1:27:34Trevor Noah?

  a country, versus how long it took America to get to those places, it's actually pretty impressive. Now, you want them to do it overnight because you've already agreed upon it, but you're not giving them their time to get to it, which I think we all do as people. Why have you not found Jesus yet? I found Jesus. Then you're like, yeah, but there was a time when you hadn't found Jesus. Yes, but now that I've found him, why don't you find Jesus? Do you understand what I'm saying?

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you say we all do it, I don't think we all do it. But anyway.

• 1:28:00Trevor Noah?

  Oh, maybe you'd.

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:28:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, but I think when I say all, I mean the collective, you know?

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  Well, you know what's interesting? And it's true. It's true about Americans. And

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  I think it comes from, I mean, just listening to you, and, you know, this person says to you, aren't you conflicted? Then you're saying, let's look at the UAE, how old is it?

• 1:28:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  And I'm just thinking, you know, that, that American point of view often comes from a place of just not knowing very much about the world. And also not, I sometimes feel that, that arguments in this country are not rooted in information and knowledge.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  It's not just that often they can feel like performances, but it would be nice if so someone said, why aren't you conflicted? And someone else says, no, I'm not conflicted. Well, people like jokes. And so I'm going to go where people like jokes. I think that's kind of what you would often hear in America.

• 1:28:57Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Rather than, how old is a UAE? How long does it take a society to evolve? What are the changes that have happened that speak to a certain kind of hopeful progressivism? That doesn't happen. So Trevor, you need to start classes.

• 1:29:16Trevor Noah?

  I mean, this is the class.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  No, we should teach people how. No, but really, I'm just thinking, and I think it is true about really a lot of things. You know, I just wish that sometimes if there was a huge issue of the day, outrage of the day, that people would be like, I'm not going to have an opinion until I've read a book about it.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Take a bit. You know, Trevor's the king of that. Not the book, but remember at the show, The Daily Show, I think it was Jussie Smollet is the example that always comes to mind. Jussie Smollet. The incident happened where he said he was assaulted by these Trump people. We're doing the meeting, we're watching the videos and, you know, people are, oh, this is so outrageous. This is so sad. Myself, who's like Trotsky on the far left, and another writer who I won't name, but is pretty right wing. We both said, there's something not right. And Trevor said, you see these two people? They never agree.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  I did say that.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  And he's like, guys, let's pause. Trevor said, we're not gonna, we're not gonna cover this.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  We're not gonna go for like MAGA racist. And we had all the roles, because it's like, it's a big production to get all these clips. We had all the roles, people had the take, people had made jokes about how it was. And Trevor was like, let's take a beat. And this was like on the Monday or Tuesday. Wednesday, more's coming in. You know, people are saying justice for justice. Jussie Smollet, like Pamela Harris, everyone's tweeting. Trevor's still like, let's take a beat. I think it wasn't until like Wednesday or Thursday, it emerges that. You know, the story wasn't what he was professing it to be. And Trevor was like, okay, now we're ready. And I always think about that when a story breaks or there's some hot button issue. Because I'm, listen, I'm always like, I'm quite fiery, as you may have gathered.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  I used to be of the view of like, this is my opinion. But Trevor's very good at, let's take a beat, let's read more. I used to be frustrated because I'd be like, this happened to these people, they're dying. And Trevor said, well, people die every day. We can't like, we have to have an informed response to what's happening.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  I feel the same way.

• 1:31:10Trevor Noah?

  But I, so here's where I have a compassion for people. I think it's unfair for us to expect that of people because they are living in the world that they're living in.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Trevor Noah?

  You know?

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:31:20Trevor Noah?

  No, I honestly.

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

  It's unfair to expect it of everyone?

• 1:31:23Trevor Noah?

  Yes. I think, I think, I'll tell you, I'll tell you why.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  No, I'm sorry, Trevor, no.

• 1:31:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you can disagree, but let me explain.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  People have a certain responsibility. It's unfair to expect it of people who are deep inside something. So for example, to say, if you said to me, it's unfair to expect people in Gaza, or it's unfair to expect people who lived through what happened in Israel to be rational or objective. I agree with that. But the average person, no.

• 1:31:50Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  We have a responsibility.

• 1:31:52Trevor Noah?

  But now here's.

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  So are you, are you Jesus then? Are you above everyone else? How come you, no, but really?

• 1:31:57Trevor Noah?

  No, let me explain.

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  How come you?

• 1:31:59Trevor Noah?

  Let me explain why, okay, let me explain why.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  Because this argument, I'm going to say that the foundation of it is very self-aggrandizing.

• 1:32:05Trevor Noah?

  I'll, I'll tell you why, okay.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:32:07Trevor Noah?

  So here's what I think. I think we all have areas where we are able to see what others cannot see. It might present itself differently. I think LeBron James sees things on a court that most human beings cannot. That just happens to be his area where he sees it. There'll be things that I see that other people cannot. You can choose a field, you can choose a world. There are people who see things that others cannot. I think in society, once we created institutions, we basically outsourced that expertise to institutions in a very good way. And that became a lot of what advanced society, right? And so like, let's, let's think of it this way.

• 1:32:43Trevor Noah?

  Let's look at a nutrition label on a box of something or food when they would say healthy or whatever. People are relying on the fact that that food has been inspected and so it is healthy and so they will ingest it.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that but that's kind of different though.

• 1:32:58Trevor Noah?

  No, but why?

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  Different from there's a new outrage of the day, like this story that you told of the guy who said someone had mocked him.

• 1:33:05Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  And suddenly people have opinions. My thing is often people don't, so I'm.

• 1:33:11Trevor Noah?

  But there's no book to read on that. What do you want them to do?

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  But I think we're not disagreeing all the way. Are you talking about that, the reflexive urge to take a side?

• 1:33:19Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  And you want people to take a beat?

• 1:33:21Trevor Noah?

  Yes. I'm with you completely on this.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  My thing, and so I often also say, go to the primary source. Like, so sometimes someone will forward something to me, is this true? And I'm just like, where did you get this from?

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  But, Chi, my man, I think you are overestimating people's ability to even know what the source should be. Like, I went to journalism school and sometimes I've been tricked.

• 1:33:44Trevor Noah?

  But that's.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  I've been tricked myself.

• 1:33:46Trevor Noah?

  In what way?

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  You know, there's sometimes it's just like, there, I can't, there was an, I think it was an A I thing. I was sent something recently and I was momentarily duped until I dug a bit deeper and I was like, oh, this is not true. This is manufactured. And I think we assume people to be a lot more literate than they are. And and that's not, that's not coming from an arrogant place. I'm just flooded with information. And I tell you, I'm like, sometimes I get WhatsApp forwards from my aunties. I'm like, Auntie, where did you, especially during Covid, chew ginger. And I was like, Auntie, but she was like, no, don't get the vaccine, chew ginger and you'll be fine, right? And to task that person with finding the truth, a lot of people don't know where to start, especially where we are being flooded with misinformation.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  So I think Trevor's saying maybe we should have a bit more grace because not everyone is able to maneuver in the same way.

• 1:34:35Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm saying, I'm saying that we should not take for granted the fact that the systems have been corrupted in such a way that the people who are looking for the thing are often the ones who are duped the most. A perfect example is vaccines, right? Most of the parents who don't want to get their kids vaccinated, read more than the parents who get their kids vaccinated. They go out there and they say, I want to do the research. I want to learn. I want to inform myself. What is a vaccine? What's going into my child? What's happening? And because of that and the information that they then get their hands on, they then make the decision to not vaccinate their child because they think that they have been able to do quote unquote more research than an institution or than a body of science or medicine.

• 1:35:16Trevor Noah?

  And so in the same way like you, like you've gone and you've read a book on artificial intelligence. That's what I think a lot of people are doing. And I'm not saying you are doing this, by the way. But then someone might go, no, I've read a book on artificial intelligence. Ergo, I now know it for myself. And it's like, no, no, no, no. Trust me, a data scientist and an engineer who's actually coded that they know it more than you do. The book has tried to give you some sort of introduction to it, but the expert is still the expert of it. And so I think what I mean by all of this is we like, America is an example. I used to think that a lot of America's decisions were from like a lack of knowledge. And I think it is in many ways, but I also think it's like, it's like the, the history of the place, right? Look at what America was when it becomes this world power.

• 1:36:01Trevor Noah?

  It's a coming together. It's a university of everyone. The brightest thinkers, you know, the smartest from Eastern Europe, the, the most brilliant from, from like the UK. It's just this melting pot of the most brilliant human beings who've come together. And you could argue at some point, America is the bastion of like science and freedom and ideas and thinking and the schools of different, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think like most systems or even like most people, you can think that that will just maintain itself. But you might be stuck in time. And so I think America still thinks that it is ahead of the world in everything because it may have been at a time.

• 1:36:41Trevor Noah?

  But I, I, I have, I have a lot of compassion for people who are in that system because I go, you know, it's Plato's cave. If you're in the cave, how can you know that you're in the cave? If the cave is telling you that it's not a cave, it's the only world you've ever been in. So how do I give you that responsibility?

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:36:59Trevor Noah?

  I think we should put the responsibility at the feet, the same way, I don't think it's our responsibility to recycle. I think it's the government's responsibility to make sure that the things that need to be recycled aren't even made in the first place.

• 1:37:09Speaker 02

  So I think both things can be true, though.

• 1:37:11Trevor Noah?

  I'm with you. Ah, there, my sister, hundred percent.

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  Because, I mean.

• 1:37:15Trevor Noah?

  No, there, hundred percent.

• 1:37:16Speaker 02

  And because I really do believe in the idea of experts, I really do, like, I want, and this is also the thing, I often say, I want a president who knows more than I do. Like, I, you know, I want in every country that I, but anyway, um, that's not the case. But, yes, we want experts and, yes, misinformation is increasingly a problem. But I think there is still, and what you said about people who read about va- vaccines, I mean, I take your point.

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  But I think that those people, is it fair to say that they have already started with a kind of conspiracy theory point of view? Which will then, I think, shape where they read, because if we are talking about experts, maybe they should go to the, maybe the CDC website.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  But they don't.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  To that point, though, what I think there is, there is no center right now, you know, when we're talking about the.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  So that's, that's the point, that's what I mean about ex, even the, even the idea of experts has been corrupted.

• 1:38:13Trevor Noah?

  That's what I mean, because don't forget, the CDC were the same ones who told people not to wear masks.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:38:18Trevor Noah?

  Because they actually just wanted to make sure masks didn't get run out, like, the masks weren't taken away from the doctors. But they lied to the people.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  They had been more honest about that.

• 1:38:26Trevor Noah?

  You see, so now, imagine somebody going, wait, they lied.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:31Trevor Noah?

  And they go, yeah, but we lied for good reasons, the same way like any child therapist will tell you, your kid doesn't care why you lied, they just know that you lied. And now they know that lying is allowed, even though mommy or daddy says lying is not allowed, because they've watched your actions. And I think that's what I mean, is like, if somebody has been lied to by the CDC about, maybe they had good intentions, but they've been lied to. How do they now then trust that same CDC versus now the account that told them something else, and then that account happened to be true? And you just need like a few truths to start sprinkling in the rest of the lies, right? If the, if your baseline.

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  But that's CDC action, how do we feel about it? I mean, can we really not make a distinction between?

• 1:39:11Trevor Noah?

  I think it was terrible.

• 1:39:13Speaker 02

  So do I.

• 1:39:13Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  But does it cause you to then distrust everything the C D C says?

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  No, I think for most rational people it doesn't, but we're in a heightened time where there is just like a lot of institutional distrust. I mean, I'm so, I, I, my husband thinks I'm susceptible to cults.

• 1:39:28Trevor Noah?

  No, but I think everyone's, everyone is.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Like.

• 1:39:30Trevor Noah?

  I think everyone is.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  Not just what the algorithm feeds you, but it's been a destabilizing few years. And you, the, I think everyone's asking themselves this question, what is true? And what do I believe? What am I? And that's why we're, because of the fear, we're going to all these extremes. And for a lot of people, they're just like, I, I, the C D C did this one thing wrong, forget the C D C.

• 1:39:48Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? Um, whether that's right or not, I, I can't really judge, but I think there's just so much mistrust.

• 1:39:56Trevor Noah?

  You know, honestly, that's probably one of the biggest reasons I do love fiction. One of the biggest reasons I love fiction is because I do not have to question whether it's real or not. And then I'm more susceptible to the message that it's giving me. I, I mean this, honestly.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  You said it's the last frontier.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:10Trevor Noah?

  Because when it is fact, I, who said this? Who said, what's the data? What's the information? What's, and we do episodes on this all the time. We talk about these things. The data's flawed, the, the study was flawed, the people running. But with fiction, I just go, this is the world you've created. It, I don't have to question its realness, but the messages I can completely accept, disagree with.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:34Trevor Noah?

  Respond to, because in a weird way, fiction creates the most real reality.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  It does, it does. You couldn't have said it better. Bravo.

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  People should read more novels and short stories.

• 1:40:49Trevor Noah?

  I agree.

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  And sometimes even the old ones, because there's just lovely wisdom in them, I think. I mean, you know.

• 1:40:55Trevor Noah?

  Do you have any favorites you'd recommend?

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  Um. Old or?

• 1:41:00Trevor Noah?

  No, old, old, yeah, old.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  I really like Middlemarch. I think it's very, it's very long, but it's very wise and just really.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  I was going to say teaches you, but actually it does.

• 1:41:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Speaker 02

  You know, in a way that you're having fun, but you're also learning and and you're in the hands of a very wise writer. There's a wonderful writer from Poland who wrote this book called The Beautiful Mrs. And I cannot pronounce the name Sidonman. But if you just go The Beautiful Mrs.

• 1:41:28Trevor Noah?

  It will come up, yeah, it will come up.

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  I also just find it very wise. I love realism. I don't really like speculative fiction. I'm not interested in science fiction. And I I just feel like I learned the most from novels because I learn about human beings and I think it helps. It helps me understand the world and helps me. Oh, there's something I forgot to say, which I have to say.

• 1:41:50Trevor Noah?

  Say it is.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  So I increasingly I'm fascinated by how what people think is sophisticated is in fact not at all.

• 1:41:59Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a sense in which the the arguments and the positions are really incredibly simple and simplistic. But but the people who who talk about them think that they're very sophisticated.

• 1:42:15Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  And I'm thinking about that because of what you said about a certain kind of um maybe an insufficient self-knowledge. So in other words, the way that America thinks that it is still leading the world.

• 1:42:30Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:42:31Speaker 02

  Is the same way that I think certain people in America think that they're incredibly sophisticated in their thinking. But actually, it's very provincial and simple.

• 1:42:39Trevor Noah?

  Yes, that I can agree with.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  On that note, thank you.

• 1:42:43Trevor Noah?

  Thank you.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Thank you. Imela.

• 1:42:45Trevor Noah?

  Thank you very much. For real, this was this was too much fun for me.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  So, Miss Chotsky, tell me.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  No, I'm not God. I don't want to need. I don't want any trouble.

• 1:42:56Trevor Noah?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:43:02Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Tsunaz Yamin and Jodi Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackel. Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.

• 1:43:41Speaker 05

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