Eliza Filby: Hard Work Is a Lie, This Is What Rich People Never Tell You

We were all told the same story. Work hard, get an education, and the world will reward you. Dr. Eliza Filby joins us to explain why that story has quietly collapsed, and why inheritance, family money, and generational wealth now shape your future more than anything you do on your own. This episode breaks down the truth about the great wealth transfer, why millennials feel like they are failing, why men are angrier, why women are more stressed than ever, why Gen Z sees the world more clearly than we did, and why most people’s lives are shaped by money they never earned and stories they never questioned. If you have ever wondered why life feels harder than it was for your parents, this conversation will change the way you see work, success, family, and the future.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Millennials are struggling to make as much money as their baby boomer parents. They face greater wealth inequality than previous generations.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  It's called the great wealth transfer. More than 100 trillion dollars expected to go from baby boomers to Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Z by 2048.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  One of the best things that you can do to save money in 2025 is to live at home with your parents.

• 0:22Speaker 03

  The only reason that I was able to save my first hundred thousand dollars was because I lived at home.

• 0:26Speaker 04

  You don't pay your rent?

• 0:27Speaker 05

  I'm like one of those spoiled rich kids that doesn't pay rent.

• 0:30Speaker 06

  Historian, author and generational expert Dr. Eliza Filby. Eliza's writing has been published in The Times, The Guardian and The Financial Times. And she's recently published her latest book, In Heritocracy. It's time to talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad.

• 0:50Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now? with Trevor Noah.

• 0:55Trevor Noah?

  This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. Earth can be a lot sometimes. Heatwaves, gas prices, bad hair days. Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off your problems and turn on your favorite movies and shows. You know, the ones you already love. From Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy, 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. This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating?

• 1:40Trevor Noah?

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

• 2:26Trevor Noah?

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• 3:11Trevor Noah?

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• 3:40Speaker 06

  That's good tea.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Mmm.

• 3:41Speaker 06

  It's good tea, yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  I've been having that since. I'd have covered by mistake.

• 3:45Trevor Noah?

  What tea is that?

• 3:46Speaker 06

  The tea, why? Because herbal tea.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Ginger and lemon.

• 3:50Trevor Noah?

  That always feels like medicine to me.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  No, this one is actually, doesn't have that medicinal taste.

• 3:54Trevor Noah?

  Are you sure?

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 3:55Trevor Noah?

  It's lemon and ginger. Lemon and ginger to me are medicines.

• 3:58Speaker 06

  It is medicine.

• 3:58Trevor Noah?

  I enjoy them, but they're medicines.

• 4:00Speaker 06

  Your body just thanks you. It just thanks you when you drink.

• 4:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because it's medicine.

• 4:04Speaker 06

  You know, it doesn't thank you when you drink coffee.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:06Trevor Noah?

  Because it's not medicine.

• 4:08Speaker 06

  No, it's stimulant.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  I prefer, so I usually have, if I haven't eaten anything, I'll have the coffee, the matcha, I mean, the mocha. But if I've eaten like I have now, this does me good.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  Mmm.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Because it helps me from feeding.

• 4:20Speaker 06

  It settles your stomach.

• 4:22Trevor Noah?

  Medicine. Everything you've said is medicine here.

• 4:28Speaker 06

  But don't you think, don't you think as actually as a sort of human beings are getting better relearning all that we've forgotten in the age of like mass consumption about food, we're relearning it all. And slapping a fat price on it and charging the earth for it.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and giving it name.

• 4:45Speaker 06

  And discovering herbal tea.

• 4:47Trevor Noah?

  I always say, I always say the greatest trick corporations ever pulled was getting poor people to be ashamed of all the things that they do and consume. And then once they're gone off of it, the corporations jump in and then they, they claim it and then they sell it for a fortune. And then when you try to come back, it's gone now.

• 5:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:09Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? Like everything, everything, everything.

• 5:11Speaker 06

  All of that learning, all of that knowledge throughout the family.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:16Speaker 06

  The, the culture, the cooking down the generations has gone.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Language.

• 5:20Speaker 06

  You've infused, you know, what, you know, the sort of idea of eating from a KFC bucket as part of like family time.

• 5:31Speaker 06

  And yeah, slapped a fat price on something that was originally basically.

• 5:36Trevor Noah?

  Like, um, I, I was always amazed when we were growing up, one of the things moms used to get shamed for all the time, especially African mothers, was tying their children to their back.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 5:46Trevor Noah?

  With like a blanket or with a, you know, whatever fabric you'd use. And they'd be like, oh, the ergonomics are terrible. There's no support. This is not how you should hold a baby. Your child's legs are being.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're suffocating your child.

• 5:58Trevor Noah?

  Oh, the whole thing, the whole thing. And then like you'd see over time, people like, oh, you've got to get better. We've got to buy a pram. Got to buy a stroller. You've got to, it became this whole world. And then when that was done and that maybe that market was saturated, all of a sudden they went, you know, there's a more organic way to hold your child. And they're like, let me introduce you to the baby sling.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Who was telling this thing, Trevor?

• 6:18Speaker 06

  This is how you reconnect with your child.

• 6:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and they're like.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  I like, I like it better when you said it. Cause all of that.

• 6:24Speaker 06

  No, no, no.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  What's the seduction about?

• 6:27Trevor Noah?

  I sell things.

• 6:28Speaker 06

  There is, no, to reinforce your point.

• 6:29Trevor Noah?

  It's the seduction of selling.

• 6:30Speaker 06

  No, but to reinforce your point, there is a shop in Tooting, where I grew up, where the book is based.

• 6:34Trevor Noah?

  In where?

• 6:35Speaker 06

  Tooting.

• 6:35Trevor Noah?

  Tooting?

• 6:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:37Trevor Noah?

  You're from Tooting?

• 6:37Speaker 06

  I'm from Tooting.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  You've been to Tooting?

• 6:39Trevor Noah?

  I didn't know that Tooting was a ting.

• 6:40Speaker 06

  It's near, Tooting is a ting, it's near Brixton. So, Tooting, there's a shop that is just selling slings, doesn't sell prams, doesn't sell bottles, doesn't sell anything but organic cotton slings.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Slings.

• 6:54Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  In America, they call it a papoose, when you put a child across.

• 6:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  On your, across your shoulder, but they're sitting right here in front and you put them in that swaddle and then it.

• 7:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you see, all of that.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:04Trevor Noah?

  And now you get money from it. Meanwhile, people were basically doing it for free.

• 7:07Speaker 04

  Our mothers didn't patent it.

• 7:10Trevor Noah?

  That's, that's the real, that's the inheritance we could have gotten.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 7:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. See what I did there? Segue into a conversation.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  You know what I love about you?

• 7:19Trevor Noah?

  Tell me.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Carry on.

• 7:29Trevor Noah?

  Uh, Eliza, thanks for joining us.

• 7:31Speaker 06

  Oh, pleasure.

• 7:32Trevor Noah?

  I.

• 7:32Speaker 06

  Having fun already.

• 7:33Trevor Noah?

  You know, I, I was, I was talking to Eugene before, before we started this episode, like earlier today. And Eugene was like, what excites you about talking to Eliza? And I said, I'm, I'm always just like out of this world, excited and, and chomping at the bit. When I engage in an idea that I just didn't have, flat out didn't have. Some ideas I think I had in life. And then every now and again, you'll, you'll bump into somebody who is telling you something or discovering something or sharing something that you just didn't have in your head. And I feel like inheritocracy is inherently one of those topics, like your book, the way you've thought about the subject, the way you speak about it. Because most people in the world right now are going, why can't we afford houses? Why does it seem like education is pointless for everybody?

• 8:19Trevor Noah?

  Why do people not want to have children? Why don't people get married? What is happening with economies? Why are young men angry? Why are young women feeling destitute? What, what is going on in the world? And people will tell you, oh, the corporations. Yes, and you know, there's a good part of that. And some people say the governments, okay, it's a good part of that as well. But this book and what you've looked at here is one of the more unique takes I've ever seen that gives us like a deep understanding of how it all goes. And I mean, like, I want to get into everything, but just on on the like, on the surface of it all is, what is an inheritocracy? When you when you use that word, what is that?

• 8:59Speaker 06

  Thank you. Wow, that was great. Um, just, I deliberately chose that word because I knew it would be provocative. It's the antidote to a meritocracy, a society that's built on merit, one that is to do with hard work and reward. An inheritocracy is to do with the lottery of birth. You can't choose who your parents are, but increasingly, it's determining the opportunities you have.

• 9:21Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 9:22Speaker 06

  And so I wanted to write about that because I was like, we're not talking about this enough. There's a level of shame, embarrassment, concealment, um, and it is defining the 21st century. And the book is is essentially, it's a memoir, it's my own story, but I define an inheritocracy as one where your opportunities in life are not defined by what you earn, because wages are have stalled, certainly in Europe, and are slightly more here, but very out of out of whack with house prices. Your opportunity is not defined by your wages, it's not defined by your education, because as you said, the return on that investment, all that hard work is declining, particularly now in the age of AI.

• 10:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 06

  It's ever more defined by who your parents are and the leg up they give you and the safety net they create. And that's the story I wanted to tell.

• 10:15Trevor Noah?

  You you started from a very personal place, you know, you you tell the story recording your father's life. You know, your father's really ill, it's towards the end of his life, and you you're recording his life in his house that he inherited. And it's interesting that at that moment, you're sort of having this epiphany where you're going. Like, what are the stories that we don't even realise we get told and we inherit from our parents that define the lives that we're gonna go on to live? And by the way, I don't mean just on a, like, a psychological level. And I'm talking like a, like, dollars, pounds, rands, cents level. It's just like, this is the journey that we're gonna get because of the person who came before us.

• 10:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think, I wanted to start the book in that moment because I remember it so well. My eight-month-old son was playing in a playpen and being really rowdy and screaming. And I was trying to recall my dad, who was stuttering and muttering and really, towards the end of his life, couldn't really coherently sort of articulate himself. But I was so struck by what was about to be lost. The stories, the memories, the knowledge, the expertise, the lived experience. And my family's quite unique in that I'm from London, but we've never moved. And when I say we've never moved, I grew up in the house that my mum still lives in and my dad inherited.

• 11:40Speaker 06

  But my family grew up, born, worked, lived, died in the same area for about two hundred years.

• 11:46Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  So like, we have never moved. Like, our story is so dull, right? It's just, the exceptionalism is that we've never moved.

• 11:53Trevor Noah?

  I hope you moved.

• 11:54Speaker 06

  So many stories. No, I still live in, literally around the corner from my mum.

• 11:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but it's gone from dull to being exceptional now.

• 11:59Speaker 06

  But it's weird.

• 12:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, who can say that?

• 12:01Speaker 06

  Because in a weird sort of way, you know, London, like New York, like, you know, other parts of the world has such a kind of movement of people and various sort of histories. They're really complex and chaotic. And I was like, Dad, tell me, tell me the mundane stories. Tell me about the horse. Tell me about the pet dog, you know, like, because I just actually, there was nothing exceptional in the stories of our family, but I knew they were about to be lost. And so I still have those tapes. I can't listen to them.

• 12:33Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  I can't listen to them. And they're there, perhaps for my children to listen to.

• 12:41Speaker 06

  But it was that moment, that realisation of can I carry this forward to my children? Because I don't think I now have all the details to do that.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 06

  So tell me, Dad, tell me, tell me what our story is.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  What makes it difficult for you to listen to those stories? Because I'll tell you. The other day, I, when I was saying goodbye to my mom before coming here, she just turned seventy two.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  But in my head, she's frozen in time. But I just turned my head quickly to look at her whilst she was talking. And for a second, I couldn't recognise her. I felt like she had grown old right in front of my eyes and I didn't see it.

• 13:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that happens.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  It took that moment for me to see it. So there's things that she says, obviously, like you're saying now about where she comes from and what she'd done. To get where she is, that make me go, I feel like there's a big chunk that I haven't listened to, that I haven't heard from her. So what is about your dad's stories that made you feel like you're not ready yet to listen to some of them?

• 13:36Speaker 06

  I think, I think it's when a parent dies. And, and I, I was in the weird situation where my father died and, uh, my father was diagnosed with cancer. And I gave birth to my son all within a couple of months of each other. So I was confronting death and life. Really sort of very much in a, in a stark way. And the reason I can't listen to my father's stories is because actually I haven't fully processed his, his death. I mean, four years on, you know, and I've had three years of therapy and I've lived other lives and I've given birth.

• 14:13Trevor Noah?

  For an English person.

• 14:14Speaker 06

  I've, what, therapy or, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  It's not common.

• 14:18Trevor Noah?

  Oh, no. All my English friends, when you say that, you go like, therapy, they're like, huh, what's, what's wrong with you? What's, what's wrong?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Is it the whole stiff upper lip thing?

• 14:25Speaker 06

  It's all very internalised.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  You've got to hold it in. Oh, all right. All right. Well, that's, um, okay.

• 14:31Speaker 06

  Yes, but I but I I I can't, I just can't do it. And it's it's maybe there will be a time when I listen to those stories with my children. I think that will be it. And what's actually, I don't mention in the book, but my dad did it with my grandmother. So in she died in nineteen eighty six and he he um he actually filmed her talking about her life and and and telling stories. And we sat around actually about four years before my father actually died, watching my grandmother tell her life story.

• 15:05Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 15:06Speaker 06

  And, you know, it's it's just so bizarre to kind of like, and there was three generations sat there listening to my their, you know, the grandmother, the the matriarch of the family, tell us about the Second World War, tell us about, you know, what it was like being, you know, a woman on a motorbike in the nineteen thirties, very unheard of, you know, just it's that connection to the past that feels that you wanna feel. We're so connected to the future and the present now.

• 15:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 06

  But, you know, we've lost that that that personal, that emotional, that actual connection to the past down the generations. And I always felt that very viscerally in my family because we lived in the house that my grandfather had had won in a card game.

• 15:52Trevor Noah?

  Card game.

• 15:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was a gambler. He was a serious gambler. We we.

• 15:56Trevor Noah?

  Very good gambler, clearly.

• 15:57Speaker 06

  My father, my fa- yeah, he was, he was.

• 15:59Trevor Noah?

  He said you guys.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  Well, no, what he did was, this is very, very clever. He, once he won it, he put the deeds to the house in my, in his wife's name, my grandmother, so he couldn't gamble it again. Right, that's the key.

• 16:11Trevor Noah?

  That is the key.

• 16:12Speaker 06

  But the point is, is my dad is now buried in the garden of that house. So so there's so much.

• 16:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  It's just all, it's very located in place for me. For other people, it's it's in in different families, different stories, different, different, you know, um generational histories. But the mundane was what I was interested in.

• 16:32Trevor Noah?

  But it it took you on a journey that I I think everyone can relate to beyond just like one story and one family. I almost feel like we don't think of inheritance until we're reaping the benefits or the or the loss of it, do you know what I mean? So like, climate change is a good example, right? We don't really think about the inheritance of climate change until we're now experiencing the effects. Then we go, how did it get this way? And how how did we have these factories? And who decided that this was okay? And now you look at the chimneys that are, you know, puffing out smoke from all these things and you go like, wow. Now you think about the inheritance. And and in the book, you you get into it, I think, for everyone, everywhere in the world.

• 17:12Trevor Noah?

  If you're in the United States, right now, you are thinking to yourself, do I have a future? And some people are saying, what did I actually inherit? You know what I mean? What did we inherit as a country? What did we inherit as children from a previous generation? In South Africa, people asking the same thing. In the UK, half of the question, half of the conversations I have with people sort of center around that feeling, you know? Um, and I I was I was reading through through your work and I was going, is this like a reckoning that needs to change how we think about who's supposed to give what to whom? Or whether it should even be the way it's always been? Like, is an inheritance good or bad?

• 17:56Trevor Noah?

  Is is is sort of the question I'm asking.

• 17:59Speaker 06

  Such a brilliant question. And I wanted to approach the issue with in the round. I wanted to look at it from all different sides, which is why, yes, it's a memoir, my story, how my parents shaped my life. But I also interviewed people sort of with very different trajectories, people who come from blended families, had really difficult relationships with their parents, but accepted financial inheritance.

• 18:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 06

  You know, I interviewed a woman from Mumbai and she is now living in London. She was like, why are you writing a book about the Bank of Mum and Dad? Like, of course, there's the Bank of Mum and Dad. Of course, they support you. Like, of course, why is this a thing? Of course, we live in an heritocracy. There was an expectation, she was like, she couldn't even understand why this was an issue. And she said, but, you know, in, in, in India, in Indian cultures, in, in Indian families, that multi-generational contract is financial down the family tree to a point.

• 19:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 06

  And then it goes up, back up the family tree.

• 19:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  In terms of care and support for the elderly. So she was living in Mumbai.

• 19:08Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 19:08Speaker 06

  She was living in Mumbai in, um, she'd moved to London.

• 19:12Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  Um, she got married. Both parents had helped buy a flat in a very nice part of London, not cheap.

• 19:17Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:18Speaker 06

  But she fully accepted that she was gonna have to go back to Mumbai very soon to look after not just her parents, but her in-laws as well. That intergenerational contract is about, yes, about support, safety nets, financial aid, but also about care and, you know, the responsibility, that multi-generational responsibility. So there's so much to unpack what you just said there, because I think what I wanted to do was not go, inheritance is all bad.

• 19:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 06

  You know, like, this is the system, economic system, where it's all to do with, you know, privilege, economic privilege and parents basically, you know, creating a, a, an easy path for their affluent kids. And, you know, whole sort of nepo baby phenomenon, which is, you know, rightly mocked in society and culture.

• 20:07Trevor Noah?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, you, you think it's rightly mocked?

• 20:09Speaker 06

  We'll come back to that, we'll come back to that.

• 20:10Trevor Noah?

  Okay, we, we gotta come back to that. No, I've got thoughts on this, we gotta come back to that.

• 20:13Speaker 06

  We've got to come back to nepo babies.

• 20:14Trevor Noah?

  Nepo babies, put a pin in the.

• 20:16Speaker 06

  Put a pin in it, put a pin in it.

• 20:17Trevor Noah?

  Put a pin in it.

• 20:18Speaker 06

  You can't, you can't just say inheritance is bad.

• 20:21Trevor Noah?

  Okay, cool.

• 20:21Speaker 06

  But you've also got to look at how actually having massive amount of support from your parents can be disabling. It can be full of shame. It can be demotivating.

• 20:35Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:35Speaker 06

  And so I deliberately went in search of people that had received a lot of money and actually didn't want it or felt controlled by it or felt demotivated by it.

• 20:44Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 20:45Speaker 06

  Because inheritance is, you know, and that can be economic inheritance, it can be, you know, it can be emotional, it can be, you know, there's all sorts of forms.

• 20:52Trevor Noah?

  Cultural, can be anything, yeah, yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 06

  But the, the key thing is, is that this isn't just a subject where we calm down and we make some crude economic argument where we go, right, there's the privileged few and there's the rest and, you know, they're screwed and they're, you know, not, because actually. The inheritocracy fundamentally isn't this evil capitalist system. It's quite often, I would say the majority of the time, a system, an economic model that's built on parental love.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 06

  Right? So just dismissing it as crude, economic nihilistic, you know, system that is really unfair.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 06

  I just wouldn't, I I just felt wouldn't do full service to the subject.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Do you think that the way the older generation used to think about family and about money sort of shaped how they left an inheritance for their children, right?

• 21:43Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  So most of it would be a house to stay in, a home that you guys can all share, some money to live in case you wanna study further if you're young enough.

• 21:50Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  If you're old enough to maybe one day branch out and do your own thing. But now we see people starting families later and later in life.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  And do you think that will affect how they leave inheritance for their children?

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Ultimately, yes. I mean, we're talking about, I think it's important to kind of like drill down on on the fact that in the US, in the UK, most of Europe, Australia, Canada, English-speaking world, we're talking about trillions of dollars here. You know, five years ago, it was estimated that the Great Wealth Transfer, the money trickling down from parents

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 06

  to their kids was about eighty trillion in the US. Now, in twenty twenty five, it's around a hundred and twenty five trillion.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 22:27Speaker 06

  It's increased just because the amount of the assets and, you know, stocks have increased, right? So we're talking a considerable amount of money. In the US, you know, the over fifties own about sixty percent of the nation's private wealth. So we have a huge disparity

• 22:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 06

  of older generations owning a lot of wealth.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  I read something the other day that basically said, in New York, I don't know about other major cities, but I think it might be similar, but in New York, the entire housing market is propped up by parents who are in some way, shape or form subsidizing their kids. Almost every single young person you see who lives in New York, New York, like Manhattan, Manhattan.

• 23:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  They're not here on their own money.

• 23:11Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? It's a parent who owns a place, a parent who's renting a place for them, a parent who's bought a place for them. And then they're like, oh yeah, you know, I'm just making my way through life and just like grinding and, you know, it's so hard living. And it's like, yeah, no, no, you, you couldn't even be here unless your parents were part of the sixty percent. Who own the thing. And this is obviously unless you're living with like ten other people in one apartment.

• 23:31Speaker 06

  And this is the thing, it goes unsaid. So, you know, the, in New York, certainly, in London, it's fifty two percent of, of, of first time buyers on the property ladder. Fifty two percent have access to the bank of mum and dad.

• 23:45Trevor Noah?

  There you go.

• 23:45Speaker 06

  In the US, Gen Z, about a quarter of Gen Z are getting that down payment from the bank of mum and dad. So it's not as much because housing generally is cheaper in the US.

• 23:56Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 23:56Speaker 06

  Not everywhere, not on the island of Manhattan, of course. But generally speaking, where's in the US, where the real investment is, is in education. So it's, it's paying for college. That's where the bank of mum and dad is sort of really sort of getting people on that ladder, getting people on that trajectory. And you, you know how wealth works, right? The earlier you get it, the better it.

• 24:19Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah. It changes your trajectory.

• 24:21Speaker 06

  It completely.

• 24:22Trevor Noah?

  For the, for the rest of your life. When I, when I was reading your book, I was thinking to myself, inheritance is almost like a passport. Before you go anywhere, it already determines where you can go and how you can go. And we, we always go like, you know, a lot of people will be like, I, I didn't get anything. I barely got anything from my parents. It's like, no, no, no, you got the passport. And so even if your parents have put you in the right country, given you access to the right networks, or given you the belief that they will be there as a fallback, you've got a better passport. You know, so you've got like a Canadian passport or like a, you know, a Emirati passport. And then like other people have African passports where like no country lets you in without ten visa interviews. What do you mean?

• 25:01Speaker 04

  Why, why, why did you have to?

• 25:03Trevor Noah?

  Do you want me to do it like this?

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Like this?

• 25:04Trevor Noah?

  Oh, now you say our country. It's funny, it's funny when it's a bad thing, you didn't want it.

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't want any of it.

• 25:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, okay, okay, fine. Then some people have.

• 25:15Trevor Noah?

  No, but it is though, it really is. It's a passport, yeah, it's a passport that takes you through your life, like just from the get go, in what you're saying.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, and it's, but it's a natural human instinct, let's be clear here, to create that safety net and that springboard for your kids. I have two kids. It, when my first son literally came out of me, I was like, right, life's purpose has arrived.

• 25:38Trevor Noah?

  Wow, and your doctor was like, slow down, excuse me ma'am, hold on, I haven't been, I'm not done with the umbilical cord lady. Excuse me ma'am, ma'am, please, just wait a second, we're still busy. We're still busy with the, ma'am, please ma'am, please, please hold her down. We'll talk about intergenerational health in a second, let me just finish with.

• 25:58Speaker 06

  No, I was, seriously, I was not one of the, I was literally not one of those mothers who was like, let me just bask in the glory of creating life. I was like, I've got to create wealth, because I ha- I have to create some sort of financial stability here.

• 26:09Trevor Noah?

  You immediately felt that thing.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  Gutten, yeah, hundred percent. And I think in America, when I think about how, my cultural reference point for this, by the way, is Love is Blind. How you guys talk about generational wealth is the aspiration. There is so much more openness about, I am aiming to create generational wealth. In the UK, we, no, no, no, no, that is not stated, no, no, no, no, it's, it's, it's something a bit shameful, hush, hush, sort of said, but, you know, sort of actually inferred.

• 26:44Trevor Noah?

  Like daddy and mummy's money, you don't, you don't.

• 26:47Speaker 06

  You just don't talk about it because we sort of, you know, our greatest export, right, is, is Downton Abbey. I thought you were gonna say Gordon Ramsay. And Gordon Ramsay, but Downton Abbey, we, we kind of sell this aristocratic past, but we like to go, oh, that was ages ago.

• 27:00Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's not now.

• 27:01Speaker 06

  British society's not, no longer like that, class is no longer an issue, we have a self-made society. Have a meritocracy bullshit. The thing is, is that class and the bank of mum and dad. And engineers privilege in the way that it is always done, if not more now than ever before. And we just don't talk about it.

• 27:21Trevor Noah?

  But you see the US.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, much more open.

• 27:23Trevor Noah?

  It's open, it's open, but it's closed, though. I find it's interesting that you just said that. So here's, here's how I see it. I didn't, I didn't pick that up in the UK in the way you're saying it. But you, you really made it clear. But I find in the US, people also hide it. They just frame it differently. They frame it as if they've pre-worked. And they're going to get some post-work going. So, so they go like, yeah, well, you know, I, I want my kids to work hard. And that's why I'm, I'm setting up a college fund for them, but they're still gonna have to earn their keep and my kids are not gonna have it easy and. Uh, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm gonna get them into a good school, but I'm not gonna give them anything and I, I still want them. And you're like, you've just told me everything you're gonna give them. And then told me that they're not going to have to do it. You know what I mean? And they're like, no, but they're still gonna have to, they're still gonna have to what?

• 28:08Trevor Noah?

  Well, I mean, and I'm not saying that they won't have to do anything, but people like to make it seem as if. They're not giving them anything. You know, one of the more honest people, funny enough about this, was Bill Gates. Bill Gates, Bill Gates said, I'm not giving my kids, they're not inheriting anything. And people were like, whoa, what do you mean? He said, yeah, I'm giving all my money away. And they're like, wow, what an asshole. And Bill Gates was like, let me, let me ask, he said, if what I have given you. With my name and with my network cannot earn you money, then you don't deserve the money that I have. Cause he, he understood and I think understands fundamentally. But the inheritance goes beyond the chequebook. Do you know what I mean? He's like, I can get you into any room. I can get you talking to anybody.

• 28:51Trevor Noah?

  You're only thinking, what's the bank account? What's the bank account? And so now, when, when you say that, I actually wanted to go like, to go to India. I wonder if places like India are almost more honest about it. Cause people will say, I'm from a good family. And things are gonna go and we're gonna keep this going. And you're like, oh, you're passing it down. They're like, you're damn straight, we are.

• 29:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 29:11Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 29:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

• 29:13Trevor Noah?

  There's no like hiding and there's no, it's like, no.

• 29:15Speaker 06

  The, the lady I was, I was interviewing, she was like, my dad was saving for my wedding and my education.

• 29:21Trevor Noah?

  Exactly.

• 29:21Speaker 06

  Since, you know, basically my birth. And there's no shame in that. There is absolute pride in that. And I think that you're right, it's the openness that is there. I do think that there's another element to this in American culture. It's quite unique to American. Culture, which is is quite a legal driven culture and and litigious. And so therefore, you know, forty one percent of Gen Zers and millennials have prenups in the US.

• 29:47Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  And they're binding in a way that they're not in the UK. And.

• 29:51Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean? What do you mean not in the UK?

• 29:52Speaker 06

  Then there's they are they're sort of they're they're sort of binding. We have a different.

• 29:56Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  System, but prenups are incredibly important here. And what a prenup does is it forces a conversation.

• 30:04Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 30:05Speaker 06

  Before you get married.

• 30:05Trevor Noah?

  On the onset.

• 30:06Speaker 06

  And so that culture of openness, I think, is also because the lawyer's going, come on.

• 30:10Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 30:11Speaker 06

  What's going on here?

• 30:12Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 06

  What what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?

• 30:14Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 30:14Speaker 06

  And and I think why prenups have become so important and not just the kind of, you know, sort of things that celebrities do anymore. Is because of the way the inheritocracy and the bank of mum and dad has changed marriage.

• 30:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 06

  So what's happened is is it used to be, so there's this whole theory in sociology called assortative mating, right? Which is where, you know, the idea is that you marry someone similar to you.

• 30:41Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 30:41Speaker 06

  And in the nineties, when more and more women started going to university, what happened was was that graduates started to partner up with graduates.

• 30:49Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 30:50Speaker 06

  And it was no longer the nurse marrying the doctor, the secretary marrying the boss. Women used to marry up. Now they were marrying their intellectual equal, right?

• 30:59Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 31:00Speaker 06

  What's happened in the last ten years is not so much graduates marrying graduates. But one individual with the bank of mum and dad marrying another individual.

• 31:11Trevor Noah?

  No way.

• 31:12Speaker 06

  With the bank of mum and dad. So you're getting this sort of Jane Austen like sort of marriage culture. Where if there is a divorce, it's not the the son and daughter's money at stake. It's the mum and dad.

• 31:29Trevor Noah?

  The bank of mum and dad.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  The banks and mum and dad who are fighting for their cash back. So prenups become really, really important in an inheritocracy.

• 31:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because you have you seen one of my favorite genres on TikTok is.

• 31:40Speaker 06

  On TikTok?

• 31:41Trevor Noah?

  People discovering, why? Why do you look so shocked? I'm a man of the world, Eugene. I've invited you many times and you've refused my DMs. So on TikTok.

• 31:50Speaker 06

  I'm on TikTok. You can follow me.

• 31:52Trevor Noah?

  No, you know, one of my favorite, one of my favorite genres on TikTok is um, is you like, I forget how I stumbled on it once. But it was people discovering that the person they're dating actually has inherited like a shit ton of money.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 32:06Trevor Noah?

  Or is in like line.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  To inherit.

• 32:08Trevor Noah?

  Yo, it is to what you just said now, you have not seen people's minds more broken by the knowledge that the person they're with. Is basically a pseudo prince or princess that they didn't understand.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 32:21Trevor Noah?

  And then they'll go, hey, guys, so I just discovered that the person I'm with is like the heir to whatever fortune. Or their parents own this mega company or they're worth whatever million dollars and whatever. And they go, we've been splitting the rent and we've been, no, and they both.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  It's not working out.

• 32:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, and they, and they both live like a trashy life. They're both like struggling. Then they find out the other person was cosplaying the struggle and they were really in the struggle. Do you know what I mean?

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Hmm, hmm.

• 32:48Trevor Noah?

  And it's different eating dry bread, the two of us, if we both don't have money. But when you find out that I was just, you know what I mean?

• 32:57Speaker 04

  You know, when I, after high school, I worked in a student campus area. At a, in a C D store that tells you how old I am. And I would see a mixture of white and black kids who'd be hanging out together because they go to the same university together. But I could see in their lifestyles outside of school that they were not the same. Others went to the township and others went to the suburbs. And that inequality of what some people have that leg up in South Africa is very huge. But also it's been weaponized as well as to make other races look like they're being lazy or they're not being um, how, what's the word?

• 33:29Trevor Noah?

  Oh, industrious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Industrious.

• 33:31Trevor Noah?

  Like you're not working hard enough.

• 33:31Speaker 04

  Or they don't know how to use their money properly.

• 33:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  So, until I was doing something with an insurance company that explained how most of the fortune that the Afrikaners had was built. Was built through insurance. So the first first generation. Yes, first first generation, after having a fight with the English, moving, the Boers moved. Yeah. They started having farms. Those farms were not making as much money. So they decided to start co-ops and then they started to have insurance companies that they built. Then they would put money. So the, the deal was the first generation to get the payout mustn't use the payout.

• 34:06Trevor Noah?

  Oh, interesting.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  They must use the payout to. To help the land and to help the kids.

• 34:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  And then only the third one can line, can spend the money, yes. But by that time, they already own the farm and they've used the money from the first insurance payout to to make the farm viable.

• 34:21Trevor Noah?

  You paid it forward, yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Then there's banks, then they can finance from the banks. And then from there, from the farms, they move to the cities. And then that's how the houses in the suburbs were, were financed and the water clues and the Cape Town and all of that. So by the time they have children in the eighties and the nineties, those children already have a grandfather that owned a farm and a dad that owns a house.

• 34:39Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  In water clue for Kemps Bay.

• 34:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  And then they go to school with us and then you, your parents are from the township. And it looks like there's something that they did wrong with their money. Meanwhile, it was just the leg up that the other way afforded to pay a minimal amount every month to inherit, to, to guarantee that when the one passed away, a lump sum comes your way.

• 34:57Trevor Noah?

  Oh yeah, that's the biggest one.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  And I feel like insurance has been the biggest scam of them all to help people get rich. And a lot of black people in South Africa don't know that you can actually use insurance that way to build generational wealth.

• 35:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, one generation dies and from their death, you get like this, this beautiful rebirth. And again, like to your point, I like that you said it, not good or bad. But it's interesting how many people don't realize what mechanisms some people use to make sure that the next generation has a slingshot. So it's like, your generation will die. And like, if it was a game of monopoly, the next generation gets to start with a free roll of the dice. Like they get a free six.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 35:33Trevor Noah?

  And you're like, oh, we all started on zero. It's like, yeah, yeah, but your parents gave you a six.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:38Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean?

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 06

  But you write about this, you write a bit about this in your book, about what you called, your mum called the black tax.

• 35:44Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  And how she had to sort of support and fund her family.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Other parts, yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 06

  Other parts of her family. And I was listening to a podcast with Michelle Obama and she was referring to the fact that when she entered the White House, everyone like, her family, extended family, friends were like, tap, tap. Help me out, help me out.

• 36:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 06

  There was an expectation.

• 36:07Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 36:08Speaker 06

  And she was like, she had to really hold firm and say, no, I'm A, not as rich as you think I am. And B, I have to, you know, make our family supported and good before we can then extend the help.

• 36:23Trevor Noah?

  It's, it's one of the hardest things anyone will experience. And we know it as the black tax, but I'm sure in other cultures you can experience it as well. If you come from a group of people who have been oppressed for a very long time.

• 36:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:38Trevor Noah?

  There is a good chance that none of them have had the opportunity to accrue wealth.

• 36:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:43Trevor Noah?

  Because wealth compounds, right?

• 36:47Trevor Noah?

  If you are on zero and your cousins are on zero and your grandparents are on zero, everyone's on zero, everyone's on zero, everyone's on zero. You are starting from scratch, right? The issue though is like the person who's next to you who goes, oh, I'm also on zero. We went to the same school. It's like, no, they aren't on zero. Because their first paycheck, their family has no claim to it.

• 37:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:08Trevor Noah?

  Because they don't need to have a claim to it. Do you know how liberating it is to earn a paycheck and your parents aren't calling you to say, hey, can you, can you help us pay this orphan? And can you help us? And, and, and that's something you also get into in the book is like, we forget that an inheritance isn't necessarily what you get in terms of credit. It's also what you get in terms of debt.

• 37:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Absolutely. One thing I loved about how Trevor explained your book to me was it's almost the same as, I hate it when an athlete who's naturally gifted and has all the opportunities in the world tells someone else who's not as athletic that they can do anything they put their mind to.

• 37:46Trevor Noah?

  You're still mad that guy told you you can dunk?

• 37:51Speaker 06

  Who told you you can dunk?

• 37:53Speaker 04

  It was him, actually.

• 37:55Trevor Noah?

  You can do it Eugene, put your mind to it.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Forty years later.

• 38:01Speaker 06

  That's, that's right. It's the idea that we're all starting from the same point in the race. We're not, we're not. And so that the sort of pretense of that, I wanted to kind of literally lift the lid on.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  I would love to also get some, to hear some research about how advice is given depending on the group of people it's given to. For example, I have a big gripe with how, for example, black people will be given advice, again in insurance, that say a funeral cover would be hundred and twenty thousand, hundred and twenty rand. And it will cover you for eighty thousand rand. But life cover is two hundred and fifty rand and will cover you for two million rand.

• 38:35Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  But that advice will not be given to that person because they think short term, the bank will lose obviously if.

• 38:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  You see what I'm saying? So most advice is also tailored to the kind of people that it's given to, to sort of preserve also the generational wealth that props up these institutions.

• 38:50Speaker 06

  I know, and just, just what. Wealth band you are at. Yes.

• 38:54Trevor Noah?

  Oh, definitely.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  What risk you can take. What mechanisms you can pull. Yeah. You know, the kind of advice that you get. You know, and and is.

• 39:03Trevor Noah?

  There's a different bank division that phones you.

• 39:05Speaker 06

  Right.

• 39:06Trevor Noah?

  Most people don't know that like there's different banks in your bank. All of a sudden, one day, if you earn enough money, someone else phones you and goes like, hey, uh, let's talk to you about me like, wait, where were you all along? And they're like, well, now you make money. And I'm like, well, I don't need you now because I make money. Why didn't you call me when I was trying to make money?

• 39:25Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, I had that kind of scenario and I write about it in the book because, you know, being a woman, there is a sort of still this perception that, you know, your husband is the breadwinner. And I went with my husband to go and see a financial advisor. We were told to go by my in-laws because we need to sort out our money. I was six months pregnant. And, you know, immediately as I walked through that door, the two financial advisors went to shake my husband's hand and kind of just sort of looked at my bump and went, when are you due? Is that kind of like, that's what you do? Yeah.

• 39:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 06

  That's what you do. And I kept, the meeting was just like, literally, none of it directed at me. It was like I didn't exist. Um, and we came out of that interview and I said to my husband, I was like, we are not going with them. Like, even if we need a financial advisor, like, I do not want to ever encounter those men again. And I was like reflecting on why. And A, they had not obviously credited me as someone that was capable of earning or out earning. Capable of understanding financial advice and being, thank you, being part of the decisions. You know, I did the, I do the weekly household budget, but I'm not making the investment, the big investment decisions.

• 40:38Speaker 06

  And it's like, that's so short sighted because now, you know, you are seeing what I'm calling the great gender wealth transfer. Because we talk about the money going from the parents to the kids. Well, quite often it doesn't go from the parents to the kids. It goes from the patriarch to the matriarch. It goes to the mum.

• 40:57Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow, yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 06

  The average, you know, the average spousal transference of wealth in the US is one point four million. So those women are inheriting, on average, in the US, one point four million, right? And women actually use their money very differently to men. You can, you know, obviously there's exceptions and nuance in that, but women are more likely to give their money during their lifetime.

• 41:18Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 41:18Speaker 06

  Men are more likely to give it at the point of death. Yeah, in a way. Women are more likely to take less risk in investments, more likely to invest in like E S G sort of investments. And and consider the wider sort of community earth, you know, think very differently about money to men. And there's a whole generation of women who are inheriting a lot of money.

• 41:41Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 41:43Speaker 06

  Who are kind of ignored by the financial services industry. And then below that, you've got Gen X, millennials and Gen Z. Women, young women out earning a lot, um, a lot of young men now. Um, a lot of single female investors and homeowners. Like to ignore like more than half the population when it comes to financial advice is madness. And you're right, it's not just about gender, it's about, you know, racial categories and just like the way that financial advice. Is a privilege for the top, top tier in society.

• 42:19Trevor Noah?

  I think that reminded me of, um, that reminded me of the, the, the, the part in your book where you're talking about. The history of it all, like the origins, the backstory, you know.

• 42:31Trevor Noah?

  A lot of people are trying to make sense of the world they live in today because they've been told a story that doesn't seem to pan out.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  It's not gelling.

• 42:39Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so in the UK, if you're in London, it seems like things are going well. As soon as you leave London, you're like, whoa, what is happening here? And and those numbers are deceiving. Oh, the GDP of the UK is still, and it's like, yeah, yeah. One company can be the GDP of an entire nation. It doesn't mean the people in that nation actually have the money. GDP is deceiving, right? In the US, people are having a tough time and they go, but I'm I'm doing everything. I I'm working, I'm getting an education, I why why is this not working out? And then you travel around the world and the stories are the same. South Africa, Australia with houses, etc. This is where the backstory I found was so important because you you took a step back.

• 43:20Trevor Noah?

  And you talked about the boomer generation and what they inherited or what they experienced at that time that they didn't realize they were experiencing. Just just like walk us through that because I know my mind was blown when you when you broke it down. Step by step where you went, I think it was like their values, their education and.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I mean, the baby boomers, and let's be clear, that's a western term, right? There was a baby boom in the US, there's a baby boom in Europe, slight baby boom in Japan, Australia, Canada. So we're talking, we're not talking about a global phenomenon here, right? That's really important. It's that generation born after the Second World War had the advantages and also the struggles, let's not forget, of that post-war period. But there is an exceptional and phenomenal period of great social mobility and wealth. So in that generation were the key beneficiaries of that. So they were had access to widening education, of course.

• 44:20Speaker 06

  They had access to, particularly in the US, the opening up of of the college degree and greater accessibility. They had, so the best educated generation in history that had access to the professions at a time when there wasn't the globalization of threat of professions. So if you were a college educated baby boomer who went into the professions and bought a house and got a really good pension and were quite savvy with your money.

• 44:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 06

  You've got a lot to pass down.

• 44:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 06

  So that that trajectory, right? And unless I remember, we're not talking about all baby boomers, we're talking about, you know, but quite a fair chunk of them experienced that period of meritocracy. I would say from really nineteen forty five to nineteen seventy nine, you know, that the Thatcher and Reagan and the sort of neoliberal push is a different story, but and they benefited from that. But let's be clear, there was a widening of participation in in education, greater access for women and men.

• 45:23Speaker 06

  And then you had this massive explosion of assets and investments in the nineteen eighties. And that has benefited them ever since. And so you've got the democratization of property owning, property ownership and investments. And so the wealth, the access to opportunity, they had, and then the access to invest and build that wealth is unprecedented, and I would argue unrepeatable and exceptional, truly exceptional.

• 45:53Trevor Noah?

  It's a, it's a moment in time. I was trying to explain it to my younger brother. He, he like, and, and so we're discussing this, we're going through, I mean, he's twenty one, so we're, we're having this conversation, right? And he's like, what do you think went wrong? And, you know, I'm reading your book and I'm trying to, and the analogy I used for him was, I was thinking of video games.

• 46:11Trevor Noah?

  If you, if you play a video game and you get like early access, sometimes what you can do is you can play the game before it comes out. And I think now they've patched it in most games, but what you could do is, you could actually build up your stats before the game comes out. So you could get all the good skins, as they call them. You could get all the good weapons. You could get all the tools. If it was like a building game, you could get the houses you could build. You could just build out. You're far ahead. Yeah, you're far ahead. And then when everyone else got access, they came into the game and they could not catch you. Now, for instance, like FIFA was a good example. I remember when we used to play FIFA. You would own a player in the game, but you got to like buy them before the game came out. So the prices were lower.

• 46:52Trevor Noah?

  And then when everyone else came into the game now, they had to buy the players from you. But because there's more people, you could charge higher amounts for the, for the thing. And when I said it to my brother this way, he was like, oh damn. He's like, wait, so this is, I was like, yeah, this is how it is. You know what I mean? Because they experienced this explosion. At a ti- and again, not fault, you know, you don't even make it fault in the book. It's just they experienced this explosion.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 47:15Trevor Noah?

  And that sets a trend in place that the next generations then have to deal with.

• 47:20Speaker 06

  So what you have is, and, and the sort of way of thinking about it is.

• 47:26Speaker 06

  When millennials sort of came of age in the aftermath of the financial crisis, certain things became cheap. Food, no longer cheap, but food and eating out specifically used to be, you know, was cheap. Yeah. Right? Buying a coffee, avocado on toast, you know, all of that. It became really cheap. Food used to be really expensive. It used to be a fair, much higher chunk and proportion of your income you spent on food. What else became cheap? Travel. You know, the democratization of travel in the 21st century has been all wonderful. Nothing but benefits, right? Except for the climate. What else became cheap? Tech, of course, and that universalization of the smartphone, laptop, whatever. But what became expensive, and this is the key thing, the things that were cheap for baby boomers,

• 48:11Speaker 06

  became really expensive for millennials, their kids. So what became expensive? Healthcare in the US, of course, education, both public college and private. Yeah. And across the UK and really across the world, the cost of education goes up. Housing, of course, both renting and buying. That's the critical thing. It's both renting and buying. And so the, and childcare, I shouldn't forget childcare because it's become extraordinarily expensive. So what weirdly, millennials became adults, the big things in life, health, education, housing. Childcare. Childcare became really, really expensive. And unattainable.

• 48:54Speaker 06

  But what became cheap was eating out, technology, travel, the three things that are synonymous with millennials. It wasn't that we loved all that avocado and coffee. The economy was literally encouraging us to indulge in those things. That's an amazing way to say it. Disgusting us unless you had the bank of mum and dad. So unless you had the bank of mum and dad, you don't have access to housing, affordable healthcare, you know, affordable education. Right. Affordable childcare. And so it's a two-part story. Number one is the baby boomers had this phenomenal experience. Yeah. Again, some, not all, of access to assets, professional workplaces, you know, investment in their pensions and wealth.

• 49:41Speaker 06

  And the second part of the story is millennials didn't. So their parents, those that could pass the money down. And they've been incredibly generous. And I was speaking to an economist when I was writing the book and he said to me, the way I see it is they've been brilliant parents, but bad citizens.

• 49:59Trevor Noah?

  Damn, say that again.

• 50:00Speaker 06

  So brilliant parents, they've gifted as much as they can. But bad citizens, because ultimately it's created and contributed to this widening inequality.

• 50:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Wow. Good parents, bad citizens. Don't go anywhere because we got more What Now after this.

• 50:23Trevor Noah?

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• 51:08Trevor Noah?

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

• 51:53Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 51:57Trevor Noah?

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• 52:31Trevor Noah?

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

• 53:16Trevor Noah?

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

• 54:03Speaker 04

  Is it still worthwhile to advise kids to get a high education to study to become a lawyer? For example, because I was telling you, my daughter says she wants to be a lawyer and I was like, "I don't know what to tell you, but maybe study something that you enjoy." Because I

• 54:18Speaker 04

  Because I

• 54:19Speaker 06

  You're gonna be doing it for a long time.

• 54:21Trevor Noah?

  I'm just loving, I'm just loving your dad having, no, you know, obviously every moment is happening in time. You know, and then like there's the cliche of asking your parents, what should I study? And they're like, become a lawyer, become like, especially like African people, you know, doctor, lawyer, engineer. You got this. And now I'm picturing you just like, hey, maybe just do something you like. Yeah, no, hey, things are tough out there.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  Because I'm the

• 54:47Speaker 06

  It's a full 180, it's a full 180.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  Yes, because I'm the worst person to give, to give career advice. I mean, what do I do for a living?

• 54:56Speaker 04

  I studied for this.

• 54:57Trevor Noah?

  I'm picturing you in Braveheart now, you're just like there on your horse and you're riding along and you're like, "Hey, look guys, hey, they might take our land, eh? Hey, they might take everything. Hey, let's just enjoy ourselves."

• 55:09Speaker 04

  We're here now.

• 55:16Speaker 06

  I think it's good advice.

• 55:17Trevor Noah?

  But it is a good, it is a question I think a lot of parents share though. What, what advice do you give?

• 55:22Speaker 06

  Oh, my goodness.

• 55:23Trevor Noah?

  You know, if the hatches have been battened, that like what happens now?

• 55:26Speaker 06

  So I, I, one of the things that I wanted to kind of make clear in the book was that I was, I was, I was on that track. Not for, to become a lawyer, but to become an academic, right? So I was the first person in my family to graduate and my dad was like, education, education, education, education. And he was all kind of, um, all in, all in. And, and also I came of age when it was all about girls getting into education, you know? And actually, as soon as the, those doors were open, girls started to out, out, out, out.

• 55:56Trevor Noah?

  Destroy us in class.

• 55:57Speaker 06

  Totally.

• 55:58Trevor Noah?

  Absolutely demolish us.

• 55:59Speaker 06

  Because we're really conscientious and good at exams. But anyway, I digress. The point is, is that then I like stayed, I did a BA and then a masters and then a PhD. And I was like, I'm on track, I'm doing everything I'm told to do. And by 31, I had a PhD.

• 56:18Speaker 06

  I was earning ten thousand pounds a year, so about twelve thousand dollars, I think.

• 56:23Trevor Noah?

  A year?

• 56:23Speaker 06

  A year. Right, I had a PhD. I had a part-time cleaning job, which involves some quite heinous toilet cleaning and.

• 56:32Trevor Noah?

  Men's or women's bathrooms?

• 56:34Speaker 06

  Both.

• 56:34Trevor Noah?

  Which were the worst?

• 56:35Speaker 06

  Both. Men's, come on, you know that.

• 56:37Trevor Noah?

  Ah, you see, you see, this is what I said the other day. And then they looked at me like I was crazy.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  I looked at you like you were crazy.

• 56:43Trevor Noah?

  No, everyone looked at me like I was crazy.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Here's my logic, I said.

• 56:46Trevor Noah?

  People looked at, I'm sorry, people looked at me like I was crazy.

• 56:48Speaker 06

  Let me answer the question, I'm getting some points.

• 56:51Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 56:51Speaker 04

  Put a pin in it, put a pin in it.

• 56:53Trevor Noah?

  Bathrooms and nipple babies.

• 56:54Speaker 04

  Nipple baby, pin in it.

• 56:55Speaker 06

  But the point, the point I want to make there, because by the way, there's, there's, you know, my dad, his last job was as a cleaner, but there's nothing more demoralising than thinking, I've spent ten years in education and this hasn't got me anywhere. What? And the only place that had got me somewhere was the fact that my parents had helped support me.

• 57:17Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 57:18Speaker 06

  So I'd like, I was like, hang on a minute.

• 57:20Speaker 04

  When it was all said and done.

• 57:21Speaker 06

  I'm like, yeah, when, when it was all said and done, the only way I could stay in London, mum and dad. The only way that I could basically be like, you know, sort of survive in London was the supplement and support that my parents were giving me at the time. And he was like, you're following your passion though, aren't you?

• 57:40Speaker 04

  Good on you, love, you're having a good time, innit?

• 57:44Speaker 06

  I was like, I've gone wrong here. And what, and, and, and actually, the first, the, the people around me that, that were, were doing well without the bank of mum and dad were the lawyers. Because actually, if you look, if you track, we're doing this um, um, on our team, we were tracking different professions.

• 58:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 06

  And what wages have kept pace with house prices and education costs and healthcare and childcare. And it's lawyers. It's not bankers, it's not engineers, and it's definitely not doctors. Definitely not, even, even in the US, where doctors are certainly paid more than, than the UK. So lawyers are, you know, the demons of capitalism are always the bankers, right? We always bash the bankers, yeah? Ah, those lawyers get away with it. Because they are getting paid very, very well, particularly obviously the ones in the big law firms. But they they have their wages have outpaced house prices in the UK and the US. And that is something I don't think is talked about enough. So I think actually go back to the law plan because I think that was a good.

• 58:44Speaker 04

  Am I staying there?

• 58:45Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wait, I'm gonna throw a curve ball.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  Because she came up with it, so I'm supporting, yeah.

• 58:49Trevor Noah?

  Just from the tech side, don't forget that the legal space.

• 58:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:53Trevor Noah?

  Is seeing the greatest replacement of entry level jobs by AI. So tell your daughter to study law, but also tell her to become um an expert. No, no, no. Tell her that she should have experience in a law firm by the time she's trying to go to a law firm.

• 59:09Speaker 06

  That is a problem. No, because this.

• 59:11Trevor Noah?

  Which is impossible.

• 59:16Speaker 06

  But that's the curve ball is the things that worked when we were in in building our professions.

• 59:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 59:23Speaker 06

  Right? Not working now. So law actually is uniquely exposed. Particularly younger lawyers are exposed to to AI, you know, and I think because a lot of that work is like checking documents and grunt work and really repetitive stuff should totally be done by, you know, um an algorithm, an L M. So so yeah, you're absolutely right. So, you know, I think maybe it's it's so hard. I said, I I, you know, I have two kids, one's eight, one's four, and I just think again and again and again, what skills do they need? Not what career path are they gonna take? Because they're gonna have multiple careers. There's no way what they're doing at twenty one is what they're gonna be doing at seventy five, and they will have to work till seventy five because that's just a fact.

• 1:00:08Speaker 06

  Because I ain't supporting them. No, but because because the economy is changing. But like, I think we fixate on this, like, become this.

• 1:00:17Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  Become this. Be an engineer, be a doctor.

• 1:00:21Trevor Noah?

  Because that was safe before.

• 1:00:22Speaker 06

  It's not safe.

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  What do we say now to our kids?

• 1:00:25Speaker 06

  You need skills and you need to you need to be agile. You need to you need to learn, not what to learn, but how to learn. So that you can go away and if you need to career pivot, you can go away, concentrate, work that out and pivot. What we don't have is an. Education system that creates those learners. It it it puts you on a track. You're this, you're in that department, you're in that school, you're on that, you know, route to career. And actually, what we all need to do, not just Gen Alpha, not just Gen Z, but also millennials, right? Is is just be really, really sort of agile and be prepared to like pivot, switch.

• 1:01:06Trevor Noah?

  I love that.

• 1:01:07Speaker 06

  Learn, upskill, upgrade, change direction.

• 1:01:10Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:10Speaker 06

  That agility was there before. You know, my grandfather had about ten different careers.

• 1:01:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Speaker 06

  And I wouldn't even have called them careers and gambling on the side.

• 1:01:20Trevor Noah?

  And the only one that got in my house was gambling.

• 1:01:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Trevor Noah?

  Which is a career, it is a form of career.

• 1:01:25Speaker 06

  It is a form of.

• 1:01:25Trevor Noah?

  But but but it's interesting, when you say that, it it makes me realise that part of the thesis of your book becomes even more clear when you look at it through that lens. Could it be that we have defined society by an exceptional moment in time? That is not the norm.

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Trevor Noah?

  Right? So to what you just said, your grandfather, your great grandfather, et cetera, these people had every job possible. And if you talk to like, if you had the privilege of talking to someone who was like way older than you, they'd say that, they go, I worked as a milkman and I were and like my grandmother, she's like, I worked as a seamstress and I did this and I did that and I did that.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  But we're not that old and we have those stories as well.

• 1:02:00Trevor Noah?

  This is true, but.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Trevor Noah?

  It became ironically, a byproduct of poverty became our gift because you we couldn't become a banker. Our parents couldn't send us to become an anything. So all you had to do was hustle in that way. And that's you just learn to be agile and do what you can do. But it makes me wonder if we have based the entire view we have on the world on an exceptional moment in time. So in this moment in time, post-World War Two, post the world reconstructing itself, this new influx of wealth, this new rebuild, then you will be an engineer because there's so much engineering that needs to be done. You will be a banker because there's so much new banking that's going to be done. You can be something because there's so many new things.

• 1:02:45Trevor Noah?

  But as soon as entropy is reached, you're not going to see these big jumps anymore in the same way. So being becomes a lot less attractive, it seems like you're saying.

• 1:02:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, and and and that's in reference to what job we do. You could also apply that theory to how we live and who we live with. Because like the US, for example. You know, one in six households in the US is now multi-generational.

• 1:03:09Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:03:10Speaker 06

  That's three generations living under one roof, okay? That's double what it was in nineteen seventy. So we have moved, you know, ever more towards multi-generational households, right?

• 1:03:20Trevor Noah?

  Which was more, which was more the norm.

• 1:03:21Speaker 06

  Which was the norm.

• 1:03:23Trevor Noah?

  That was the norm.

• 1:03:23Speaker 06

  Which was.

• 1:03:24Trevor Noah?

  People forget that.

• 1:03:24Speaker 06

  The norm, exactly.

• 1:03:26Trevor Noah?

  One family, two people in one house is a crazy thing when you think about it, actually.

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Trevor Noah?

  And so now it feels like we're just going back to what was before this anomalous moment in time. Like, live with your grandparents, live with your grandchildren, live with your, to your point of like childcare. I sometimes wonder if the cost of childcare has shot up the way it has because people don't live with grandparents.

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  A lack of access to someone who can help you.

• 1:03:51Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there never used to be a babysitter when we were growing, like that concept I only knew from TV.

• 1:03:55Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:03:56Trevor Noah?

  Genuinely, I, I don't know about you, did you ever hear babysit? Babysitter was not a thing.

• 1:03:59Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:04:00Trevor Noah?

  Because the people who babysat were the people who lived in the house with you.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  But also, to be fair, a lot of things in our community were not normal. And they didn't have titles, like, for example, there was no adoption, black families.

• 1:04:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there was no such thing.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  Like, your cousin would just live with you and never leave.

• 1:04:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  And then you'd find out now he's part of your family, but.

• 1:04:18Trevor Noah?

  Those moments were the worst when you, you found out oftentimes because they had the biscuits that were apportioned for you previously.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  But why was there so much guilt in giving him all the things that were yours?

• 1:04:28Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean?

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Exactly the biscuit story.

• 1:04:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Like, there would be this, ah, man, you know, he's going.

• 1:04:32Trevor Noah?

  They would do that.

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Trevor Noah?

  They would do that. And then now that would build resentment because now you'd see your inheritance slipping through your fingers.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  In the home of merry biscuits.

• 1:04:41Trevor Noah?

  Yo, you remember your grandmother's tin of biscuits? That was your inheritance. And then now, all of a sudden, you gotta share this with somebody else? The will has been changed. Let me tell you something, man. I still have scars. I share, but I still have scars.

• 1:04:57Speaker 06

  But that, but that's a really important point to, to, to sort of like. Refer to how families look now. We're talking about the rise of multi-generational households, but also rising divorce and remarriage and blended families really complicates inheritance.

• 1:05:16Trevor Noah?

  Tell us more.

• 1:05:17Speaker 06

  Well, I interviewed one girl in the book and she had, she came from a, she was a product of a divorce. That was, that was how she phrased it. And her father had remarried and had married a woman who had two children. So they became his stepchildren. And there was so much in her sort of expression and voice and tone that was resentful, that she knew that because essentially her relationship with her dad had become distant and his relationship with his stepchildren had become close.

• 1:05:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Speaker 06

  The money, you know, and she wasn't being materialistic. I was, you know, she was really careful to caveat that. But she was kind of like, you know, they'll get what is essentially mine.

• 1:06:04Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 1:06:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, and that's, you know, one example. I interviewed another guy who was saying, you know, the problem I have is that my first marriage, my children are now entering their thirties and wanting help with a house. My second marriage, my kids are going through school. So I've got like these competing priorities just in the age gap

• 1:06:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Speaker 06

  of my two families.

• 1:06:25Trevor Noah?

  Still help that's needed though.

• 1:06:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Trevor Noah?

  And then society will tell you that one group is a failure because of that. So they'll go, well, the ones in school, you should be helping them because of they need to get through school.

• 1:06:37Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:06:38Trevor Noah?

  And the ones at the house, I mean, they, they've got to get out there and they've just got to work. And, and society basically tells people that they're failing and their families are failing. When in fact, it's just a lack of inheritance that's basically making you make these decisions.

• 1:06:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was, you put that so well. And I think you're right because it's in a capitalist economy, there is a right way of doing things.

• 1:07:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

  Coming a success, particularly in a capitalist economy that is driven by social media and comparison culture in which we are, you know, have these images thrust into our, in our, into our eyes every, every second.

• 1:07:14Speaker 06

  I I got a message after I I published the book, actually, from a from a a man in his mid thirties. And he said to me, thank you for writing this because I always felt that I'd let the system down.

• 1:07:29Trevor Noah?

  Damn, that I'd let the system down.

• 1:07:30Speaker 06

  Right. And he said, reading your book made me realise that the system let me down.

• 1:07:35Trevor Noah?

  Who?

• 1:07:37Speaker 06

  And because he hadn't had access to the bank of mom and dad, because he hadn't, you know, succeeded in education, because he, you know, he had this sense of this very pervasive sense of being a failure in modern, you know, categorisation. And and I think, you know, that is such a powerful thing to to to to sort of compute and and realise. And it it is it is quite defeating to say, you know, your parents will determine your future.

• 1:08:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 06

  But it's also empowering to know that that's the system that's at play.

• 1:08:12Trevor Noah?

  That's what I mean, at least you know. That's what I mean about the honesty of it all. So to like to go back to the US one. I always bristled when I would hear people say.

• 1:08:21Speaker 06

  What?

• 1:08:22Trevor Noah?

  Bristled.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  He's pulling out the fine china tonight.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  Bristle away, my friend. Bristle away.

• 1:08:30Speaker 06

  That's a great word.

• 1:08:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like a little hedgehog or porcupine.

• 1:08:35Trevor Noah?

  I when I when I would hear people say the phrase self-made, I I don't know why it got me. It still gets me till this day. So when I when I heard it, it was, um, the one that stuck out to me was Kylie Jenner, right? She had done an amazing job with her beauty brand and this whole thing. And they went, the youngest self-made billionaire. And I went, I'm not discrediting anything that she's done, but she's not self-made. And they're like, what do you mean? Self-made. Then I was like, no, no, she inherited everything from her family. And I'm not, again, I'm not saying she's not good at business and I'm not saying that she didn't do well and didn't fit. No, no, no. But you cannot tell me that she didn't inherit what Kim Kardashian had worked to build by building her piece of the empire. You get in the door a lot easier and a lot quicker when you're Kim Kardashian. And then Kim Kardashian inherited from her parents.

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:09:20Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean? So if you're coming from a world where you you're of the Jenners and you're of the Kardashians, you've inherited something. And again, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 1:09:28Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:09:29Trevor Noah?

  But there's an inheritance. Jeff Bezos, self-made in his garage. What they don't tell you is like hundreds of thousands came from family members that enabled him to start these businesses in a garage.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  And fail and start and fail.

• 1:09:40Trevor Noah?

  Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, same thing. People go, he just dropped out and he started. Guys, you can't just drop out of school and start these companies. You can try and maybe you will succeed and be an anomaly. But then his story also involves a bank of mom and dad.

• 1:09:55Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:09:55Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:09:56Trevor Noah?

  Injecting cash.

• 1:09:57Speaker 06

  It well, it makes me, it actually makes me laugh because in venture capital, there's a phrase, friends and family round.

• 1:10:03Trevor Noah?

  Ah, they love that. Yes. Yeah, they call it that.

• 1:10:06Speaker 06

  They call it, they call it the friends and family round. So before you ask, like, you know, investors that you don't know, ask investors that you do.

• 1:10:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 06

  Your friends and family round.

• 1:10:16Trevor Noah?

  So you have different rounds of fu- of funding, right? When you when you start the company?

• 1:10:19Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:10:19Trevor Noah?

  And then one of the, they go, uh, start with the friends and family round.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  Then come.

• 1:10:23Trevor Noah?

  But they call it a round, as if it's, you know, it it now makes it that you're, you're not just asking them, this is a round of funding, of course. And then to your point and what you said about a generation paying the next generation, go back and look, Google it, use AI, whatever you want to do. Look at how much each of these family members then got when the companies would IPO. Because that's another way where you can give an inheritance back to your parents.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:10:49Trevor Noah?

  You come from a wealthy family or you have access to wealth because of your family, right?

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:10:55Trevor Noah?

  You start this company. You take a few hundred thousand dollars. Ah, still working hard. You lose a bit of it. You lose all of it. They give you some more. You go back in, you do it again. Things go well. They go well. They go well. They get even better. Next thing you're launching a company. It's an IPO. Before the company lists on a stock exchange for everyone else to buy the shares.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Start here first.

• 1:11:16Trevor Noah?

  Once again, there's a loophole that allows you to give friends and family shares.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  First.

• 1:11:22Trevor Noah?

  Before the thing lists.

• 1:11:25Trevor Noah?

  And now you can give them shares to a company at a price that basically is not

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  Doesn't exist.

• 1:11:31Trevor Noah?

  It doesn't exist yet. And that little investment that your dad or your mom or your dad in law, your mom in law gave you now balloons. And look what you've done. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  So it becomes the the the pre four skins.

• 1:11:46Trevor Noah?

  I mean, that's one way to think of it. The skins, not four skins.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I need to get it before. So it's a four.

• 1:11:53Trevor Noah?

  This is true.

• 1:11:54Speaker 06

  I love that.

• 1:11:54Trevor Noah?

  This is true. I don't think anyone who's playing video games would call them.

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  They are the skins.

• 1:11:58Trevor Noah?

  They are skins. There are skins in video games.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  Yes. But if you get the skins before.

• 1:12:02Trevor Noah?

  Before the game comes out.

• 1:12:03Speaker 04

  Are they not for skins?

• 1:12:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  For for.

• 1:12:05Trevor Noah?

  Therefore, they are skins from before.

• 1:12:08Speaker 04

  So you're for skinning. You.

• 1:12:10Trevor Noah?

  I'm I'm willing to accept this as a term. Many rich people.

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  Are for skinning.

• 1:12:15Trevor Noah?

  Are for skinning. And so by for skinning, they make sure that they're able to erect a larger fortune.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  Got you. To penetrate the market more.

• 1:12:22Trevor Noah?

  That's exactly what it is. Sorry. We're so sorry. We'll we'll cut ourselves out of this podcast. We're so sorry.

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  You've got a PhD. You don't deserve this.

• 1:12:32Trevor Noah?

  Back to the toilets. Look at everything you've done. We've taken you back to the toilets.

• 1:12:39Speaker 06

  Brilliant.

• 1:12:40Trevor Noah?

  But it is that. You know what I mean? And and to your point, that's what I mean by the honesty. Is like, if we're honest, and we're not making it good or bad, it just makes it a little more, it just makes it easier.

• 1:12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Trevor Noah?

  To to navigate.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:12:54Trevor Noah?

  Just tell me that your parents had that or acknowledge it's it again, it's not about fixing or not fixing, but it's nice to know.

• 1:13:01Speaker 04

  It speaks to exactly what your your writer said, the one who wrote your letter, who studied something. You you are basically essentially lifting the veil on what people have been so ashamed to admit, and it makes other people admit even better. So in South Africa, there was a huge debate about people who say they're self made or this term that they've pulled themselves up with their bootstraps.

• 1:13:20Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, they love that.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  Someone said, you have to have boots first.

• 1:13:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  How about that? You had boots.

• 1:13:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  For you to pull straps.

• 1:13:27Trevor Noah?

  And by the way, you can't pull your this great, you can't pull yourself up by your boots. Have you tried?

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  I don't have.

• 1:13:32Trevor Noah?

  Try and lift yourself up by your bootstraps. See what happens.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  For me.

• 1:13:35Trevor Noah?

  It is impossible.

• 1:13:36Speaker 04

  You, on the other hand.

• 1:13:37Trevor Noah?

  It is impossible.

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  Puss in boots. That's there, there, there, there, he did it.

• 1:13:42Trevor Noah?

  You know, you know, actually, I like that Eugene, no, I like that Eugene brought that up because I, I think to what, to what that man said to you in your writing. I feel like I have failed the system. You, you tackle this in a, in a, in a beautiful and poignant way. You make us see a generation of men now. Who, who have been framed as just like losers, basement dwellers, angry at society for no reason. Yeah, but when you, when you break it down, you go. What else could you be if this, if you are failing? And the system's telling you that you are failing because it's your fault. What would you be if not angry and completely, because you're disillusioned, you know what I mean?

• 1:14:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the manosphere has many causes, but I think the sort of economic um disfigurations are one, one, one really core element. Particularly how men have suffered in the last 20 years economically, right? And, and you know, one of the fastest growing demographics in the U S is female breadwinners. You know, young women, young G N Z women in, in major cities across the U S are out earning young men. You know, we know they're outperforming um men at university in education. And it's really interesting. We did some data asking people, do you think we live in an heritocracy?

• 1:15:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:06Speaker 06

  And the gender breakdown was so revealing. Because men were particularly affluent men that were rece- receiving the help from um the bank of mum and dad.

• 1:15:22Speaker 06

  Were most likely to say, yes, we absolutely do. But least likely to admit it.

• 1:15:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:15:30Speaker 06

  Publicly.

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  Publicly, yes, yes.

• 1:15:31Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:15:32Speaker 06

  So there's, so that, so there's a sort of weird sort of scenario that women are much more likely to say, I got help from my parents than men. Men are much more likely to lean on a kind of self-made narrative. However, you know, sort of airbrushed.

• 1:15:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  And, and I think it pierces at the heart of this perception of what masculinity is all about, which is you are the breadwinner. You bring home the bacon.

• 1:16:02Trevor Noah?

  You did it yourself.

• 1:16:02Speaker 06

  You create the financial security that. Enable women to do what they need to do and, you know, and breed, breed, breed, you know, that we are still so far from that being, you know, countered in society. It's so pervasive. And, you know, I remember when, you know, my husband and I, we've, we've, I call us, we have a seesaw marriage. So at one point he was earning more and then another point I was earning more and then, you know. And so I've been a breadwinner and it's, it's, it's really interesting how people reacted to it.

• 1:16:34Trevor Noah?

  What, what did you notice?

• 1:16:36Speaker 06

  You know, um, you're carrying a lot, you know, this sort of perception of, yeah, you're carrying the children, you're carrying the domestic burdens, but you're also carrying the financial burdens, you know. Okay, let's just box your husband as not performing, you know.

• 1:16:53Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:16:53Speaker 06

  The assumptions made, well, the reality was, was that he was doing most of the childcare. Um, and it wasn't childcare because it's his kids. He was doing most of the, most of the domestic tools. He was being a father.

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  I think you've spent too much time with us now.

• 1:17:07Speaker 06

  I know you've corrupted me. Oh my God. But, you know, he was doing, he was, he was doing everything that, you know,

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  Doing his bit.

• 1:17:15Speaker 06

  A traditional housewife.

• 1:17:16Trevor Noah?

  He was being a partner.

• 1:17:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:17:18Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:17:19Trevor Noah?

  He was being a partner.

• 1:17:20Speaker 06

  But it's incredible how, how we still, after forty years of feminism, unable to accept that in society.

• 1:17:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes, and that's what we talk about all the time as we go. It's not about us defining, I mean, society will always shift these roles and they'll gradually move here and there. Some people would argue some traits are masculine, some are feminine, but you as a person may contain more regardless of your gender. You may be more masculine in some things and more feminine as they've been defined.

• 1:17:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:17:48Trevor Noah?

  Put that aside for a second. We take for granted what it does to a society when the stories we're telling people don't match up with the realities. Right? So to your point exactly, if we're telling young men these stories.

• 1:18:05Trevor Noah?

  Then there's no reprieve in their minds. They're going, I suck, I fail, I this, I this. And then someone pops in in the manosphere and goes like, hey, hey, hey. Before you judge yourself, let me give you someone else to judge. Let me give you someone else to hate. Let me give you something else to be angry at. And that's a powerful outlet because then you go. Deep down, I think it's me. But they've said it's not me, it's these things, but they don't point you to the thing that it is. And then to your point with women, it's the it's the the exact opposite. They go, I mean, he can't pay your rent. And I mean, is he gonna support you and your family? And is he gonna? I mean, you've got to be with a high value man and you fail. And you hear people using these terms as if human beings are only defined by their economic value. And I know people are all experiencing the pressure of the environment we're in.

• 1:18:50Trevor Noah?

  But we're also not able to be honest about it because the thing itself isn't honest.

• 1:18:54Speaker 06

  But but I mean, to to to just add a counter argument.

• 1:18:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, go please.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

  If you look at all the data, women want high value men. Like, the whole marry a guy in finance.

• 1:19:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Speaker 06

  Phenomenon is a consequence of of an economy where it used to be you could survive on a male breadwinner salary.

• 1:19:12Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:19:12Speaker 06

  Now you need two salaries.

• 1:19:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, completely.

• 1:19:14Speaker 06

  Two salaries. So you actually need more than ever. You know, men to step up and to provide, particularly if the woman wants children. And obviously, we are talking about heterosexual normative relationships here. There there is there is a lot of variance and and dynamics here, of course there are, and difference. But it is it is quite telling that women are very economically driven when looking for a mate.

• 1:19:39Trevor Noah?

  This is no, I don't think it's a counter. I think it's exactly what I'm saying. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. That's exactly what I mean.

• 1:19:45Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:19:45Trevor Noah?

  And I'm saying, so, okay, you know, there's a story that always sticks with me when I think, when I read. You know, when I'm reading economics, I'm trying to understand the world. Um, when I when I went on tour and I did shows in India. One of the biggest things that strikes you in India is how close the wealth inequality gap is. Now, I come from South Africa. We have one of the highest Gini coefficients in that the gap between the rich and the poor is one of the widest in the world and it's ever expanding, right? But because of the legacy of apartheid, they've done a good job of obscuring it.

• 1:20:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Trevor Noah?

  You go to Cape Town, they've built walls that hide it from you when you drive from the airport till you get to the mansions. You know, you're in the city in Johannesburg, you can avoid it on the highways and you can get to where you need to get to. With minimal disturbance to your emotional well-being in terms of seeing how far you may or may not be from somebody else, right? America does it as well, and it's done it for years. Different parts of the world have it in different ways. And that's where the whole, like, you come from the suburbs or from the, that's sort of what it was. In India, it's crazy how, and I haven't been everywhere, so please don't get me wrong, this is not a blanket statement, but where I went, you'd be shocked at how one minute you'd be driving through, as they call them, the slums of India,

• 1:21:01Trevor Noah?

  and the next thing you know, there'd be a mega mansion that is one of the most beautiful buildings you've ever seen in your life.

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  That close.

• 1:21:07Trevor Noah?

  Close, I mean literally, not figuratively, not, not, you know when people go a stone's throw away?

• 1:21:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:21:13Trevor Noah?

  Literally a stone's throw, right? And I'm with the taxi driver in the car, and I said, "Whose house is that?" And he said, "That's Mr. Ambani's house." I was like, "Oh, Mr. Ambani's?" And he's like, "The Ambani family and they've done..." And I look it up and I'm like, "Wow, this building cost a few billion dollars or something, it's one family." Now, I immediately apply my thinking, I'm like, "Oh, you must feel terrible." And this man said something fascinating. He said, "No, it's amazing." I said, "Good for them. They make India proud. Look at what they've done. It's great to see them. They're building a name all over the world. We are all proud of the Ambanis." And I was like, "Ah." And I said, "But like, how does it feel for you, though?" And he said, "No. He said, "I come from a different family."

• 1:21:53Trevor Noah?

  And he said, "For me and my family," he said, "like, for my cost, we're not gonna get there, but I'm just working hard to get to the next place." And now maybe in like a um you know in a in a way that I shouldn't have, I pitied him. But then I realized he didn't pity himself. Because he was working, in my opinion, with a more honest reflection of what his situation was. He was like, oh, no, no, no, I never thought that I'm gonna get there. Because of my family lineage. So my goal is just to keep growing this thing, but that's not our path. And he had a piece to him that I think many people have been robbed of in the world. Again, I'm not saying people should or shouldn't be in a downtrodden position. I'm not saying that.

• 1:22:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:36Trevor Noah?

  But I went, what would happen if somebody could say, yeah, I'm living in my mom's basement and I'm a twenty four year old guy. But my family didn't have much of an inheritance and the system has let me down. And because I didn't have these things, I can't go. But I I don't have the shame anymore because I understand that I'm in it. It's not in me.

• 1:22:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:22:54Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:22:54Speaker 06

  And you're so you're so hit brilliant point, which is it's all about expectation.

• 1:22:59Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:23:00Speaker 06

  Mo Mo Goudat, you know, the.

• 1:23:01Trevor Noah?

  Of course, yes, yeah, brilliant.

• 1:23:03Speaker 06

  He has this whole theory about happiness and it's all based around expectation.

• 1:23:07Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:23:07Speaker 06

  Whether they're met or unmet or surpassed. And and, you know, the guy that wrote to me and said, the system has failed me. Had higher expectations. He's experienced a downward social mobility.

• 1:23:24Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:23:25Speaker 06

  And he had high expectations because he watched what had happened to potentially his peers. And ultimately, potentially even what had happened to his parents.

• 1:23:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 06

  And so his expectations were a degree would get me this. I would have access to a house. I would have a certain sort of measure of success.

• 1:23:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45Speaker 06

  In this system. And it's those, yeah, unmet expectations.

• 1:23:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Speaker 06

  That you didn't, you know.

• 1:23:52Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's the story that they're telling you.

• 1:23:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Trevor Noah?

  Over and there there was a book that I read that changed the way I saw it even in sports. They're like, you know, people talk about, oh, what's the best way to get into the NBA? And what's the best way? Well, you know, it's hard work and training. You've got to do this. And they're like, you know what? One of the best ways to get into the NBA or into the Premier League or into any of the top sports league in the world. You know what one of the best ways is?

• 1:24:15Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:24:16Trevor Noah?

  Have parents who are athletes.

• 1:24:20Trevor Noah?

  Have a father or a mother who played sport at the highest levels. You have a better chance of getting into that sport at the highest levels. Because to what you said earlier, even beyond access, which they can very be give you. Just the physical inheritance that they've given you.

• 1:24:36Speaker 04

  Genetic.

• 1:24:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like we we take this for granted. So people will tell you all these, oh, work hard and I worked hard. Yeah, you did. I'm not saying you didn't. But did your dad play basketball at a high level? Yes, and did your mom? Oh, wow, look at that. Both parents play basketball at a high level and you're now in the NBA.

• 1:24:55Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere because we got more what now after this.

• 1:25:00Trevor Noah?

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• 1:25:45Trevor Noah?

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

• 1:26:30Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 1:26:33Trevor Noah?

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• 1:27:17Trevor Noah?

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• 1:27:37Speaker 04

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• 1:28:08Speaker 04

  You know what I think a lot of people are not telling about the story of inheritance is how every measurable inheritance now was, at some point, a humble beginning. Like your grandfather winning, he didn't win a mansion, but that house became a legacy for your family. Yeah. And I think now for our generation, because of, like you said, expectations that we put on ourselves, unmet ones, we're also adding what society, we sort of think is expecting from us, depending on who we are, what we are, what we've studied, and what we look like, based on also what we see on social media as well. Ah, yeah. There's some people who won't buy a one-bedroom flat. No. Because they think to themselves, I'm a surgeon, why would I live in a one bedroom flat? But years and years ago, someone bought that one bedroom flat and bought another one, another, another one and now fifty years later.

• 1:28:52Speaker 04

  The expectation of, of also, I think it's, I, I, I'm yet to read the book, but I hope there is a part that speaks to how we can, there was a quote that I read somewhere that said poverty is a disease of pride. Because it stops you from asking for help, it stops you from asking, from starting small, and it also stops you from getting paid small. So you can build on something else. So once you cure that, I think a lot of things will be, will be solved, you know, expectations met. And also just knowing that starting small is something that you can use to build a legacy for your family.

• 1:29:23Speaker 06

  And I do think if you look at like people in their twenties, you know, I'm in my forties. I look at them and I'm like.

• 1:29:29Speaker 04

  You are in your what?

• 1:29:30Speaker 06

  Forties, I'm here midlife.

• 1:29:33Speaker 04

  You look in your forties. Yeah, hey, look. Tell you what.

• 1:29:39Speaker 04

  Sorry, I couldn't help it.

• 1:29:40Speaker 06

  No, but you look at Gen Z, right? They're in their twenties and they are, they are becoming like financially educated, investing, however randomly in certain things like they are fully aware that you cannot live by salary alone. That dream has died. And they are fully aware of how exposed they are to A I. They are fully aware that a college degree isn't the access and the entry point to opportunity that it was twenty years ago. They're so much savvier, whereas I think millennials are still, I call them the in-betweens, they're like caught between two centuries. Right? They're still sort of like hankering after the twentieth century dream.

• 1:30:22Speaker 06

  And sort of trying to sort of navigate the twenty first century. And whereas true twenty first century kids that have also grown up with, you know, a smartphone in their pocket since they were thirteen. You know, social media that yes, creates comparison, the thief of joy, but also creates aspiration.

• 1:30:39Speaker 06

  You know, and and you're not just defined by your immediate circle, your immediate community. You're on your phone seeing what's possible.

• 1:30:47Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:30:47Speaker 06

  And you know.

• 1:30:48Trevor Noah?

  But unfortunately, that possibility might be out of reach.

• 1:30:50Speaker 06

  Yes, but it also, it does widen your world in a way that we did not have.

• 1:30:56Trevor Noah?

  Completely, completely. I agree with that.

• 1:30:58Speaker 06

  You know, and and it it makes you think, I think.

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Differently.

• 1:31:02Speaker 06

  Differently and bigger. And I and I think it it maybe is is diluting for that generation. The narrative of of this is the path to success, become a lawyer, you know.

• 1:31:15Trevor Noah?

  How how do you how do you think it adversely affects women, like specifically, because. You know, we we we will now especially talk about like young men. And I think one of the reasons I do it is because I go. When young men are angry, that's when shit pops off. Do you know what I mean? Like revolutions and and militias and rebel groups is groups of men who have had no, like ISIS was one of the best examples. Right. The US goes into Afghanistan and that whole region, there's a power vacuum. It's all young men who now have no jobs, they've lost families, they have no hope. And because of that, someone corrals them all up and says, we'll give you money, we'll give you women, and we'll give you purpose.

• 1:31:58Trevor Noah?

  Ride with us. And all of a sudden, you have this mini army that takes years to now.

• 1:32:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Trevor Noah?

  Counteract. And the only way people counteract it is by killing it as opposed to going back to its source. And so. It's easy to focus on that because it's almost more threatening.

• 1:32:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:12Trevor Noah?

  But when we look at women. It almost feels like on an emotional level, it's it's destabilizing. It almost feels like in heritocracy at times butts up against some of the freedoms that feminism promised. Right, like choosing when to have your child, choosing how many children to have. Some of these become luxuries that you inherit because you did or didn't have parents that could give it to you.

• 1:32:38Speaker 06

  I know it's ironic really, because feminism, certainly in in the in the US in the seventies, was about freeing the woman from the family. You know, and enabling and the kitchen sink and, you know, kind of, you know, widening opportunities and access for women. And if you look at millennial women, they're.

• 1:33:02Speaker 06

  And I'll tell it through one of the stories I I demonstrate in the book. I spoke to to one girl who was, she was, she had a joint bank account with her mother and not one with her partner. She wasn't married to him, but they'd been together over fifteen years. Right. So her financial ties were with her mother. And they had property together and they'd, you know, sort of, you know, very much sort of open dialogue and relationship with money with her mother. But she was very clear that she wanted complete separate finances from her, from the partner. And the reason I tell that sort of um

• 1:33:40Speaker 06

  that story and and and her as an illustration is that for the daughters of the feminist pioneers, the millennial women, they found greater financial security in the bank of mum and dad than a male partner. Right. Not always true. I generalize hugely here and there's really important nuance. But I think one of the frustrations I see with a lot of my female friends and a lot of of the of the narrative around motherhood in particular is what were all those feminist baby boomer women doing when they were raising their sons? Like

• 1:34:19Speaker 06

  why don't they know how to change a nappy? Why don't they know how to, why don't? And and actually, the truth is, millennial dads are changing more nappies, pushing more prams, doing more school runs than any other generation of dads before them. It's not because they love their children more than any other generation of fathers before them. It's because the economics of marriage have fundamentally changed. Women have stepped up in the economic contribution to the household because they've had to, but also because they wanted to, right? But men have had to step up on the care front. And I see it, I see modern masculinity in a really positive sense being redefined around fatherhood. Yeah. Right. The public demonstration of the father, you know, father of girls, you know, father. Yes.

• 1:35:00Speaker 06

  Right. It's a really positive sort of narrative around fatherhood. I see less positivity and public demonstration around elder care. And looking after aging parents and people in our families. Because we're living in an aging society, right? We have fewer and fewer children. We have, we have a ticking time bomb of an aging society. And within families, who historically has always done the elder care, looking after the parents. We know.

• 1:35:29Speaker 06

  Predominantly women. So just brilliant that fathers have stepped up looking after kids. Now we need sons to change as many catheters as they're changing nappies for their babies.

• 1:35:39Trevor Noah?

  Balance it out on the other side.

• 1:35:41Speaker 06

  Because all of those hard-earned, you know, career opportunities that millennial women have done and succeeded in will be seriously under threat as their parents age and they have to look after their parents.

• 1:35:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's it's um.

• 1:35:57Trevor Noah?

  It's also one of those, one of those problems that has so many different prongs sticking out of it that you realize you have to just push push each one in to to finally get to a solution. So one of them to what you're saying is the system. If people are ashamed to live in a multi-generational family, they're less likely to do that.

• 1:36:15Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:36:16Trevor Noah?

  I don't know about you, but I've definitely heard people say, ah, yeah, I've got to look after my gran or there's like a little, there isn't, you know what I mean? To your point, there isn't a chest out. There isn't somebody like, oh, no, I look after my grandmother.

• 1:36:27Speaker 06

  There's no elder care influences.

• 1:36:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:36:29Speaker 06

  There's mum influences. There's no elder care influences.

• 1:36:32Trevor Noah?

  It's not seen as a positive. And then to the second side of it, it's what you said. Populations are declining, generations are getting older, but we don't seem to ask, in my opinion, like a core question. Everyone goes like birth rates are declining. And then I see all these things that like, could it be microplastics? It could be the micropl- and I'm like, all right, maybe it is. I'm not a biologist. I don't know. Maybe it is. I do find it interesting, though, that birth rates are not declining everywhere in the world at the same, like in the same way, at the same clip.

• 1:37:05Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:37:06Trevor Noah?

  You know, if you look at where capitalism has gone and how it's gone and how people live, more importantly. It's interesting that in poorer places where people are living like a more, um, you know, like sustenance life. Their their birth rate is pretty high still. They you know what I mean? They're still having the kids. They're still growing populations.

• 1:37:24Speaker 06

  Although it's declining at quite a rapid rate.

• 1:37:26Trevor Noah?

  But not but not even close. Well, I'm saying like if we account for the micro, let's say we account, I'm not even saying it's microplastics. Let's say we account for that. The decline across the globe. Africa is still growing at a rate that many places in the world aren't. And I'm not saying that it is or isn't. I just wonder

• 1:37:44Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:37:44Trevor Noah?

  how much or how less likely you are to have kids in a world where you go. I do not have the resources to have these kids. Like, when are you gonna have your kids? How many conversations have we had with people who have frozen their eggs?

• 1:38:00Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:38:00Trevor Noah?

  But haven't had the kids. And you go like, but why aren't you having the kids? They're like, well, I can't afford them right now. But I know that I want the kids in the future, so I'm gonna freeze my eggs now so that I can have the kids when I have the money to have the kids. And when I have the man who can help me afford to have the kids. And it all, if you look at how many times the word afford comes into the equation.

• 1:38:19Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:38:20Trevor Noah?

  You realize we've warped part of what I what I believe is a very natural thing, and that is you just have kids because you are having sex.

• 1:38:27Speaker 04

  And we're not having frozen babies.

• 1:38:30Trevor Noah?

  No, they won't be frozen.

• 1:38:31Speaker 04

  Or they themselves.

• 1:38:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they themselves won't be. You thaw them.

• 1:38:34Speaker 06

  But I mean, I think I think the conversation around fertility as as as a mother who had babies late, I was a geriatric pro um mother, right? That's an official medical term.

• 1:38:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but is this like a young age? What is the age for geriatric?

• 1:38:49Speaker 06

  I think it's thirty six.

• 1:38:50Trevor Noah?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh. It's wild that they use geriatric for that.

• 1:38:52Speaker 06

  Geriatric. So I was a I was a geriatric mother. You're talking to a geriatric mother here. And

• 1:38:57Trevor Noah?

  Thank you for your service.

• 1:38:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Speaker 06

  I breed for the world.

• 1:39:04Speaker 06

  Um, but women historically have never had control over their fertility.

• 1:39:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Speaker 06

  And in some places and in different, obviously, you know, different conversations, even in this country, around controlling one's um fertility and birth rights.

• 1:39:22Speaker 06

  It's a really sensitive and complex issue that deserves attention and nuance because you're absolutely right. The economic constraints and and burdens of having children now are at completely odds with perhaps what our grandfathers and grandmothers and certainly our great grandfathers. Having children used to be a net benefit. Because they used to earn money and come back and give it and spread it to the family, right? Having as many children, actually, you'd create this sort of mini economic empire. You're creating your inheritance. Right. Oh, wow. Now, really, since the nineteen eighties, when children started to live at home longer.

• 1:40:04Speaker 06

  Now parenting is a thirty year financial commitment with the most expensive years after eighteen, right? And that's how we we you think about the language we use around parenting. We invest in our children. It's an economic commitment here, right? So so the way that parenting has gone is women are having fewer children. They're having them closer together. That's really important. And they're having them much later in life. And that is a product to a large degree of choice, right? Because as soon as you start educating women to tertiary level, the birth rate declines massively and they have children later. It's about choice, but it's also about economic burdens and the complexities of trying to find a partner.

• 1:40:49Speaker 06

  And I use gender neutral terms there deliberately, right? Because because families come in many forms. And also, you're seeing increasing number of women, I have many friends, that are chosen single mothers that are choosing to make a child on out, you know, on their own steam. So the the model of what a family looks like, the model of how women procreate looks like, just all looks very different. But to speak to the political point, which I think is mentioned too often, too casually, which is we, you know, childcare is too expensive, you know, healthcare is too expensive.

• 1:41:25Speaker 06

  Education too expensive. The economics of parenthood has become more expensive. But people had a lot more children in a lot tougher economic times.

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  During wars.

• 1:41:34Speaker 06

  Exactly. It's not economics, just economics, nor is it state support either. Because if you look at Scandinavia, for example.

• 1:41:41Trevor Noah?

  They've got some of the lowest birth rates in the world.

• 1:41:43Speaker 06

  They've got some of the best provisions in terms of paternity leave, childcare, but the lowest birth rates as well. So what we're really talking about here, which is something that no one really, I think, fully addresses, which is we've given women better options. This is about individualism.

• 1:42:00Trevor Noah?

  And you're saying we should take them away?

• 1:42:02Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:42:03Trevor Noah?

  Okay, just making sure. It's from your tone. I was like, damn, this is gonna be a spicy take. We've given women too many options. Time to take them away.

• 1:42:11Speaker 06

  We've given women options.

• 1:42:12Trevor Noah?

  No, that's what I was like, damn.

• 1:42:13Speaker 06

  And you know what? Guess what? When women are given the choice.

• 1:42:17Trevor Noah?

  I want to be a glitch. I was not here. Women's rights were being taken away.

• 1:42:22Speaker 06

  The point is, is that when women are given the choice, having ten children is not what they do with their life, right?

• 1:42:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:42:29Speaker 06

  So, you know, and I think there's, we have to also have genuine conversation, a much more positive one. But when you have kids, it's all about sacrifice. It's a thankless task. They don't thank you. Like, the whole point of having a child is, you know, you build it within you and you let it go. You literally push it out of you and you spend the next twenty years trying to push it out into society, hopefully so that they can have enough resilience and independence and savviness to not, you push them out of the pride. You literally, and that's, you know, I think it's really interesting if you look at how inheritance operates in nature, is, you know, there is that sort of, let's push the, push the kids out of the pride.

• 1:43:13Speaker 06

  But actually, there are other examples in nature where, you know, inheritance, material inheritance, actually is a fact of life. So woodpeckers inherit trees.

• 1:43:24Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 1:43:24Speaker 06

  And inherit mounds. Yeah. Squirrels.

• 1:43:29Speaker 04

  Inherit the nuts.

• 1:43:30Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:43:30Trevor Noah?

  These nuts. Sorry, I couldn't help, I couldn't help it, Eugene. I apologize that you were caught in the crossfire.

• 1:43:36Speaker 06

  You don't know, I go high.

• 1:43:37Trevor Noah?

  I apologize that you were caught in the crossfire.

• 1:43:39Speaker 04

  I am so sorry for this, I am.

• 1:43:41Trevor Noah?

  My friend is here and I, I can't let him get away with that. I can't let him get away with that. I apologize. I apologize. You have, you have inherited our friendship and I apologize for that.

• 1:43:54Trevor Noah?

  But that's an interesting way to think of it. It's like, so which one do you think is most natural for us as humans then? If if different animals have different inheritances, what's most natural for humans? Is there is there any literature on this?

• 1:44:06Speaker 06

  In an in an economy that feels fragile, it's keeping close.

• 1:44:10Trevor Noah?

  Okay, yeah, okay.

• 1:44:11Speaker 06

  When it feels danger, when it feels full of danger, feel of uncertainty, fragile existence, you keep your babies close. You know, and that's why you have the situation where one in four Gen Z'ers take their parents to job interviews.

• 1:44:28Trevor Noah?

  One in four Gen Z'ers take their parents to job interviews?

• 1:44:32Speaker 06

  For support.

• 1:44:33Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:44:33Speaker 04

  For support. Oh, I thought to get them a job.

• 1:44:35Speaker 06

  Maybe the parents are, you know, actually going and the the kids are having to tag along. But you're seeing a process of of what I call extended adolescence. It used to be you became an adult, you know, eighteen, then it was twenty one. Now it's more like thirty.

• 1:44:52Trevor Noah?

  So what happens in the future? Because, you know, we we got all these promises. I would see all these news headlines and I would see all these stories where they go millennials will be the greatest inheritance generation of a lifetime. There will be trillions of dollars that because of what the parents have earned, they will. Is is that still true? Is is there going to be this massive boom that that everyone experiences if they are the children of the boomers?

• 1:45:16Speaker 06

  I mean, inheritance is not a guarantee, right?

• 1:45:19Trevor Noah?

  Oh, damn.

• 1:45:20Speaker 06

  The you've got the contingency issue around elder care and and that being social care being incredibly expensive. All the inheritance could be wiped out. You've got, as I said, the complication around blended families. You've got the fact that most millennials will inherit in their sixties. So and going to them, it's probably going to go to their kids. So the intergenerational unfairness trickles down the generations, I suspect, is how it will roll. Because

• 1:45:48Speaker 06

  And it will happen differently in different countries. I mean, in the UK, for example, the tax system encourages you to give early while you're still alive.

• 1:45:55Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:45:56Speaker 06

  Don't, don't wait until death, like you'll lose it to the taxman forty percent. So give it away in life. In the US, it is slightly different and Trump's amended it so that you, you, more people in the US give at the point of death, which means that millennials really inherit it a lot later. And so it may fund their retirement because they're perhaps not putting enough into their pensions that.

• 1:46:18Trevor Noah?

  So now it might skip a generation where, where it was, I guess, at some point meant to be like the next generation.

• 1:46:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I mean, these things are so fraught with uncertainty. Who knows what governments do? Who knows? Policies will change, you know, the affordability of various things in our lives will change. That's what I think is really important. What you were saying about earlier is the script is so unclear for the 21st century.

• 1:46:42Trevor Noah?

  It really is.

• 1:46:43Speaker 06

  The education, the jobs, the past, the family unit, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the various sort of expectations we had feel so sort of not abandoned, but just like irrelevant.

• 1:47:00Trevor Noah?

  Hmm. It feels like there's three distinct conversations that are happening at the same time then. So you have the, the Gen Z who are, as you said, on, on the cusp of this new era, technology, AI, social, just a whole new world that hasn't even been defined yet and keeps changing every day. You have the boomer generation that is nearing the end of their journey, but no one knows where their wealth will go, when it goes, if it goes.

• 1:47:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:29Trevor Noah?

  And then you have the millennials, the sandwich generation who, who are stuck in between. Is there a way that each group should think?

• 1:47:35Speaker 06

  There's one more.

• 1:47:36Trevor Noah?

  Oh, which one is that?

• 1:47:36Speaker 06

  Generation. So in between the, so millennials, there's worth saying, Gen Z are those born from, and these are arbitrary date ranges, but really nineteen ninety.

• 1:47:47Speaker 06

  Nineteen ninety six to about twenty ten.

• 1:47:49Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:47:49Speaker 06

  That's Gen Z. After that is Gen Alpha.

• 1:47:51Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:47:52Speaker 06

  Okay. And before that is Millennials, nineteen eighty one to nineteen ninety six. Before that is Gen X. No one really talks about them because they're, actually, there's not as many of them. But that's those born from nineteen sixty six to nineteen eighty. And what's interesting about them, so they are generally speaking, the parents of Gen Z. Okay, boomers, nineteen forty five to nineteen sixty five.

• 1:48:18Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:48:18Speaker 06

  The parents, depending on when the mother gave birth, the parents of Millennials. Now, what's interesting is boomers have a lot more money than Gen X. Gen X were the generation that really suffered the most during the financial crisis. That's the jet, that's, we talk about millennials suffering, actually, they were too young. It was the assets that, that were vulnerable with those owned by Gen X.

• 1:48:38Trevor Noah?

  Was Gen X side, okay.

• 1:48:39Speaker 06

  But in America, you now have Gen Xers trying to push their kids through college, support them with everyday cost of living bills, potentially help them with a down payment on a house. They are putting twice as much money into their kids than they are their retirement.

• 1:48:55Trevor Noah?

  Hmm. They're hedging their bets on their children.

• 1:48:57Speaker 06

  And they are not as rich as the boomers. Potentially hedging their bets on their kids, I like that. But there is a sort of that forgotten generation who are sort of entering their sixties, you know, seventies now, who are actually quite vulnerable.

• 1:49:12Trevor Noah?

  So how, how do we think of inheritance then, you know, to go back to the premise of the book, you know, and in heritocracy, we're always told that we, we aim to and we live in meritocracies. You work hard and things will work out for you. And, you know, in the UK, they got rid of the monarchy so that everyone could be equal and everyone could work their, their best and get their best. And in America, they said, we have no monarchy, you just work your best and you will get the best. And this message really, for the most part, has permeated the globe. It's the story that everyone tells, work hard and you will be rewarded. We hear about oligarchies, you know, we we hear about, you know, straight up monarchies

• 1:49:53Trevor Noah?

  and oppression and system, but in an inheritocracy, how do you, how do you think that we should think about it? You know, because as you said in the beginning, it's not good or bad. You're always going to inherit something. So how do we then think about it in a way that will help as many people as possible? Because then society as a whole moves forward.

• 1:50:14Speaker 06

  Such a great question, which I think is beyond me, but I I'll try. I think the most important thing is to be open about it. Um, you know, generally speaking, in a theocracy and an autocracy and a meritocracy and a democracy, they're quite open about what the system is.

• 1:50:34Trevor Noah?

  They really are.

• 1:50:34Speaker 06

  In an inheritocracy, we need to be open about it.

• 1:50:37Trevor Noah?

  The only case where they're not open is a kleptocracy.

• 1:50:39Speaker 06

  Kleptocracy.

• 1:50:40Trevor Noah?

  Because that one, we have to call the police inquisition.

• 1:50:42Speaker 06

  Yes, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I think being open about it. But then I was, I was, I think one of the major failures of the book is that I don't offer any solution. There's no like, what do we do with this information? Do we, do we, do we all become lawyers? Do we all like, oh, my God, um, you know, just build generational wealth? Do we tax everything and everyone? Do we, you know, kill aspiration in the process? Like, what is it that we need to do?

• 1:51:17Speaker 06

  And the one conversation I had with an economist in the UK, um, I think came

• 1:51:27Speaker 06

  to the right sort of conclusion, which is you have to make, you have to, you don't want to kill inheritance, you don't want to kill that aspiration of building generational wealth. It's a really positive thing, and it's a huge drive for a lot of people. But you want to make it matter less. You want to build.

• 1:51:46Trevor Noah?

  I love that.

• 1:51:46Speaker 06

  A system that makes inheritance matter less. So what levers do you need to pull in the economy? What, you know, how does the education system need to change? How do you need to make nepotism not be the sort of, you know? Key mechanism of of access to power. What is it that needs to be done as individuals? Because there's always, you know, a point about individual responsibility in this. As communities, professions, you know, but also in terms of governance and government.

• 1:52:22Speaker 04

  You know what I'm realizing now as I speak to you is that there are so many ways that people have acquired a lot of wealth that they've passed down. And it speaks to a point that you raised earlier, that some people are ashamed to say where their wealth comes from. And I think there should be a book about how people have gotten their wealth in the first place. You know, in South Africa, obviously, we have our history. In many countries, they have sugarcane plantation owners. Yeah. Cotton farm owners, slave labors, and now we're seeing what's happening in Nepal with kleptocracy and people stealing just generally from the public purse and their children having a great time in Soho. So I think there's a lot to be said about what inheritance is and what wealth is. But I think what the previous generations from us did is what we could learn is inherit their values.

• 1:53:05Speaker 04

  Because those values are the ones that generated the wealth that we generally are enjoying now, you know, and how to use money. What family is, what investments to make and how to keep the family structure together. And I think shame, they tried very hard to try and do that. But what they gave in education took less and gave them less grandchildren.

• 1:53:23Speaker 06

  It's a there's a there's an old sort of saying that the first generation makes it. The second generation sustains it and the third squanders it.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Speaker 06

  And it's really interesting to when I was writing the book, the difference I discovered talking to a first gen wealth. But someone that had made the money.

• 1:53:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:43Speaker 06

  And someone that had inherited the money, like literally, and was then passing it on.

• 1:53:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:53:49Speaker 06

  So so if you've been an heir and then you will be a, you know, a and someone that shares their wealth, you have a greater understanding of that responsibility of wealth. But potentially the Shame that comes with that wealth, but also none of the drive that was with the builder of the wealth.

• 1:54:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:54:12Speaker 06

  And it goes back to just full circle moment on the Nepo babies.

• 1:54:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:54:17Speaker 06

  Because actually, there is huge burden of inheriting wealth.

• 1:54:22Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:23Speaker 06

  And really difficult weight to carry if you're, you know, not just carrying the family business or potentially the family wealth. In fact, yeah, you know, sons of footballers, that's a really heavy, you know, legacy to to pass forward.

• 1:54:42Speaker 04

  And you can also carry the family shame and guilt.

• 1:54:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:45Speaker 04

  If we trace where the wealth came from.

• 1:54:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, huge.

• 1:54:47Trevor Noah?

  Oh, damn.

• 1:54:48Speaker 06

  Huge.

• 1:54:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 1:54:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Trevor Noah?

  Don't follow the money.

• 1:54:51Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:52Trevor Noah?

  Never follow the money.

• 1:54:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. Do you have a view on Nepo babies in general?

• 1:55:00Speaker 06

  I think, I think it's, I think it's really interesting how we are living culturally in an heritocracy.

• 1:55:07Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:08Speaker 06

  Not just economically. So dynasties have become huge, whether we're talking about the Kardashians, they were obviously the first. But, you know, Beyonce and Blue Ivy, whether we're talking about the Beckhams, whether we're talking about Kennedys. Yeah, there's always been political dynasties, but I think you're like getting cultural dynasties.

• 1:55:23Trevor Noah?

  Cultural dynasties.

• 1:55:24Speaker 06

  So social media creates the lineage.

• 1:55:27Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:28Speaker 06

  And actually, it's been around a long enough now that those babies are now like mini adults.

• 1:55:33Trevor Noah?

  You're right.

• 1:55:33Speaker 06

  And like, you're seeing them literally grow up.

• 1:55:35Speaker 04

  Getting the deals now and doing the work.

• 1:55:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're seeing the next gen. And actually, there's huge economic reward in being a family brand.

• 1:55:44Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:55:44Speaker 06

  Right?

• 1:55:45Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I never thought of that.

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  I feel like in a way, the whole sort of like phenomena of Nepo babies is partly because of the sort of culture facilitating it and tech facilitating it. But it's also because we can maybe relate to them in a way that we maybe don't admit.

• 1:56:04Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:56:04Speaker 06

  Because a lot of us are Nepo babies to some degree.

• 1:56:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I agree.

• 1:56:10Speaker 06

  You know, that TV show Succession was ostensibly about, you know, the billionaire class with their quiet luxury. And their, you know, family infighting about who was going to run the family business. But actually, maybe we could relate to that more than we'd like to think or would have thought. Because actually, it was about families and money.

• 1:56:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Speaker 06

  Which have become. More and more prevalent.

• 1:56:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, who gets the house, who gets the car, who gets the land, who gets, I mean, even small things like the, the, the closet or the, you know what I mean, like furniture. We take for granted how many things are assigned value and like where the inheritance goes.

• 1:56:49Speaker 04

  Even last names are inheritance.

• 1:56:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, that's very true, actually. Yeah, because it opens or closes doors in some cases. Ah, never thought of it like that.

• 1:56:57Speaker 06

  Also, I love the fact that your mom called you Trevor because there was no association.

• 1:57:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, my mom wanted me to, she just wanted something unique and random. Because of what Eugene is saying.

• 1:57:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:10Trevor Noah?

  So my mom thought at a time when a name bore, it, it, it came with it, especially like in, in South Africa. But like your name was generally your African name, was a name that, that meant something to the family. And my mom felt like it was an inheritance of an expectation.

• 1:57:27Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:57:28Trevor Noah?

  You know, and so some, you know, like her, her name is Numbuisele, which means the one who has to give back. And that's pretty much the role she played in the family. You know, she was the one who had to give back. Um, and I think a lot of people have these stories where they go like, oh yeah, my name is that meaning. But I laugh with her now and I go, the irony is it became that she gave me Trevor because she's like, what a random crazy name. That means nothing in her world. And she's like, I'll give him this name because I don't want him to have the expectation.

• 1:57:55Speaker 04

  Of being normal.

• 1:57:56Trevor Noah?

  Of being normal and then look at my life. So in a way, she still gave me the thing with a, it's, I, I was laughing with her saying you can't avoid it. All you can do is try and aim it in the direction you wish for it to go.

• 1:58:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:08Trevor Noah?

  Because by doing that, I spent my whole life being surrounded by kids who were like, yeah, but what's your name name? Then I was like Trevor. Then they're like, hey, man, no one's named Trevor. What's your name name? Then I was like Trevor. They're like, hey, yo, you, you're in a safe place. Tell us your name.

• 1:58:22Speaker 04

  Gabriel.

• 1:58:24Trevor Noah?

  No, really. And, and so I, I love that Eugene said that it's like even your last name can be an inheritance. But this is, this has been a great way to think about it. Like make a world where the inheritance is less important. It'll always be there. But less important. That's why I love football, Eugene. I'm trying to get him into football. But, uh.

• 1:58:42Speaker 04

  Do you know what?

• 1:58:43Trevor Noah?

  One of my favorite stories.

• 1:58:44Speaker 04

  Do you know what?

• 1:58:44Trevor Noah?

  Can I tell you? One of my favorite stories.

• 1:58:46Speaker 04

  Did I say it right? Do you know what?

• 1:58:49Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 1:58:51Trevor Noah?

  So, one of my, one of my favorite stories is the story of Lionel Messi.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:58:55Trevor Noah?

  Alright, arguably the greatest footballer to ever do it. When Messi was first scouted, he was seen as a prodigious talent. Very early on scouts saw him and said, this boy has the potential to do things we've never seen before. However, they all noted in their scouting reports that his body was gonna hold him back. They said he's too small, he's just not strong enough, he's just not big enough. We worried, in fact, at some stage in his life, Messi wasn't growing, I think he had a, it was like a growth deficiency that he was experiencing, so he wasn't growing at the same rate as his peers.

• 1:59:28Speaker 04

  Didn't they also give him a nickname to that effect as well?

• 1:59:30Trevor Noah?

  I don't, I don't know, actually.

• 1:59:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, the flea.

• 1:59:32Trevor Noah?

  I wouldn't, oh, there you go, yeah.

• 1:59:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, but in Spanish.

• 1:59:35Trevor Noah?

  There you go, and so.

• 1:59:36Speaker 04

  Could have been Lel Chicharrón, but.

• 1:59:38Trevor Noah?

  And so.

• 1:59:38Speaker 04

  Don't take my word for it.

• 1:59:41Trevor Noah?

  Messi now goes on this journey. You know, he, he struggles, this young kid's super talented. But the game of football changes to your point. And as Messi matures, and he's like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, the system that he's playing in starts to value kicking the ball on the ground more than kicking it up in the air. And now, being the tallest, biggest, strongest person, doesn't define your success on a football pitch. And all of a sudden, Messi has the opportunity to become the greatest, where if he came around, we don't know, ten years earlier, twenty years earlier, it might have just ended as, you are not big enough to play football.

• 2:00:26Trevor Noah?

  And so in, in that way, I, I don't think they planned it in, in that, in such a beautiful way. But it is amazing to see what a system can do. If you change it so that your inheritance is less important, more people can join the game. And right now, we may be missing out on some of the greatest talents of a generation. Because they haven't inherited the tools that the system currently requires.

• 2:00:48Speaker 06

  And I feel like, and as a mother and as parents, like, I grapple with that all the time, like, what what is gonna be valuable when he's out into the world? I'm pretty sure the educational system, education system that he's in is, is not necessarily nurturing those skills.

• 2:01:07Trevor Noah?

  No, almost nowhere.

• 2:01:09Speaker 06

  And you can't really predict them either, that's what I find is, is difficult. I mean, we know in the age of A I. To be the most human you can be, full of character, full of great communication skills, full of humour, you know, is going to be hugely valuable. We know the definition of luxury is going to be anything delivered by a human.

• 2:01:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:01:32Speaker 06

  That is like a given. So if you can be the most human you can be,

• 2:01:35Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:36Speaker 06

  Um, we know that's going to have some currency, right? But beyond that, no idea, no idea. And, and, and as a mother, I, I feel that in an age that where everything feels quite fragile

• 2:01:53Speaker 06

  and your urge to create certainty and, and safety

• 2:01:58Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:01:59Speaker 06

  is, I've, I've never felt so inadequate.

• 2:02:04Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:02:05Speaker 06

  And, and that, I was just literally, I came from having a really deep conversation with my husband about like, what are we going to do about schools? What, what, where, you know, what's, what's the right avenue? Because what I did doesn't necessarily work anymore.

• 2:02:20Speaker 04

  Right. I'll tell you something. Seventeen years in,

• 2:02:25Speaker 04

  the biggest lesson is we, as a parent, you look at the world and you look at your child as interacting. If they were an animal, you think of them as being in this big, bad jungle. Meanwhile, you don't realise that by what you've given them, what they've inherited from you, your life circumstances, they actually live in a game farm where all the animals are curated and controlled. And they interact with the world according to how they behave. So the way they are and what they have will determine in a big, bad world who they interact with. So they'll never find themselves in the wrong side of town because of how they grew up automatically. That stops them from going to the other end. So what you must give to your kids more than anything, and kids are very slick, because they don't do what you tell them to do.

• 2:03:10Speaker 04

  They do what you do.

• 2:03:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:11Speaker 04

  So monkey see monkey do situation with them.

• 2:03:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:14Speaker 04

  So they look at your values more than anything else, how you treat people, which car you like, which neighbourhood you like, how often you're on your phone. Do you watch the news or do you watch magazine shows? Do you prefer walking or do you prefer driving? And you'll see that as you get older and they get older, they'll start emulating the life that you've created. And if you're certain enough that you've created a life that you would be willing to pass on to them, they'll definitely inherit that. So all what we're giving now to our children, the guidelines.

• 2:03:40Speaker 06

  Such high stakes, such high pressure. Do as I do, yeah. It's, it's, it's, I think, and like, coming back to where we started this conversation. When I was with my father in the last couple of weeks of his life,

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  I wanted to soak up so much of that, who he was, what he believed in, his values. He was such a unique character. I just wanted to, to sort of envelop it as much as I possibly could as he lay there, basically, dying. And, and, and desperate to kind of carry on. And actually, that's why I went into therapy. Because I knew I'd end up fucking up my kids trying to do that. Because the worst thing you can do as a parent is try to sort of carry the family legacy down because it's full of expectation and quite often warped values. And, and, yeah.

• 2:04:37Speaker 06

  And, and actually, being free from my inheritance has been what I've spent the last four years doing. And writing that book was about essentially working out the journey my parents had had, the journey I have had, and putting that to bed so that my kid doesn't have that inheritance. He can have much more freedom.

• 2:05:02Speaker 04

  You're doing a good job.

• 2:05:03Speaker 06

  Thanks. I feel a bit emotional.

• 2:05:05Trevor Noah?

  I can't think of a, can't think of a better way to end the conversation. This was amazing. Thank you. Thank you for, yeah, I mean, wow. I feel like we benefited more than we ever thought of.

• 2:05:19Trevor Noah?

  Can't wait to see if you do write another book. I can't wait to see what it'll be. And no pressure right now. Don't say anything at all. We'll leave it right here. Thank you, Eugene. Thank you so much, Eliza Filby. I'm blessed that I inherited both of you for this conversation.

• 2:05:36Trevor Noah?

  Great, thank you y'all.

• 2:05:39Speaker 04

  You're amazing. Thank you, thank you. That was such fun guys, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

• 2:05:43Trevor Noah?

  I learned so much, wow, that was really cool.

• 2:05:45Speaker 04

  You are deep and funny. Bless you. Deep and funny. Yeah, you're deep and funny. What a great combination.

• 2:05:55Trevor Noah?

  This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market has everything you need for the holidays, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner. Whole Foods Market has convenient and cost-friendly finds that'll delight everyone at your table, plus great gift ideas, all of which follow the Whole Foods Market's strict ingredient standards. Shop for everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters.

• 2:06:22Trevor Noah?

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

• 2:06:57Speaker 06

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• 2:07:27Trevor Noah?

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