Trevor Noah: My Depression Was Linked To ADHD! Why I Left The Daily Show!

26:12You know, you, you hear the sound of a car and you know which car is bringing danger to the house. You know, I would know by the sounds of, of the footsteps, whether or not my stepfather was sober or drunk. Just by his footsteps, I knew by the way he would close or open a door, I would know whether to be on edge or not. And so when I got that call, everything in me let go. Like it was, it was one of the most still is sort of like a painful memory, you know, is, is like the first thought I had was damn it. It, it happened, I thought it would but not like this, but it, it, it, it, it happened. It happened.

26:58Yeah. What is the cost of you? Because you described that spidey sense. It almost sounds like a gift. And the, the interesting thing to some degree it can be a gift. Yeah, it is a gift. I think every gift is a curse. I think every curse is a gift. And what is the curse that comes with the gift? So the curse that comes with it is, I exist in a space where I am too aware of how other people feel. You know. And, and as I've come to understand what happens to a lot of children who are in abusive households is they develop their hypersensitivity as a tool to protect the parent because they start in the same way you were saying with your dad, why is he just sitting here?

27:42What happens in a household of domestic abuse is a child goes, oh, my parent does not know when danger is, is impending. And so I then need to be on alert for them. Because if they don't know, then I need to be a alert. And if I'm alert, I can keep everybody safe. And so you develop that acute sense. You develop, you know, your nervous system doesn't, doesn't rest. I would sit in a room and I would, I could feel the people and I still have that. I have to like, I now have to practice letting that go. And so part of it is probably why I'm a good comedian. But it's like, it's like learning when I want to use it and when I don't.

28:23So learning when to ignore it. Do you have a choice? Yeah, you do. You definitely do. You know, I think emotions, you don't really have a choice about your emotions most of the time, but you do, you do choose how you react or how it affects you. And so what I'll try and do is genuinely sometimes I'll be, even in a conversation, I practice it when it's low stakes, I'll be with friends and I can feel the conversation getting heated and I can feel someone's going to say something that'll hurt somebody else. And then what I'll practice doing is just keeping quiet and breathing. Whereas what I used to do was I would jump in immediately.

28:54I would jump, I would, I would interrupt. I'd interrupt, you know, and I'll be like, oh, did you guys see the, and I would diffuse and I'd find a way and I was very good at it. I still am. But now I'll just breathe and I'll be like, well, let's see where this goes. I know my friends are not going to hit each other, but I now breathe and go like, it's not my job to protect everybody. And so I just try and breathe through the feeling and see how it turns out. Sometimes I even do it as a game to see if I am right because sometimes you're predicting what one of the outcomes and it may not be the outcome, you know, and I then trust that they can also resolve things themselves.

29:27And that's probably one of the hardest things is as a child, because as you said, you're not understanding how your father's a prisoner on this chair getting berated and I as a child, I'm going, I don't understand why my mother doesn't understand the danger, why she leaves and why she even getting into a conversation with this man, he's not sober. Why is this happening? Many children experience this. And then you then go, this person cannot protect themselves, so I have to do it for them. And how did you try and do that? Sometimes I would, I would just, I just disrupt anything, you know, I could disrupt a conversation, I could find a way to, you know, sort of like distract things.

30:14Yeah, you know, like Chris Pratt with those, with those raptors in Jurassic Park, you just find a way to like snap and, you know, just pull attention, find ways to, it sounds ridiculous, but literally it was me just thinking of ways, you know, do you close a door that then has to be open that then alerts more people to the presence of somebody or, or do you turn the TV up in this way, or do you say something to him so that he, you know, his mood might shift in a certain way, do you, you know, all of all of these things I was, I was thinking of, and this is me thinking of these things at the age of, let's say 9, 10, 11, 12, you know, all the way through.

31:01And does it ever go the other way where you're also trying to cheer up your mother at all or take care of her spirits or? No, no. I think my mother's, my mother's gift and curse has always been the fact that her religion has powered her through, you know, and if you know somebody who's very religious, you'll know that their connection with God and their purpose pushes them through, you know, obstacles that most human beings would never be able to survive, never, never, never. So there was never like despair on the other side that I could feel from my mom. I never felt like I had to like, cheer her up, you know, the house definitely descended into like a, like a doom and you could feel there was a, there was a palpable sense of tension post what had happened.

31:51That day you presumably rushed to the hospital. Yeah. You arrived there. Yeah, speak to doctors, I imagine. Yeah. Did you speak to him? Did you, did you tell the police about him? Did you call him? Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is all happening in the chaos on the panic. You called him? I don't remember if I called him or if he called, I don't remember how it happened. Did you speak to him after this event? No. No. And then you find out that there's been a bit of a miracle, I guess, because the bullet has missed all of the fatal parts of the head. I mean, find out is a, it's such a, it's such a drawn out feeling and moment because time is weird in that it stands still when you're experiencing the worst of it.

32:42And it, it, it flies when it's the best of it. And so that, that moment, even when you say the word, you, you, to find out, I go like, no, it, what felt like forever was us waiting for the inevitable news that, you know, my mom, our mom was dead. Like that, that seemed like the, the conclusion. I mean, I've watched movies, you watch movies, some of these short on the head and it's over, you know, so that was a, yeah, that, that was me grieving. It's a very strange experience to have because I grieved somebody, I grieved the loss of my mother, but then she didn't die. But I completely grieved to her as if she was gone.

33:24Like I, I genuinely, I cried because she was gone. I didn't cry because she was hurt. I didn't, I was like, it's over. It's finished. Every thought ran through my head. I was like, well, I'm raising my brothers now. I was like, okay, I guess now I'm the head of the household. It's amazing. Like my brain spun in every day. I was already now thinking 10 years ahead. I was like, oh, man, okay, where, where, where we living? What are we doing? How's this going to work? And, you know, where's my little brother? And what do I tell him? And how do I, you know, in that moment, you must, you're so interesting because you get to see in that most horrific way, the fragility of the most important relationship in your life to come out the other side and realize how fragile that, because you know, when you talked about our parents almost being these like presidents, you also live under the assumption that they're always kind of going to be there.

34:10Yeah. And in that moment, you got to see that that's not, that's not guaranteed. Yeah. And that curse ended up being one of my greatest gifts. Because from that day onwards, I have never seen my mother the same way. You know, I've never, like, I, every time I look at her, I'm, I'm grateful that she exists. Every time I hold her, I, like, I hold her, like, it's the last time. I, she even like pushes me off sometimes. Like, I have, I have to go hard, I have to go hard, and I have to go for long. And I think this is extended to other people in my world to be honest with you is I, I, I'm very cognizant of the fact that this thing is, is a femoral, I don't know when it'll, when it'll disappear.

34:56So it has made me more appreciative of that. I don't assume. You know, I, I, I hope. And I think there's a possibility that we will meet again. You know, what is they say in Arabic in Shall 'a? God willing. I don't know. And it wasn't bit of a miracle. I was reading because you're right. Yeah. No, it was. In movies, you hear someone get shots in that shot in the head. You never hear that they survive a bullet to the head. Yeah. Whereas in your mother's case, she survived it by some. Yeah, that, that's where we have to go miracle. And that's where we, we still joke till this day, you know, because, because my mom's very religious, I grew up very religious but very skeptical of, of, of religion or anything really.

35:37And I was taught to question ironically by my mother, you know, my mother taught me the question. She's still questions things. She doesn't, she doesn't follow blindly. So, so I think I, I was, I was in this position and I think many of us were where I'm, I'm seeing what I think is, is, is the end. The doctors are saying to me, we, we're going to try what we can, but it looks terrible. And then we find out that the bullet entered the back of her skull, went through her head and then exited. It like it, it shattered, it went, it basically missed the bottom of the brain. You know, when, when past the, you know, the spinal cord all the way through and then hit her cheekbone, which then deflected the bullet and then went out of her nose.

36:30So it like cut off a little piece of her nose, but the exit wound wasn't as bad as it could have been and yeah. And they, the doctors couldn't do anything. So there was no brain surgery. There was no opening of it. It was just stopping bleeding, closing wounds and now praying. And, and the doctor was the one who said miracle and he, he said, I, he said, I hate this word because I'm a man of science and I'm a doctor. He said, but this was a miracle. Said, this shouldn't have happened like this. And then my mom was like, yeah, of course, of course it's a miracle. And of course, this is how it was going to happen.

37:04She like, you know, my, my Lord protects me. So he didn't go to prison. No, I didn't.

37:15How, how does that? So in South Africa, I don't think it's unique to South Africa as well. You know, when I've traveled to other African countries, I've learned this is unfortunately true. The crime that a man commits against his wife or his partner isn't given the same validity as if it were committed against a stranger. You know, the court system doesn't treat it the same. The, the law is somehow not applied with the same level of ferocity as if it were somebody else. And so in this instance, you know, they basically ruled something to the effect of like, oh, it was his first offense and you know, would he repeat it or not?

38:04And it was, but it just, it's a failing of the justice system that has meant that many women in South Africa, another part of the world don't feel like justice gets served. You know, you see it time and time again. You see it in the US all the time, unfortunately. You know, you'll see man kills wife or wife and family and themselves possibly. And the case just isn't treated with the same. It's always seen as like there's like a, oh, there's something went wrong or in a, you know, in a tragic love affair. It's always, it's always labeled like that. And I think that's affected our ability in society to, I mean, I think to treat it the way we should.

38:51When you described the miracle that that bullet traveled from the back of your mother's head through her head and then out her nose, it made me think about what we said at the start of the conversation about dominoes and how, in this case, millimeters change the course of your life because as you say, the responsibilities you would have then had to assume. You see the life you would ever have. Everything changes. By millimeters. Yeah, everything changes. I probably don't move to America. I don't explore the world in the same way. I, I take on a whole different role in my life. Everything changes.

39:26What about anger towards him? Towards able. Oh, geez, that's, that's, that's been a tough one for me because I, because I experienced every emotion. You know, I talk about it in my book like I, I've experienced every emotion because I mean, fear was the first one. The idea that this person could take away, you know, the life of, of someone who arguably I loved the most. Then like rage, helplessness, even, even like shame, feeling like I didn't protect her. Like I, because I knew from the beginning, you know, I talk literally I talk, I write about this in the book. My grandmother would tell us stories of how, because she had the best memory in the family.

40:11She would tell us stories of how when I was young, when my mom first met my stepdad, she, like I was, I was saying to the family, I was like, is guys great in everything, but I don't think this is a good idea. I don't think it's a good man. I don't think we should trust him. I like, I was saying this as a child, you know, and, and the one thing that I think confuses people sometimes, sometimes when it comes to domestic abuse is that we, we think of it as a binary. You know, so people go like, how can these bad men live these lives? But they don't, we don't realize that oftentimes the moment of bad is a, is a, you know, is the explosion.

40:50But everything around it is charisma and charm and, and, and jokes and, you know, and I lost with this man most of my life, you know, I had some of my favorite experiences with him as a human being. When he was wonderful, he was the most wonderful human being you'd ever meet. And it, it took me a while to, to understand how to, how to consolidate those ideas, how, how to, you know, how to resolve the fact that somebody who you love, someone who treated you with, with, with, with respect and, and joy in, in some moments was also the person who brought you the most pain, you know, so I definitely, anger was like a big one for me.

41:33I, I, I thought everything, anger at myself, anger at my mom for, for staying to, to the point that that could happen, anger at him, anger at the system for not protecting anger just like just everywhere, and then anger dipping into pain and anguish and then, you know, crying it out and then being angry again and then being scared and then just, just going through waves and waves and waves of that. And so that, that was a lot of my time in therapy and a lot of my time having conversations with my mom, you know, and my mom would always, always say to me, she'd be like, you know, over time, you learn to forgive and I was like, I don't think I could ever forgive.

42:10And she was like, yeah, she's like, but, you know, forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. It means letting go of the thing that the person is holding of you as opposed to, you know, you, it's not you letting them into your life. It's not, it's just going like, yeah, that happened. I feel for them. I understand many of the things that made them do what they did and then trying to let go of that anger that's like burning inside you, that rage. And I'm glad my mom did that because in the years since, you know, I've spent more time reading about domestic abuse and learning about domestic abuse and speaking to experts about it.

42:49But unfortunately, there's a reason there's a vicious cycle. You know, a lot of young boys who grew up in homes with their moms are abused, grew up to then become abusers themselves, even though they hated the very idea of what they were experiencing. And so to your point, I think it's because of that now unreleased and unrealized anger that they didn't get to express when they were children because they weren't safe. And then now, at some point, it comes out of them. And so I genuinely had to deal with it. I even accept the idea that I was as angry as I was, angry and helpless, which is a terrible combination for a human being to experience.

43:28Have you figured out him? I think in moments, yes, I think I have. I think the levels of my forgiveness won't reach my mom's because she was in love with him, you know. To me, this was still a person who came into my life. You know, he's not my biological father. So I think my, I don't think I've ever reached the level of like pure, like I forgive you, but I do understand, you know, I think I understand a lot of it. I think I feel sorry for him. I think I, yeah, I've learned to come to terms with it, but like pure forgiveness. I'll be lying to you if I'm like, yeah, forgiven. I'm like, no, I think so sometimes.

44:10And then other times I go like, no, actually, actually, I don't. That experience has left fingerprints on you in some way. Oh, definitely. And how do those fingerprints still show up today in your day -to -day life and your profession? Oh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't know the answer to that question. Because, because the strange thing again, I think about the mind is that the things that affect us sometimes may not be the things that are obvious to us as we may think. You know, you can get into a car accident and experience an acute trauma that you, and you know how this affects you. And you'll be shocked that many of the other things you're dealing with in your life where you're struggling aren't actually from that car accident.

45:05They're from like the minute moments in your life where somebody rejected you. You know, you weren't chosen to play on the team as a kid. You failed a test. You were bullied. And I don't say this like dismissively. I say it cautiously. I go like, oh, I would be careful to put all of it on that moment because in a way that moment was contained. You know, it came with many other instances. But, but yeah, as I've sat and explored my myself and my brain and my mind and therapy, I've realized that some of the things that you think will affect you the most might not. They might stay in that, in that world.

45:43And then there's all these other things that affect you way more than than you would ever think they even have the right to. So I wouldn't know to be honest with you. I wouldn't be able to say to you, oh, I'm like this because of that. Or I'm like that because of that. No, I do think I appreciate people more. You know, I'm very present when I'm with my loved ones. Yeah, but other than that, I couldn't give you a concrete answer that would be genuine. You said something about young men's struggling, which came to mind as you were talking about, you being that young man who seemed to be quite confused with a variety of emotions and less experience about what they're correct out.

46:24It's well for those emotions. You said recently, in fact, one of the big things I've been worried about recently is young men and how angry they've become, how alone they've become, how isolated they've become. And then ironically, how they've turned the anger isolation into a community. There's a couple of words there that seem to fit the issue that would go on your foot, anger, isolation, as a young man. Loneliness.

46:54Can you relate to what young men are going through in the sort of modern world today? Because the stats on young men are quite shocking. Yeah. The mental health stats, the suicide, suicide, the duality stats, the depression stats, the stats around purposelessness. And I wanted to know how you're looking at young men today. I get asked all the time by people that listen to the show. They say they've got a young son in the son of struggling. They don't know who they are, where they belong with their parents. It's how to make friends. It's a big one. What are you saying when you look out into the world, the state of young men?

47:26So I think I can empathize with a lot of it. And I think I can relate to some of it. But on my side, other than the anger, let's say, I wasn't isolated. I didn't feel isolated at all. Because I got to play with other kids and because I was with other kids and because I had my cousins and everybody, I never felt isolated. Even when I was talking to you about my grandmother, I think you used isolated, but I didn't because I genuinely never perceived it as that. Because I was in the home with people. It's just they were grannies. So to get what I'm saying, so I didn't feel like isolated in that way.

48:01Definitely felt like an outsider, though, which is a different feeling that's adjacent. I think it occupies the same lexical field, but it isn't the exact same thing. Because isolation, I think, can come with it like a certain solitude and a certain feeling of knowing that you are in this thing alone because you are in this thing alone. But then being an outsider is a different type of torture. And I think that's maybe what a lot of men are experiencing that I can relate to. I think for a long time, we've lived in a world where we've told people what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it.

48:41And it was sort of easily realized. And now I'm not a historian. I don't know every history that we've gone through. But from the little that I've read and from the historians that I have spoken to, we know society goes in these waves and we move through these waves. And I think we shouldn't take for granted now that there was a whole generation of young men who were given a purpose by war, a lot of war. And war is one of the most powerful thrusts of purpose that a nation will ever experience. Young men are told what they're supposed to be doing. Your country needs you. You need to go and fight, young man.

49:19You need to protect this country. And you like, I need to protect this country. Now, even if you don't want to dodge the draft, you've been given a purpose in a strange way. Even if you, you're like, I'm anti -war now you have a purpose. Your purpose is to be against the war. Your purpose is to oppose the war. Your purpose is to spread love and peace. The other person's purpose is to survive the war. Another person's purpose is to win at the war. But you have a purpose. And that purpose is powerful. And it propels nations for it, you know? And then you enter into a period of what we would argue is relative peace.

49:51And I say relative because there are many parts of the world where there are just like these constant chronic wars that are waging. But for most people, what are you doing? You know, you're sitting in a world where there is no draft and there is no imminent one. It's a choice now. Do you want to go to the military or do you not? And you don't have to. And then also things aren't just given to you. You know, before when your parents were like, go get a job, it meant there was a job to get. You know, if your parents were like, go get a job, you could, it was almost harder to not get a job back in the day than it is now in a strange way.

50:28Because like it was just like this thing you do, you know, it was doing. I sweep, I clean, I, you know, I collect, I fix, it was so simple. And I think now we're living in a world where many young men are experiencing a purposelessness because it's sort of like not laid out in any way, shape or form. And I think we've created such a narrow, a narrow scope of what people can do or can't do or, you know, like we've re -rewarded so few things that I think we've exacerbated the problem. You know, gone of the times when being a painter, a philosopher, a, you know, some sort of artisan is like celebrated in that way.

51:15You know, gone are the days where skills are passed down from generations to generation. And it seems like that's less and less becoming a thing. And I, from what I've been told, a lot of it can be tracked back to like industrialization and this consolidation of manufacturing, you know. So an interesting point of this as you were talking was, is because more women are graduating with college degrees. And because of the quality movement that's meant that men and women now are both in the workforce at high level positions. I mean, even in that, there's going to be less jobs available for those men who would clearly before in the past have, yeah, they would have the job.

51:52Yeah. And also, this is really interesting thing that a lady was talking about my podcast where she said that there's still a stigma in society that a man is to be the provider. Yes. But in a world where they're less able to get those top jobs to provide and women are earning more, which no one's got an issue with it all. No one, not one. Yeah, some people have an issue with that. That's true. I don't have an issue. I don't think you did. But they were referring to it as the, you could say the short man problem or the tall girl problem. Where effectively, they were saying that women wanted to date up into the right, which has been shown in the surveys.

52:30But there's less people up to the right now. And so, and there was another survey that said 70 or 80 % of women want their husband to be a provider. But the math doesn't math here because there isn't that many men up there anymore. So, and when you look at the dating stats, the sex stats, the age in which men lose their virginity now, the amount of men that haven't had sex in the last year, it effectively looks like just the top 10 % of women having all the fun. And the bottom 50 % have been right disenfranchised by the system. Yeah, but I, so I think about this all the time and I, I try and spend as much time reading, thinking and discussing with people who are far more brilliant than I'll ever be.

53:11And what I've come to realize is we may now be experiencing a culmination of the dominoes, you know, we're experiencing the dominoes of a declining middle class and governments around the world no longer propping up the middle class because anyone who's real about economics knows that like the middle class is an invented thing really. And its governments actively saying we're going to create it's right. So, as that has declined over time and people have sort of created this illusion that no, everyone can just get there on their own merit and like nothing needs to be created for you. We've seen the middle class decline.

53:47What happens then is there's a gap, you know, between the rich and the poor. Then there's another domino that falls. And it's like the consolidation of wealth, you know, these mega corporations around the world that find ways to not pay taxes, that find ways to pay like slave wages to some people and then sell you a cheap product and then give you credit that you shouldn't get and then put you in a debt cycle that you shouldn't be in and that's one domino, you know, and then politics becomes more polarized and more extreme because of algorithms and the way we say that's another domino. That's another domino.

54:16That's another domino. That's another domino. That's another domino. Companies find ways, as he said, to hire fewer people to get more out of them or hire different people. That's another domino. And in a strange way, I think of this sometimes I go, you see gifts and curses. This is purely anecdotal in my life. There's not research, but I'm willing to bet on this and I'm willing to stand by it. One of the curses that women experience because of being pushed out of the workplace and being like forced to stay at home and for such a long time was they learned how to find purpose in what most people would consider mundane and maybe even meaningless.

54:59You know, women have found ways to like fill their time with community and with connecting and they found ways to like look after their bodies and work out and do things and it's different in different communities like knitting clubs, book clubs and just think about that. It takes up your time, it gives you a purpose. We're going to read this book and then we're going to discuss it and we mean fundamentally it's nothing but it's something. You know, and it drives you forward, it makes you feel like you're supposed to be somewhere, you're supposed to be doing something. And then when the workplace opened up, the women are like, oh, we can go and work as well and you know, I don't know about you, but in school all the girls were smarter than we were in class anyway.

55:37And so now they're comfortably working, especially in an office environment, some sort of like designed perfectly for them in that in that way. And then guys, I think we haven't practiced that. I don't know many guys, I don't know about you, I don't know about, I don't know many guys who know how to just sit with their male friends and just be, not do a thing, be like just be and I find and I, you know, I'll be careful in saying this, but I have found that the degree of comfort in just being is different depending on where you are from in the world. So like my friends who are from third world countries developing nations, you know, with it South Africa and we're in the township or whether it's my friends from Trinidad or it's my, like in Trinidad, they even have a word for it, Lyming, they say, they say, let's Lyme.

56:23And Lyming means spending time together with no purpose whatsoever. That's literally what my Trinidad friends say, they're like, you know, we're gonna Lyme on Saturday. That means we're doing nothing. It doesn't mean we're gonna go see a game. It doesn't mean we're gonna watch you, we're gonna Lyme. It means your friends are gonna come, they're gonna sit on the couch and you're just gonna beat. You'll talk and then you won't talk and then you laugh and then you won't laugh. And I don't know about you, but I feel like guys are we're not as good at that, you know, like I read something the other day that was great and was talking about how guys always need the third thing.

56:54There's always the third thing. There's you, there's me and there's the third thing. Hey, what are you doing on Saturday? Why don't we, will you want to go fishing? It's like, why do we need the fishing? Why can't we just sit like this and be like, hey, what's happening in your hearts, even what's what's going on? What's happening in my heart? Or let me tell you what what's going on? Women can do that. And some may argue that it's, you know, maybe they've been genetically coded, but I also think they've been forced to practice that because men were like, you can't come to the, you know, the factory, the office, the everything was so long.

57:25And then women are like, all right. And I think I think that's another thing that men are struggling with. But it's not like they've felt it's the dominoes. When I was young, we used to go to the mall. We used to go to the mall and we'd hang out with other kids. And then now malls aren't really a thing. And then kids don't really hang out anywhere. And everything's become about money and transactions. Think about how few places you can go to connect with people without money now. You know what I mean? But when I was growing up, it was, it was quite common. You just went and you hung out with other kids.

57:55And that was just what you did. It didn't involve money. And I think, I think we're starting to experience that domino affecting society now. Do you have money for a video game console? No. Then you can't meet up with your friends on Fortnite. Do you have money to go to a move? No, you don't. Or in movies have gone up. Yeah, you can't hang out with your friends at the movies. Can you afford an Uber ride? No, you can't. Can you all these things now have meant that I think we're experiencing a generation of men in particular who are not just isolated, but not practiced in the arts of just like connecting with another male for no other purpose than to just like share hearts and be human beings.

58:37I've heard you talk about how you think we're a sort of continuation of our ancestors. And that sort of legacy. How did you talk about this before? And as you were saying about this, I did that. Women are able to connect without the third thing. It made me think, you know, I think a lot of women have had that modeled by another generation that came before them. Yeah. Whereas I don't know about you, but I didn't have that model in my house. I never saw my dad sit with a guy. But that's what I mean. He didn't even talk to me. We didn't even have those conversations. That's what I mean. I call him by his first name.

59:10Yes. And I mean, he would even, he's like an awkward hugger. You know, like a guy. Yeah. You might get the tech to fuck off me. But we don't have that model. So where do we learn the skill? Yeah. And you'd be weird if you said to your friends, well, most people would be weird if they said, we just want to sit down and just what's in your heart. Yeah. No, my friends treat me like that. I still do that now. I think they've softened to it. You know, my friends have sort of, they indulge me. And I think they enjoy it for the most part. But like I do that with my guy friends and just be like, man, let's just take a moment to come naturally.

59:45Just look into my eyes and just take a moment. Well, here's the thing, fun enough. I spent most of my life with women. So I spent most of my time with my mom, with my grandmother, with my grandmother, and my grandmother's friend, because I was in the house with them, I'm just sitting around with these women just like talking and sharing. I spent very little time with like the men in that way. So those men that are struggling, they they'll probably be hearing you and thinking that you're so far away from them in terms of that ability to be emotionally expressive and just to check in for a lot of them.

1:00:18It's uncomfortable. Yeah. What is it they need? Why do they need to start? Is there a place to start? I think it is difficult, but I also think we have tools to make it easy. You know, so I'm very hesitant to very quickly just say to every man, hey, go out there and be vulnerable and whatever, because the sad truth is a lot of guys have punished a lot of guys for being vulnerable and being themselves. And we have to acknowledge that as well. You know, there's so many times when a guy will go to their friends and say, man, I'm sad. People are sad, oh, what are you pussy? Oh, look at a guy you said.

1:00:52What are you, she broke up with you? Come on, get out there, man. And now all of a sudden, the circle that you had that you thought was protecting you has revealed to you that if you show your vulnerability, you're ostracized from it. It's not safe. Yeah. So you don't want to be there. And then sometimes we even turn into a fight. You know, now all of a sudden people are slapping you or hitting you or punching you because you've admitted that you're vulnerable. And so I think I think that's another place where young men struggle is like, we have to maintain this bravado. And then we see all these these influences online who keep telling us like, yeah, you're a tough guy.

1:01:23That's what you got. You got to be a tough man. You got to be a tough man. That's what you got to do. Never once are they saying to you like, yo, what do you feel? How do you get rid of those feelings? Or how do you deal with them? How do you process them? Who's your friend that you can like literally sit with and cry with? Do you have one? But I do think we have tools, you know, I think again, you know, gifts and curses, the curse of the online world is that it affords everybody anonymity. And so they can be the worst of themselves. I think the gift is also the anonymity. You know, I think a lot of people will be shocked at how you can connect to a person online in like a really honest and beautiful way because you're safer in a way.

1:02:04You know, I've made some of my best friends playing like Warzone. You know, when like when the pandemic hits, I was like, I was like, everyone was playing Warzone. I was like, I'll jump on not really like an FPS guy. And I jumped on and I was decent at it. But I made friends playing this game and we talked to people and you'd regularly meet with them. And some people were assholes, but a lot of them weren't. And the ones who weren't, I would read link up with and we'd play. And then it goes from talking about the game and talking about your loadouts. And then all of a sudden you're talking about your family and your life and how are things and how's your week been and how's work been and what's going on with your boss and that promotion and that and to this day one of my friends, one of my closest friends, a person who are like considered like a brother to me is from that video game.

1:02:47I never knew what he looked like. All I knew was what he sounded like. And we like know each other because we explored a world that was full intense and purposes fake and yet the most real experience that we could have. And I think, you know, I look at like Reddit for instance, I think Reddit's one of the most beautiful communities I've ever seen where a guy can get on Reddit. You can write a post and you can say anything. You can say, I'm struggling with this. I'm having suicidal thoughts. I feel like I don't have a purpose. I feel and you'll be shocked at how many other guys will jump on and go, Hey man, I'm in the same boat.

1:03:20Hey, I'm also struggling. I'm also sad. I also, my parents, I don't have a good relationship with them. I, you'll be shocked at how that community comes around you because there is the safety of knowing that you're not exposing like your name and your face, but you are exposing the thing that's inside you. And so Is it a shame that we can't do that in person as well? Oh, yeah, definitely. I think it's the biggest thing that's limiting men, you know, I think it truly is. It's one of the biggest thing that's limiting men in society is that we don't we don't have an outlet for our emotions. We don't, you know, so if we, if we're not fighting or competing, then we're just bottling.

1:03:59It comes with a cost doesn't it? If you bottle things. Yeah, it does. It never really stays inside the bottle. It's like the bottle has got a hole in it or something. Yeah, exactly. You said something I really related to, which is you said you didn't feel like you belonged when you're younger. And I wondered when I was reading, you say this in your books and in other interviews you've done, if that was at all related to your skin color, I'm shimming it wasn't part, but I grew up with the exact same feeling. Like there's a there's a reason why I don't know anybody from my hometown where I lived for almost until I was 18 years old.

1:04:29Wow, because I just always felt like we were different. We were all we were always different. Everyone's why we're the black poor family. And also we just talk different. I had different ideas of the world and dreams and um, but even now I still don't feel like I belong. I was where do you feel like you most belong then? No, I almost know that. Not but where do you most belong? There's got to be a place where you feel like you most belong. Well, I'm alone. Oh, wow. That's when I feel like I'm I bet it's when you can truly be whatever you want to be. Maybe yeah, maybe when I'm alone, I guess. That's when you feel like you're you most belong.

1:05:06Okay, let's take it away from alone. I'm saying with other people or even in a place, is there a city you go to? Is there a group that you're amongst? Is it? You're telling me there's nowhere that you go to where you think to yourself. Wow, I belong here. I you know, definitely nice city. I'd say maybe when I'm with my brothers, okay, Christmas. Just because they also didn't really fit anywhere. So we kind of all don't and they kind of forget. I think that's the only thing. But there's a lot of people that don't feel like they belong. And they're trying to find their place in the world. Yeah, you were a kid from South Africa that didn't feel like he belonged.

1:05:44Have you found your place in the world? So I haven't I haven't. I just find places and moments where I feel comfortable and and and I feel like I'm yeah, I feel warm is the best way to describe it. And and this is a lesson that I've learned actually if if you're struggling with this, it may not apply to everybody, but I think it can help.

1:06:08Sometimes the feeling of being alone is exacerbated by the fact that you are trying to connect with people based only on you and yourself. You know, so you go, I'm alone. I don't feel like I belong. And then you want to go meet somebody and you and you just like, I hello, I me. Do I do I belong to you? Do you belong to me? And they're like, what are you? What are you doing here? You weird. Like you and we we don't know how to belong and how. But what I found works wonders is finding things you enjoy, focus on finding things you enjoy. Like like things that you like doing activities. And I mean anything running, playing a sport, reading, like any activity with your hands, you fishing, I'm fishing.

1:06:55Find it. Find the thing that you love. Find it. I want to really I want to show you some some graphs that I was I was just thinking of as you were speaking, I'll put them on the screen for anyone to look at. But have you seen these graphs before? Have you seen those graphs before? People keep us Oh, yeah, I've seen I've seen something similar to this. Yes. In terms of our age and then who we were with in our lives. Yeah, and I was particularly looking at the friend graph there. Yeah. So the amount of time you'll spend with different people as you age. And when I first saw this, it was really, really shocking to me.

1:07:26And actually, this graph changed my life a lot because it made me realize that if I if I don't do anything, the sort of five best friends that I have, yes, will drift away from me. Yeah. And I saw this in your story that your relationship with friendship and connection has evolved over time. Yeah. What has that journey been like if you take me back from when you left South Africa, you you're arriving America to pursue your dream as being this comedian. How did your priority shift as it relates to friendship and connection? I think because I spent so much time alone as a kid, I loved other people.

1:08:00You know what I mean? I love being alone. I love spending time by myself. But man, I when I can dig a hole under that gate and like connect with other kids, I'm in heaven. And when I when I became a young adult and I was and I was starting to work, I really appreciated the people who would come into my life and what they would teach me and you know what what they would remind me of myself, which is like an important thing to me. I think I think fundamentally that's what great friendship is is somebody who sees a part of you that you wish to grow more of and then every time you meeting with them, they're encouraging it and they're they're reminding you of it.

1:08:39You know, and that's why I warn people about bad friends because a bad friend can do the same thing. You know, like if I say to you like think of think of the kid who bullied you in school. Think of that kid who was really mean to you. Yeah. I bet you you met them today. I don't care how successful you are on this podcast. There's a little bit of that kid that got bullied that they still have. Oh, 100%. Do you know what I mean? 100%. I think there you go. And where I was did when he called me the end what exactly exactly. And it's amazing how that happens to us. But it's because they they they hold us in a moment, you know, and some people hold you in a negative moment and some people hold you in a positive moment.

1:09:17There are some friends I can think of where no matter what is happening in my life, if I meet them, I'm smiling, I'm thinking, I'm being creative, I'm laughing, I'm loving, I'm sharing, I'm feeling, I can't control it. You know, it's not something that I'm actively trying to do because they are constantly seeing that part of me that I wish to encourage. And so how do you define a bad friend? Like how do you know? How do you spot one? I don't think you spot them. I think you feel it's, you know, and I think it's a lot easier for us to spot than we think it is. One of the easiest ones is can you be yourself?

1:09:51You know, sometimes they're not a bad friend. They're a bad friend for you because you are not revealing yourself to them. And so they are being friends with the idea of you, but they're not being friends with you. And then you leave thinking, I don't feel good, but they don't even know you. So you can't blame them for being a bad friend. You know, I almost don't think there's such a thing as a bad friend. I think because they could be a great friend to somebody else. So I wouldn't even define them as being a good or bad friend. I just go, this is a bad friendship for you. And what I learned very early on was like the value of good friendships, you know, and I learned because of my mom.

1:10:28I remember once I was, this was, I was 19, 20. I just finished high school. So I was 19.

1:10:39And I just finished high school. And I spent all my time hanging out with like friends of mine in the hood, you know, and we just did nothing to hold in. We got up to mischief and we're like, how do we make money? How do we hustle? How do we do these things? And then my cousin went to university. And then I, because he's university, like, had this like open -ish policy, you could just hang out on campus all day. And so I started hanging out with him on campus pretty much the whole day when he wasn't in lectures. And then I went home one day and my mom was beaming. You know, I walked in with my cousin and my mom was like, oh, how are you putting in?

1:11:14She's so happy. And she's like, oh, nice to see you. And she said, oh, I'm so happy. I'm so happy that you guys are spending this time together. And I said, why are you so happy? And my mom said, because you spend all your time at the university. And I said to my mom, I was like, mom, I don't go to university. I just hang around and I do nothing. And she said, yes, but the people you're hanging around and doing nothing with will inspire you to do more with your life because they're doing something with it. And I was like, what? And she said to me, she was like, you cannot be around people who are moving and not wish to move.

1:11:48Whether we like it or not, the people around us are affecting how we see ourselves and how we wish to be seen. And that stuck with me. I don't think I took it immediately, but it definitely stuck in my brain. And the friends that I have today are still, I have new friends, you know, as I grow in life, but the friends that I have today, my core group of friends, you'll see them with me at the Grammys. You'll see them sometimes like we're not be like, you know, backstage at the Daily Show. You'll see them with me at random events in the world. You'll see them backstage at my comedy shows. These people have literally been with me on a journey where they've got their own lives, but our journeys have been intertwined because they always make me want to be more and do more and grow more and change it.

1:12:30And I think I do the same thing for them. And we're constantly challenging each other and encouraging each other and playing with each other and and that has been, I mean, that's been a measurable for me, you know, that's, I even value that more than I do like, let's say success. On the subject of success, friendship, sacrifice, the moment when you come to the United States, you are very hardworking to say the least. In fact, when we sat down, you know, you flown from Portugal to where was it Seattle to Vegas, then here to New York, right? In the last couple of days or so? Yeah, four days, I think it until yeah, four days.

1:13:11You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. I mean, you don't, I mean, I don't know what's in your bank account, but I would hazard a guess that you don't need the money. So I often wonder, what is it that's driving you today? Someone said to me, the down the podcast, they said, they referred to my driving force in my life as potentially being toxic fuel. And I've never had the phrase toxic fuel before. But the definition of that is this sort of combination of seemingly negative forces that pushes you to prove something, to whether it's to yourself or to others or and shame the big part of that.

1:13:44You see a lot, I think, with first generation immigrants when they come to a country, they know what it's like to be without. So they're driven by this toxic fuel. How does that land with you? And can you relate to any of that at all? I can, but I don't think that's been my case.

1:14:02If you spoke to me three, four years ago and you said, Trevor, you went to Portugal, you went to Seattle, you went to Vegas and now you're in New York. And it would be, yes, because I went to work here, I went to work here, I went to work there, and I went to work there. Now I was in Portugal with my friends. That's why I was in Portugal. I was in Seattle because I was working, I work with Microsoft, but it's like on, it's like a passion project. I get to work on tech, I get to explore technology and ideas and work with engineers and just enhance my mind. And then I was in Vegas doing work. And then in New York, I'm having a conversation with you, but this is not like in a work world.

1:14:43So I go like, I'm going to have a great conversation with you. And I also love being in New York because my friends are here. And this is technically where I live. So like if you, if you said to me, let's do this interview, not in New York, I would have said no. But because you chose a city where my friends are, I can, I'll say yes to you. And it didn't used to be the case. So now I have made one of the like determining factors of how I live my life. I think of it through the lens of friends first because I think that community is literally the most important thing in everybody's life, not just my life, everybody's life.

1:15:18I know some people be like, my family, I'm like, yeah, you think that and it is true. But as you sit on the graphs, you'll see at some point you're going to get old and your kids are going to go off and live their own lives and do their own thing. And then you're going to be shocked at how it's you and your spouse if you're lucky and you're all of a sudden you're alone and you're like, where are all my friends? Where are all these people? But friendships are, you know, they're little piggy banks. You're putting money in and they're putting money in yours and every now and again you get to break them open and enjoy what's inside.

1:15:46But that's the most important thing. That's how that's my like literally that's my success now. Now. Yeah, that's my success now. Before it was just because I loved solving any puzzle that somebody would put in front of me. That's all that drove me and that's, that's a lot of what still drives me now. I just love puzzles. And what was the puzzle that brought you to America? So the puzzle was can somebody host the daily show when they're like not from America and you know, it's like just all these things can you can you even do it? Can you go host a show in America? Like, well, this is a crazy puzzle.

1:16:26Seems impossible. So let's try it. Was money or fame or anything part of that? Because fame is often associated with a form of like validation. No, no, no. That's the curse of what I do. I often say to people, I, you know, I'm unlucky that a part of my job comes with fame. I don't like that part of my job. What? Because I don't need it nor do I want it. What's the cost of it? The curse? Oh, I mean, you I'm sure you're starting to experience this in many ways in your life. But like it's, people will never appreciate the beauty and the and the tranquility that comes with anonymity, the the ability to write your story whenever you meet someone.

1:17:14You know, when when you meet a stranger, let's say you're at a bar at a restaurant in a train station, wherever you can look at somebody and you can say, hello, my name is and you can tell them who you are. And what we never seem to realize as people is every time we meet a new person, we are writing our story from the beginning and from that moment in time, you know, and you think about this like I think of it through the lens of like like characters characters sometimes. Like if Luke Skywalker met you before Luke meets, you know, Yoda, what is Luke? Look is just like some random dude who lives on like a dusty planet.

1:17:53Hi, my name is Luke. I live in a dusty planet. You meet Luke many years later. It looks like hi, I'm a Jedi. What a different way to live as Luke and what a different way to be, you know, and I think that's the beauty sometimes that we have that we take for granted as people is the ability to rewrite a story or to write it from a different perspective because we've moved on and we've gone somewhere else. When you are now known, your anonymity is gone. People have a different idea of what privacy you deserve or don't deserve. I've had many friends who won't go out with me in public because they go, hey man, I want to have a meal and not be disturbed.

1:18:32I want to wear whatever clothes I want to wear without worrying that they'll take a picture of me standing next to you and then I'll look terrible. You know, I don't want to think about these things and I get it. I get where they're coming from. You know, I I think many of the downsides of fame are the facts that as my mom even puts it, you are now owned by the world. You know, people have this idea that no matter what day you're having, you should engage with them, no matter who you with, you should afford them the time. And I understand it from their perspective because for them, they're seeing you and they're encountering, what a beautiful experience.

1:19:09You know, but it's hard for us to imagine that that person is just having a day. You know, I remember once joking with an ex of mine and I'm saying, it's amazing how like when we're having like dinner or lunch in public, we can't even tell like an animated conversation story to each other because someone just sees us from fight. It looked like we fight it. You know, so now we're sitting there and I can't be like, you're this guy, I was like, and if someone takes that picture and goes like, Trevor, no, a fighting with his guy, and it's like, no, and that becomes a thing in your world. And now friends, I'm, were you fighting?

1:19:39And other people, you'll be shocked at how pervasive it is. And I think it's why so many celebrities or famous people or people in the public eye have lived very depressed lives, have lived lives where they're isolated, have lived lives where they don't leave their homes. And you know, and then you find them, you know, passed out in their bathtub overdosed on something. Think about how many times you've heard that story. A really famous person has died. You never hear that they've died in public. You never hear that they've died while with their friends. No, it's always them alone in like hotel room.

1:20:18Yeah, hotel room. Yeah. A bathtub, you know, a hot tub. But it's always like a such a solitary like ending for somebody that though, and then the whole world cries for them and with them. It's like, oh, I can't believe this. What do you, oh, this is so sad. And I'm like, yeah, because you'll be shocked at how lonely being well known can actually be, because it means you can never be alone in many places. And that's where I think core friends are very important. You said in there that you what they don't know is that you're human and that you're going through life in all the same ways as everyone else.

1:20:54Yeah, well, and not in the same ways, but in different ways. And I think that's that's the, you know, I do talk about awareness. Yeah. I'm very careful. I, you know, I, and maybe because of how I was raised as well, very careful to not make it like a, well, always me thing. I'm not like famous hurt me, and it's harmed me. And you know, there are many things that have come with it. Every gift is a curse, you know, but, but many of the things that I came with I did not want nor did I need. I like waiting for a table at a restaurant. I genuinely do and I don't mind that. You know, I don't care for, I've never been somebody because my friends have always been the thing.

1:21:30In fact, one of the days I learned the lesson in, in one of the most practical ways was I love roller coasters and I love going to theme parks and we used to go with my friends and you do the usual thing. You stand in a line for an hour and then you ride for like 60 seconds and then you walk for like 30 minutes to the next one and then you do it all over again. And I loved it. And then one day I was going to theme park and then the theme park knew I was coming and now as the host of the Daily Show and they're like, hey listen, we heard that you're at theme park, we would like to take you around to all the rides.

1:22:02And there's like no skip, you skip the lines and you get to ride as many times as you want. And I was like this, I was like, this is it. The Daily Show has paid off. Finally, finally, all the death threats are worth it. And we went and we rode on the rides and we were just manic. We did every, I mean, we did every ride that you couldn't do in a day and we finished a park that would probably take like, let's say eight to 10 hours to finish. We did it all multiple times in like the span of like three hours. I had a headache. My friends were dehydrated. We had had seldom a conversation amongst us.

1:22:37We and it was so strange getting back in the car. And this felt like the most depressing theme park experience we'd ever had. And we got back to the house. And I guess because my friends and I like doing this, we sort of tried to understand and analyze what have gone wrong. We're like, why do we feel like this? And we came to the conclusion, we're like, oh, we assumed that the theme park, we love the theme park because of the roller coasters. What we didn't realize was we love the theme parks because it forced us to stand in line for an hour as friends and just be. And we just talk, there's literally, you can't do anything else.

1:23:15You just have to stand there for an hour and just talk to each other. And then you hear people screaming and they've designed them now. Once I did that, I started learning about theme parks and how brilliant ones do this to you on purpose. They make you wait in certain ways and in certain places. And then the screams of other writers make you anticipate something and become excited. And it's all the ingredients for living a good life, I feel, is instead of chasing what seems like the exciting roller coaster thing, you spend your time with the people you love and you look forward to amazing things that you're going to do hopefully with them or maybe just for yourself.

1:23:51And then when you get there, you enjoy it. And then on the other side, you take a long walk and you commiserate and you share the experience with each other and you get to process what has happened to you so that when you do it again, it becomes novel and interesting and beautiful. And so that's that's like where I realized like the downsides and the upsides and the I so I appreciate many of the things that have come with my life. Don't get me wrong. But I won't lie to you. I have as much fun in a comedy club with 70 people in it as I do in an arena with 12 ,000 people in it. In fact, I have more fun in the comedy club.

1:24:27It's so paradoxical that adding friction to an experience can make the experience better. But that's kind of what you described it. And as you were talking about it, I was thinking about this study I read ages ago where they took one group of people. They they had this boring boring community forum. Yeah. And they took one group of people and they let those people straight into this boring community forum. And then they asked them in a survey after how was the community? Yeah. And all the people said boring. And they took another group of people. And they made them wait to get into the forum. They made them complete tests and go through this rigorous process to fight to get into the forum.

1:25:01The people went into the same forum. And then in surveys after they described the forum as being so much better. That's hidden. Then the people who weren't made to go through the gauntlet to get in. And it's this idea that friction adds value to the thing. We fight for it. Like the 40 minute queue is what makes us so grateful for the roller coaster. And when you get robbed of that because you get to play life in easy mode or exactly that's exactly what it is. That's the curse. Yeah. It's great. But also the point about connection. I never thought that so much of the enjoyment of going to the theme park is standing there and just small talking for being for an hour with my friends.

1:25:35It's just being. You mentioned the word death threats on the daily show. Yeah. When you did get onto the daily show, which was a real first for a show like that. It didn't go so well at first. Oh yeah, it was terrible. I didn't realize this. I was looking at the stats and I read that there was absolutely terrible. It was like, man, it was, it was, you know, when they say be careful what you wish for. Because I was like, oh, I'd love a challenge. And this would be an interesting and oh, it was a challenge. It was absolutely terrible. Because I stepped into a role that I quickly learned. Wasn't just a position, but it was it was almost, it was almost, I don't know how like it was like a post in a way.

1:26:24It wasn't just like your hosting a show. No, no, very quickly learned like John Stuart to many people. It was the most trusted man in America. And he was the voice of a generation. And he, you know, the politicians who sort of looked to him and they're like, well, what would John Stuart think? And wow, I mean, that was. And even if you remove the legend that is John Stuart, just taking over any show comes with a moment where people don't like no one likes change. You know, so like when Johnny Carson handed over, people weren't happy you know, and when when Leno handed over, people weren't happy, it always happens.

1:26:58Is race an element in this? I'm sure for some people. And but I think it's, you know, I'm careful to say like it's about race. And I think it's more, it's all the things that make you different. Yeah. You know, so me being different in my color to John Stuart probably makes a person feel like I'm more different to him when I'm sitting in the in the desk. The show has changed. The show has been really. Yeah. And I that I love if there's one thing I love, it's understanding or trying to understand human beings. Because I think we're very complicated, but we also simple at the same time. And that was a wonderful moment for me to like learn like, wow, even people, because these people who are hating, by the way, it's not like these were conservatives or anything.

1:27:38It was like liberal people who were, you know, and some of the things they were saying to me in emails or like online emails. Yeah. Oh yeah, people, they'll find ways. But you, I would sit there and be like, wow, you really hate me. I've done nothing to you, but you hate me. But then I realized, no, you hate the idea of me. And you hate what I've done to your world. I'm the, I'm the representative, I'm the idea of how your world has changed. Here's this idea that you've loved John Stuart. He's now gone. And I am the reason he's gone. Even though that's not the case, I am the reason he's gone. And because I'm the reason he's gone, you are now angry death threats.

1:28:15Oh yeah, but I mean, that was extreme. And you get that because the daily shows involved in politics, you know, or we comment on politics rather. And, and when we do that, man, you know, people would just be like, go back to where you came from, you, you know, who, how dare you and you're coming here and end with this and blah, blah, blah, blah. Again, my gift and my curse was that I came from South Africa. So I know like top quality racism. So, you know, like when I came to America and like people were saying these things to me, I was like, oh, I was like, okay, this is okay. It was interesting.

1:28:51Yeah, but, but it was, it was really hard. And I'm lucky that I had the people I had making the show with me because they really, really, really taught me why I learned from the experience that you genuinely, you cannot choose what's going to happen to you, but you almost definitely can choose who you're going to handle it with. And that is the only thing that I now do in my life. And it determines everything. I will take a shit job if I'm going to work with great people because a great job with the worst people is not going to feel great on the other side of it. You know, and even thinking of it makes me happy.

1:29:35I think I think about the terrible times we had together in that building, you know, like reviewers hated us and people calling for the show to be canceled. And we were just like they're commiserating trying our best and doing our best. And now when people see it as a successor, they go like, oh, you won the Emmys and you, you know, and it was this and it was successful. And then the digital footprint of the show changed everything. And all of a sudden, you know, these billions of impressions and whatnot. So yeah, that came afterwards. And now that's that's easy to see as an end product. But when we were in the trenches, there was there was none of that.

1:30:08You know, if I was a fly on the wall and the worst day in the trenches, is there a day that springs to mind, a day where you may be considered, reconsider your decision, a day where you you didn't want to get out of bed. I was reading the stats around us to give people context to show it lost 700 ,000 viewers a night when you first took over by the whole night. Don't say like there. You tell me. No, no, no, you just made it sound like we lost them everything. Just any night. It's from an interview. You didn't GQ. So yeah, no, I know. And by the hundredth episode, it had lost 37 % of its viewers.

1:30:42Listen, it went on to become a smash hit across this digital. No, no, but you're right. But I think that's important. I think it's important context because I didn't know that. Yeah, I just watched the show. No, no, no, no, I saw on social media. I thought he's killing it. Oh, no, man. No, it was it was it was a it was a mission. Yeah, and there were there were many days. Again, I mean, I'm just so grateful and I'm so lucky. There were days where I remember there was one day we like made a joke on the show. Not even on the show. No, someone on the team had tweeted something on the show account.

1:31:13And now they were like articles written about it and they were like, this is why Trevor North shouldn't be though, I wasn't even the person who tweeted the show account. But I, you know, I'm not going to come on me like, that's not me. We were a team. Whatever. It's my name is on the show. And I remember turning to one of the writers, Dan Amira, still the head writer at the show. And I said to Dan, I was like, man, I think I should just quit. I was like, it'll just be easier for all of you because you guys are having a great time. I come along. I've made your lives terrible. It's like I should just quit.

1:31:44I should just go, you know, and then I'll never forget Dan. He just looked at me and he's very dry. One of the funniest human beings you'll ever meet, I'm really dry in his delivery. And he looks at me and he goes, but if you leave, this thing might get shut down. And then I don't get lunch anymore. I said, I'm sorry, what? I'm like pouring my hot dogs here. And he's like, I like the lunch here. That's stupid. You can just, what are you talking about? And he said it to me in such a like a matter of fact way. And I remember being stunned and I looked at him. And he said, um, how did he say it to me again?

1:32:28I don't know the exact words, but the sentiment was basically, he said, he said, these people don't like you, right? And I was like, yeah, clearly. And he said, so if you leave, are they going to like you? And I was like, no, then he's like, so if leaving one make them like you and staying one make them like you, I want to just stay. He's like, because I like working with you. So just stay. And that was just like one of those many moments where, you know, you talk about millimeters. It was just him saying to me, just stay, just stay. And I stayed. And now everything seems obvious. But that building was full of people who told me to just stay.

1:33:08That building was full of people who were like, I know one of them was John Stewart. Like I'll never forget like John, one of the best things he ever did for me was it's almost like he predicted this. That's why I call him Yoda, I call him my Jewish Yoda, you know, because we have this relationship where it's like I came into this order where I was learning this new thing called, you know, the force and being a Jedi and it seemed impossible and he was this ordained figure anyway. But I remember he called me into his office one day and he said to me, he said, I want to I want to show you something.

1:33:40And he showed me an article that someone had written about him leaving the show like he was, you know, because this was just before he left. And the article was like, why John Stewart cannot leave the show and why American needs him and why John Stewart has to and it was just this effusive article about like the 10 ways that John Stewart is the hearts of American politics cannot leave. And John showed me that and he's like, huh? And he's John's like, doesn't take himself seriously at all. So John was like, huh? And I was like, yeah, and he's like, huh? And I'm like, yeah, congrats. You crushed it.

1:34:13He's like, no, no, I crushed it. I'm important to America. And we laughed. And then he goes, hold on now. And he typed something in. And then he pulls up an article from like years ago, years and years and years ago. But it was like, not wait, it wasn't that far. It was like, it was like three years prior, two years prior. So he was like, it is prime, but it was like two, three years before that. And it was like, why John Stewart needs to leave the daily show? It's over for him. He's the worst of America. He's not good for this kind of, this whole article just like slamming him. And he's like, you see?

1:34:45And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess, you know, things, he's like, no, no, you're not looking at the right thing. And he's like, look who wrote it. And it was the same journalist. So when John was in, they were like, this guy needs to leave. And then when John was leaving, they were like, oh, this guy needs to stay. And he'd looked at me and he said to me, please understand that to me, he said to many people, I have, I have always been obvious, but he said, I know my road and I wasn't. And he wasn't. You know, when John took over the show, Craig Killborn had been the previous host, people thought John couldn't do it.

1:35:14If you said that today, people would burn you at a stake, be like, he's crazy. What do you mean, John Stuart can't do it? That's what people said about him. And he was one of those people who said to me, he's like, Hey, man, I've been there. And maybe people don't remember it because it was like pre -internet. But he was like, put your head down. And this is part of the journey. And lean on him. I lean on the other people. And it was just like, you know, just like a slow, you know, boring slog, you know, filled with many funny and sad moments. And then one day, it seems obvious to people from the outside.

1:35:49And when you go home on those days and you're alone in your apartment or at home in your house, you're not around the guy that wants to lunch and they're the colleagues at work. What is that like? I read that you're someone that suffered with depression periodically throughout your life throughout our life as well. Were you suffering in that period when you were alone? I didn't realize at the time that the depression that I was suffering from was ADHD depression. It wasn't like depression depression. And I've learned since that there's a difference. So I relate to too many ideas in and around depression.

1:36:21But I remember being confused because I'm not depressed perpetually. But I definitely experienced these moments. I didn't know that ADHD can do that to you. I didn't know that it can be like a byproduct of untreated ADHD and not knowing that you have ADHD. So that's just like a footnote there. But it's fun. You say that when you went home and you see I wasn't alone. And that's probably the reason I survived. So David was with me every single day. He had moved from South Africa. We started like a comedy night together. That's how long we had been working together. So we would walk out of that building together on the hottest nights in New York and on the coldest nights in New York.

1:36:59And we would go back and we lived together in the same apartment. And then we'd open like our notebooks and we'd be like, all right, what could we have done better? And we would just sit there and we'd be like, what could we have done better? And we'd get home at like eight or nine p .m. And then we'd work until midnight, go to bed, get back to the office at seven, eight the next day, and do it all over again. And then we'd come home in the evening and be like, what were the wins? What could we have done better? And we would just do this over and over. But I was never alone. And so I never think of it.

1:37:30You know, that's that's why I wish like more people would share their stories in that way is because I think we live in a world where so many people sell an idea of perseverance as an individualistic pursuit. When it's not, I think too many people forget the paths on the back and the hugs and the encouragement and the load lifting. They forget all of it. They see their suffering. They see their success. And then they go out and sell to the world how you got to persevere. Let me tell you what in the darkest times, let me tell you what I did, Stephen, I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, Trevor, you're going to do it, Trevor.

1:38:05You're going to be the man at the daily. You're going to, yeah, but everyone forgets. They're like, no, your friend was there going like, do you want to go get some chicken wings? Let's go get some chicken wings. There was somebody accepting you despite your failure. There was somebody who was reminding you of that part of you that you always wish to be, which is somebody who can solve a puzzle is somebody who enjoys what they're doing is somebody who perseveres. But they're looking at that side of me. And so I wasn't alone with me. It was David was Joseph O 'Pill, guy who was random is now one of my best friends, a writer from Uganda, who did the daily show, like a version of the daily show in Uganda.

1:38:41What a, like this weird world coming together. You meet us today. You'll think we've known each other a whole life, but he was also, he was just there. And he's like, I believe in us. He's like, I think we can do this. I think we can do it. I think we can do it. And but if you were going out my own, then I wouldn't be here with you. I, I, I will put all my money on that. I would not be here with you. I don't even think I would have taken the daily show. I wouldn't have done the daily show. When you say you wouldn't be here with me, would you mean by that? Oh, you wouldn't be calling me here to have an interview with me, because I wouldn't have done the things that I've done, because I couldn't have done them alone, because nobody could have done them alone.

1:39:17Nobody has done the things they've done alone. You know, like everyone, I've seen people tell these stories of climbing Mount Everest, and Maya sent and my, yo, all those Sherpas that went with you. Let's talk about them. No one's climbing Everest alone. No one's discovering, you know, the, the South Pole alone. No, you weren't. In fact, the, the person was, the guy who just like, just like first navigated the South Pole was led there by somebody, you know what I mean? All these stories that we tell, self made. Oh, I love that phrase. It's my favorite. Self made billionaire. Oh, really? Oh, it's an interesting choice of words.

1:39:58So you just did this all by yourself. Huh? You made the thing by yourself with your hands. You made many more of them by yourself. You drove the trucks. You thought of all the ideas. You put it in the stores. You gave it to the people. You took the money. You invested it. You grew it all by yourself, all by yourself. All the ideas were from your head all by yourself. And then you got there. Oh, come on. There's, there's no such thing. And I don't think it diminishes your achievement. I just think it's important because it helps people understand that they need other people to get to where they're trying to get to.

1:40:32And maybe sometimes the reason you're not experiencing that is because you're trying to do it alone. I hear people all the time go like, I'm going to put my head down and I'm going to want to crush it. Okay. Along. Good luck. Good luck. And I think it creates an unrealistic expectation for people. People who studied together in school got better marks. It was just like a simple thing that we learned in our school when I was growing up. If you had a study partner, you just learned more. The idea of the shop is such a good analogy because the shopers never really get the credit in the store. And I mentioned in the article, but they're lifting most of the bloody weight.

1:41:07And they're literally keeping you alive. Yeah. They've ascended Everest more than the most celebrated Everest ascender. How are they not the ones? It's the equivalent of finding out that like somebody ran carrying you saying bolts. But then we don't consider them the fastest man alive. Yeah. You know, and so I don't know that. So I'm always cautious to think of that because it doesn't, like I say, it doesn't diminish what you've done. But man, you're not doing it alone. And to realize that, I think, helps you to understand why it's important to have those people. And why it then brings joy. Why did you leave the Daily Show?

1:41:45Because at the moment, you left the Daily Show, you'd won these huge awards. The showers had caused this sort of digital revolution, which we hadn't seen before, where the Daily Show had become, you know, from my experience of the Daily Show, was much more of an online show than it had ever been before. Most of the time I watched the Daily Show, I'd be watching it on YouTube or I'd be watching it on clips that were going around the internet. You know, the billions and billions of views it was doing at that point. Why would someone leave that situation? I don't know why someone would leave it. Why did you leave it?

1:42:14Because it was time. It was just time. How'd you know? I don't know. That's something I've always felt I've known in life. And I don't know why. Like the fight? Yeah. But not in a negative way. This is more... Okay, so here's the thing. I think part of it comes from where I am from. And maybe you'll relate to this as somebody from the UK. In South Africa, TV shows end. We've never had a TV show except maybe like one soap opera. But we never had TV shows that run for 10 seasons or 20 seasons. That's not a thing. It ends. And it doesn't end because it's bad. It ends. It just ends. And I look at some of my favorite creators of things.

1:43:01You know, like I look at like sign felt. They were like, all right, it's done. The network was like, we can give you more. We can do more. They're like, yeah, but we it's done. We just feel like it's done. Hell, sometimes things can be done. And for me, I think there were there were multiple reasons. You know, one was definitely the pandemic. I took for granted that the pandemic was a moment where many people were forced to be at home. But then, you know, the silver lining of that terrible period for many people was that they got to like just like pause for a moment. You know, many people will tell you the story of how they like man during the pandemic.

1:43:42I just like paused. And I, you know, we didn't. I didn't. I was making the show from home. And I was just going at it. And I'm really glad. And I'm lucky that I got to do that because it sort of shielded me from some of the panic that came with the pandemic of what are you doing? What are you not doing? Where's life go out? I was just like, I'm just doing my show. I'm just doing the show. I'm doing the show. I'm doing the show. Find a way to do it from home, shoot it using iPhones. We didn't even have like cameras. We never crew. We didn't have anyone. It was just me, David, because he lived in the same building and then the other David and it was just three people, you know, physically making a thing that's supposed to take many, many, many people, you know, but here you are.

1:44:19You're doing this, but you, but you're virtual and you're not in the same room as people and you, and you can't travel and I was, I was experiencing one of this. I couldn't go back to South Africa. I couldn't travel the world. I couldn't. And one of the big things I learned during the pandemic was I had made my life about work and I had made everything else secondary, right? So I would see my friends if I did not have work. I would travel with my friends if I did not have work. I would come to your wedding if I did not have work. But work was the thing and everyone in my life knew this. They were like, oh yeah, work, you know, Trevor, if you're not working, can you, they don't almost say that to me.

1:45:00And on the other side of the pandemic, I realized as like, I can do the daily show. I looked up and I was like, wow, it's been, it's been eight years of me being at the daily show. Seven years of me hosting, one year of me being a contributor at times when John Stewart was there. But I was like, you sort of can do this forever. But maybe, but what else can you do? Where else can you be? How can you spend your time? What would you like to do? And how would you like to do it? I learned so many things at the daily show. I'm eternally grateful for them. But I also would like to learn more things. Even in the years that I haven't been there, I've relearned and that's an illusion.

1:45:49There aren't two ideas for every problem. That's fake. There are multitude of ways to discuss any issue and any topic. But if you stay in one place for long enough, then in a good way and in a bad way, you start to perceive that as reality. And so, you know, there were many things when it came to me leaving the daily show. But I just felt like, yeah, it's time. We scared. Yeah. Of sometimes people get scared when they have such a high post in society that they might be losing something they could never get back. Or they might, you know, oh, that's fascinating. I think about the average person listening to this now who's in their job and they might might be a lawyer who's climbed the ladder.

1:46:39Yeah. And they've got this sort of internal voice saying something isn't right here, but this fear that keeps them trapped in places, the loss of version. Even if you're miserable, this is the power of loss of version can just hold people in place. I read this crazy study with Dr. Daniel Khan, and I believe it was Daniel Khan, and the famous. Yeah. Right. He did the studies where if you drop like a dollar on the floor, the pain of losing the dollar is equal to the pain of finding three. Yes. So in life, you don't just need, you know, equal reward to sacrifice something. You need two or three times the reward to leave.

1:47:14Well, I will say this first and foremost, I was lucky. I wasn't miserable. You know, I wasn't like, I didn't have like a, I hate this. So I know. But I did want to turn and focus my life on something more. More. Yeah. Like I wanted to spend more time with my loved ones. I wanted to spend more time with my people. I wanted to spend more time in South Africa. I wanted to spend more time learning other languages and traveling. I wanted to spend more time practicing comedy and other countries. Yeah. And what is that feeling that because, yeah, I'm trying to understand the feeling or the emotion that tells you that.

1:47:55So I guess it goes to the now sort of cliche, but still I think very appraise you don't know what you've got. So it's gone. The pandemic showed me like all the things I even talk about us for people. It showed me all the things that I didn't value that I should have. Like when the pandemic hits, if we're honest, we didn't care that we couldn't go to the movies or we couldn't like it's not about the stuff. It's that we couldn't do it with our people. You couldn't see your friends. You couldn't be with other human beings. You couldn't be in a space together where people are cheering or singing or laughing or you couldn't be with people.

1:48:34And I don't know about you, but during the pandemic, I wasn't sitting there thinking to myself, oh, I work. Work is the thing I could do more of. No, I was thinking to myself, wow, my people. My all my friends that are South African were trapped in South Africa couldn't leave, couldn't come to me. I couldn't go to them. Couldn't see my family. And I wasn't even big on that. It's not even like I was like, I always got to go home to see my family. I just go when I go. But now I realize like, wow, this is just again, it's fleeting. And I had to ask myself, Trevor, what are you trying to achieve in your life?

1:49:12Where do you want it to go? Where do you want it to end? What's more important to you, the ratings on the success of this show and this idea or the ratings and the success of your friendships and your relationships? And I do think in life, you have to let go of something to grab onto something new. And that was a decision for me that because I couldn't, I couldn't be in two places at once. And the daily show is all consuming. You cannot be part -time in it as an idea. In fact, John and I joke now, but now he gets to do it weekly. And I think if anything, you'd never go back to doing it daily because he knows how all consuming it can be.

1:49:54Like I didn't just do the daily show and I was there. I would do the daily show and I was there and then I'd leave and I would read the news and I'd keep up with the news and I'd try and keep up with all the news and I'm reading the Guardian and I'm reading BBC and then I'm reading like right wing sites, I'm reading bright parts and I'm reading what's on conservative media and then I'm reading, you know, the telegraph and the economist and that's what I'm doing. Consuming news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, get more news, barely read a fiction book in years. It's like more news.

1:50:22I need information and news, okay, economists, analysis, what's happening? How do I put this together? What's happening? Elge zero, okay, okay, think about that. What's going on in them? Times of India, what's happening? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? Yeah. It's too much. So much. It's too much. And especially for someone with your brain, if I say so myself, from what you how you've described it, someone who's sort of hypersensitive and aware. And someone who appears to me to be a little bit of an empath, you said, you know, when we said, yeah, right, you feel things. Yeah, you know what it did teach me and this is something I tell everyone till this day, give yourself a break from the news, give yourself a break.

1:51:02We've been told and we've been conditioned to believe that we only to keep up with the news. It's a lie. It's an illusion. You know what's happening. In fact, if you read the news once a week, I promise you, you'll be as informed as somebody who's reading it every single day. You know why? Because when you're reading it every day, you are caught in the cycle of it trying to discover what it doesn't know yet. Developing story, developing story, developing story, you'll be shocked at what you learn when you just read a story that sort of had the time that it needed to breathe. There's there's less, there's less predicting, there's less guessing, there's there's less pontificated.

1:51:42It's just like this is what happened and this is what we know and that's it. When was the first time you went to therapy? The first time I went to therapy was 2015, 2014 somewhere there. Yeah. Why did you go to therapy? I asked this because it's a set of reasons really, but I'm met in particular. In fact, if you look at the stats, men of color are often at least likely to go to therapy. There's a complex reason why that is, but I think it's quite important for men that have been to therapy, including myself, to talk about why they went and also sort of the journey they've been on with it, but also the role that it's played.

1:52:26I'll say it in two parts. I went to therapy because I fell in love with the idea that I could learn more about myself and why I was the way I was from somebody who was skilled in understanding it. In the same way that I loved physical therapy, you know, I was like, wow, you can like move your body differently. If you've ever had physical therapy, you know what I'm talking about and if you haven't, you should go one day, if you have anything wrong with you long before you consider surgery and things, you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked at how your neck hasn't been moving the way it's supposed to.

1:53:01You'll be shocked to realize that your back has been like stuck for a while. You haven't been breathing. You'll find that your knees haven't been like you say that. No, not really. It's actually crazy to realize how much over time you've settled into a restriction that's stopping you from being yourself fully physically, but mentally as well. Patents, and as you said, games of snap, where you don't even realize you're not just reacting. Things are happening and you're reacting to them. And I read a bunch of books and I was like, wow, this is fascinating. But I was like, none of it, like tells me about me, per se.

1:53:43It's very broad. And so I decided, it's like, let me go to this place to try and learn about who I am. Or if there's even a puzzle that I can learn a little bit more about. How did that feel the first time you went, but also telling your friends that you're going to therapy, because especially in 2015, it's kind of fallen away slowly as more people talking about it. But there is a stigma associated with it. Everyone asked me, they said, why, what's wrong? That's what everyone said to me. Everyone said the same thing. What's wrong? One of my favorite ones. This wasn't a friend, but I did an interview with a British newspaper.

1:54:23Forget which one it's called. Maybe it's the telegraph. I'm not sure. It's slightly conservative. But anyway, anyway, we did this interview. I'll never forget this. And the world of very British, very posh, you know, older woman. And she said to me, she's like, you've been quite outspoken about about going to therapy. And do you still go to therapy? And I was like, yes. And she's like, why? What's wrong with you? And I said, do you not go to therapy? And she said, I don't need to. And I was like, well, everyone can benefit from therapy. And she's like, I respectfully disagree. I think the the the the repising that we that we're currently experiencing in the world is completely unnecessary.

1:55:04And sometimes you just need to take it and move on. And I was like, that is the most British thing I've ever heard in my life. But I get it. That's what a lot of people felt and think, you know, to be like, why? What are you doing? What I've come to realize is that therapy as an idea holds a stigma, but the thing that it is doing is not just necessary, but it's actually welcomed by everybody. When you go and you have a conversation with your friends and you commiserate about something that's going on in your life, it's a form of therapy. You know, when you confide in your loved one, the two of you are in bed at the end of a long day and you're telling them about how stressful your job is and you know, you're telling them about your doubts about staying in it.

1:55:54And that's a form of therapy. And I think because we've given it this formalized title that's associated with like psychotic breaks on the most extreme things, we've now made it seem like it's reserved for people who are only like broken, broken, broken. But we've forgotten how necessary it is, you know, like you go around the world and you see cultures, many of them cultures of color had the idea and the tradition of therapy long before it was formalized as a concept. In African cultures, you would speak to the elders. That's what you do. You go and you sit down with the elders, you tell them about your problems, you go there with your wife, you go there with your family, you go, any dispute, you go and talk about it there.

1:56:37And they give you their advice and it's based on generations of knowledge and it's based on a communal understanding of who you are and who they are. They've known you since you were a child even. It's a form of therapy. You know, and so I think because we've given it this, this like the label people, I go to therapy, I realize if you just change that, take that sentence out and tell it to somebody and go, oh yeah, no, there's a wonderful elder who I speak to and they give me advice. All of a sudden, like half the people who look that you're finding would be like, that's very good, you must listen to your elders.

1:57:09That's very good. You know, and then in another culture, you say to somebody, oh, I go to somebody who spiritually understands how like my brain works and they connect me with myself, they'd be like, that's very good, you do that. We all do it, you know, bartenders have been therapists for hundreds of years. You know, people have gone and gotten drunk at a bar. Hadraces, yeah. Hadraces. It's a natural thing. It's just, you know, I understand the stigma because there's a terrifying notion that comes with saying that you're broken. But I don't think it's about saying that we're broken. It's just about like understanding our cracks.

1:57:49Did you understand your cracks from it? I think I understood them theoretically. My problem was never understanding them, my problem was never like understanding them on an intellectual level. I think I've always been good at that, maybe even too good. The thing I've had to learn in therapy is the feeling part, not the thinking parts. What do you mean by the feeling part? So I've always been very good. I would be able to break down any situation to you as thoughts and, you know, and analytics in a way. You go like, Trevor, what happened there? I would even be able to explain like an outburst. Well, what happened was clearly over time, this action had been repeated and I didn't appreciate it.

1:58:30And so at that point, I'd reached my breaking point and I reacted like this, you know, and it's, but I didn't realize until I went to therapy that I limited how much I was saying the feeling that I was having. I felt sad. I felt mad. I felt and then like you said about tracing it back, you then now once you understand that feeling and once you acknowledge it, you're then able to now and then even ask yourself, why do I feel this thing? Why do I even feel? And start realizing that some people can make you feel when others can't. Two people can say the exact same sentence to you. Only one can have an effect.

1:59:06Why? And that was, that was and continues to be my journey and my joyous challenge. It's like learning how to like feel, not just think through everything. It's like you really just feel how do I feel? Oh, I'm tired. Oh, I'm resentful. Wow, I'm sad about that. Oh, I'm feeling a little hopeless. I, wow, this feels a little melancholic. This is like really getting into those feelings. Mendo, do they? Yeah, no, just drink or they just go. Yeah, men just get like pissed. Masterbait gamble. Yeah. Yeah. I'm angry at you. When was the last time a male friend looked at another male friend and said, you hurt me.

1:59:48You know, hey, man, that hurts. I know you think my hair cut looked funny, but the way you sit in front of those other people, it hurts. Hey, the way you commented on my job and how you think it's, it's the dumbest thing that hurt me, that it like it hurt me because I love how you see me and I want to see myself being special in your life. And it, I felt insignificant. You hurt me, man. Men are terrified of that. You know, and so we'd rather say, you pissed me off punch you in the head because that's that's acceptable in society. We're that. You know, you said your therapist or therapy helped you to identify this link between ADHD and depression.

2:00:32When did you find out you had ADHD? I got diagnosed two years ago. My friend got diagnosed first, told me about it, changes his whole life. And then when he was describing some of the symptoms, I was like, huh, I was like, well, that that's weird. That sounds a lot like me. And we're very different personality -wise. And then I asked him, I said, I said, I don't understand. I've never noticed these things in you. And he was like, yeah, he was very good at hiding them. He's very good at masking them. And it was it hit home so much that it made me think I need to get diagnosed. I was like, let me go and see.

2:01:07I was like, it could it might not be. But let me go and find out. And then I remembered that when I was a kid, my school told my mom that I need to go for psychiatric evaluation because when I was really young, the teachers complained. They said I was just I was all over the place. And my mom took me to a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist diagnosed me with ADHD. But back then it was called hyperactivity. And my mom, the therapist was like, oh, your son has ADHD is hyperactive. And so you must stay away from these foods and must do this. And you must do that. And you should give him treatment.

2:01:45And my mom was like, we'll pray for him. Let's keep it moving. She didn't she just didn't know. And she was like, no, this is not a thing. You know, and then I now as an adult went, wait a minute, was that what that was? And then I went went through the like real assessment. Like, I mean, not like an online quiz. You know, the one where you sit down, it's multiple visits. You do different types of tests, multi -modal tests. And you go through it all. And then I learned about my ADHD. And I think that's another thing I'm a little worried about now in society. It's just like when we talk about therapy and AI and everything, we flatten these these these words.

2:02:24And so what then starts to happen is now I meet people everywhere. Everyone's got like, I've got ADHD. I've got ADHD. I've got I can't watch a movie for more than 10 minutes. I've got ADHD. I lost my keys. Here. And it's like, no, you can be forgetful and not have ADHD. You can have a short retention span and not have ADHD. You can you can be many things and not have ADHD, right? But even when you have ADHD, you don't all have the same ADHD. You know, some people are inattentive, some people are hyperactive, some people have learned coping mechanisms, some people haven't in women and men. It presents differently at times.

2:03:00So I think we must also be careful. You know, like now it's just become like and then like on TikTok, hey, how did you with your ADHD? It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's, you know, it's good that we're talking about these things. But let's not be quick to, you know, to all have it and have the same version of it and all think that all of our treatments are exactly the same, et cetera. But that, yeah, that's, so I think I, mine was, I think it's now three, four years ago. This link between ADHD and depression, I've, you're the first person I've interviewed. I've heard about this before, but you're the first person that I've spoken to who has said that their depression was linked to their ADHD.

2:03:40Yeah. Can you explain to me the link and how that sort of manifests? So I, I didn't understand it, but you know, as I understand ADHD now, what, what fundamentally happened in my brain, and I guess it'll happen to some people as well is I would have an inability to choose where to place my focus. Right. One of the things. So I would either be hyper focused by something that I shouldn't, why would have no focus for the thing that I should. So I could be having a conversation with you here. And let's say there was a car outside revving its engine. At some point, that's all I'd be able to think about, even though you're speaking to me, that's all I'd be able to think about is like, who's revving this engine?

2:04:23Who's driving this car? What is going on out there? What kind of car is that? It sounds like a V6. Is that a truck? What are they? Huh, something wrong? No, it's, and now you'd be talking. And then at the end of the sentence, I'll just hear the last three words you said. And then I'll try and like, put it all together and act like I was paying attention. But what my brain was also doing in that paying attention thing was it was focusing on a recurring thought or recurring idea that I couldn't let go of. And that's sometimes where the depression would kick in. Is that I would be perpetually stuck in a loop of either meaninglessness or what I like to call personally, it's like my zoom or stuck on my lens.

2:05:06You know, and I think the way you see life is it's literally like a lens. I shouldn't have done it with my hands in a video. That's going to be reconfertish. Yeah, just going to meme that. But anyway, I think of a lens, right? And what you're doing with a lens all the time when you're getting focused when you're zooming is you're trying to place your focus on the object that you're trying to place it on. If you zoom out too wide, you can't see the object. If you zoom in too much, you also can't see the object. You've got to find the right zoom so that you know, okay, we're now looking at a cup.

2:05:35If you zoom in too much, you just go like, I'm looking at a at at silver. I'm looking at a color. You zoom out too much. You can't even see that we're in this room. You know, I'm looking at people. They're like, no, there's a cup. I didn't see it. And so what was happening in my brain was I would get stuck in a zoom and I would just loop. So sometimes it would be me going, huh, that was an interesting day at work. Oh, I go to work tomorrow. And I go to work the next day. Then the next day and then the next day. Then there's a weekend. But then I'm back at work. And then wait a minute. It's just weeks and weekends forever.

2:06:11This never, it just keeps on going. And then and then one day you're like, you're 90 and then and then you're dead and wait, what why am I going to work tomorrow? What's the point of what what is happening here? This couldn't get that out of my head. I literally could not get that thought out of my head. And I would just sit there like, what is the point of this? What are we doing? Couldn't get it out of my head. And how does that feel when you can't get that out of your head? What is the feeling? For me, it felt like life was meaningless. Like the concept of it was meaningless. I was like, we're a blip.

2:06:48What are we doing here? All of this means nothing. All of this is pointless. Is that an exact example of something that would make me feel like? Yeah, no, this is an exact example. This is something that would get stuck in my head. Because I didn't know with ADHD that I was hyper focusing on this thing. So in the same way that I could hyper focus on learning about, I don't know, a discipline, industrial design or artificial intelligence, you know what I'm talking about with that? I'd get hyper focused and then I'd learn everything about it. And I'd read every book and I'd talk to every person I could and I would watch everything.

2:07:23And all of a sudden, you know, in like three months, you'd meet me and I'd go like, yep, I've read that book, I've read that book, I've read that book, and I'm obsessed with this thing. And then one day just disappears. Now that's fine for like learning, let's say. But it would be terrible for an idea of like sadness or an idea of feeling like life is going nowhere or... It can't be good for big famous.

2:07:48It's like the worst thing for being famous because you have constant, like, meaningless feedback and the brain is trying to interpret a lot of it. Exactly. If you get one of those things stuck in your head, gosh. Yeah. And then mine also, like, depends on some people have it, some don't, but like pattern recognition, people with ADHD generally can be very good with pattern recognition. Probably why they're good comedians. And so what happens then, unfortunately, is you can also start to see the patterns in life that can make life seem meaningless. But once I got my ADHD diagnosis and once I understood what was happening, I really did start to see it as a lens.

2:08:28And anytime I find myself in those moments now, because I don't take medication, you know, I took medication like once or twice. I was like, it didn't help me in my comedy. I actually need to be erratic and unfocused when I'm doing comedy. And I'm lucky that I live a life where I don't have to be in an office at a time and do a thing in a certain way. But in coping or in like learning how to deal with it, I've learned just about like that lens and I'll talk to myself. You know, I go, there's me and there's the observer, like I'm the observer of my thoughts. I'm not the thoughts. And then I'll talk to myself.

2:09:00So I'll be like, man, you do this tomorrow and then the next day and then life is me. Then I go like, it is, it is meaningless unless you zoom in. And then if you zoom in a little bit more, one of the sudden, how it's almost like the most meaningful thing. This conversation with this person is the most meaningful conversation you will ever have in your life. This is it. This is everything that it is. This hug that you're getting from your friend is the most important thing you will ever experience. This meal that you're having just tastes these ingredients. What is taste? Feel it on your taste buds and like one of the tools they teach you like with ADHD sometimes, you know, when it makes you going to anxiety or depression, it's just notice things.

2:09:41Practice being present, walk down the street and like look, like really look and say out loud what you're seeing. And at first it's very stupid. That is a red door. That is a green roof. That is a pigeon sitting on the gutter. That is a gutter. That is a gray car that is driven by it. And you'll be shocked at how just doing that gets your brain out of that loop. And then something's going to catch your eye or something will spark. And by the end of that walk, you won't be in the mood that you were in when you started that walk. Did you ever feel hopeless when you spiraled into this sort of rumination?

2:10:17Was there a moment through this journey of understanding your depression that you felt hopeless? I didn't. I didn't. This is going to sound really weird to you. I have this I have this strange thing that'll happen to me sometimes in life where I feel like it's it's all meaningless and it's nothing and it's whatever. It's very very random. Oftentimes I've just learned sometimes it's fatigue, you know, I've learned rules now for myself and for anyone out there really, especially if you have ADHD. Before you go through anything or before you think about anything like intently and intensely when you're struggling, ask yourself a few simple questions.

2:10:55Have you slept? Have you eaten well? Like have you eaten good food? Have you moved your body? And have you spent a little time breathing? If you answer yes to all of those questions, you can continue to pontificate about the meaning of life and everything that you're going through. If you have not just fulfill all of them and then see if you're still feeling the same on the other side and you'll be shocked how often times you aren't. So the one thing that would happen to me, this is so ridiculous. I know sometimes when I'd be in that place, I'd feel a little hopeless. Right? And I would think to myself, I hate this, the sucks.

2:11:32I don't know what I want to do with life anymore. Never like suicidal, but just like I just don't know if this life thing, what is this? And then I would go, if it was going to end tomorrow, then what would I do like today then? I'd be like, you know, I'm going to go on stage. I'm going to tell that joke that I've been terrified to tell. I'm just going to say it because I'm leaving anyway. Life is ending. It's going, it's all going, oh, it's all going to shit, right? It's going to say that good, tell it joke. And I'll be like, you know what I should also throw a party. I mean, you'd like to end in anyways, just like one, just like, fuck off party that you just like go into it and and I think of all the things and I mean this genuinely, I think of all the things that I would do with like giant middle fingers on my way out.

2:12:23And the smile that it brings to my face, I can't explain to you because every time it makes me realize that that's all I should be trying to do. Not in a way where I don't, I don't consider other people, but it's what I should be trying to do. And it's made me realize that at times, not everyone, but for me and I think some people would probably feel this sometimes what's happened in our lives. And I know I had this is like, you feel like you don't, you don't realize that you've stopped sort of like running, jumping, smiling, screaming. You've stopped being everything you can be. And you've just, you've started existing as one version of yourself.

2:13:10And sometimes just having the idea of just like, you know what I mean, take all your clothes off and run through the streets screaming. And what would you say? And who would you say it to? And why would you say, you'd be shocked at how that gives you an inkling of what you're not doing for yourself. Some people might be like, I'll tell my dad to go screw himself. I would say to you, oh, this is probably you realizing that you don't set boundaries with your dad and you don't communicate well, maybe you don't tell your dad how you hurt your feelings. I, man, I'll go to work and I'll, yeah, maybe this is not the job for you, you know, I'll party on that.

2:13:45Maybe you're not taking enough time to have fun. You'll be shocked at how like sometimes you're not a tantrum, but it's just like your, your screw you choice is what you sort of should be doing in a in a responsible way. And that I promise you now in all those moments where I felt like it's hopeless with the moments where I come back even more. I think to myself, huh, maybe I should try aiming to get to that place and they're in a strange way lies the meaning for me. It's such a beautiful thing that they can be really important answers in such a desperate state, but I completely understand what you're saying, because I played out the example in my head that this was my last day.

2:14:27I thought, what are the things I'd love to do? And again, it's such a, so clear to me that those are the things that I'm missing right now from my life, my experience. Exactly. You mentioned Dadson and you did reunite with your biological father. Yeah. Sort of 24 years old, 25 years old when you reunited with him, I believe. Yeah, 20 something somewhere there. What's that like? Is that complicated or is that? Oh, definitely. Definitely. And why did you, why did you reunite with him? Because well, I reunite with him because my mother gave me a key piece of advice, which was valuable. And she said to me, she said, don't take for granted the answers that a person can hold of you that you may not even know you needed for yourself.

2:15:10You know, and I think parents have that with us, especially if parents are willing to engage with you. You know, if these are human beings that have fundamentally shaped you, you are half of them. You know, they are half of you. It's a weird thing that you can take for granted. And so for me, like the gift of reconnecting with my father was reconnecting with him as a man, a young man, albeit a man. You know, scared. I scared isn't the right word. I was unsure, but I wasn't scared. You know, it's like, it's that feeling of the unknown. What's going to happen? What are we like? We get along. We not get along.

2:15:58I remember him, but as a boy and does he even remember me? Does he even like me? You have all these ideas. If they're a part of you that wants to know if he, if he loves you, if he cares about you, I think, I think definitely. But I think, we don't even think of it like that. And I didn't even think of it like that. Does that make sense? Because I assumed the love, because I'd seen it my whole life from him. So I assumed the love. But I didn't, I think the thing that's adjacent to that love is the choosing. Yeah. You know, sometimes you assume that parents love you, but you're not sure that they choose you maybe.

2:16:37And so that was, that was interesting for me. And then seeing parts of myself that I didn't even know came from another person. It's fascinating, frustrating, and liberating at the same time. Although he wasn't around all the time, did you learn lessons from him when you met him when you started to sort of rekindle your relationship with him? I think I did, but not lessons that were taught lessons that were witnessed. I think most of the lessons that we learned from our parents aren't taught, to be honest. What did you learn from him? I definitely think from him I learned how important it is to maintain your friendships.

2:17:16You know, he, he's lived a long life. It's older than my mom, but even as he's gone into his old age, still as friends, he still has community, he still has like, he showed me how wonderful that thing is. You know, because friendship, I feel like friendship has in many ways been given the short end of the stick in the world of relationships. You know, people understand the value of like parents and children, and then people understand like romantic relationships. They go, oh, that's the most. Of course, your spouse, your, but your friendships are one of the few relationships that don't necessarily rely on like a, like a transaction in a way.

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2:19:50That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. Patricia, she is so sent, she's your mother. Yeah. She's so central to your story. To much of the wisdom you have, you talk about continuing the legacy of her legacy, I guess, and everything that she's instilled in you. She sounds like a superwoman in every sense of the word. The apparent resilience. I say apparent because I don't know how to define the perseverance and face of so many struggles other than using the word resilience is astounding. I found Richard's picture either, but I found this beautiful photo of you which reminded me a little bit of although you can because I've posted it online.

2:20:32One of the things I've struggled with is with the disconnect between me and my parents is I've struggled with the thought that there's going to be words unsaid. Oh, and I asked some of my guests this about this because I think because I'm trying to navigate it for in myself and within my own life. If you had a 60 second phone call with Patricia and you knew it was going to be your last, what would the words be? What would you choose to say? Oh, I think it would just be, I love you, I love you, thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you, I love you, thank you so much, I love you. That's pretty, and genuinely, that's pretty much it because I'm really lucky that I've said and I continue to try to say most of what I should to my mom and there's always new things that come up and then I try to say them and we have beautiful conversations and you know, like these days we take like drives, like drive her to go and buy a new chicken for her.

2:21:33She's got like a little chicken, it's not even a farm, I don't even know what to call it, it's like a little squad of chickens, but I'll just take her for a drive and then we just talk about life and we just, when we talk and we share and we laugh and we, but we spend like, it's like the nothing moments, you know, no agenda, no like, there's no thing we have to do or not do, I sort of slip into her life, you know, I find her in the garden and I just stand around while she does her gardening and then listen, talk, share, but really that's if that was the call now, it would just be thank you, thank you, I love you so much, thank you very much, I love you, I love you, thank you so much.

2:22:07And I guess that early experience where she was shot by your, yeah, really kind of allowed you to get the perspective. Yeah, definitely. Before most of us would. Definitely. Have the perspective. She sounds like a remarkable person, when you talk about continuing her legacy, how do you do that? Well, she would challenge me and say, my goal is to improve on her legacy, my mom's definitely remarkable, but as she would say, it's, you know, by the grace of God, it's not by her hand alone. And I think one of the things that I've loved most about my relationship with my mom is that I've come to learn that part of what makes her so exceptional is the fact that she's a flawed human being, she's not perfect.

2:22:55There are some wounds that she's inflicted on me that I need to now deal with in my life because she's been my parent, you know, and this is, this is sometimes the paradox that we struggle with in, in our lives as people, I think we, we've been, we've been so indoctrinated into this like binary way of thinking that we didn't want to go, we had great parents or we had terrible parents. Sometimes you had a parent who has greats at some things and terrible at other things, you know, and if they did love you, they were doing their best. Sometimes they didn't, and I think that's tough for some people to acknowledge, but if they loved you, they were doing their best and they tried their best and they failed at other things.

2:23:34And that's fine, but you know, my goal and my dream is to, as my mom always said to me and my brothers, like, be better than the last. How are you thinking about fatherhood? I go back and forth on it because on the one hand, sometimes I think you see like the zooming, the lens. Sometimes I think about like the planet in the world and like, are you bringing kids? You're going to bring kids? No, I'm like, yeah, but the world's probably been terrible for everyone who's been in it at every single given time. So is that a reason to not have a child? And then I ask myself the other question, I'm like, okay, but what do I think I'm bringing to this child?

2:24:11And then I thought to myself, wow, do I want to have a kid with ADHD? How hard was that for them? And what is it going to be like? And then I'm like, ah, but maybe it'll be great because you know, 80s, and maybe they'll have it, and maybe they won't. And maybe like, so I go back and forth on all of these things. The, you know, the one thing I would hope is that I will give my child two things that are important and that is number one being chosen. Number two being considered. I think a lot of people have children, but they may not choose them and they don't consider them. And that's where you'll hear parents saying things like, you know, I brought you into this world.

2:24:49It's like, yeah, exactly. So you should consider me a little bit more. You know, many parents treat children as if the children owed them for introducing them into existence. When I think it's the other way around. So yeah, I think to myself, I, I like the idea of it. And I do like the puzzle of it. But just like I learned from the daily show and every other major undertaking, if I know that it's going to be terrible, then I'll probably have a great time. But if I think that it's going to be rewarding and wonderful, I'm going to hate a lot of the moments in it. How does romantic love fit into all of this for you?

2:25:27Because you're, well, you were, you know, during those daily show days working everywhere of the day. Yeah. Yeah. You were fighting in every cent of the world to make this show a success. You're living in an apartment with a guy who's also doing the same. I don't know where it fits. I can't see it. It didn't in many ways. You know, and that was the price I paid. You know, does it fit now? Yeah, I think it definitely does. I think it definitely does. Like it's, it's a weird thing to say, but as I have become more comfortable with the notion that I could be not in a relationship forever, like, you know, as people say by yourself, but I don't think of that because of friends and community.

2:26:05But as I've gotten more comfortable with that, I think I've become more able to be in a relationship. Because I think more and more, I've thought of a relationship as something I can bring value to as opposed to the thing that's supposed to just do everything for me. You know, and I think before, I was only looking at it that way without realizing it. Trevor, these books are beautiful for so many different reasons. Borena Crime is one of the most, it's so funny because it's not my story, but it's everyone's story in so many ways. I think that's why it's such a beautiful book.

2:26:46It's for his mother, his journey to the very, very top of a mountain and all of the important wisdom he's learned along the way that I think is so relatable even though it's not not my story. And some books don't achieve that, but your books achieve that so well. And this book is the first time I've ever described a book as being truly, truly beautiful. It comes out on the 8th of October. It's called Into the Uncookgrass. And it's so wise, powerful, but beautiful, the book that... And silly, I hope people remember that as silly. I would love to read this to my kids, but it's funny because I thought, I want to first open it and I thought, okay, you know, there's illustrations throughout the book.

2:27:22And then I started reading the words. And you realize that it's both applicable and powerful to a young person, but also something you could read alone at my age of 32. It's such a beautiful book. It follows in the tradition of the boy the fox and the mole. It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, those are the stories. It's books that I loved, you know, the boy the little prince, you know, there's so many books like that that I think inspired me to think about rediscovering our childlike curiosity, ability to think beyond ourselves, I imagine. Like almost like re -remembering yourself before many of the hurts, you know, and then going from there.

2:28:06And so... And connection is such a prevalent theme throughout this. The journey of connection of love and all of those things. And I'm going to link that below. Everyone needs to read that book. It's so beautiful. Read it for yourself, read it for your kids, read it with your partner. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest and not knowing who they're going to be leaving. Oh, okay. Tell us about the lowest point of your life. How did you overcome it? What lessons did you learn from the experience?

2:28:37Hmm. Funny enough, I think we talked about it. I would safely say the lowest point of my life was my mother being shot. So it's crazy that we did speak about it. How did I overcome it? I don't think I would be so...

2:28:55Errigan says to say that I have overcome it. I think I'm constantly working to overcome it. Do you overcome these things? I don't know, to be honest with you. I really don't know. Because I... You know, it's strange because I don't know what that means or doesn't mean. It doesn't mean you don't think of it anymore. Does it mean it doesn't affect you anymore? I don't know what the answer to that question is. You know, maybe overcoming something means that it now no longer negatively influences you. I don't know. I don't think that we have like one fixed idea of overcoming something that isn't tangible.

2:29:28You know, it's not like scaling a mountain. So the honest answer I would give is yeah, I just give myself grace and I try and work at it. I try and understand that it's all a work in progress. You know, one of my favorite things I learned recently and I guess it speaks to this is I should remember the name. I would remember stories and not like the names of things or the dates. But there's a beautiful art form that I learned about when I was in Japan recently. And basically it's a practice of repairing pottery and ceramics that have broken. Right? And what happens is, you know, you break a plate or you break a vase or something.

2:30:14And what they do is they put it back together. These artisans who do it. But they don't just glue it back together. They glue it back together and they sort of adorn it with like a golden bondage. And what you get is an object that is somehow more beautiful than before it was broken. And it's this beautiful Japanese tradition. I'm sure you could find the name and you know, put it out there, but it's, if you could help me with it. But it's, to me, it was one of the the most beautiful concepts and a different way to think about being called, what's on called fixed or overcoming or, you know, it is the art of Kinsugi in Japan.

2:31:01And learning about this blew my mind because it was such a, it was a paradox shifting way for me to think about overcoming or being better. And it wasn't the idea that we are perfect, the way we were before something happened to us. But rather it is that we get to wear our cracks with a new type of pride and a new type of beauty, you know. And that's maybe how I think of overcoming now is I think of myself like a ceramic that has been cracked many times. And because of the love in my life and because of great therapists and because of good people and because I've worked and I've managed to find ways to put gold bondage in those cracks to somehow find a little more beauty in myself than I had before the thing that happened to me.

2:31:53And so yeah, that's that, that like that absolutely every time I see those, it actually makes me emotional when I look at each one and I think about the story sort of of the person that each vessel contains. My last question is a very complex question, but it was inspired by what you just said about Kinsugi, the Japanese tradition, which is I spoke to a guy called Mogor Dao Mipokas, who had lost his I love more. He's a great conversation with him. That's great. It's one of my favorite of all time because for many reasons, but many of them you've touched on today. And in that conversation, he said something to me about the loss of his son, he said, there's this thing called the eraser test.

2:32:30I don't know if you've ever heard about it, but they ask a group of people who've been through a lot of difficult experiences that if there was a button in front of them, that could it would erase all of those experiences, really difficult experiences at times, would they press it? Now, if I put it up in front of you and it would erase what happened to your mother, being shot at that age, would you press it? Yes, I would. You would? Yeah, I would. And this is a fundamental philosophical arguments that I have with people. This is purely like philosophy and it's the way I see the world, and I think the way some people see the world.

2:33:05I understand that many of the times, or I understand that like oftentimes people come out of a bad experience with a new learning or something that has improved them in many ways, but I think we should never take for granted how many times that doesn't happen. You know, I think we should never take for granted how many people are broken by a bad thing. And I think we've done something in society and maybe it's because we want to valorize it, or maybe it's because we want to make people feel like they're not victims, or we want to make it seem like there was some purpose or meaning. Maybe it's tied to religion.

2:33:44I think we at times have sort of valorized this idea. It happened to you for a reason. You know, and so now you get this kid who is abused by their parents or someone in their family and you're like, it happened to you for a reason. It made you the person you are today. You know, or somebody who suffered a horrible trauma or like a car accident, a terrorist attack, whatever it is, it's, hey, it happens to you for a reason. You're going to, you know, look at you, you will be stronger. Look at you today. You wouldn't be this person. You know what people forget to talk about? Is the fact that yeah, you could have been a different version of you.

2:34:21You could have been happier. You could have been less wounded. You could have carried less burden. You could have been less hurtful because of that. And I think we should never take that for granted. I think we should encourage people to find the best. And we should always say to ourselves, hey, what can I get from the situation? What can I learn from it? How can I grow from it? But I am not a fan of anybody saying that they will keep it because it's made them who they are. Just because you've survived a storm doesn't mean that you should want to keep that storm. And so, and that's why I say it's a philosophical argument.

2:35:00It really is. But I don't like how we've done that to people because in some way, I feel like it makes people think that they now have to be grateful for a terrible thing that has happened to them or a terrible thing that they've experienced or people around that have experienced because they've come out more resilient on the other side of it. Everything happens to you for a reason. Yeah. And so if I could replace it, I go, no, I forget that. I don't go like everything happens to you. It doesn't. I go back to what I said, my friend, phrase my friend taught me, who are you? Who do you choose to be?

2:35:30I would say forget the eraser test. I would say to you, there can never be an eraser test. Why don't we replace it with a pencil test, a pen test, a market test, whatever device you want to use. And you go, if you could press this button and decide what story you write on the other side of the thing that happened to you, would you now write that story? And what story would you write? I think that's more important because the eraser thing makes people now feel like they have to just own a part of themselves, which most people will not want to do. But then it makes you feel like you have to like claim this thing as being part of yourself.

2:36:04No, I would press that button. I would erase my mother being shot. I would erase me having ADHD. I would erase the tough times that my country went, are you raised apartheid? I wouldn't be like, I would keep apartheid, Steven, because if it wasn't for apartheid, I wouldn't be here with you today. No, no, no, no, no, I would erase it. And maybe we'd be dealing with something else. But if I could, I would press that button because I, yeah, I don't think we need to celebrate it. I think we need to work on it. And you know, we need to strive to heal ourselves. But I don't think your tribulations are what make you.

2:36:39You survived. And I'm proud of you for surviving. But that doesn't mean that you needed to go through what you had to go through. So beautifully said, you have a wonderful podcast. I can talk to you all day, but if people want to hear more from you, they have to go and listen to your podcast, um, called What Now? So on Spotify, um, you speak to a whole range of people like me, but you, you do it in a very different way. But in the, in the way, and with the, with the same set of components as to what's made you such a hit with so many people, I can't tell you how much, you know, my team, my, my family, my sister, my brothers, they're such tremendous fans of you.

2:37:13Yeah, this wonderful blend of wisdom, I now know where it all comes from, humility, vulnerability, and you are authentic. And authentic is a complicated word. But you are authentic. As anyone could hope to be, and that's why everyone has to go listen to your podcast. It's a third link that I'm going to put down below. It's called What Now? And it's one of my favorites. Trevor, thank you so much. From the guy who made easily one of the best ever. Thank you very much. No, no, I mean, this, I mean, it's real. You know, I always say like I go, if you want to see a professional podcast, go, go to Dary of CEO.

2:37:44If you want to come explore my mind, come listen to what now people want to explore your mindset. No, but for real, I'm like, congratulations. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. And I can't tell you how much of it on this word. Sometimes I get quite nervous to interview people and you want to know. Oh, wow. Thank you. I got nervous to because I respect you so much. So thank you so much, Trevor, for the time I appreciate you. Yeah, man. And don't, don't spend as much time alone. You're not like, you know, I know you've always been there. And I know it can feel in a weird way, it can feel like the comfortable place, but like it doesn't need to be.

2:38:14I'm learning this. Yeah. You'll be shocked at like how much lies on the other side of it's, you know, in a weird way, you'll, you'll, you'll be shocked at what finding that belonging can do for you. You know, it comes with risk the same way it doesn't a romantic relationship, but man, it's, it's, it's easily the most rewarding. If there's like a, if I could evangelize one thing to people out there, it would be find your people, find your place. And unfortunately, I think that's what's happening these days. People are finding that place in negativity, you know, people are finding community in negativity.

2:38:47Now we all hate together. We all, we all, you know, hate to eat together and we we're all like angry at women together and we all hate that music artist together and we all, yeah, let's hate together. That's, that's, it's not sustainable because it cobbles us up. It's like it's just like, choose us up and spits us out. But if you can find the things that you love doing for you and then you find the people who love doing it as well and it makes you feel good, the thing on the other side is, it's magic. In fact, they've shown studies, I know you love studies, studies, multiple studies have shown and I think a meta analysis as well has shown that people who have a strong group of friends actually have better romantic relationships because the burden of your relationship is now lessened by having this community as opposed to people who merge with one person and then all their hopes, aspirations, dreams, fears, frustrations are just poured on them.

2:39:41You reach a breaking point, but you can actually have, it's not replacing it by the way. You have a better romantic relationship when you maintain and you have a strong friendship. So I encourage it. Do it. I promise you I will. Do it. I'll let you know. It's gonna be great. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

2:40:09Thank you.

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