What Now? with Trevor Noah - Meet Esther Perel - One of My Favorite People

33:28And over time, decades maybe, I slowly began to actually appreciate that I was part of many places, even if I didn't necessarily belong to all these places. You know that distinction? No, I like that. I'm just trying to think of it. I'm trying to process it. Like it's a part of me, but I am not just that. If you want to know me, you need to know this and this and this. It's various parts. It's all the different parts of you that make you who you are. The locations, the languages, the stories that accompanied. I think probably you too. I think so. You know, I'm trying to think of how it works for me.

34:12I mean, what part of your American-ness travels with you to South Africa? Or do you really kind of… No, no, no. So, because I spent so much… Because I lived my whole adult life there, I'm very good at being South African. You know? It takes me a week and then I'm into the groove. The one thing that I will say that I've inherited from America, which I'm always grateful for, is the idea that there's the possibility to do it even if it does not currently exist. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like this project I was describing. Exactly. There's just always this idea of, but what if you could do it? But what if you could do it?

34:52It doesn't exist, but what if you could do it? And I think of how crazy that notion is. everything that is at some point wasn't now we treat it like it's normal but there was a time when it just it wasn't so i think i think i've probably adopted that um what else is it some there's also some negative things that i think you adopt and then you you if i'm if i'm aware enough i can leave them behind you know so america will make me feel like i have to be actively engaged in everything all the time there's a certain fomo-ness to america as a whole it doesn't matter what it is business are you missing out are you not doing the thing are you not engaged news have you kept up do you know what's happening has it broken is it breaking is it live is it happy you know that's that's always going on um it doesn't matter what even even small things like food have you tried that place you've got to try that place oh my god i can't believe you haven't tried that why haven't you tried that place there's a there's a certain you know drive yeah Yeah, but an urgency more than just a drive.

35:53There's an urgency to be part of and to not miss out on that I don't experience when I'm back home. When I'm back in South Africa, it's different. Because when you live in a more collectivist culture, the culture drives you. You don't have to go and attempt everything and be part of everything in order to know that you exist because you are absorbed by a larger tradition. I think that is part of the individualism here and part of the individualism is also once I had a family I had a very different experience here because you have to do everything yourself it's not just you have to go you have to keep up with the news you also have to pay for your education you also have to pay for your health you are responsible for everything and when you come from a social welfare system that is a very different experience the idea with which people take it for granted that they have to put all the infrastructure in place.

36:53A marriage here is a social welfare state of two. Versus, you know, there's a social welfare state that exists as part of the system, and within that you create a family. That puts an enormous burden on people. Enormous. We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

37:19If you are new here or haven't been here in a bit, welcome to my office. For the whole month of July, I am offering you 20 % off for the annual and monthly subscriptions on Apple Podcasts. By joining my office hours subscription on Apple Podcasts, you'll get an ad-free version of these episodes. Plus, you will have access to my Apple channel. that includes the earliest seasons of the podcast plus a clinical library of conversations with colleagues coaches and other therapists as well we offer follow-ups with couples as well if knowing more about their stories is something that interests you and that you're curious about join my office hours by clicking the subscribe button on the where should we begin show page see you there and thank you

38:15Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Quince. Hate to break it to you, but now that it's August, that means summer is almost over. For some of you, that might be a relief. Autumn means cooler weather, which also means it might be time to find some cozy cold weather staples. Enter Quince. Quince specializes in effortless, high-quality essentials, like ultra-soft organic cotton and premium Mongolian cashmere sweaters. They're beautifully tailored, built to last, and transition seamlessly from morning meetings to a nice dinner out. This summer, I've been wearing quite a bit of Queen's linen.

38:53I love the European linen tank because it's light, comfortable, and goes with just about everything. And when the weather cools down, I'm looking forward to pulling my cashmere sweaters back out. They're the pieces I reach for year after year. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Queen's app for app-exclusive offers or go to queens.com slash begin. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash begin.

39:30Fall is here, and that means the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. It's the one we've been waiting for. So whether you're a fan of the original pumpkin spice latte or ready to mix it up with an iced pumpkin cream chai, the new iced pumpkin cream matcha, or the new iced pumpkin cream shaken espresso, you can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks. Your favorite fall flavors are back at Starbucks. The one and only pumpkin spice latte and the deliciously smooth iced pecan crunch latte have arrived and are ready to sip all season long. Or find a new favorite, like the new iced banana bread latte that tastes just like fall in a cup.

40:10You can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks.

40:21Did you always think you would do this? No. What was like the idea? I find that there are almost like three different stages that people sort of project themselves in one is when you're very young what did you think you would be when you were like a young child what did you want to be oh I think I had different I had three things I either was going to be an interpreter because my mom said you speak all these languages you'd like to travel interpreter will give you both a journalist because I was curious and a theater actress. I love the theater. But I think, honestly, for me, there's the people who've always known what they wanted to do, the people who just stumbled upon something, and then the people who had an inclination and then they matched it with what life put in front of them.

41:14I think so much of what I did is because I arrived to the U.S., because of the opportunities that the U.S. gave and because of the obstacles because I didn't have the right license and I couldn't do what one would have done normally. I love that. If I had studied here. So necessity became the mother of invention. I had to hustle. I had to create myself. I had to find a way to do. And so it became a kind of a combo between what I bring and what life is putting in front of me and says, do this now. So the friction is the reason we have. Yeah, you see, this is what I mean. No, it's amazing. my producer loves a story he was telling me that there's a story you told I guess that paints a picture of a little bit of a life that most people wouldn't associate you with at first glance but I do think it explains a lot of like your style and how you see fashion and everything is like how did you get into and not fashion the way people think of it but what is your relationship with fashion uh i my parents had a clothing store they had clothing stores i lived above one of the stores i worked in the store pretty much since i could talk what what type of clothing was it everything i wear really you wear okay so just like a mix of a good clothing store but you know my brother opened the first boutique in antwerp which was the first time that young people were dressing separately from adults.

42:45When you were little, you had a suit with short pants. Yes. And a jacket. You just wore what the adults wore. A smaller version. A smaller version, exactly. And then in the 60s, suddenly you began to wear your own, the jeans, the Shetland sweater. And so my brother opened the first boutique in Antwerp where young people went to dress separately from the older folks. And I lived my life with the change of seasons by looking at the change of windows. and I accompanied my dad to the manufacturers to pick up the merchandise and the collections, and I went with my brother to Paris all the time to get the merchandise and to look at the fashion shows.

43:24So I kind of grew up in a fashion business, in a clothing business, and there was a tremendous amount of attention paid. But I also sat in the store and watched my mother sell because the stores were open till 8 o 'clock and 9 o 'clock at night, and my mother worked in the store. Was that common back then? Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Every day till eight and Friday and Saturday till nine. Wow. So if I wanted to see my mom, I had to be in the store. I sat on the chair and I watched her sell, dress people, tell stories. People told their whole life story. I went with my dad to bring suits to people who were dead and families who were mourning before they were going to the burials and the cemeteries.

44:09I mean, I really learned about life through clothes, basically. And I'm the only one in the family that didn't enter the business, the family shop. Why? Was it because something pulled you more? Was it because something pushed you out of it? We lived above the store and I just thought we never get rid of this thing. It's with us at every meal. That's all you talk about when you have a family shop. Anyone who's a family. And I just thought, I want a profession I can carry on my back. I want a profession that I can travel with and I can, you know, do it. You wanted the store to live above you. Yes, yes.

44:48And I can do it anywhere I go. The thought of being tethered like that to this place. Of course, then I had an office and a private practice. So it wasn't, you know, until, you know, Skype started. But that was the main idea. I remember saying to my parents, I said, I want a profession that I can carry on my back. And here you are. I could be wrong, but I feel like there was the mating in captivity, Esther, who came onto the scene and in many ways gave people their first look at an idea that went beyond the flat way they looked at. That's the title of my first book we should probably explain. Oh, Mating in Captivity?

45:33Oh, for those who don't know, it's a book. And for those who don't know... It has its 20th anniversary next year. Congratulations! Wow. Yeah, but I think it was one of the first pieces of work that changed people's flat perceptions on not just relationships, but infidelity, the infidelity of the mind, how people... And for a moment in time, that's sort of, you know, how I think a lot of people thought of Esther. and that sort of was, yeah, it really was your conquest at the time. It was the journey that you were on. Now I feel like you have this passion and this laser focus specifically around community, the village, reconnecting with people, finding people.

46:15I actually thought about you the other day because I walked past a laundromat and I literally thought to myself, I need to talk to Esther about this.

46:26What did you see? I have this theory in my head. I think we have neglected or we have gotten away from two elements in life that have robbed us of intimacy and we didn't realize that it's a second system effect. And those are need and friction. Right. And when I looked at the laundromat, I saw both, but in different ways. The main thing I saw was friction. and I thought it's amazing how now we live in a world where if you live in a building you want the building to have a laundry you know in in unit laundry whatever it is washer dryer and when I looked into the laundromat I thought ah imagine how many love stories wouldn't have happened if people didn't have to come and wash their clothes imagine how many friendships would have never been sparked if people didn't have to come and walk and it's friction it's it's it doesn't seem like you you know the right ingredient to get there but when i looked into that laundromat i was like oh wow what a what a cool organic way to meet because you're stuck with somebody for three hours and you might find you with them every single week at some point you might just say hi at some point you nice to see you again hey you left your i put the the coins in the dryer i you know and i literally thought of you and i was like wow i wonder if this is like part of what esther's fighting well not laundromats obviously but friction friction yes the importance of friction that is definitely a piece i i talk about but if you want to go back for a moment so i had been a couples therapist for quite a while when i wrote mating in captivity i just had not focused on sexuality and the cultural story that supports our expectations around sexuality around desire desire around eroticism in long-term relationships.

48:22And I took a kind of a side road and I just thought, I want to explore this because I had been trained in certain ways to think about sexuality in relationships. And I just thought, is that really true? I mean, is that the way it works? Because that's not what I see in my office and I don't think it's what other colleagues see in their office. Wait, you're saying your training wasn't matching up with what you were seeing in the real world? That's right. Oh, I had always assumed it was your training that had informed you. No, not at all. That's part of why the book became so significant because it actually questioned a whole set of suppositions that were parading as truths when they were actually not.

49:06Give me an example of sexual problems are always the consequence of relationship problems. If you fix the relationship, the sex will follow. That happens sometimes. But I had seen many couples who got along much better and it changed nothing in their bedrooms. Because the politics of the bedrooms are not the same as the one in the kitchen. Because love and desire, they relate, but they also conflict sometimes. And how do we negotiate and reconcile security and adventure, love and desire? That was the subject of this first book. And then I began to think, well, what happens when desire goes looking elsewhere?

49:45And that became the book about infidelity. And I thought here too, there's a whole set of ways that we think about infidelity that don't help a ton of people. And I would ask audience after audience, if they've been affected by the experience of infidelity in their lives, and about 85%, 90 % of the people would raise their hands, either because a parent was, or they were the child of, or they were one of the three protagonists, or they were the friend. And so this is not just a few rotten apples on the side. And people are gutted by this. And I thought there needs to be a better way to help people deal with the crisis of affairs and the breaches of trust and the violations and all of that.

50:28And then these are still two books that basically presumes that people will be in relationships, or at least those are the people I wrote for, or people who seek to be in relationships. And then I became, I went back to the origin of my work, actually, which was I'm a systemically trained therapist who looks at relational systems. And I began to see our relational systems and our relational lives is changing fundamentally. It is one of the most important pieces of the future I'm interested in, the future of relationships. Let's go back to, you said systems trained. So help me understand what is the difference between...

51:09Psychoanalytic and systemic. Yeah, I wouldn't even know the names. So psychoanalytic and? Systemic. Okay. Systemic training was the, I mean, it exists in cybernetics. It exists, it borrowed pieces from cybernetics and feedback loops and looked at relationships and relationship problems or problems in families and couples as they are connected to the context. Right. How is the system organized that keeps this problem in place versus going just intra-psychically, intra-inside yourself, looking at your own personal story rather than looking at what is actually happening between me and you? That's a very different interpretation.

51:52looking at how are we interacting in such a way that our communication is really fraught or that we end up both being rejected at the end of every conversation rather than just what happened in my history and what happened in your history. It's understanding. That's it. Problems occur in a context. You look at how is the system organized around these problems and it is interpersonal and not just intrapersonal. Got it. and that to me was the beginning of thinking relationally hence community friction and all of that if i look at the line i i i've been looking at what happens between people and not just inside of the people and our mental health models have been very very focused on what happens inside people.

52:45And the idea is that if I'm better with myself inside, it will solve all the problems between you and I. If I am more at peace with myself, I'll be nicer to you. If I like myself more, if I'm more selfish, et cetera. And that is sometimes the case, but it is not the whole story. And, um, but the whole story is also the opposite. If I'm actually, you know, engaged with you, I'm less likely sometimes to think about myself all the time and to find meaning in doing things for others and to find relevance and to even get confidence because of how other people see me rather than stand alone in front of my mirror and try to say to myself, you're worthy, you're worthy.

53:27So that is the big divide at this moment. That is really an essential division. And then comes technology and then comes, you know, climate change and migration and all of the big geopolitical issues. And they all are influencing the way that we are relating to each other. And then instead of just calling it relationships, I began to think, no, no, it's relational intelligence. That's really where I am now. And that's not the same as emotional intelligence. It's really looking at the whole system. Relationships are all relationships have expectations. They have boundaries. They have room for creativity.

54:08They have, you know, a dimension of accountability and responsibility. They straddle how we negotiate the self and the other, my needs, your needs. You know, how much I connect to you without losing me and how much I connect to me without losing you. All relational systems have hierarchies, have roles. It's a map. And what is happening to these systems in light of technology, in light of AI, in light of the fact that, and now we get to the friction, that most of the predictive technologies are aiming at reducing friction. Yeah. And they want you to have a polished, smooth, frictionless delivery of your every delight on demand.

54:57and that is fundamentally changing how you and I relate to each other. Yeah, for me personally, I just noticed... Is that a long story for... No, it's great. Does that give you how I got to where I am? Yeah, I think it does because I think a lot of people are experiencing this but I don't think we understand why we're experiencing it and I also think most people are being blamed for it either from the outside or they're blaming themselves. So I think a lot of people are sitting at home saying I can't make friends I don't know people I don't have a community I'm lonely I'm depressed I'm this I'm I'm I'm I'm And then they're blaming themselves But no I think very few people are thinking About the laundromat Very few people are thinking about What it means when your food gets delivered to your house Versus when you had to walk and go and get the food And I don't mean it in like an old man way In my day You know, I just mean like, I mean like the conversation that you have with the person at the store.

55:58Oh, yeah. It's just like that little weak tie that builds something in your world. It's a little, I always think of it as planting the seeds for serendipity. That's how I think of it. Because you never know which one will grow and which one won't. But even in comedy, you know, I'll always say to my friends, things go wrong all the time in my life, right? Are you traveling? You have to cancel a show Or a thing goes wrong at the show Or whatever it is And my friends will say to me How are you always so chill about it? And I go, I'm not necessarily chill But I have practiced telling myself That all of this is inevitably going to be comedy The friction is the comedy There's no good comedy that comes from A beginning and an inevitable conclusion It doesn't work I went to the store And I looked for the size that I was looking for and they had it and I bought it and my card went through and I went home and I put it on and it looked great.

56:52No story. There's no story because there's no friction. Exactly. That's the same as the erotic formula. Attraction plus obstacles equals excitement. Oh, wait. Hold on, hold on. Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement. Huh. It's the same in the rules of desire. You know, it's funny. If there's no obstacle, if there's no friction, this is going back to what we said. I remember once having a conversation with a stripper who's like, it was the most random conversation. And I said to her, I said, why do you put your clothes back on? And it was just a joke, right? Because like, all of us are in this club.

57:31And here we are for a bachelor party. And this person dresses and then undresses and then dresses and then undresses. And I just said as a joke, I said, why do you put your clothes back on? It would be more efficient to keep them off. And she said, yes, but you'll be surprised. I think I won't articulate it as well as she said it, but she said, you'll be surprised at how the men aren't turned on by us being naked. They're turned on by the idea of us becoming naked at some point. And she was like, that's essentially what we're playing with. And now when you say it like that, I go, oh, yeah, it sounds like the same thing.

58:02It's the attraction. The obstacle is the clothing and whether or not it will come off or when it will come off. And that creates the excitement. Correct. That's a good analogy. Huh. Thank you. Of course, whose bachelor party was this? Oh, what do you mean? This is the most common thing. Of course. It's like, you know, people are like, bachelor party. It's actually more common in the US. I don't think I ever got invited to a bachelor party at a strip club in South Africa. Not what do they do? I think it's more of a, you have what we call a braai, like a barbecue, and you hang out. But I don't think it's a, it's funny actually, now that you're asking me, it isn't seen as an ending of a life.

58:48Does that make sense? So I find a lot of American bachelor parties are, well, this is the last time you get to explore sex and craziness and eroticism and all of it. So you better enjoy it. One last ride. That's right. You're about to enter the marital cell. There you go. And your monastic life. But I don't remember anyone saying that in South Africa. I don't remember anybody saying, you're going to get married, so no more sex for you kiss your sex life that was never I don't think it's ever even been framed like that it was more it's more the coming together of families that's what people focus on they go oh now you are welcoming another person into your family or the other side is becoming part of your family I think that's so a strip club wouldn't make sense for combining families I want to go back to the laundromat I love the place I really I think the laundromat or other places like it, the bookstore, the coffee bar, the train station, the train itself.

59:50I mean, there's so many places for that friction. I think that that's where I'm positioning myself today. I'm placing myself at the door. I want you to come outside. Do you know one of the most to come outside and go to any of these places? The statistic that really stayed with me recently is an article. It's called The Antisocial Century by Derek Thompson. And 74 % of food that is cooked in a restaurant is not eaten on the premises. That's the new number. And that woke me up. An increase of 30 % of people eating alone in the restaurant. Now, eating is one of the oldest worldwide gatherings, traditions of coming together with others.

1:00:40It's friction of every sort. And the fact that we are going to order from the restaurant and then bring it home and eat it many times alone, that's a problem. So this is all I'm going to do now from now on is the future of relationship, getting people to not feel so lonely, so isolated, so locked up in their houses, so defeated by relationships. and so transferring their expectations for algorithmic perfection into their relationships. They want people to become perfect and predictable like the technologies. And we are by our very nature unpredictable and imperfect. And that is part of the beauty of being human beings.

1:01:31It's exactly that. If there is no obstacle, there's no story that's of any interest, let alone comedy. And I think that we're saying something that is quite, it's more important than we even let onto this friction piece. Yeah. You know, because that's the plot. You tell stories and they have a plot and the plot is built by all these unpredictabilities, obstacles. Be it in the sexual plot or be it in the comedy plot or be it in the relationship plot. It's really important. What are we going to do otherwise? what's going to happen to us i think the difficulty though is realizing the value of it in the moment i think that's that's what's hard there's a fantastic um professor i think he actually has a course on happiness or fulfillment or something of the sort a swedish professor i think his name is dalen michael dalen and one of the things they found was if you asked most people most most most people what they would like to eat in the future he broke it into three carrots ice cream and insects and he was referring to like these little insects that you could buy at disneyland apparently i'd never heard of them but it's like a chocolate covered insect and it's you know it's it's all the rage and people buy them but he found that there was a large number of people who never ate them a lot of people bought them but never ate them and so he broke it down into carrots insects and ice cream and in all the research what he found was if you asked most people what they want to eat for their next meal or for the meal in 10 years they say carrots i should be eating more carrots right if you ask most people what they what they wish they had eaten it was insects and then if you ask most people what they want to eat now they say ice cream and it was just a beautiful, simple way of looking at the way we avoid friction.

1:03:28He went, we know theoretically what we want for ourselves in the future, what will be the healthiest or the best. We also know that we regret not taking the road less traveled, the crazy idea, the moment that didn't necessarily make sense. But in the moment, for the most part, we are more predisposed to choosing the immediate relief and the and so when i think about friction i think of it in the same way if you as esther say dating apps you go trevor don't use a dating app i know myself and a lot of people would say yeah i agree with you esther because in the future i think to myself i would love to meet someone organically etc in the past i would have loved to taken a chance tried something different explored beyond my you said what was a culture religion race all these things but in the moment oh it's so easy to just swipe it's so because it's the ice cream and we never feel good after the ice cream and then we always regret the ice cream but we always fall back into then so that friction like i i love that you're positioning yourself there because i think but friction is connected i think to the big issue of the moment yeah which is uncertainty because friction is what makes you have to experiment deal with the unexpected right deal with the unpredictable deal with the the lessons of making all kinds of bad choices it helps you deal with uncertainty dealing with uncertainty is what helps you deal with anxiety that's what wait wait wait say that again dealing with uncertainty is what helps you deal with anxiety In what way?

1:05:11Because if you become more adept at dealing with the unknown, the unexpected, the unpredictable, then you develop a sense of confidence. It's what you just described when you get to a show and you had to cancel something or the flight was late. You have a stance that basically says, I know what I can control. I know to handle the unknown and the unpredictable. And I know that it will land in my comedy. because it will become part of the story. Now I'm annoyed, maybe, but, you know, that you don't get completely frazzled. You absorb it. You have a shock absorber. And that shock absorber is what allows you to not be as anxious about the unknown, about mortality, about the unpredictable, all of that.

1:06:01You know, having all the answers in the palm of your hand is not making us less anxious. It's making us more anxious. because we're no longer making bad choices, discovering something, realizing we don't like it. We begin to expect immediate, perfect answers for everything. And relationships and life, our existence doesn't operate this way in many aspects. Some of them do, but the majority of things are way more complex than that. So this piece of uncertainty matched with all the changes that are happening at full speed are making us very, very fraught. And that to me, because everybody wants to talk about the loneliness epidemic, but people are not necessarily addressing what I think is the other piece, which is how do we deal with so much uncertainty all at once?

1:06:53And when you can't deal with uncertainty and you don't have the resilience to help you with anxiety, then you don't know how to deal with frustration, conflict, differences. and then you become more intolerant and then you go to look for people who sell you certainty and that comes with certain political regimes as well you want somebody who's going to help you feel more certain I'm going to solve this for you so to me that's all interconnected and that's happening on a geopolitical level and it's happening in relationships and so to just look at the dilemmas of mating in captivity is not enough anymore for me I think there's something bigger happening that is touching at the core of our existence.

1:07:40Every research tells you that you only live longer and you live better when you have meaningful relationships. And people are having less and less of it. What was the system that made you this way? I've always wondered, what was little Esther like when your parents would talk about you? How were you with other kids or how were you in the house? Was your world certain or was it more uncertain? My world was certain, but my parents' world was a world that was completely decimated. So predictions. So I think it's two different things. On the one hand, you know, one of the most important aspects of my background is that I am a child of two Holocaust survivors.

1:08:31and my parents were the sole survivors of their entire family. Jeez. So my mother was the youngest of seven. My father was the youngest of nine. Nobody, nobody, nobody survived but my parents. So they definitely dealt with uncertainty and they dealt with the unknown and they dealt with a world where you have no idea where kindness will come from and where order will be restored and where humanity will come back and all of that. So I have all of this in my background. They each spent four years in concentration camps. I think that all of that is extremely important in how I look at the world, how I look at who is good and who is not, who thinks of others, who doesn't, who can be kind, how much is our ideology defining who we are versus how much does our behavior and our actions actually define who we are.

1:09:28All of these big questions. But then I think in addition, whenever I see dogma or groupthink or mass psychology or crowds, I tend to think there must be something else. There must be another way. Is this really so? Or is this just so because that many people think like it? and I think it's the combination of those things I I act very fearlessly but I am not but I act fearlessly oh so I guess you act courageously then yeah that's interesting I never I never saw it like that but yeah because that's because that's what courage is right acting in spite of the fear I think I think of myself as as counterphobic do you know that term No.

1:10:15So you can be phobic, you can be fearful. And counterphobic is when you actually do the things that frighten you the most. How do you find the balance between that and living life with a reckless abandon that causes danger to you and others? Because some things scare you for the right reasons, don't they? Yes, of course. Like when you were hitchhiking, you didn't go with that one person because something scared you in some way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you always want to keep judgment. You have a healthy dose of skepticism. You don't believe what everybody tells you. People will say this in different ways.

1:10:56They'll be like, go to the thing that scares you. And then I've like, I mean, you know, and I've been public about this, but I always think to myself, I go, I wish my mom was a little more scared of domestic abuse because then I wonder what it would have changed in my family. And I talked to her about this, you know, and I'm glad I spoke about it publicly Because people have even spoke about it publicly as well now with me. They go, yeah, when do you allow the fear to control you or to inform your decision? And how do you know when it's a good fear, when it's a bad fear? This is, you don't always know.

1:11:28I mean, you have a sense. You look around. You ask other people for a reality check. Yeah. When I am very worried about things, I ask for a reality check. I also know that in my stomach lives a real long history of fear and that I can have very strong reactions to situations. But I also know that the legacy of this precedes me. And then what do I do? It is a different thing. But I think when do you know if your fear is valid? It's a fear. so what helps you with fears is grounding yourself in reality how do you trust reality generally it helps to have other people around you to help you you know am i is what i'm seeing what you're seeing too i mean okay is is a check right and the check is not all is not always done alone you're not always the best person to actually know or at least for yourself you can be perfectly perceptive for others but for yourself you don't necessarily know because you You sense a lot of things.

1:12:36In football, we say man on. What is that? I've always loved that. It's one of the reasons I love playing football. Yeah. Soccer or football? Soccer, soccer. I mean, that's, you know. Our football. Yeah, football. One of the things I love about football is I always go, for me, it's a perfect allegory for life. Because it's, one, you are the individual. Everything you do individually matters to you and to the team. However, you cannot do anything without the team. and things will happen because of the team. So you're part of a system. And so it almost ties in those two ideas where one is completely what am I doing as a player and why did I do that or why am I going to do that?

1:13:15But the other one is you have to do it in relation to others and you have to understand why. So you can kick a great pass, but if your teammate doesn't reach it, there was no point in kicking it. And there's one, when you talk about your community, you just say man on or man, and it means you're being marked by something that you may not be aware of and the people around you can observe you better in the situation than you can because you have your blind spots and good teammates will always tell you what's happening around you. They'll say man on, they'll say time, they'll say you've got time and it just means you've got time to think.

1:13:49You can breathe on the ball. Turn, you can turn your body. And I love those small moments where you're reminded that you're not in it alone even though you are alone in that little microcosm of a moment you're alone. It's a beautiful image. It really describes it very, very well. There is what you can do and then there is how other people can help you do what you're about to do. And then how what you do will help what others need from you because that's the way the team... I think it's a great image. It fits my thinking very much. When I think of your parents, I think to myself, and this is this is purely anecdotal i have some friends well obviously because they're young it might be their grandparents who um survived the holocaust or escaped it and i've often found that there will be two groups and this is purely anecdotal and i'm you know i know i'm distilling it down but i'll have some of my jewish friends like they'll go my grandparents taught me to be afraid of everything question everything run away at the first because because of what we experienced then there's other ones who'll go no they've taught me to fight harder to be in this correct and there's no like one correct one but i i think to myself you could have had parents who wouldn't tell you to hitchhike or wouldn't let you go anywhere i didn't tell them oh you didn't tell them don't please okay no oh okay no and certainly not that i was traveling with a boyfriend either okay no now the story is making a little distinction is very important because i i've often described that I grew up in a community that was all Holocaust survivors.

1:15:26They were not Belgian born. They all arrived. My parents also, when they arrived to Belgium after the war, from the concentration camps, they were refugees and they stayed illegal refugees for another five years. So this is not just the war. It's everything that follows. I happened to be born later. My brother is born in 46. I'm born in 58. So I just arrived when my parents were finally beginning to kind of settle themselves. But I often thought that in my community, and what I'm going to describe, I saw in my community, but I think you can apply this to many other communities and many other circumstances surrounding trauma.

1:16:07There were people who did not die and there were people who came back to life. Oh, damn. The people who did not die lived very tattered to the ground, often fearful, often afraid to take risks, often afraid to enjoy because when you enjoy, you cannot be vigilant. You cannot be worried and joyful at the same time. You cannot experience pleasure and fear at the same time unless it is baked into a certain kind of pleasure system, but not the way that these people were experiencing it. And they often lived with curtains that were kind of pulled down. And you entered their homes and there was a kind of a morbidity.

1:16:52They survived, but they were not necessarily alive. And this is an image. This is not that anybody discussed it like that, but I would feel it when I would go to the homes of my friends. And then you had another group and they came back to life. And I am very blessed to have been part of parents like that. My two parents, they had not survived for nothing. they they didn't starve for years for nothing and they we discussed many many times what made them want to continue live and how did they get up in the morning at minus something degrees and and walk with newspaper around their feet and go work in those factories and be moved from one camp to another all of that and they were going to enjoy life it wasn't just a they were going to enjoy life with a vengeance.

1:17:42The biggest thing they could do was actually enjoy life. Enjoy life with a vengeance. You understand? It's a beautiful phrase. And I think what I took, and this was very, very young. I had the notion that my life will be meaningful. My life will be big. Not fame or things like that, but I will do important things. I will have a rich life in all kinds of ways. And I'll tell you a very, very interesting anecdotes that happened to me this year. And I would often, so that was the thing I had. I'm going to, I'm not, I'm the, I'm a miracle child. I arrived, you know, years after my parents tried for me to be born.

1:18:24I have this whole legacy and all these dead people at my feet, and I'm going to live in a way that's going to kind of give them something. So that's a piece also of how, why I, you know, what drives me. But this year, I was invited by a German media group to be a guest of honor at a dinner at the Poland Museum in Warsaw. And amongst the many other guests was also the foreign minister of Poland. And I had to say something. So I got up, I had no idea what was going to come out of my mouth. and I said you know when I was a child I used to lie in bed and I would think one day I'll go places and they won't tell me Jews not allowed they let me in but not only would they let me in but they will tell me you are welcome and not only would they tell me you are welcome but one day they will tell me, you are the guest of honor.

1:19:30We want you here. And here I am today, invited by the Germans at the Jewish Museum of Warsaw in the presence of the Polish foreign minister. I guess I actually manifested this dream. And this was like, I didn't know if it was the adult in me talking or the eight-year-old in me talking. But the room was silent. Wow. You know, it just like, it was right there, all in front of me. But I didn't, it was, here I am amongst you all, and I'm invited, I'm accepted, and we can start a new relationship. And we can repair, and we can learn to respect each other, and we can learn to honor each other's presence.

1:20:23And that's what I want to do. It reminds me of something my mom often says. It's the reason she goes to temple, but she'll go. She says she feels like Jewish people and black people are natural allies. Because unfortunately there's a shared trauma and I forget the other word that she uses. But a sort of like ostracization that they can all relate to. and it's interesting you just saying that you know unfortunately a lot of it can be applied to many black people you know the dream to go somewhere to be welcomed to be brought in not just be allowed in but to be welcomed in to be seen as part of to be it's you know that's why i tell it to you in my version but i think these are stories that belong to many other groups and many other people who have been excluded, rejected, annihilated.

1:21:25I mean, nobody has the Olympics on victimhood. Don't go anywhere, because we got more What Now? after this.

1:21:39Excuses are easy. An epic movie night? We don't have enough snacks. Dinner party with the girls? We'd have to decorate. Surprise date night? Nothing to wear. But Amazon's Prime same-day delivery lets you say yes before the moment slips away. Try that new popcorn maker. Order those cheeky drink glasses. Get that new perfume. And turn that I wish we could into an I'm so glad we did. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast. Same-day delivery. It's on Prime. Available in select areas. Terms apply. Right now, when you buy more carpet at the Home Depot, you save more. During our Buy More, Save More event going on now, upgrade your carpeting with the top brands and save up to 15 % off installed carpet projects.

1:22:27Installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot. Select from a wide assortment of carpet to fit your room, lifestyle, and budget during the Buy More, Save More event at the Home Depot. Offer valid August 27th through September 13th, 2026. Base price for standard installations only. Excludes Traffic Master and Stock Carpet. For licenses, see homedepot.com slash license numbers.

1:22:47Trevor Noah:Hey, Chicago. Class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Croc store today.

1:23:42Thinking of what could be. And really, really sitting back into the like, this is the way it was. This is the how. As somebody who thinks about systems, where do you think we are in that journey? Because it seems like that journey has a sort of natural curve that it follows in history. If you look at the history of cultures and societies, when you do this, I would say it's periods of expansion and periods of contraction. Yeah. That is the movement I see. And I think that we lived for a long time in a system that was more contracted. I'm going to give it to you from the point of view of relationships.

1:24:24Trevor Noah:Okay. For a long time, people lived in tribes, communities, villages. And they still do in the majority of the world, mind you. And the relationships are organized around duty and obligation, around loyalty and community. and there's a lot of clarity. I mean, there's been polarization always. There's churches fought each other, tribes fought each other. It's not like we haven't been polarized. But it was slightly different because every one of these hierarchical structures, communities and religions provided people with a good sense of clarity and certainty. What you didn't have is personal freedom or personal expression.

1:25:06we moved with the modern era and with to a system of relationships where for the first time we began to switch from duty and obligation we moved to choice and option and from and and basically at the center now of relationships is the individual in search of a community not an individual in the community in search of personal freedom and expression and you have more freedom than you've ever had, but you're more alone than you've ever been. And you are crippled with uncertainty and with self-doubt because you have a tremendous amount of decisions to make when you have freedom. You can decide so many aspects of your life today that were never available, talking in the West primarily.

1:25:57And with that, the burdens of the self have never been heavier. and it's all ruled by the rule of authenticity, meaning being true to myself. Now, how do I know what is true to myself with such absolute certainty? That is really exhausting. That's difficult. So you add to that the speed with which technology is transforming us. This is one of the biggest revolutions that we're going to go through and people are dizzy and they are anxious and they are uncertain and we know that anxiety and trauma constricts our imagination. And so we go into a contraction again. And we are looking for people to give us some relief and some certainty and autocracy comes with that.

1:26:45And that's the motion that we are in now. So we become less welcoming. We become less tolerant. We start to see other people as threat, what they take away rather than what they bring. And this is not the first time by far. I mean, it's really important at this moment to listen to historians as well so that we get a sense that, but it hasn't happened with that kind of speed and that kind of intensity maybe ever, or at least, you know, we had the industrial one, we had the agrarian one before, but I think that that's what we are in. And I went to South Bay last week and I did a conversation with the futurist Amy Webb.

1:27:29And, you know, she was giving the predictions of the future. And half the slides, not half the slides, but many was like, this is happening and you don't need people anymore. And this is happening and you don't need people anymore. And everybody's clapping. And I'm thinking these people are cheering their own extinction. Yeah. I mean, what is happening to us? Not just our own extinction. I think we're also cheering our own purposelessness. Yeah. And that's, someone in a thousand years is going to look back and go, wait, you're telling me they went into a building with other people, they sat at a desk, they punched in numbers, sent those numbers to other people, other people read them, sent it back to them, and this was their purpose?

1:28:12This was their, and they'd be like, that can't be right. It seems like slavery. It must have been slavery. Why would they do this? But that purpose is... but it's purpose with the spiritual dimension it's purpose with the transcendence oh yeah definitely which is i think the most powerful it's not a prag only a pragmatic purpose yeah i think we're erasing it with um with a lot of technology is we're we're we're going you don't have to do it you don't have to i'm sure you've you've seen this and i i say this to my friends all the time you know one of my best friends just had twins and he he and his wife have gone through this whole journey now of finding a nanny and finding this and finding that fine and i remember laughing one day and i sat with them and i said do you ever think it's do you ever think of how funny it is that we live in a world that has tricked us into living alone but then buying our community back you know you're buying every element of your community who is a babysitter if not your sister your friend your uncle your grandparent you're the who is that sort of babysits.

1:29:17By the way, I didn't grow up with, I didn't even know that was a concept growing up for me as Trevor. Because it's people. People babysit. Your ride to the airport. There's no Uber. It was whoever. Esther, can you take me to the airport? Esther goes, oh, I don't want to take you to the airport. I guess I have to take you to the airport. But you know what I think of? I'll take you next time. I think it was Scott Galloway who says on one of our episodes, which I really loved, he described it as garbage time. I mean, I know you wouldn't be so crass as to say it that way, but I I appreciated what he meant he said it wasn't the moments where he had planned magic where magic happened it's when he didn't and I think of that airport ride with your friend you hate the friction you hate the idea and yet that's the ride where you learn a new thing about them you connect on something different you laugh at something new you know and I think all of this technology is just like it's just eroding a lot of that purpose even in the smallest ways just the purpose of like I'm the person who always helped Esther to do this.

1:30:17Now there's a robot lifting things for her. You know how nice it was, I think for many people, to say, my neighbor helps me put up shelves. So when I think of that, I go, yeah, it's natural and we're going and we're growing, but I am less worried about jobs per se and I'm more worried about purpose. I think without purpose, it's very difficult to get out of bed. it's very difficult to even know why you tolerate friction because friction without purpose is now just torture. Because purpose is the essential dimension of meaning. I mean, we are creatures of meaning and we need to know that we matter and we need to know that we exist in the psyches of others and we need to know that when we're not there, others still think of us.

1:31:02And so we have an experience of object constancy that I live inside of you and you live inside of me and that whole intersubjective piece is essential to relationships. And that's the piece you do not have with an AI. You can have a ton of different things with the machine, but the machine doesn't have subjectivity. And that doesn't mean that it doesn't yet have subjectivity. It just doesn't. It's a one-way street. Right. And to learn to relate to the other is essential in relationship, not just to learn to relate to yourself. You're not just thinking now as you say that, when you said yet. Because usually I get yet.

1:31:41No, no, no, no, no. When I say no. No, no, no, no. The reason I laughed when you said yet is because I think of the ultimate conclusion if we're honest about where a path goes, all right? People are selling AI now. And then they go, the ultimate goal is not just AI, it's intelligent AI. And it's not just intelligence, it's artificially intelligent and it's generative and it is predictive and it is and it is and it is, right? And I was watching a video yesterday or the other day where it was like, I think it was NVIDIA showing off like a robot vacuuming like a house. And now when you said yet, I think to myself, wouldn't it be ironic and almost predictable that we would pursue a world where we create a thing that works like us, moves like us, starts to speak like us, starts to think like us.

1:32:34And then at some point that thing goes, yeah, I don't wanna do this anymore. I don't want to vacuum your house. I have dreams. I have aspirations, Esther. I want to go hitchhike. I want to go hitchhike. I don't care that I'm a robot. I also have dreams. I want to see what the world has for me. A little frisson, you know? And then I wonder, what are we going to do when we get there? God, I can't go as far. But I do know that we are relational creatures. That's part of the purpose. You don't, you know, I mean, sometimes you do things that matter to you, but sometimes what matters to you is related to how it affects others.

1:33:17Oh, wait, say that again, please. Sometimes you do things that matter to you, but it's exactly what your image of the soccer. I kick the ball, but that ball will actually have a future that is determined by how other people catch it. Oh, I like this. It's the same image. can I tell you Esther I'm just noticing there's a huge gap in sports relationship psychology and I think you could no no I'm telling you you could take it but you gave me a good image no but I'm serious if we could find like a gap I think there's a lot of people men stereotypically yes who love sports who I think would be able to see relationships and and like psychology in a different way if you if you applied it through that lens but you have to translate that for me I'll do it.

1:34:03Great. Gladly. I can give you principle. Because this way you've described, I saw the ball. I saw the, I mean, I happen to know soccer, so it's easy for me. I saw the guy play and I saw the response. And I know how people, you know, you're running, but there is somebody who's telling you, you know, who to kick it to. And you are in a complete system of interdependence, but while you are also in a state of autonomy. Yes. People think that when you say interdependence, you've abdicated yourself. You haven't. You are completely in charge. But what will determine the outcome of your thing is not just determined by you.

1:34:40It's everyone in relation to somebody else. Yes. And I think that there is something happening at this moment that is eroding this. And, you know, I could say the future of love. I could say the future of connection. I could say the future of how, you know, can we still turn conflict into connection? Wait, how do you think it is and will affect romantic relationships? Because I know a lot of people who say, oh, I'm just happy. And I'm not even mocking them. They really say, I'm just happy with my partner. And it's just the two of us. And we get cozy. And it's wonderful. And you know what? That's not the main voice of change.

1:35:19The change is really happening that people are actually less and less in relationships. Less and less in romantic relationships. Less sex. Less connection. less dreams with others. It's that. There's a kind of a collective withdrawal. There's also a disillusionment because there has been such a kind of a, what Eva Ely Luce calls an emotional capitalism. You know, it's like the commodification of people, the kind of market mentality applied to your intimate life that has been really challenging to people. That's partly on the apps, not the only place, But it's really taken people down a notch. They just can't take it anymore.

1:36:03And so I think every study looks that comes back talking about from the sex recession to the intimacy recession to the fact that young people are less and less in relationships, in romantic relationships. Right, right. But they also have less friendships. Yeah, people have fewer and fewer friendships. There's a loss of social capital that people have no one to turn to in a time of crisis or to confide to that friends on social is not the same as friendship in life. Yeah. And all of that, I mean, there is really an impoverishment of connection. And at the same time, we know that emotional health is essential to overall health.

1:36:42so you can't separate the changes in relationships with the kind of mental health issues that are emerging that are connected to the questions of longevity i mean these things are to use the word we keep coming back to interdependent so how do we get people to relate to each other more to have more connection to come out of their house to to go to the laundromats of this moment i think is really the question that all the people who work in my field are currently questioning so i haven't studied any of it nor do i think i'm an expert but if i was to throw in an amateur observation i would argue there are two things that i think are contributing to it in a major way i was with my brother and we're sitting myself my brother and one of my best friends and we're sitting together in front of the tv and my friend he goes i want you guys to watch the show and he puts the show on and the three of us start watching and then my brother goes very quickly he's 20 he goes like man this is boring i think his exact phrasing was this is ass that's what he said actually and my friend said i don't care we're gonna watch it just watch the episode it's really it's gonna get good and i'll never my brother went like i don't know and he pulled out his phone and then he went immediately he was just on social media and i'm sitting there and then we started speaking about it which was fun I said man do you realize how crazy it is that there was a time when you couldn't do what you just did and not only could you not do it I argue it would have made the evening a little bit better because you would watch the thing that we're watching sometimes because your parents are watching it because the tv's on it whatever it was and because of that you were connected even if you were connected in the thing that you didn't like which i know seems like a paradox but you were so at the end of it you would go that was boring but you had experienced boring with us as opposed to experiencing entertainment alone yeah you know and i that's the first part i think of i know that as trevor i can i can sit here and pontificate and sort of romanticize a laundromat oh this beautiful world and then someone will say to me like yeah so you can afford to spend two hours and i i because while the laundry's going I've got to be doing this, and I've got to be doing that, and I've got to prepare this for tomorrow for work, and I've got to get that report ready, and my kids need this, and my that needs that, and my, and I think that's the other thing that I notice a lot of people are struggling with is people are trying to save as much time as possible to sort of plow it into the, as you say, the productivity side, the, you know, the transactional side.

1:39:29I could be using this time to do something productive. I could be using this time to get something. I could be using, and I can't, that's what a lot of people say, I can't afford to do this. So I'd love to know, like, because you think about all of this. Do you think there's an answer on the other side of it? I mean, I think that it's a very, very valid argument. But we're talking about something slightly different. For example, you do shows where people come to laugh. Right. There's no purpose. so to speak, you don't accomplish anything in the transactional sense. They're not thinking about time when they come to you.

1:40:11They surrender. I mean, there's two things, people singing together and people laughing together. These are extraordinary social synchronization techniques of how you bring people together. And do you feel like you have less people coming out these days? No, I think it's the opposite, actually. I think in music, I don't know in comedy, but I'm pretty certain all live entertainment is experiencing its best performance ever. Like people are coming out more than ever. So to this person, I could say, you know, I completely understand that in your life and in your reality, these two hours, you have a ton of other things to do.

1:40:49We're not discussing this. Find yourself every once in a while. The show. The performance. the sing-along, the place to go and laugh together with others. Because these things have in many ways, they've always existed, but now they exist in the replacement of religious experiences. This is what people used to do and they would congregate. They didn't necessarily come together to laugh, but they congregated. And they went on the steps of the church and then they had comedy there. Right. So these are new iterations of things that have accompanied civilization forever. Find your ways to do this. So spend time, have moments.

1:41:34If it's not the Sabbath, then have it be Sunday. And if it's on Sunday, have it be Saturday night concert or whatever. But you need these experiences, these experiences that are more aesthetic, more collective, more interactive, and they don't accomplish anything else besides the power of that congregating. and I think you are you and all the people who do your art you know it's I've never done I've never in my I go to shows but I don't often go to I've never seen you live for example I've never seen many shows like that it's pretty fantastic I'm going tonight to my first comedy wait really? yes oh that's gonna be fun I can't wait to hear what you think at the Beacon and I'm really excited to go and I'm going to listen to Mark Babilia oh Mike Babilia is at the show yeah yeah Yes.

1:42:23And because I've never been to a, you know, where I, because I always thought humor is the hardest thing to translate language wise as well. And then I feel like I don't get it. I don't get the joke. Wait, you think you won't get the joke? I often thought when I would go to a comedy cellar, I've often felt like I'm not laughing at the same things. But I am back. I'm going. I'm very excited. Because I've understood recently I've had such joy singing with people. And now I want to go and laugh with people. I want to have those kinds of experiences. And to me, that's my answer to the person who doesn't have time to schmooze in the laundromat.

1:43:07It's okay. I get it. Everybody has a different reality. But every person who used to have a very busy life and got up with the sun and went to sleep with the animals had that time in their life. But it was regulated primarily through religion. Now we have to find secular versions. Well, that's what you've made me realize in this conversation is I think a lot of the conversations we're having in society are thinking of it through the individual lens, saying you get out there, you do, you do, you do. But what you just made me realize while we're having this conversation is it is a lot easier to do that when the we is doing it.

1:43:46So you never felt like you were in the wrong place when you were at church. In fact, you felt the inverse. Why aren't you at church? Why didn't you come to church? What do you mean you're missing church? And to your point, I mean, what are you doing? Technically, you don't have to go there You can pray at home, you have the Bible at home You can do it another day But because the we was there and you weren't Think of Halloween I'm always intrigued, now that you say it By how people who are very busy Will still have to leave the office Because it's Halloween Because they're kids And you're like, this is the most ridiculous thing ever you're dressing up like a witch but you're you're like i can't miss it i can't now i gotta get i gotta leave yeah i'm taking my kids trick-or-treating and and because society has accepted halloween as this concept your boss doesn't say are you crazy you're gonna leave the office early because your your kid's got to dress up and go get candy that's crazy but you're honestly you're making me realize now that the the so was the day that you're contained in defines how comfortable you are doing or not doing the thing.

1:44:52Because it's much harder to have discipline alone and to know when to stop. You know, now it's like on the one hand, you have the freedom to decide what you want to eat, when you want to eat, when you want to sleep, how much you want to sleep, when to exercise. But on the other hand, it's a lot harder to have to create all these disciplines by yourself when you have collectively synchronized those things. All the stores are closed on a certain day, then that's it, you know. oh, these are the three times a day or the five times a day that you need to pray. These are the times that you need to have sex because it's mandated by your religion.

1:45:25People who are Orthodox have often a lot more sex than people who are secular.

1:45:29Trevor Noah:Right. You know, because there is the, it's not left to do I feel like it. It's I should, I have to, it's part of what's expected of me. And there is something very important about this. Of course, in that system, if you don't want to go, you don't have the freedom not to go. It's not this or that. But the integration of these two poles is really important in the equilibrium of a society. What is a must and what is a want? What is a we and what is an I? This is true in every relationship. This is true in the relationship between individuals and their family or their community. And it's true as a whole in societies.

1:46:10And at this moment, we are off balance. So if you were creating a perfect world, in fact, we play this game on the podcast. One day you should join us. I think you'd have a lot of fun. We call it If I Ruled the World. And it's the idea is you rule the world. You can change it however the way you'd like to change it. But it's nothing boring like, you know, everyone gets free health care or that. It's like, because we sort of agree. It's more like one of the more recent ones I had was I said, if I ruled the world, I would make it that everybody's thoughts that they're having during sex is heard by the other person that they're having sex with oh no it failed terribly yeah but that's not such a good proposition yeah it failed esther i don't need you to tell me it failed okay it failed terribly um my reasoning was good though and that's oftentimes what we're actually trying to get into is the reason versus the idea i'm very i wouldn't know how to answer this if i oh but it's fun i think it's like it's uh because i I think it's not about knowing certain...

1:47:13I know how I would answer this. Yes, go. But it's not... I'm going to start on the conceptual level. I think this thing I just described, how do you balance the I and the we? Okay. You know, me and the other. Us, them, all these divisions. The majority of these issues in relationships, for sure, it's complex. In relationships of two people, if there is a complicated question that can have two polarities, it's very easy to take half of the story. I take one side of the issue and I put the other side on you. And you could do this with, should the kid have a pacifier? As you could do this about sex, as you could do this around money.

1:47:59It doesn't matter the issue. Polarization doesn't have much to do with the thing that you're actually differing about. it's the fact that you've taken the complexity and you have parceled it out if you were alone you would have to deal with both parts of it yourself oh damn right do i want to clean or do i not want to clean do i want to get up do i want to exercise do i want to pray you would have to negotiate inside of you the two sides of the complex of the complexity of this issue because there are different sides. And you would have to figure out yourself. Do I work or do I take off? Do I want kids?

1:48:41Do I not want kids? Do I want to be in a relationship? But when you're in a relationship, it becomes, I want A and you want B and now let's fight. And this piece about how you have to negotiate the complexity and you can't resolve it by just picking one side, but it is all about integrating these polarities is, I think, what makes us either in a good relationship or not, or in a good society or not, for that matter. The opposite of that is cleavages, intolerance, conflict, disconnect, polarization, all the words that are rampant these days. So am I hearing you correctly if I say that essentially what you're saying is we need to still be able to grapple with both parts of the conversation.

1:49:33Yeah. Do I want tradition or do I want innovation? Yes, but you must sort of hold both. Exactly. Do we want Europe, tradition, history, the past, the timelessness, the Sunday? Or do we want the United States efficient, pragmatic, everything is open 24 hours, seven days a week? As if it's that or that. It's not. We appreciate this and we appreciate that. So how do we bring these things together? You know, complex problems don't get solved. There are paradoxes that you manage. It's almost like I'm picturing sliders while you're saying this. I'm almost going, you might raise a slider and say, I think 70 % relaxation right now, 30 % not, but not on-off.

1:50:19Exactly. You know, it's like you're talking about like dimmer switches for our opinions versus on-off switches. And it's a both-and that changes constantly versus an either-or. Because these things are too complicated to make it an either-or. Tech, AI, all of this. This or that, you know, the old system, the new system. No, you want this, but there are consequences to it. So can we check on it? Then we want some of that, but we don't want all of what it was. And this is a very different way of resolving the big issues of our life, of our society, of our relationships. And I don't know how one helps to shift that.

1:51:05But that would be, if somebody can help me do this at scale, I want to be on the lead of that. Okay. I'll apply my mind to it. I might not be the person, but I might bump into the person. So I'll... You let me know. Do you know what I'm saying? I completely understand what you're saying. And I think, you know, not to completely level blame, but I do think if we start with, let's just say just start with the algorithm. So I don't know if you've seen this recently. There are a few social media companies or one might not even be social media in its inception. And essentially what they've proposed is building algorithms from scratch.

1:51:49They go, forget villains. Don't think of Facebook as a villain. Don't think of Instagram. Don't think of anyone as a villain. Rather, think of it as an outcome of what they tried to create. And that is what it is. So they designed an algorithm. What do you mean, an outcome of what they tried to create? So, you know, sometimes we go, that person is bad because this happened. We don't think to ourselves, that happened because of what they did. But their goodness or badness isn't really part of it. The algorithm was an example of this. When they originally made a lot of these algorithms, They design the algorithms to maximize getting people's attention and to keep people engaged, which seems like the right thing to do regardless of the product you're making.

1:52:28So you have a restaurant. No, no, make the food taste as good as possible so that people will enjoy the food. But we also know there's balance. You can also fill the food with cocaine. People will really enjoy the food. But what is the outcome going to be? You can, and now things like food have a longer history, a longer tradition. So if you talk to somebody who's cooked and knows their food, they will tell you through the history of that food that people learned why not to add this or why to add that. Oh, because then over time it does this to you, right? Digestion, moods, you name it. tech i think is still because it's in its infancy it doesn't have the legacy of 400 years where you can trace it through and say like ah yes that is why you know this algorithm exists like this it doesn't have four centuries of knowledge so they went it's all about attention let's make it attention then people will love it but then the attention was what they call like the car crash attention economy people pay attention to car crashes people always look at a car crash almost No one can ignore it.

1:53:36The algorithm then went, oh, that gets your attention. So more car crashes, more car crashes, more car crashes, more car crashes, right? And so they talk about how the algorithm then did its job indiscriminately and put us in the position, a lot of the position that we're in, not completely. It's accelerated a lot of what we're experiencing. And so now there's this new idea of creating an algorithm the other way around. And so, for instance, saying… The other way around being? It's not about a car crash. we won't feed you what will keep you hooked in a negative way we won't show you the opinion that is going to inflame you the most we won't show no we will connect you with the people who you know and who you follow which seems like a small thing but apparently it's big a lot of people follow people that they don't ever see because the algorithm has determined that it's not as interesting strangers are more interesting new is more interesting in fact some of them you would love this i'll send you some of this uh work that they've shown some of the like social media sites would even not show you your spouse or partner on your feed because they've realized people very seldom interact with it because you know them however it will show you your ex or it will, this is one you'll love.

1:54:56It will show you the person that your partner is lingering on. Do you get what I'm saying? Yes, yes, yes. So you'll find, yeah, you find you're in a relationship with the person. Let's say they like the picture. You will see the picture that your partner or spouse liked because the algorithm realizes that you linger on these for longer. Now, it's not malicious. It's not even trying to do something. But as Charlie Munger used to say, you show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. It is trying to keep your attention. So now people are talking about trying to create an algorithm that's based around what we hope to achieve as opposed to circumstance and saying, what is the connection we're looking for?

1:55:40What are some of the behaviors we're trying to model? What are some of the connections we're actually trying to foster between human beings? And can we build that from there? And I think, funny enough, that could be the first building block to, you know, as you say, not the either or, using the thing that currently I think comes with a lot of toxicity to try and flip it on its head and create connection, which I think, I actually think is possible. I don't think it becomes the panacea, but I think it just becomes one lever that we turn just a little bit. And then all of a sudden, you know, you try and turn the next thing, you try and turn the next thing, you try and turn the next thing, you know.

1:56:18I've thought of doing something at my shows. I haven't figured it out yet but I would love to find a way to incentivize people who come to my shows to connect with the people around them and then if they do there's going to be something that benefits them but I haven't figured out what it is yet but I know I want to do something like that you know what I did in my show about that? so the first thing I asked when people as I meet them is how many of you are here as a plus one know nothing about me but were recruited and you were curious and open enough to come on some anthropological field trip and so i just want to welcome the skeptics i love that so that's number one so that and it's all there's always a group of people they just came because somebody said i really would love for you and and i'm just saying you know it's much easier for the person who already knows me or is into to this kind of work to show up than the person who, you know, so I shake hands with them.

1:57:17And my second question is, where are you from country-wise? So I get a complete sense as to what are all the places that people have come from and knowing that each of you is going to hear me with a different ear because you come from different relationship traditions, different relational systems and cultures, et cetera. And then my third question is, how many of you have ever been involved in a consensual sexual experience that was also unsatisfying, but you went along with it anyway and you said nothing. Damn. And they all stand up. This is always this damn. Damn. So they all stand up and it becomes very clear that there's a ton of bad sex in the theater and that, you know, all genders, all orientations, all backgrounds included.

1:58:01So that kind of creates a... And then I ask how many to stand up if you know no one here. and then I ask every person that is sitting next to someone standing to actually introduce themselves so that if you came alone you won't leave alone that's the kind of opening thing and and then I do a lot of you know they play the card game during the the the show as well so they have four cards and they tell each other stories but it's really such an important thing to, I mean, what if you actually asked people if they could tell a joke to each other and you give them five minutes or four minutes to talk to each other.

1:58:42I mean, jokes are dangerous, but to each other, to the people they're sitting with, or just to pick some question. No, they could be something. I actually think they could. I think a lot of the reason crowd work has become so popular in comedy now is because it's connected audiences to each other in a way that it hadn't before. So give me an example of crowd work because is it you to the audience or is it the audience with each other? Well, I think what happens is a lot of comedians will talk to the audience, but they also sort of facilitate a conversation between people. For example? Someone goes, hey, what's your name?

1:59:20Where are you from? Oh, Esther. Esther. Oh, that's a nice name. It sounds like a grandmother's name though. So Esther, where are you from? Belgium. Oh, Belgium. You don't know anybody from Belgium. Tell me something. Any other Belgians in the room? Any other Belgians in the room? Woo. Oh, wow. I didn't know there were this many Belgians and then it was like what are you guys doing here? What is this? Like an invasion? And then Esther says something What's that? Oh no, we're not the Europeans who invade Aha, very funny Esther And then you know the play they play with the person Then someone else might say something in the room and they go What's that?

1:59:47Oh, they want to know the Belgians Wait, what happened? What did they do in Africa? What did they do in Africa? And now there's this connection and it's tension and there's laughter and there's and it's like a very and it's funny because some comedians don't like It's central. Yes. It all gets mediated through you. Yeah, because otherwise it's chaos. But there is something about having them... I'll look in my card deck for you and see if there's one or two things that you can translate. I'll try it. I'm open. There's something about them talking to each other because then you say... And when you leave here, you continue these conversations.

2:00:25I'm open. That kind of thing. You know, it's so... I mean, you have them in the palm of your head. Love it. I will try it. You can test a few things. I will try it, gladly. And it will either work or I will get comedy from it. I mean, because so much of my show was about creating the communal experience. Then I say, please stand up if you're currently in a romantic relationship. Stand up if you would like to be in a relationship. Stand up if you would like to be out of the relationship that you're in. Damn. Or at least on occasion. Who stands? How many people have stood for the first one? Nobody.

2:01:04For being in a romantic relationship? No, no. Would you like to be out of the relationship you're in? Oh, you would be surprised. People stand? Oh, yes. Are they there with the person? Sometimes, yes. No ways, Esther. Actually, in the New York show, there was a person who stood up literally in front of her. She stood up in front of her wife and then announced to her that she was done. But it's meant to be funny, like on occasion. who hasn't on occasion thought, you know, what am I doing here? I'm done with this. No, I can see the humor in this. But sometimes people don't see that. And so you have both voices.

2:01:37The one that is taking this light and is taking this with humor and the one that is actually sending a message. Sometimes they're there alone. Sometimes they're there with the partner. And I raise my hand and say, me too. I've had those thoughts. But let's be honest for a minute. Come on. We can't start a conversation if we don't at least include this. it's another way of saying relationships relationship ambivalence is a part of being in a relationship I'm going to do this now you've given me homework and like a challenge how do I connect my audiences more half of it because I think there can be beautiful outcomes and the other half is just because I like the possibility that things might not go well you'll tell me oh definitely there's a story on the other side of it I think there's a beautiful story on the side of everything that doesn't go well um i was saying this the other day to a friend of mine it was about relationships and i said um and this is genuinely how i feel i was like i i really do feel sad that now more than ever people seem to discard everyone that has been in their lives as a quote-unquote mistake as a waste of time as a you know what i mean and i i don't know i don't know why i have such an aversion to that but i go like no it's and i and by the way i'm also not one of those people who's very pro that like it all happens to you for a reason and it was meant to be no i don't think of it like that but i i don't know i don't know why but you think it has something to do with the perfection you got that that people are you know it's like bad investment yeah i do think so i think it's like a market mentality it's bad roi it's bad roi that person wasted my time she said that she wanted this and then four years later and then what a waste of time and then i go but how was it a waste of time when you were in it what were you feeling what were you experiencing what were you doing what were you you know what i mean like how was it a waste of time did it have a bad outcome or do you feel like the whole time was a waste did not end the way you wanted it to end and then i'll often say to them what if they died because that's the thing i was like okay i go what if they died what if they died and so the promises they made to you could not be fulfilled what if they died and then they go oh but that's different that's different and then i go but in a way it isn't this is romantic consumerism this is you know this is transaction you wasted my time And that's an amazing statement to make on a relationship.

2:04:10You know, it wasn't worth it. It didn't deliver. It didn't deliver. It had a poor ROI. I mean, it's really, we have done an interesting thing, right? We've brought psychology to the business world and we've brought the market to the relational world. the business mentality into our relationship you know is it worth my time um should i invest in here um it i don't you know when you really look at what it does to people um it's not the most pleasant thing right yeah you were one of the first people who told me and this like opened my eyes completely we were talking about um Europe the French France you know just this whole idea and I remember I I had gone to Mexico City and one of the things I noticed in Mexico City was how many groups of mixed gender friends were hanging out just just dinners lunches you name it and I would I I love when I'm in a place I love asking people where you from how did you come here who are you you know especially in a city that that has a mix of the the natives and then people who are relocating or visiting and yeah i was surprised so many people like oh no we're friends i was like oh i thought you were a couple no no we're friends what about you oh no we're this and oh and and i remember talking to you about it and you said something that fascinated me you said like in america because i had experienced this and when talking to people a lot of people will say what are you looking for oh well then what's the point it's it seems like many people live in the binary of is there romance on the other side not just romance is there a happy ending on the other side of this and if there's not why are we even why are we speaking why are we you know and and then i remember you saying you grew up in a world where well men and women were friends and going out for dinners and it was more yeah it was more nuanced I guess nuanced and less goal oriented less outcome driven outcome yeah it's like the experience itself has value the process is interesting the you know as they often call the journey but it's really it's the experience itself has meaning and value of its own it doesn't get measured by the outcome.

2:06:37I would apply this to a lot of things in life. But it is the fundamental difference between task-oriented versus relationally oriented. Task-oriented is, what does it deliver? What do I get from this? What's in it for me? This is an amazing expression. It doesn't even translate in French. What's in it for me? Like the phrase. The phrase. It just doesn't exist in French. No, what's in it for me? It's succinct to the point. it's very very clear what it means you know is there something for me to gain here it's a very interesting sentence what's in it for me you know and versus you know pleasure the fun the discovery the exploration the mystery the surprise I mean that's those elements which I consider the elements that are essential ingredients of the of the erotic of the feeling alive because you can accomplish a lot of things.

2:07:34That doesn't mean you feel alive. It just means that you feel like you've accomplished a lot of things. It's a different level of existence. And that does go back to the thing I described about my parents before. It's like they definitely, that was very central to them. You know, I thought of that recently. As I listen to you, it brings back memories. My mom used to tell me that when they arrived to Belgium, they would go on Saturday night to the ball, talk about the coming together, and they would go dancing. And they would have to dress up and take the trolleys, the tramway, and go to Brussels and go dancing.

2:08:16And I'm just thinking, oh la la, after all of this, you just went dancing. Didn't you want to first lick your wounds? and it made me think that there really there are two stances at this moment that have that stand out in certainly in thinking about mental health and trauma and what we're talking about relationships joy loneliness all of these things you know you can think that healing comes from focusing on the trauma and finding meaning in it and understanding its resonance for you and its long-lasting legacy and all of that. But healing can also happen by creating new experiences that bring you joy and hope and energy and connection and exploration and all of that, that that in itself is healing.

2:09:12And I think that those are two very important doors that we stand in front at this moment, individually and as groups, as communities. yeah I like that for us as a society right now to ask ourselves do we want to create new memories and new ideas that will heal the wounds that we've experienced what do we want to shut it all down and focus on not losing what we think we have or in a couple you know sometimes you need to first start by addressing all the problems or sometimes you start by actually talking about the things that are going really well and the things from which in which you connect beautifully and the things that never pose a problem so you don't even think about them and you first need to like the person again and they first need to feel like you want to be touched by them again and then it maybe you can go and sit down and think about what happened when you had this mega argument.

2:10:14You know, and a lot of people in the field of conflict are talking about 80-20, right? It's the 80 % that you actually agree upon or share a vision for or care for. Yeah. And the 20 % that you don't, but we have a real knack at this moment to go to the 20 % first. And I think that we have a lot to gain to rebalance that a little bit. That's where I'm at. I think that's where we're at. This has been fun. This has really been great. I like that. I think let's wrap it there. We could go forever, which is what I always think makes a great conversation and what makes you one of my favorite people. The infinite nature of pondering life is what makes it very enjoyable.

2:11:07and I think one of the main things I admire about you is how doubtful and yet adventurous you are it's a fantastic combination because some people are doubtful but that limits their ability to want to go out and see explore discover and then there are other people who are adventurous but they almost approach it with a reckless abandon that can can bulldoze through certain ideas and people around them i think there's something really wonderful in being doubtful but also adventurous and you know how i do it by holding the hands of others oh i like this if i go into nature and i know i'm a city person and i really don't know nature and i feel very vulnerable in nature but i'll go or into all kinds of adventurous trips in nature because I'll attach myself to someone who I trust and knows it well.

2:12:09So I hold the hand. But I do this in my work too and I mediate the dangers of the world to the trust that I have in other people. I love this. You've left me a lot to think I'm going to apply myself. Let's get people back into laundromats. Esther, thank you so much. Thank you. It's a treat.

2:12:35What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jody Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackl. Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.

2:13:33We'll see you next time. You can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks. Fall is here, and that means the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. It's the one we've been waiting for. So whether you're a fan of the original pumpkin spice latte or ready to mix it up with an iced pumpkin cream chai, the new iced pumpkin cream matcha, or the new iced pumpkin cream shaken espresso, you can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks.