0:16

I'm

0:19

Claire Parker and I'm Ashley Hamilton

0:22

and this is Celebrity Memoir

0:24

Book Club. The podcast where we

0:26

read the books so that you don't have to, even though we

0:28

do believe that everybody has the right to an equal

0:31

education. And

0:32

everyone can read a book if they want to read a book.

0:34

We're not the only ones who can sit here and tell you what's

0:36

in a book, but if you say, I don't want to read that book, I

0:38

just want to know what those gals have to say about it.

0:41

Hey baby, we are here for that.

0:43

We have a monopoly on nothing but our own ideas.

0:46

And that's not even true. I am so willing

0:48

to uncork this shit and let it leak into the public

0:51

if you want it.

0:52

I was pointing at my brain.

0:56

Oh my God, before we start, I want to tell you guys,

0:58

we have new merch. So

1:01

if you are looking for a special something

1:03

for that special someone this holiday season, hit

1:06

our website. It's pretty cute. And

1:08

Claire,

1:09

if you were to write a memoir about your

1:12

week, what would you title last week's chapter? Broke

1:15

as a Joke. Hell yeah. Because...

1:19

She's been robbed! I was

1:22

robbed by the interweb. An AI

1:24

thief stole my likeness.

1:26

And you'll never believe it. I was going to pay off

1:29

my credit card bill. And I looked and I

1:31

said, I spent $8,000 this month. That

1:34

can't be right. I was so frugal. I

1:36

was like, that's so weird. I guess things

1:38

just add up. I'm like, I know I went out to dinner once

1:40

or twice, but I can't believe it came out to $8,000. Inflation

1:44

is so crazy. I really was like, wow,

1:46

I thought I got a handle on my spending,

1:48

but I guess that someone's got to cut up my credit card. I

1:50

can't believe this

1:51

happened. And then for the first time in my life, I

1:54

was like, let me just look. Let me

1:56

look and see what I've been spending money on, which is not something

1:58

I've ever done before.

1:59

the gods. Chase isn't lying to

2:02

me, they'll add it up right. And then do you know what actually

2:04

had happened? Someone had spent $7,000

2:06

at Balenciaga and I went, that makes sense. I

2:10

can't believe Balenciaga. They went on

2:13

like five separate trips to Balenciaga

2:15

and then one to YSL. I can't believe

2:17

they didn't text you. I can't believe that

2:19

either. I guess they think I'm that kind of bitch. I'm like, who do you think

2:21

I am, literally Kim Kardashian? Oh

2:24

my God. Who else is getting something

2:26

new from Balenciaga every single day? I guess my

2:28

thief, my likeness. Yeah, I guess the one

2:31

who looks like you and acts like you and sounds like you and so it's

2:33

a credit card that says your name. And so

2:35

they were like, we can fix it. Like obviously

2:37

I was like, I clearly wasn't in Vegas because look

2:39

at every other charge that day. It was for

2:41

the New York City

2:42

Metro.

2:44

I was like, all of those swipe passes,

2:46

that was me. The Balenciaga was

2:49

not. And then they're like, that's fine. We'll

2:51

reimburse you or whatever. And then we're going to send you a new card

2:53

to your house. And I was like, great. But then I was

2:55

walking around with no credit card. And then do

2:57

you know what that reminded me? That actually

3:00

in September, somebody had done a fake

3:02

charge on my debit card.

3:05

And that one they did ask me, they were like, did you go to this amusement

3:07

park in like Georgia? And I was like, no,

3:09

because that time actually was in Las Vegas, ironically.

3:12

I wonder if there's any ties to the

3:14

Vegas. I also wonder if it has anything to

3:16

do with the fact that I was in a cyber hack

3:19

when I was in Vegas. I would say there's

3:21

a pretty good chance that all these red

3:24

strings are really just one coherent

3:27

braid. Anyway, so

3:29

I did get a new debit card, but I guess I never called

3:32

them to activate it because I never use a debit

3:34

card. I put everything on credit for the points. I'm on

3:36

a point scale now, like, positive.

3:40

But I also don't have cash because who uses

3:42

cash and the amount of times I've been walking

3:44

around and been like, oh, I have no money on me. And then

3:47

today I ordered us a CNBC credit

3:49

card last week and it came, but I haven't activated that

3:51

either. This is why I'm broke as a joke because

3:54

I actually have like 19 cards in my wallet

3:56

and not a one of them works. You

3:59

will be really at yourself when you realize that you

4:01

just have to like open the app and press activate.

4:04

I'm not gonna do it. Okay. And

4:06

Ashley, if you were a celebrity and last week

4:08

was a memoir, what would your chapter be called? Oh

4:10

my gosh. It will be called

4:13

How Cute is My Dog? Shut up.

4:16

No, boo, tomato. Yeah,

4:19

just having a real just cute

4:21

fest. I just love her so much. I feel

4:23

like I'm in a bit of a bit of a

4:25

warped space right now. And

4:27

bug has been like just so fucking gorgeous.

4:30

And we did a photo shoot last week, my college

4:32

roommate is a photographer. And she

4:34

like if I was asking me if I want head shots, and I'm always

4:36

like, No, because I hate having my photo taken.

4:38

But then I was like, actually, let me get

4:41

a Christmas card done with my dog. Do you

4:43

feel like you have that thing where looking at the

4:45

beauty of your daughter, it shows you the beauty of yourself?

4:48

No, you see your features in her? No,

4:50

I look at her and I go, Oh, the next generation

4:52

is just better. God got it right this

4:54

time. Yeah, that's just some kind of my week.

4:57

I just want to say up top, I don't know if you've heard

5:00

but recently, unfortunately, Timbaland has

5:02

been removed from the men that seem not that bad

5:04

list. He has come out calling Britney Spears

5:06

crazy. It's just not a nice thing

5:08

to do given current events.

5:11

I got that you're friends with JT, but you don't have

5:13

to verbalize it right now. It really seems

5:15

like you shouldn't discredit her and her story. However,

5:18

good news. We have read

5:20

a man that we both like so much

5:23

that actually tell them what you just told me. Oh my

5:25

god, you guys. I just googled

5:27

his height just to see. He

5:31

lives in New York. I've seen him on Raya. I know he

5:33

was running Raya back in the day. I don't think it's crazy. We

5:35

have mutual friends with him. I'm just saying

5:38

first Minka next to you. Oh my god. I also

5:40

think he's child free. Per Minka's

5:42

memoir. Good to know.

5:44

Trev, if you hear this, I

5:47

would love to be a guest on your new podcast. Anyway,

5:49

this is actually a really genuinely very

5:51

good book. I don't think we're spoiling it by doing the episode.

5:54

I think that if you haven't read it, I would recommend you go read

5:56

it. Okay. You guys, before

5:58

we start this to say there

6:01

is a word used very prominently throughout

6:03

this book that has a very different

6:05

meaning in South Africa versus

6:08

the United States. It has a very different history in South Africa

6:10

versus its history in the United States and

6:12

we tried to limit the use as much

6:15

as possible while still giving credence

6:17

to its purpose in this story

6:20

and I just want to be very clear that

6:22

we do not under any circumstances outside

6:25

of telling this story think it

6:27

is okay to use but after

6:29

consulting some people that

6:31

we know and trust we felt that is very important

6:33

to the story of South Africa to the story being

6:35

told in this memoir and we are more

6:38

than happy to receive any feedback about

6:40

this episode. So it starts

6:43

off with the immorality act of 1927.

6:46

In South Africa there was a law that

6:49

any European male could not have sex

6:51

with any woman native to South Africa and

6:53

vice versa. The penalty would be

6:55

jail time. So to be born mixed

6:58

race was quite literally to be born out of crime. So

7:02

the way this book is written it goes back and forth

7:04

between two chapter types. There

7:06

are more historical grounding

7:09

chapters that sometimes have personal stories

7:11

but are more grounded in like the

7:14

culture of South Africa at the time. This book really

7:16

very much was written for American audiences which

7:19

is great for me as an American person. And

7:21

because of that he as Ashley said grounds

7:23

the beginning of each chapter into something you

7:25

need to understand about South Africa and its

7:28

history and its people in order to

7:30

then appreciate the nuance and context

7:32

of the story he's about to tell you. Yes and then we get the

7:34

chapter about where his life was at the time.

7:37

He starts off with an overview of apartheid

7:40

and South Africa's history of apartheid

7:42

how deep-seated it was

7:45

how planned the system was.

7:47

The genius of apartheid was convincing

7:49

people who were the overwhelming majority to turn

7:51

on each other. You separate people into groups and make

7:53

them hate one another so you can run them all. So

7:56

basically in South Africa there was a ton of different

7:58

tribes. You've got Zulu he's from the country. tribe,

8:01

Swana, Sotho, Venda, there's

8:03

a ton. I think right now he says that South Africa

8:06

has like 11 official languages. So there is a

8:08

lot of different groups of people. It seems like

8:10

the Zulu and the Kosa, which he is

8:12

a part of, are two of the more dominant

8:14

ones. So they all had problems with each other

8:16

to begin with. So all non-whites were

8:18

systematically classified into various groups

8:21

and subgroups. And then these groups were given differing

8:23

levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at

8:25

odds. Perhaps the starkest of these divisions

8:28

was between South Africa's two dominant groups, the

8:30

Zulu and the Kosa. The Zulu man

8:32

is known to be a warrior. He is proud. The Kosa

8:35

on the other hand were considered the thinkers.

8:37

My mother is Kosa. Nelson Mandela is Kosa.

8:39

The Zulu went to war with the white man. The Kosa played

8:42

chess with him. For a long time, neither was

8:44

particularly successful and each blamed the other for

8:46

a problem neither had created. Bitterness festered.

8:48

For decades, those feelings were held in check by

8:50

a common enemy. Then apartheid fell. Mandela

8:53

walked free and black South Africa went to war with itself.

8:56

So he starts this book, chapter one, Run. And

8:58

he says sometimes in Hollywood, they have these movies where like

9:01

they're zipping down a highway and they jump out of a moving

9:03

car and they're rolling down and they just get up and

9:05

brush off like nothing happened. And he goes, I have to

9:07

tell you as someone who's been pushed out of a moving car, that's

9:09

not true. It really fucking hurt. So

9:12

then he proceeds to tell this story about

9:14

the time his mother pushed him out of a car.

9:16

And I will say the way this story is written,

9:19

it does such a beautiful job of establishing

9:21

his relationship with his mother, establishing

9:23

what their life was like and establishing

9:26

the way black South Africa

9:28

ran under apartheid. And

9:30

right after, not only does it explain

9:33

all of these things perfectly,

9:36

it also like keeps you guessing and doesn't

9:38

feel so expository.

9:40

You know, I mean, it's a great story that does such

9:42

a good job of explaining so many different levels. And then

9:44

they hit you with a pretty shocking twist that

9:47

makes you want to keep reading. So he talks first that

9:49

his family is very religious. His mother is so religious.

9:52

My childhood involved church or some form of church,

9:54

at least four nights a week. And then on Sunday they went to three different

9:56

churches. They

9:57

went to a mixed church, a white church, and then a black

9:59

church.

9:59

church and that was the day. His

10:02

mom loved Jesus and

10:04

he does also mention like the way that Jesus

10:07

was introduced to South Africa

10:09

and it obviously was not originally a

10:11

Christian place and his mom really

10:13

took to it, loves Jesus, is always praying. They

10:16

have a lot of arguments about like what Jesus

10:18

wants for them and it is always what

10:20

his mom says. She is a stubborn

10:22

woman who gets her way and her way is

10:25

you go to church all day Sunday. So he talks

10:27

about one particular day that the worst thing that could

10:29

happen on a Sunday is their car breaks down and

10:31

he was always like, well if we don't have a car, how are we going to get there?

10:33

And she's like, nope, we're taking the minibuses and the minibus situation

10:35

in South Africa is not my precious

10:37

bus system of New York City which I'll admit has

10:40

its problem. I will say it's not that different

10:42

from your precious bus system of New York City. Don't say

10:44

that about the MTA. They're trying their best. They

10:46

get no money. Okay, so the minibus system,

10:48

so black people were not allowed on buses

10:51

and so they established their

10:53

own unofficial bus system with these unofficial

10:56

routes driven by literal criminals. It

10:58

was like gang wars over the bus route. You couldn't take

11:00

another gang's bus route. They had

11:02

a monopoly on the market. They were privatizing it and

11:04

then also they would like run whenever they felt

11:06

like it. So you could wait for an hour for a bus that was supposed

11:08

to be here yesterday and then if they saw

11:11

you getting somebody else's bus, it would kill you. Yeah.

11:13

But so he's like talking about how he hates having to take the bus

11:15

when their car breaks down because she was

11:18

very frugal and always getting secondhand cars.

11:20

To this day, I hate secondhand cars. Almost

11:22

everything that's ever gone wrong in my life, I can trace back to a secondhand

11:25

car. Secondhand cars made me get to tension

11:27

for being late to school. Secondhand cars left

11:29

us hitchhiking on the side of the freeway. A secondhand

11:31

car was also the reason my mom got married. If it

11:33

hadn't been for the Volkswagen that didn't work, we would have never

11:36

looked for the mechanic who became the husband, who became the stepfather,

11:38

who became the man who tortured us for years and put a bullet

11:40

in the back of my mother's head. I'll take the new

11:42

car with the warranty every time. What? Yeah.

11:45

You don't get answers on that until the last fucking chapter.

11:47

That's just nestled in there. Can you

11:49

believe? Crazy. So then he

11:51

establishes both him and his mom's relationship

11:54

and the fact that they were both kind of awesome.

11:57

He says him and his mom were just like the fastest people

11:59

in town. He and his mom ran so fast

12:01

that his mom could always beat him until he got a little bit older

12:04

and then he introduces his mom's wit.

12:06

She was also extremely smart, she was

12:08

beautiful. You know, Clint and I respect fast running.

12:11

She says we had a very Tom and Jerry relationship, me and my

12:13

mom. She was the strict disciplinarian. I was

12:15

naughty as shit. She would send me out to buy groceries

12:17

and I wouldn't come home run away because I'd be using the change from

12:19

the milk and bread to play arcade games at the supermarket.

12:21

I will say, he is naughty. He

12:24

is naughty. At first I'm like, oh, you were just like an ADD

12:26

kid. But then he starts telling some of

12:28

the trouble he got into and I was like, oh, you are like capital

12:31

N, naughty. She would go

12:33

at a full sprint in high heels, but if she really

12:35

wanted to come after me, she'd do this thing where she'd kick her

12:37

shoes off while she was still going top speed. She'd

12:40

do this weird move with her ankles and heels would

12:42

go flying off and she wouldn't even miss a step. That's

12:44

when I knew, okay, she's in turbo mode now. When

12:46

I was little, she always caught me, but as I got older,

12:49

I got faster. And when speed failed her, she'd use

12:51

her wit. If I was about to get away, she'd yell,

12:53

stop, thief. She would do this to her own

12:55

child. In South Africa, nobody gets involved

12:57

in other people's business unless it's mob justice

13:00

and everyone wants in. So she'd yell, thief,

13:02

knowing it would bring the whole neighborhood out against me

13:04

and I'd have strangers trying to grab me and tackle me. That

13:07

is hilarious. Okay, so they

13:09

are close. They are smart. They

13:12

are fast. They go to a lot of church and

13:14

they take illegal mob buses when

13:16

the car doesn't work. And she wasn't

13:18

afraid of anything, his mother. We'll get into

13:21

more of the incredibly like brave things she

13:23

did and the way that she just lived whatever

13:24

life she wanted, regardless of the law, regardless of

13:26

what was safe. And he says they would be waiting

13:28

out in these all wait neighborhoods where it was quite literally

13:30

illegal for them to be waiting for these mob

13:33

run buses in the middle of the night where they weren't

13:35

coming. And he would be like, shouldn't we get out of here? Aren't

13:38

we worried? And she'd tell me not to worry. She always

13:40

came back to the phrase she lived by. If God is with me,

13:42

who can be against me? She was never scared

13:44

even when she should have been. So one of these Sundays,

13:46

the car is broken down. They're waiting around for

13:48

a bus. It never comes. They're

13:51

waiting for an hour. And finally she says, you know what? We're just going

13:53

to have to hitchhike. He waves down a car. The

13:55

guy picks her up. They get in. And the minute they

13:57

get in a bus driver, a furious.

14:00

Zulu bus driver shows up and is

14:02

like, what the fuck are you guys doing? You're stealing

14:04

my customers? I'm about to kill you. He pulls out a

14:06

gun to kill the guy in the front and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, we'll

14:08

get on your bus. We just didn't think you were coming.

14:11

We'll get on your bus. So they get on the bus

14:13

and they find out that she's Kosa. They of course

14:15

have big beefs between the two of them. The stereotypes

14:18

of Zulu and Kosa women were as ingrained as those of

14:20

the men. Zulu women were well-behaved and dutiful. Kosa

14:22

women were promiscuous and unfaithful. And here

14:24

was my mother, his tribal enemy, a Kosa woman alone

14:26

with two small children. One of them was mixed, no less.

14:29

Not just a whore, but a whore who sleeps with a white man. Oh,

14:32

you're Kosa, he said. That explains it.

14:34

Disgusting women. So the bus

14:37

driver is antagonizing Trevor's

14:39

mother and his younger brother is in the

14:41

mom's arms. Trevor is falling asleep

14:44

because they've been busing around to various

14:46

churches literally all day and now it

14:48

is like nine o'clock at night. And

14:51

he starts antagonizing her. She realizes they're

14:53

in a dangerous situation. And

14:55

so she asks to get out. She's like, we'll just walk from

14:57

here. And the bus driver's like, absolutely not. So she leans over

14:59

to Trevor and whispers when we slow down at

15:01

the next stop sign. Cause also this guy was blowing

15:03

through traffic signs. So she was like,

15:06

but he'll at least slow to look and we'll roll

15:08

out of the car. Trevor is asleep. So he

15:10

does not hear her say, I'm going to push

15:12

you out of the car. And so they slow down

15:14

at a stop sign. She flings the door open, pushes

15:16

him out, tucks and rolls, holding

15:19

the baby close to her and then yells

15:21

for him to sprint. And they just sprint and sprint and sprint

15:23

until they get to a mini store. And he's like,

15:25

what the fuck? What's that? Cause

15:28

he also, he was like, well, when she said run, like

15:30

sure I was asleep and then I was being pushed out of a car, but

15:32

I knew what run means. So I was running.

15:35

And he goes, had I had a different life? Getting thrown

15:37

out of a speeding mini bus might've fazed me. I'd

15:39

have stood there like an idiot going, what's happening, mom?

15:41

Why are my legs so sore? But there was none of that.

15:44

Mom said run and I ran. So

15:46

then they get home. They got to the mini store. They called the

15:48

cops. The cops ended up driving them home. And

15:50

they have another argument about whether or not they were supposed to leave

15:52

that day. And he says, the devil

15:55

tricks you into going out and that's why we were in danger. And

15:57

she says, no, Trevor, that's not how the devil works. This is

15:59

part of God's. plan he wanted to test us. She

16:02

just will talk circles around him. So

16:05

then he talks about how apartheid was a police state, a system

16:07

of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under

16:09

total control. A full compendium of those

16:11

laws would run more than 3,000 pages and weigh approximately

16:14

10 pounds. But the general thrust of it

16:16

should be easy enough for any American to understand. In America,

16:18

you're the forced removal of natives onto reservations

16:21

coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine

16:23

all three of those things happening to the same group of people at

16:25

the same time that was apartheid. So

16:27

he gets into the laws

16:30

that he was born under, where

16:32

it was illegal for a white person and

16:34

a black person to be together

16:36

sexually or kind of at all. And

16:39

his mom just kind of didn't care. So

16:41

his father is a Swiss German man named Robert.

16:44

And basically there's like white there's black. He

16:46

is mixed, which then gets classified under a different group

16:48

of people called colored people, which

16:51

often refers to like a whole other sect

16:53

of people. And so basically he would be allowed

16:55

to be with them. But he is not allowed to be seen

16:57

with black people or with white people. He is a

16:59

completely different third group. Right. And

17:02

that third group is legal when

17:04

two people who are considered colored

17:06

people have a baby so

17:09

that there are like mixed lines and there's

17:11

like a section of mixed people. Under

17:13

apartheid, if you're a black man, you worked on a farmer

17:15

and a factory or in a mine. If you were a black woman, you worked

17:17

in a factory or as a maid. Those were pretty much

17:20

your only options. My mother didn't want to work

17:22

in a factory and she was a horrible cook and

17:24

never would have stood for some white lady yelling at her. So

17:27

true to her nature, she found an option that was not among the ones

17:29

presented to her. She took a secretarial course, a

17:31

typing class by law, white colored

17:33

jobs and skilled labor jobs were reserved for whites. Black

17:35

people didn't work in offices. My mom, however, was a

17:37

rebel. Unfortunately for her, her rebellion

17:40

came around at the right moment. So

17:42

there were also people who lived in these secret

17:44

flats because not everyone actually cared about these

17:46

laws. A good number of people acknowledged them as

17:48

completely absurd, especially the white people

17:51

who moved to South Africa for jobs like this

17:53

Swiss German man and all these other people from

17:55

Switzerland, Germany, Denmark. There were a lot of people

17:57

who were like, we're not really going to work.

17:59

uphold

18:00

these rules, you don't care, they

18:03

would rent out apartments for prostitutes

18:06

who would use those spaces. And so

18:08

she meets a bunch of prostitutes who show her how to

18:10

get in a legal apartment. And so she

18:12

ends up living on a floor with the

18:15

Swiss German man that she eventually

18:17

has a baby with. It was so dangerous

18:19

for her to be there. So what they did was they had

18:21

these things called homelands which were

18:23

semi-fobborn black territories that were in reality

18:26

puppet states of the government in Pretoria. But

18:28

this so-called white country could not function without black labor

18:30

to produce its wealth, which meant that black people had to

18:32

be allowed to live near white areas and townships.

18:35

The government planned ghettos built to house black workers

18:38

like Soweto, which is where he lived. The

18:40

township was where you lived, but your status as a laborer was the

18:42

only thing that permitted you to stay there. If your

18:44

papers were revoked for any reason, you could be deported

18:46

back to the homelands. To leave the township

18:48

for work in the city or for any other reason, you had to carry

18:50

a pass with your ID number, otherwise you could be

18:52

arrested. There was also a curfew, but

18:55

his mother didn't care, so she just found this apartment in a white

18:57

neighborhood and she did it by befriending all

18:59

the prostitutes. Those were often

19:01

the only black women allowed in the neighborhoods because men

19:03

would give them a little place. Yeah, I

19:05

mean, well, they weren't allowed. So they had this system in

19:07

place. Maids were allowed in the neighborhood, so the prostitutes

19:10

would often wear maid uniforms and then they would

19:12

get these apartments rented to them illegally by

19:14

white men who wanted

19:17

them nearby. So her

19:19

mom operated under the same kind of

19:21

system as these prostitutes where she would wear

19:23

maid uniforms when she was walking to and from

19:26

her apartment

19:27

and she used the same system to get an apartment.

19:29

She just wasn't a prostitute.

19:30

So she's living in this apartment. I think as Ashley

19:32

said, this man Robert was up the

19:35

hall. They started chatting. He was 20 years older

19:37

than her. And for some reason, she's just

19:40

like, I want to have a baby with you. And he's like, I don't want a kid.

19:42

And she's like, oh, you don't have to raise it. I just want your sperm.

19:44

And he's like, no, that's crazy. But

19:47

she just keeps asking and one day he finally

19:49

is like, fine, go for it. Nine

19:51

months after that, on February 20th, 1984,

19:54

my mother checked into Hillbrough Hospital for a scheduled

19:56

C-section delivery. Estranged from her family,

19:59

pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was

20:01

alone. My father isn't on my birth certificate.

20:03

Officially, he's never been my father, and my mother,

20:05

true to her word, was prepared for him not to be involved.

20:08

Where most children are proof of their parents' love, I

20:10

was proof of their criminality. The only

20:12

time I could be with my father was indoors. If we left the

20:15

house, he'd have to walk across the street from us. So

20:17

he actually can't be seen with either his mother

20:20

or his father, because the evidence of his mixed-race

20:22

existence is proof that they broke the law? Yeah.

20:25

He's so much lighter than his mom, it

20:28

was very clear when they were next

20:30

to each other. So he couldn't hold his mom's hand in public.

20:33

He couldn't call either of his

20:35

parents, really, mom or dad publicly.

20:37

When his cousins would be playing out in the yard at his

20:39

grandma's house, they would keep him so close

20:42

indoors, because he says the other effect of having an apartheid

20:44

state and living in this police state

20:46

where everything is illegal is a

20:48

lot of people were narcs, and you never

20:50

know who was a narc. So if you're playing

20:53

outside with your cousins, and they say, well, who's that

20:55

boy? Why does he exist? He would have just gotten taken

20:58

and put into it like an orphanage. So

21:01

he spent a lot of his childhood alone at home.

21:03

The only places he ever went were to his grandmother's house

21:05

where they, again, lived in the townships, but

21:08

you couldn't be white there. So if they had seen him, again,

21:10

they would have been like, what's that white person doing here?

21:13

And if the cops had been called, he would have been arrested

21:15

and thrown into the orphanage. So he was always just inside.

21:18

He said in Soweto, the police were an occupying army.

21:20

They didn't wear collared shirts. They wore riot gear.

21:23

They were militarized. They operated in teams known

21:25

as flying squads because they would swoop in out of nowhere,

21:27

riding in on armored personnel carriers with slotted

21:30

holes in the side of the vehicle to fire their guns out

21:32

of. You didn't mess with a hippo. If you saw one, you ran.

21:34

That was a fact of life. The township was in a constant state

21:37

of insurrection. Someone was always marching or

21:39

protesting somewhere and had to be suppressed. Playing

21:41

in my grandmother's house, I'd hear gunshots, screams, tear

21:43

gases being fired into the crowds. He

21:46

talks about growing up and how it was so unfair because his cousins

21:48

were allowed to play outside and he never was. And his grandparents

21:50

would be like, well, if you go outside, you'll be taken. And he thought

21:52

they meant by the other children. You don't understand what the problem

21:54

was. And now he's like, oh, they mean like by

21:57

the police. I would be kidnapped forever. Yeah.

22:00

for most of his life didn't know anyone

22:02

else who was like him so he had no context

22:05

for it he just thought he was different. Yeah it's interesting because

22:07

he's being raised in a black community his mother

22:10

is black his white dad he barely sees

22:12

so like to him he's black but he's not a part

22:14

of the black group and because of apartheid he can't

22:16

really be there legally and so he never

22:19

meets other mixed kids. At first I didn't like

22:21

understand how that could be possible but

22:23

then he talks about... Yeah once Mandela

22:25

was elected and we could finally live freely, exile

22:28

started to return. So he meets other

22:30

mixed kids and when he's around 17

22:33

he told me his story and I was like wait you

22:35

mean we could have left? There was an

22:37

option? Imagine being thrown out of an airplane

22:39

you hit the ground and break all your bones and you go to the hospital

22:42

to heal and you move on and you fully

22:44

put the whole thing behind you and then one day someone tells you

22:46

about parachutes. That's how I felt I

22:48

couldn't understand why we stayed I went straight home and

22:50

asked my mom why didn't we just leave? Why

22:53

didn't we go to Switzerland? Because I'm not

22:55

Swiss she said as stubborn as ever this is my country

22:57

why should I leave? So

22:59

he grew up in a mostly matriarchal

23:02

family. His mother had actually

23:04

left her own family around 20 years

23:07

old and just cut off all ties with them and

23:09

then had Trevor and came back and raised

23:12

her son with them and in the

23:14

house was his mother obviously, his

23:16

grandmother and then his great-grandmother Coco who

23:19

was blind and just sat near the fire all

23:21

day. Yeah the fact that I grew up in a world

23:23

run by a woman was no accident. Apartheid kept

23:25

me away from my father because he was white but for almost all the

23:27

kids I knew on my grandmother's block in Soweto, Apartheid

23:30

had taken their fathers away as well just for different reasons.

23:33

The fathers were off working the mines somewhere able to come

23:35

home only on the holidays. Their fathers

23:37

had been sent to prison, their fathers were in exile

23:39

fighting for the cause, women held the community

23:42

together. He talks about the way Soweto

23:44

built up over time everyone was given

23:46

some space in this area

23:48

and at first they would all start out which is like a makeshift

23:51

plywood cabin sort of

23:54

and then just slowly over time you would build a wall

23:56

and then maybe a few years later you get some money

23:58

you build a second wall and over Over years

24:00

and generations, homes were built up

24:02

in this area and everything was kind

24:04

of makeshift. They couldn't have businesses there because

24:07

it was a black neighborhood. So everything

24:09

was just like out of people's garages and

24:11

they had like a whole economy. It

24:14

just was not official. There's

24:16

something magical about Soweto. Yes, it was a prison

24:18

designed by our oppressors, but it also gave us a sense

24:20

of self-determination and control. Soweto

24:22

was ours. It had an aspirational quality that you

24:24

don't find elsewhere. In America, the dream is to

24:26

make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there

24:28

was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto.

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26:04

again, his mom is, I think,

26:07

a genius. Like, just a very

26:10

intelligent, smart, and resourceful

26:12

woman. Trevor talks a lot about how you can only dream

26:15

as big as you know what exists. And the incredible

26:17

thing about his mother is that she always ensured that

26:19

he knew what else was out there. He's like, but

26:21

who told her? How did she know to escape

26:23

to these other places? How did she know that even though

26:26

she didn't have anything to make sure that

26:28

I could see what was beyond? I mean, this book

26:30

is a real testament to her. So

26:32

she spoke a number of languages. Like we said,

26:35

South Africa, I think, now has 11 official

26:37

languages. And at the time, a lot

26:40

of people spoke a lot of different languages. And she

26:43

knew so many of them and spoke

26:45

them perfectly and made sure that he knew.

26:47

So when he was like 10 years old, he

26:49

was fluent in like five or six different languages

26:52

and understood the accents,

26:54

understood when they were used. And so because he didn't

26:56

really fit in anywhere, he realized that language

26:59

was this great connector. Language,

27:01

even more than color, defines who you are as

27:03

people. I became a chameleon. My color didn't

27:05

change, but I could change your perception of my color.

27:07

If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you

27:09

in Zulu. And so he would just like learn

27:12

how to respond to what he was

27:14

being given to get out

27:16

of a lot of sticky situations. Because like he had to

27:18

move through the world very carefully. He was illegal.

27:21

So he speaks English, which his mom makes sure she

27:23

learns first. English is the language of money.

27:25

English comprehension is equated with intelligence. If you're

27:27

looking for a job, English is the difference between getting the job or

27:30

staying unemployed. After English, Xhosa

27:32

was what we spoke around the house. She learned Zulu

27:34

because it's similar to Xhosa. She spoke German because

27:36

of my father. She spoke Afrikaans because it's

27:38

useful to know the language of your oppressor. And Sotho she

27:40

learned in the streets. Sotho is another

27:42

tribe. Living with my mom, I saw how she used

27:44

language to cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate

27:47

the world. We were in a shop one time. The shopkeeper

27:49

right in front of us turned to a security guard and said, in Afrikaans,

27:52

follow those blacks in case they steal something. My

27:54

mother turned around and said, they're beautiful, fluent Afrikaans.

27:58

Why don't you follow these blacks for.

28:00

Ah, jammer, he said. Apologizing

28:02

in Afrikaans. Then, and this is the funny thing,

28:05

he didn't apologize for being racist. He merely apologized

28:07

for aiming his racism at us. Oh, I'm so sorry,

28:09

you said. I thought you were like the other blacks. You know how they

28:11

love to steal. Tell me how by

28:13

the age of 10, he was speaking like five languages.

28:15

And after 15 years of French, I'm speaking no

28:18

French. I've been taking Danish on babble

28:20

for a week now. And I could probably say hello.

28:22

Yeah, it's just hi. Okay.

28:24

Well, one down. Listen, no, when is the wind?

28:27

You know, you say bye. Let me hear it. Hi,

28:29

hi. I cannot wait for my move

28:31

to Copenhagen. If you're not

28:33

on the

28:36

Patreon, you don't even know what I'm talking about. Also,

28:38

we're recording this episode a few weeks in advance. So

28:40

maybe by the time it comes out, I'll be a saluent.

28:43

Oh my God. Yeah. Call her and ask. Ask me how

28:45

it's going. Call her up and say hi. Ask me

28:47

how my Danish is going. How's your Danish going?

28:49

Fantastisk.

28:53

As apartheid was coming to an end, South Africa's elite private

28:56

school started accepting children of all colors. My mother's

28:58

company offered bursaries scholarships for

29:00

underprivileged families. And she managed to get me into

29:02

Maryvale College, an expensive private

29:04

Catholic school. So he goes, he

29:06

said it was like this amazing post race

29:09

Catholic school where there was kids of every color

29:11

and every socioeconomic background. And there

29:13

was no division. Every click was racially

29:15

missed. Everybody wore the same outfit

29:18

and got along, but he was pretty naughty.

29:20

So he got kicked out real quick. Yeah.

29:22

And then he went to another school where there was like a pretty distinct

29:25

black group and white group. He always

29:27

identified as black. The white kids would talk

29:29

to him, but he'd be like, this just doesn't resonate with

29:31

my experience because he was raised in

29:34

black communities. So he gets put

29:36

in like the A classes, which is like the white

29:38

classes. And he was like, I want to be in the class with my friends.

29:40

And they were like, no, you do realize the effect

29:42

this will have on your future. You do understand that what you're

29:44

giving up. This will impact the opportunities you'll have for

29:47

the rest of your life. He's doing like

29:49

pretty well. Yeah. I think

29:52

that it was like a good call because it seems like it didn't

29:54

hold him back. I moved to B classes with the black

29:56

kids. I decided I'd rather be held back with people I

29:58

liked than move ahead with.

29:59

people I didn't know. So they

30:01

talked about one of the main features

30:03

of apartheid was blocking knowledge and education.

30:06

So there were some mission schools where

30:08

Catholics would come in and try to give like a good education

30:11

but then there were these things called Bantu schools which

30:13

taught no science, no history, no civics. They taught metrics

30:15

and agriculture, how to count potatoes, how to pay roads,

30:18

chop wood, till the soil. It does not

30:20

serve the Bantu to learn history and science because

30:22

he is primitive, the government said. This will only

30:24

mislead him, showing him pastures in which he is not

30:26

allowed to graze. My mother was blessed

30:28

that her village was one of the places where a mission

30:30

school had contrived to stay open in spite of

30:33

the government's Bantu education policies. There

30:35

she had a white pastor who taught her English. She

30:37

didn't have food or shoes or even a pair of underwear

30:39

but she had English. She could read and write

30:41

and when she was old enough she stopped working on the farm and

30:43

got a job in a factory in a nearby town. My

30:46

mother used to tell me I chose to have you because I wanted something

30:48

to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return.

30:50

My grandparents marriage was an unhappy

30:53

one. They met and married in Sophia town but one year

30:55

later the army came in and drove them out.

30:57

The government seized their homes and bulldozed the whole

30:59

area to build a fancy new white

31:01

suburb called Triumph.

31:02

Along with tens of thousands of other black people, my grandparents

31:04

were forcibly relocated to Soweto to a

31:07

neighborhood called the Meadowlands. They divorced

31:09

not long after that my grandfather moved to Orlando with

31:11

my mom, my aunt, and my uncle. So the

31:13

reason that his mom was raised on a farm was

31:16

that her mother in classic children

31:18

fashion blamed her mother who raised

31:20

her as opposed to her father who abandoned her. When

31:23

she was like 12-13 she said to her mom, I don't

31:25

want to live with you anymore, I want to live with dad because I like

31:27

him better than you. And the mother said, fine,

31:29

go live with him if you like him better. She went to live with

31:32

him and he said, well you're of no value to me,

31:34

you're too much money. So he sent her to go

31:36

work a farm with his aunt where she was essentially

31:38

a farmhand and they had barely enough

31:41

to eat and she like had nothing. My

31:43

mother didn't see her family again for 12 years. She lived in

31:45

a hut with 14 cousins. I mean she

31:47

just had this ambition and this drive.

31:50

So many black families spend all their

31:52

time trying to fix the problems of the past. It's the curse

31:54

of being black and poor and it's a curse that follows you

31:56

from generation to generation. My mom

31:58

calls it the black tax because the generations

32:01

who came before you have been pillaged rather

32:03

than being free to use your skills and education

32:05

to move forward. You lose everything just trying to bring

32:07

everyone behind you back up to zero. So

32:10

after working for 12 years on this farm and

32:12

where she sometimes had to eat the food that she

32:14

was stealing from the animals, she finally said, I can't

32:16

take this anymore. I want to go make money and at least

32:18

have it be my own. So she goes and gets a job in a factory

32:21

where she's paid with a plate of food every

32:23

night and she's like, I'll take it. It's better than

32:25

nothing. At least I've earned it. And

32:27

then after doing that for three years, my

32:29

mom wrote to my grand asking her to send the price of a train

32:31

ticket about 30 rand to bring her home

32:34

back in Soweto. My mom enrolled in one of the secretarial

32:36

courses that allowed her to grab hold of the bottom rung

32:38

of the white collar world. She worked and worked and worked

32:40

for a living, but living under my grandmother's roof, she

32:42

wasn't allowed to keep her

32:43

own wages.

32:44

As a secretary, my mom was bringing home more money than

32:46

anyone else. My grandmother insisted it all go to the family.

32:49

The family needed a radio and oven, a refrigerator,

32:51

and now it was my mom's job to provide it. So

32:53

eventually one day she just runs away,

32:55

gets on a train, shows up in Johannesburg and never looks

32:58

back. And that's where the prostitutes teach her how

33:00

to get an apartment and use the maid's clothes to

33:02

move around white areas. And that's where she

33:04

meets the Swiss German man

33:06

who becomes Trevor Noah's father.

33:09

When she had Trevor, the most important thing

33:11

was that he learned to read. My mother wanted

33:14

her child to behold him to no fate. She wanted me to be

33:16

free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. She gave

33:18

me the tools to do it as well. She taught me English as my first

33:20

language. She read to me constantly. The first

33:22

book I learned to read was the book, the

33:24

Bible. My books were my prized possession.

33:26

I had a bookshelf before I put them and I was so proud of it. I

33:28

loved my books and kept them in pristine condition. They

33:31

were very poor, but they did what they

33:33

could. And she was always trying to give

33:35

him experiences. People thought my mom

33:37

was crazy. I think some drive-ins in several of

33:39

these places were the things of white people. So

33:42

many black people had internalized the logic of apartheid

33:44

and made it their own. Why teach a black child

33:47

white things? Neighbors and relatives

33:49

used to pester my mom. Why do all this? Why show

33:51

him the world when he's going to live in the ghetto? Because

33:54

she would say, even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will

33:56

know that the ghetto is not the world. If that

33:58

is all that I can accomplish, I've done enough. We

34:00

tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream

34:02

of what you can imagine, and depending on where you're from, your

34:04

imagination can be quite limited. So

34:07

then he talks about the way that apartheid

34:09

fell because it makes no sense. One

34:11

of the examples he gives is that Chinese people

34:13

in South Africa were characterized as black,

34:16

but Japanese people were categorized as white

34:18

because South Africa wanted to have a good relationship

34:21

with Japan because of the electronics that they

34:23

were producing. And so he was like, you

34:25

know, it's crazy. A police officer could go

34:27

up to an Asian person on a bench and be like, hey, get off

34:29

that bench, that's for white people, and then be like, well,

34:31

I'm Japanese. He's like, oh, I apologize, sir. I didn't mean to

34:33

be racist. Have a good afternoon. He's like, it

34:35

just doesn't make any sense. My

34:38

mother used to tell me I chose to have you because I wanted

34:40

something to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return.

34:42

And then I gave birth to the most selfish piece of shit on earth,

34:44

and all it ever did was cry and eat and shit and say, me, me,

34:47

me, me, me. If you weren't engaging to me,

34:49

I was trouble. I wasn't a shit to people.

34:51

I wasn't whiny and spoiled. I had good manners.

34:53

I was just high energy, and I knew what I wanted

34:55

to do. So he was naughty,

34:57

and him and his mom were going at it nonstop. It

34:59

was very much a them against the world thing, but they were also

35:02

them against each other. But they were both

35:04

like smart and bantry, and she was

35:06

ruled by logic that made sense to her. So

35:08

he says sometimes he would come home in trouble from school. But

35:10

if she agreed that the thing he got in trouble for was stupid,

35:13

she wouldn't punish him. But then

35:15

other times, she was a big hider, which means

35:17

whipping with a stick. My mom was

35:19

forever trying to rein me in. Over the years, her tactics

35:21

grew more and more sophisticated. When I had

35:24

youth and energy on my side, she had cunning,

35:26

and she figured out different ways to keep me in line.

35:29

At one point, he said he was a better arguer

35:31

than she was because he was so swift and like so good at

35:33

finding loopholes that she made a new rule in the house

35:35

that you could only fight via letter. So

35:38

they would write letters back and forth.

35:41

And whenever he would come to fight her, he'd be like, uh-uh, put it

35:43

in the letter. And he's like, sometimes we go four or five days without

35:45

speaking, only writing a letter. Dear Trevor,

35:48

children, obey your parents and everything for this pleases

35:50

the Lord. Colossians 3 20. There

35:53

are certain things I expect from you as my child and as a young

35:55

man. You need to clean your room. You need to keep

35:57

the house. You need to look after your school uniform. I

36:00

ask you. Respect my rules so that I may also

36:02

respect you. I ask you now, please

36:04

go and do the dishes and do the weeds in the garden. You're

36:06

a sincerely mom." To whom it may concern,

36:09

dear mom, I

36:11

have received your correspondence earlier. I am delighted

36:13

to say that I am ahead of schedule on the dishes and will continue

36:16

to wash them in an hour or so. Please

36:18

note that the garden is wet so I cannot do the weeds at

36:20

this time, but please be assured that this task

36:22

will be completed by the end of the weekend. Also,

36:24

I completely agree with what you are saying with

36:26

regard to my respect levels and I will maintain

36:29

my room to satisfactory standard. You're

36:31

a sincerely Trevor. I

36:33

love this response. She had one where she was not that as great

36:35

as I slept, being said, to whom it may concern.

36:38

First of all, this has been a particularly tough time in school and

36:40

for you to say that my marks are bad is extremely unfair, especially

36:43

considering the fact that you yourself were not very good in school

36:45

and I am, after all, a product of yours. And

36:47

so in part, you are to blame because if you were not good in school,

36:49

why would I be good in school? Because genetically, we

36:51

are the same. Grant always talks about how naughty

36:53

you are. So obviously, my naughtiness comes from you

36:55

and I don't think it's right or fair or just for you to say any of

36:57

this. You're sincerely Trevor. Can

37:01

you imagine? I was creative

37:03

and independent and full of energy. The therapist

37:05

did give me a series of tests and they came to the conclusion

37:07

that I was either going to make an excellent criminal or

37:10

be very good at catching criminals. He was

37:12

just always getting in trouble in this Catholic school

37:14

and they sent him to a therapist three times because they thought

37:16

he was so fucked up and the therapist was like, I don't know, man,

37:19

you make some good points. One of the things he got in

37:21

trouble for was because he wasn't Catholic, he wasn't

37:23

allowed to have a Eucharist, but he always wanted

37:25

grape juice and crackers and he was pissed. He couldn't have

37:27

it. So one day he went in and he'd always be like, but

37:29

Jesus isn't even Catholic. He's Jewish. So

37:32

if you're saying that Jesus himself showed up, he couldn't

37:34

eat his own body. And they're like, listen, we

37:36

don't know. And so one day he went

37:38

back there and he drank the whole jug of juice and

37:40

ate an entire sleeve of crackers and

37:43

he got in so much trouble. And his mom was like, what are you

37:45

mad about? He wants more Jesus in him and you

37:47

won't give us him. The boy can't have a little Jesus.

37:50

That doesn't even make sense. Why wouldn't you want the child

37:52

to have some Jesus in his life? So

37:54

she's like, no, you're not in trouble. Yeah, he did

37:57

actually do really fucked up things sometimes though. He was

37:59

like obsessed fire and knives. He's like,

38:01

my two big things, my two big loves in this world

38:03

were fire and knives. And at one point he like

38:05

burnt a white family's house fully to the ground.

38:08

But like not even as an act of rebellion, he was visiting

38:10

his friend who lived in a house in their backyard

38:12

with his mother who was their maid. And he

38:14

was obsessed with burning things into okay,

38:17

he says he's obsessed with burning his own initials into

38:19

wood. But I'm like, I've never heard of that. I've heard people

38:21

burning ants

38:22

with the sun. I

38:23

wonder if he softens it for his own self. I

38:25

mean, that does sound cool. I don't know. I'd like to try

38:27

burning my initials into wood. I'm intrigued.

38:30

But he like left the magnifying glass and

38:32

matches on a straw bed. And then

38:34

they like got locked out. And then they forgot about

38:36

it. And they were like, well, if we're locked out anyway, we might as well just keep hanging.

38:39

And then the whole thing went up in flames. Yeah.

38:41

But there was no punishment for me that day. My mom was too much in

38:43

shock. There's naughty and then there's burning down a white person's

38:46

house. She didn't know what to do. And he says

38:48

he got in trouble all the time. And he was always getting whipped and always

38:50

getting punished. But I was blessed with another trade I inherited

38:52

from my mother, her ability to forget the pain

38:54

in life. I remember the thing that caused the trauma,

38:57

but I don't hold on to the trauma. I never let the memory of something

38:59

painful prevent me from trying something new. If

39:01

you think too much about the ass kicking your mom gave you or

39:03

the ass kicking that life gave you, you'll stop pushing the

39:05

boundaries and breaking the rules. It's better to take

39:07

it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on.

39:10

You'll have a few bruises and they'll remind you of what happened, but that's

39:12

okay. But after a while, the bruises fade and they fade

39:14

for a reason because now it's time to get up and get to

39:16

some shit again. I have

39:18

to say, I really liked this book. He does

39:21

a really good job of using his

39:23

life to like teach you a lot. And it's

39:25

compelling and it's interesting. I don't know

39:27

how honest of a reflection he has on himself.

39:30

No, I'm healed. Nothing bothers

39:32

me. But my dad, we're good.

39:34

Yeah, we had a really great talk

39:36

one time about how he did love me all those years.

39:38

And now I feel full. And you're like, totally.

39:41

I heard that's how it works. Like for him to sit here and be like, drama

39:43

rolled off my back. Just like I rolled out of that car that

39:45

one time that man tried to kill me for being a different tribe than

39:48

he was. And I'm like, I'm sure. Okay, so

39:50

this chapter, we can just breeze through. He had a dog

39:52

named Fuffi. He had no idea Fuffi was

39:55

deaf, which, you know, you'd think you'd figure

39:57

out. But I figured out when he died and the vet was like,

39:59

was it weird having a and they were like, we thought Fuffie

40:01

was stupid. Actually

40:03

they had two dogs, it was Fuffie and Panther, and

40:06

they would call him in for dinner, and Panther would come and

40:08

then go back and get Fuffie in common. They were like, oh my God, their

40:10

whole lives, Panther was telling Fuffie what

40:12

the directions were, how cute. And that

40:14

did make me cry. But so now he has this

40:16

crazy thing where, every time they came home, Fuffie

40:19

would be in front of the gate to their house. Their gate is like

40:21

five feet tall, so they're like, how is Fuffie getting out? So

40:23

Fuffie would scale the gate and leave the house,

40:26

and then it turns out that he was going, or she,

40:28

I don't know, Fuffie was going to another house

40:30

all day, and this other family thought

40:32

Fuffie was their dog and leaving at night.

40:35

And so Fuffie just fully had two families, and

40:37

they went to go get Fuffie, because now this other

40:39

family is locking Fuffie in, they know

40:41

that Fuffie's been cheating on them, and

40:43

they were like, well this is literally our dog. You

40:45

can't have it. And the other family was like, no, this is literally

40:48

our dog. And so Trevor goes back with his mom,

40:50

and the mom brings all the vet records, and is like, this is literally

40:52

our dog. And Trevor is wailing and

40:54

sobbing and crying, and they go to try

40:56

and get her, and they end up having to pay this other family,

40:59

and Fuffie kind of doesn't really want to come home,

41:01

or doesn't really give a shit. Well Fuffie can't

41:03

hear. I mean, remember at this point, they don't

41:05

know that Fuffie's deaf. Yeah. So

41:07

he's yelling, you're my dog, and the other parent is like, no, they're my dog. Meanwhile

41:10

Fuffie is just looking, thinking that all of his

41:12

friends got together for a party. Yeah,

41:14

so Trevor's on the way home, just sobbing,

41:17

and his mom's like, I got you the dog back,

41:19

what's up? And he's like, Fuffie loves another boy.

41:22

Fuffie was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed

41:24

me more than Fuffie. It was a valuable lesson to me. The

41:26

hard thing was understanding that Fuffie wasn't shooting

41:28

on me with another boy. She was merely living her

41:30

life to the fullest. Until I knew that she

41:32

wasn't going out on her own during the day her relationship

41:34

hadn't affected me at all. Fuffie had no malicious

41:37

intent. I'd live that Fuffie was my dog,

41:39

but of course that wasn't true. Fuffie was a dog.

41:41

I was a boy. We got along well, she

41:43

happened to live in my house. That experience shaped

41:45

what I felt about relationships for the rest of my life. You

41:48

do not own the thing you love. Oh, Trevor?

41:51

Trevor, I don't know that this was the conclusion.

41:54

I will say this conclusion bummed me the fuck

41:56

out. I was like, I swear to fucking God, if

41:58

bug ever like, love. loved someone else,

42:01

I would lay in front of a train. I

42:03

don't know if that's the better conclusion. I'm

42:05

saying whatever your conclusion is about your dog probably

42:07

shouldn't impact your romantic relationship. Didn't

42:10

even occur to me. I was lucky

42:12

to learn that lesson at a young age. I have

42:14

so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle

42:17

with feelings of betrayal. I mean, yeah,

42:19

that's like one of the big human experiences.

42:21

You can be betrayed as an adult and

42:23

as a child. They'll come to me angry and crying and

42:25

talk about how they've been cheated on and lied to when I feel

42:28

for them. I understand what they're going through. I

42:30

sit with them, bite them a drink and I say, friend, let me tell

42:32

you the story of Fuffie. Trevor,

42:34

I've heard the old, I can't love you, a

42:37

girl broke my heart when I was 16, excuse, but

42:39

I've never heard the, I can't love you once

42:41

my dog knew someone else. Well,

42:44

it's not even I can't love you. It's like, you

42:46

can't ask people not to cheat on you the same way

42:48

you can't ask a deaf dog to not know

42:50

where it's at all the time. I mean, this

42:52

idea that like, we don't owe anything

42:55

to one another, that all we are are like ships

42:57

in the night. This is what he learned from

42:59

his dad. This is the trauma of the

43:01

relationship with his dad and he's like projected it onto

43:03

his dog and he's acting like he learned

43:05

some elevated lesson of like cheating

43:07

can't hurt you if you never trust. Oh

43:10

God, we'll get to the dad part later, but

43:12

he's like, oh, me and my dad just didn't talk for 10 years,

43:15

but that doesn't mean he didn't love me and it's totally cool and now I

43:17

feel fulfilled and you're like, okay, I

43:19

don't believe you. I don't believe you that it's all

43:21

good now because I've known a lot of dads

43:23

that have been a lot more present and people are a lot more

43:25

fucked up, so. And so then we get into

43:27

his dad. He talks about how his dad

43:29

was never interested in marriage. He used to say that

43:31

most people marry because they want to control another

43:34

person and he never wanted to be controlled. Okay,

43:36

I mean, I guess that really loops around with

43:39

the foofy story pretty smoothly. So

43:41

when he was 24, his mom was like, why

43:44

don't you meet your dad again? And he's

43:46

like, at this point, I had not seen my dad in 10 years. Growing

43:48

up, he had seen him every Sunday and

43:51

then he became a teenager and he was like, actually, I'd rather play

43:53

video games and then his mom

43:55

got remarried and he got a stepdad and the stepdad didn't

43:57

love that they still were in the life of a

43:59

foofy. former lover and so

44:02

they just drifted apart and then the dad moved to Cape

44:04

Town and they just never saw each other again. And he was

44:06

like, why would I need to know my dad? And she was like, I

44:08

don't know. I just think you might want to. They find

44:10

him and it's tough because his dad is very

44:12

secretive. His dad is like a real private Swiss person.

44:14

I guess that's like a Swiss thing, huh? Yeah.

44:17

Like he's like a bank account. Totally. Offshore.

44:20

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44:22

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44:24

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45:35

Okay, so

45:38

he finds his dad and he sends a letter

45:41

and his dad's like, of course I want to see you. And

45:43

I will say he never talks about getting into comedy or his

45:45

career at all. I found that so interesting. I kept waiting

45:47

for the comedy part. He never admits it. There

45:49

are just like a couple parts where he references

45:52

his twenties. And I think at this point, you

45:54

just said he's 24 and he's like, I was already

45:56

touring and I was like majorly successful and I

45:58

was like hosting a TV show and I was like. doing a lot of

46:00

stuff around the country and

46:03

the world. And it was like a huge deal. Anyway,

46:05

so I went to go visit my, and you're like, okay, I hope

46:07

we get to that later. We don't just spoiler alert.

46:10

If you ever want to find out how by 24, he was like

46:12

a very successful touring comedian, you

46:14

won't find out. It's actually because at 20, he was

46:16

like selling stolen radios. Yeah.

46:20

I'm like, what was the leap? Exactly.

46:23

Anyway, so he goes and he sees his

46:25

dad and they spend the day together. And

46:27

his dad like takes out a scrapbook where it

46:29

turns out he's been compiling like every press

46:32

mention of Trevor for the last couple of years.

46:34

And he's been following his career and he's been so proud of him.

46:36

And he's like, oh my God, it turns out

46:39

I was wanted. I felt a flood of emotions

46:41

rushing through me. It was everything I could do to

46:43

not start crying. It felt like this 10 year

46:46

gap in my life closed right up in an instant. Like

46:48

only a day had passed since I'd last seen him. For

46:50

years, I had so many questions. Is he thinking about me? Does he

46:52

know what I'm doing? Is he proud of me? But he'd been with

46:54

me the whole time. He'd always been proud of me. Circumstance

46:56

had pulled us apart, but he was never not my father. He

47:00

chose to have me in his life. He chose to answer my letter. I was wanted.

47:02

Being chosen as the greatest gift you can give another human being.

47:05

Okay. Do you guys see what I mean though about

47:07

where the lesson he learned for Fufi maybe

47:09

is something that he's telling himself to handle any

47:11

feelings of abandonment from his father? Clap

47:14

if you see it. So

47:16

he goes on to talk about his experience

47:19

as a mixed person

47:21

in a place where being mixed was not allowed.

47:24

So he explains that when Dutch colonists landed on the southern

47:26

tip of Africa over 300 years ago, they encountered

47:29

an indigenous people known as the Koisin. The

47:31

Koisin are the Native Americans of South Africa, a lost

47:33

tribe of Bushmen, nomadic hunter-gatherers, distinct

47:35

from the darker Bantu-speaking peoples who

47:38

later migrated south to become the Zulu, Kosa,

47:40

and Sotho tribes of modern South Africa. So

47:42

when the first white colonists moved there, they

47:45

had their way with Koisin women and the first mixed

47:47

people of South Africa were born. So then

47:49

this group of people were often enslaved

47:52

along with people from West Africa, Madagascar,

47:54

and the East Indies. The Koisin all but

47:56

disappeared from South Africa while most were killed off

47:58

their disease, famine, and war. The rest of their blood. was

48:00

bred out of existence mixed in with the descendants of

48:02

white and slaves to form an entirely new race of

48:04

people.

48:05

Colored.

48:06

Colored people are a hybrid and a complete mix.

48:08

Some are light and some are dark. Some have Asian

48:10

features and some have white features. The

48:12

history of colored people in South Africa is in this respect

48:15

worse than the history of black people in South Africa. For all

48:17

that black people have suffered they know who they are, colored people

48:19

don't.

48:20

So then he goes on to talk about being considered

48:23

one of these colored people. I was the anomaly wherever

48:25

we lived. In Hillboro we lived in a white area

48:27

and no one looked like me. And so we know we lived

48:30

in a black area and nobody looked like me. And Eden

48:32

Park was a colored area. Everyone

48:34

looked like me but I couldn't have been more different. It was the

48:36

biggest mindfuck I've ever experienced.

48:39

And he talks about just like being an insider

48:41

versus an outsider. When he was obviously different

48:44

people are willing to accept you if they see that you are an outsider

48:46

trying to assimilate into the world but when they see you as

48:48

a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the

48:50

tribe that's something they will never forget. That's

48:53

what happened to me in Eden Park. So

48:55

one of the insane things about

48:57

a apartheid was that you could

49:00

like apply to be considered white. Every year

49:02

under apartheid some people would get promoted to white. It

49:04

wasn't a myth, it was real. People could submit applications

49:06

to the government. Your hair might become straight enough, your skin might

49:08

become light enough, your accent might become polished

49:11

enough, and you'd be reclassified as white. All

49:13

you had to do is announce your people, denounce your history, and

49:15

leave your darker skin friends and family behind. You

49:17

also could get demoted. Sometimes

49:20

two white people could have a child who was like all

49:22

of complexion and they would be considered colored and then the

49:25

family would have to break up and decide are we all going to

49:27

move to a different part of town or is the mother gonna take the

49:29

baby? Like it is just so fucking insane.

49:31

It's so fucking insane. There

49:33

literally was like based on how the cashier

49:35

at the day with eyeball you were quick and how they would

49:37

categorize you. Yeah and this system

49:39

of promotions and demotions is what

49:42

kept this group of people

49:45

so untethered because it

49:47

wasn't just this thing of like okay this is the

49:49

life you must lead. There was a promise

49:51

of something more if you just worked

49:53

hard enough at it but it was so limited

49:55

like the chances were so slim. And then

49:58

he talks about when apartheid fell And

50:00

Nelson Mandela was elected. He said it felt very

50:02

much to them like the whole race had switched

50:04

and the finish line was now the starting line. People

50:06

were trying to be black. Black is beautiful, black is powerful.

50:09

So for centuries, colored people were told like be whiter,

50:11

be whiter, be whiter. And all of a sudden

50:13

black people are in power. So you can imagine

50:15

how weird it was for me. I was mixed but not colored,

50:17

colored by complexion but not by culture because of

50:19

that I was seen as a colored person who didn't want to be colored.

50:22

And that was not taken too very well. He

50:24

was bullied constantly. He like never

50:26

had friends. He never felt like he had anybody to play

50:29

with. They would move sometimes to these white

50:31

neighborhoods where nobody would invite him and then

50:33

sometimes he'd be in black neighborhoods where he also felt like

50:35

he couldn't be out. And he talked about one time he was

50:37

at this mulberry tree and a bunch of kids come over

50:39

and start throwing mulberries at him and

50:42

pelting him. And he has heart, he's sad. It was

50:44

like a scary intense thing to happen. But

50:46

he's covered in all of this juice. So his mom

50:48

thinks he's just like bleeding everywhere and she

50:50

starts laughing when she realizes it's just juice. My

50:53

mom thought everything was funny. There was no subject too dark

50:55

or too painful for her to tackle with humor. Look on

50:57

the bright side she said, now you really are half black

50:59

and half white. It's not funny. And

51:01

then he tells his stepdad who beats

51:04

the ever living shit out of these kids and he's

51:06

like, okay, well that wasn't the right thing to do either.

51:09

Revenge truly is sweet. It takes you to a dark place

51:11

but man, it satisfies the thirst. Then

51:13

there was the strangest moment where it flipped. I caught a glimpse

51:16

of the look of terror in the boy's face and I realized that Abel

51:18

had gone past getting revenge for me. He wasn't doing this

51:20

to teach the kid a lesson. He was just beating him. He

51:22

was a grown man venting his rage on a 12-year-old boy.

51:25

In an instant, I went from, yes, I got my revenge to no,

51:27

no, no, no, too much, too much. Oh shit. Oh shit.

51:29

Oh shit. Dear God, what have I done? The

51:31

little boy is left like battered to a pulp

51:34

and of course they go back home and then that little boy's dad

51:36

comes over and Abel, the

51:38

stepfather goes out and I don't know what he says to him.

51:40

I think he says straight up like, don't fuck with me. I will kill

51:42

you. The guy turned around quickly and got back in his

51:45

car and drove her away. He thought he was coming to defend

51:47

the honor of his family. He left happy to escape with

51:49

his life. And that's kind of our first real taste

51:51

of Abel. Anyway, so

51:54

then he gets into matters of the heart. He

51:57

was not a cute teenager. He

51:59

struggled. with acne, he was a bit awkward.

52:02

But the thing he realized is that because he was no one,

52:04

he could get along with everyone.

52:05

Yeah.

52:07

You know, he gets swerved by a girl on Valentine's Day.

52:09

I don't think the story is necessarily that important.

52:11

But he did get her flowers and write her a poem,

52:13

and then he showed up to give it to her at school, and she had another boyfriend

52:16

already. Yeah. Tough stuff.

52:18

Tough stuff. They did

52:20

not have a lot of money, and his mom was a master

52:23

of cutting corners and saving every penny possible,

52:26

but in a way that was humiliating often.

52:28

So they had this car that was always breaking down, and she could

52:30

get as much mileage out of a gallon as

52:33

humanly possible. So if they were

52:35

at a stoplight, she would turn the car off. If

52:38

the traffic was moving slow, she would turn the car

52:40

off and be like, okay, just push it so we don't have to waste gas

52:42

for moving so slow anyway. And he was like, well, this is humiliating.

52:45

But it was the way. We didn't have money

52:47

for petrol. After school, I was on my own.

52:50

Weekends, I was on my own. Ever the outsider, I created

52:52

my own show into the little world. He calls

52:54

himself a weed dealer but of food, and this is,

52:57

again, he doesn't even say like, this is where I got my sense

52:59

of humor. But he just says like, I learned

53:01

how to make people laugh and feel at ease. So

53:03

he would be able to like show up, and

53:06

people liked him there, but he wasn't part of the group.

53:08

He also found a way to make money

53:11

off of food because there was this food truck outside

53:13

of school where you would get all your food and you just

53:15

want to be first. And since he was the fastest kid, he

53:18

was able to make money by being the person

53:20

who was always first in line. And so the slower kids

53:22

would pay him to pick up their food

53:24

so that they weren't like late in line and there was

53:26

nothing left. So that was kind of his

53:29

first dabble at hustling as well. So

53:31

he has a couple of little stories from high school. And again, this

53:33

is one of our stamp of approval

53:35

rec books. It's a great book to read, and it does read

53:37

very quickly. So if you're going on a vacation, if you've got a weekend

53:40

away, we really recommend it. There's a lot of stories

53:42

that we're leaving out that are just like cute little stories about him

53:44

growing up that are funny. And they are well

53:46

constructed because he's a comedian. So he knows how

53:48

to have a beginning, middle, and end. There's none of this like, why

53:51

did you tell us that? There's a punch line.

53:53

But we're leaving a bunch out because we

53:55

can't tell you everything. We can't thievery

53:58

this book up. Anyway. One of the

54:00

fun stories is his friend, he's kind

54:02

of a hustler in the neighborhood, is

54:04

like, I could get you the most beautiful girl

54:06

for prom. And he has some trade that he'll

54:08

do with him. And he's like, all right, fine. Well, okay, so we later

54:10

get into the fact that Trevor Noah was burning

54:13

CDs and selling them. And so this was one of

54:15

the guys that was like one of his CD

54:17

distributors.

54:18

So he was like, I want a bigger cut of my CDs and I'll

54:20

get you the most beautiful prom date. Anyway,

54:23

long story short, he does get him the

54:25

most beautiful prom date. Everybody cannot believe how beautiful

54:27

this girl is. He begs for more money to so he

54:29

can buy a new outfit. He borrows his stepdad's

54:31

fancy car, which then, whatever, there's a whole

54:34

long process of getting with this prom. And you're like, what's

54:36

gonna go wrong? He picks her up, she's dressed beautifully,

54:38

they get to prom and she won't get out of the car. Everybody's

54:40

coming out begging this girl to come out of the car and

54:42

come into the prom. And he's like, this is the biggest joke of

54:45

all time. Trevor Noah, the nerd at school, finally

54:47

got the most beautiful girl of all time to come to

54:49

prom with him and she won't get out of the car. And

54:51

finally, after begging and begging and begging

54:53

and people coming and trying to beg on his behalf, someone goes, you know she

54:56

doesn't speak English? And he's like, huh? And he looks back

54:58

and he realizes none of the time they spent together, did they ever

55:00

directly communicate? It was always being translated. She

55:03

met his family. He's like, oh my

55:05

God, we never once had a real conversation.

55:08

And as Ashley pointed out, first the deaf dog

55:11

and then the girlfriend who doesn't speak English, does

55:13

he listen? He also talks

55:16

about his mom specifically instilling respect

55:18

for women and respect upon him. He would

55:20

come into the house and say like, hey mom, and she'd

55:22

be like, no, stop and make eye contact with

55:24

me. You have to really see me when you say hello to me.

55:27

And he makes a big point about the way he was taught

55:29

to like respect people in

55:31

this way. But then he like doesn't know that

55:33

his dog can't hear him. He doesn't know that

55:36

he has this girl that he asks out that

55:38

like dumps him on Valentine's Day, but like they never really

55:40

even knew or liked each other. I'm like, are you

55:42

paying attention to anyone when you have these

55:44

conversations? Like I don't mean to equate women

55:47

and dogs, but like of the few stories he

55:49

does tell with these interactions, there are

55:51

a number of people who he just didn't

55:53

realize didn't hear him. Oh

55:56

my God. So he also starts

55:58

like this DJing business. because he's downloading

56:01

all of this music illegally to burn it

56:03

onto CDs, but then he has this huge hard drive of music

56:05

and he becomes a DJ. And one of the things that

56:07

you have to do when you're a DJ is it

56:09

helps to have hype dancers. We've all been

56:12

to bar and bat mitzvahs, you know about hype dancers.

56:14

And the best dancer in his crew was named

56:16

Hitler. And he explains that in

56:19

Africa, you would just have like an

56:21

African name, and then you would have a white name.

56:24

He was like, I knew people named Mussolini, like people from

56:26

history. I don't know. It was just a thing. And

56:29

this guy that was the best dancer

56:31

in his crew was named Hitler. And so they'd

56:33

all gather around and be like, go Hitler, go Hitler.

56:36

And they didn't realize the

56:38

implications of Hitler. For many

56:40

black South Africans, the story of the war was that there

56:42

was someone called Hitler and he was the reason the allies

56:44

were losing the war. This Hitler was so powerful that

56:47

at some point, black people had to go help white people

56:49

fight against him. And if the white man has to

56:51

stoop to ask the black man for help fighting someone,

56:53

that person must be the toughest guy of all time. So

56:55

if you want your dog to be tough, you name your dog Hitler.

56:58

If you want your kid to be tough, you name your kid Hitler. It

57:00

just like was what it was. I met

57:02

people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst

57:05

atrocity in human history. Without question,

57:07

it was horrific. But I wonder with African

57:09

atrocities like the Congo, how horrific

57:12

were they? The thing that Africans don't have that the Jewish

57:14

people do have is documentation. The

57:16

Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made

57:18

films. And that's what it comes down to. The Holocaust

57:21

victims count because Hitler counted them. And

57:23

this is something that really struck me. It would

57:25

have struck me five weeks ago, but right now we are in

57:28

the middle of witnessing a genocide.

57:30

We are witnessing apartheid occur once

57:32

again in the

57:34

West Bank. And we are watching the genocide

57:37

in Gaza and people are ignoring

57:39

it completely because they say like, we

57:41

can't have another Holocaust like as we

57:43

commit another genocide. And

57:46

it is one of those things that like my entire life, it's

57:48

been beaten into my head that this was horrific atrocity.

57:50

And it was horrific atrocity. I will never discount

57:52

that. But the way that we ignore other atrocities,

57:55

you know, it's just fucked up. Any group

57:58

of people can become a victim. You have to be vigilant

58:00

for all people. We had to be vigilant for all people

58:02

and to sit here and say like we can never have another

58:05

Jewish genocide, I completely

58:07

agree and in order to ensure

58:10

that we have to care about all

58:12

people and ensure that there is no more any

58:15

genocide. This sentence really

58:17

landed to be like, yes, we are

58:20

taught from a young age that this was the worst

58:22

thing that's ever happened and there are a lot

58:24

of really worst things that have happened.

58:26

We live in a fucked up society and it's

58:29

important to educate us on all of them, not

58:31

just one because it's not about protecting one

58:33

group, it's about protecting lots of groups.

58:36

I didn't want to be too heavy-handed in this episode to be

58:38

like apartheid wink wink, this is what it looks like.

58:42

But something to notice. Something

58:45

to notice. I like went back

58:47

to that line that was like they bulldozed

58:50

their homes to move in a new family.

58:52

Pretty

58:52

crazy.

58:54

They hadn't. Could you imagine if a

58:56

group of people were kept in one small area until

58:58

they needed a passport to the other area or they

59:00

could be arrested? Can you imagine

59:02

if we read this book and then let

59:04

it happen again? Anyway, so

59:07

then the punch line of this story is that they are

59:09

booked to DJ at a Jewish school

59:11

and because they like don't really understand the implications

59:13

of the Holocaust or what the name Hitler means to

59:16

Jewish people, he's DJing and then the

59:18

dancers come out and they're like, go Hitler. And

59:21

the Jewish people flip out but he like doesn't understand

59:23

what it all means. He thinks they're offended

59:25

by their like sexual dancing. Yeah,

59:27

he's like, oh, these white people are mad that black people are

59:29

dancing sexually at them. He like doesn't realize

59:32

that chanting go Hitler is like fairly

59:34

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1:01:07

So Benny explains another neighborhood in

1:01:09

South Africa called Alexandra. Alex

1:01:12

started out as a squatter settlement where blacks gathered

1:01:14

and lived when coming to Johannesburg to find work. What

1:01:16

was unique about Alex is that this farmer sold plots

1:01:18

of land to some of the black tenants that in the time when it was

1:01:21

still legal for black people to own property. So while

1:01:23

Sophia Town and other black ghettos were raised and

1:01:25

rebuilt as white suburbs, Alex fought

1:01:27

and held on and asserted to its right to exist. Wealthy

1:01:30

white suburbs like Fanton grew around it, but

1:01:32

Alex remained. More and more squatters came putting

1:01:34

up makeshift shacks and shanties. They

1:01:37

look like the slums in Mumbai or the favelas in

1:01:39

Brazil. And so he talks about how this

1:01:41

neighborhood, because it was pinned in on all

1:01:43

sides from wealthy white neighborhoods,

1:01:46

it never was able to flourish and expand. So it

1:01:48

just like kept building on itself. And

1:01:50

people just kept adding more and more shacks to the backside of those

1:01:52

shacks, growing more dense and more compressed,

1:01:54

leaving close to 200,000 people living a few square

1:01:57

kilometers. Even if you go back to day, Alex hasn't

1:01:59

changed. change. It can only be

1:02:01

what it is. So that's a little context for

1:02:03

what he calls the cheese boys, which is the group of people

1:02:05

he hangs out with kind of at the end of high school.

1:02:08

As we said, we kind of skimmed it, but in high school,

1:02:10

he works as this interim buying people food

1:02:12

and selling bootleg CDs. And then when

1:02:14

one of the kids who was wealthy graduated,

1:02:17

he actually gave Trevor, his CD

1:02:19

writers, so that he could kind of cut out everybody and own

1:02:21

the full means of production. And he was able to really

1:02:23

start making some dough. He was like, I had $50 a week,

1:02:26

which is to this day, what some like maids

1:02:28

make as a salary. So he's like, it was a lot

1:02:30

of money for a teenager who had no real expenses.

1:02:33

And he goes on to say like, this just shows that

1:02:36

whole give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach

1:02:38

a man to fish, he can fish for the rest of his life. He's like, no, but you also

1:02:40

need to give him a fish pole. It's not that he didn't

1:02:42

have to work hard. And it's not that he didn't have the smarts, but somebody

1:02:44

had to give him the tools it took

1:02:47

to succeed. Like he didn't have the seed money.

1:02:49

And he's like, you really have to help people and like give

1:02:51

them the things that they need to help themselves

1:02:53

and I'll just like tell them about it. Yeah. So

1:02:56

he's starting this business where he's burning

1:02:58

CDs and he at some point

1:03:00

is able to trade up for better CD writers

1:03:02

and he's really like cranking out CDs.

1:03:05

And then he graduates high school. He's not going to college. He's

1:03:07

not taking a year abroad. He doesn't know to do so he kind of hooks up

1:03:09

with his friend, Bongani, who is a short

1:03:12

bald, super buff guy. He wasn't always that

1:03:14

way. He used to be skinny, but then a bodybuilding magazine

1:03:16

found its way into his hands and changed his life. Physically,

1:03:19

this guy is from the town Alex that we just described

1:03:21

that has this is like an electricity. Everything is outdoors.

1:03:24

Everyone's running around so much is happening. People are just running

1:03:26

to and fro and then all of a sudden it'll explode

1:03:29

in violence. But then it kind of just comes back down. It

1:03:31

is like a lot of poor people, but it is a community

1:03:34

and it's people who are doing the best they can but

1:03:36

don't have a lot. So they start hustling through

1:03:38

Alex where at first it's just CDs, but then

1:03:40

they start trading other electronics and they would buy

1:03:43

something off of one person flip it for more money.

1:03:45

They would cut deals. They would sell things

1:03:47

on leeway. They started having so much cash that

1:03:49

they were like loaning out money a loan

1:03:51

shark and getting it back with interest. So if they would sell CDs

1:03:54

in the morning and with the cash that they had, they would

1:03:56

go around and loan it to moms. They

1:03:58

were so good at knowing that the value of everything And so he says

1:04:00

sometimes like, you know, a mom couldn't pay back, but what

1:04:02

she did have was a daughter that she didn't let go

1:04:04

out. And he'd say, well, why don't you let your daughter come to a party

1:04:07

with us? Because you know, this guy who likes her, that

1:04:09

guy would give you some beer in exchange for the

1:04:11

right to talk to the girl. And other

1:04:13

people would buy beer. It was just like a whole thing. And

1:04:15

he's like, but at the end of the day, it was so much time

1:04:17

for such little margins when you really look at

1:04:20

it. Yeah, like they were flipping things

1:04:22

into a lot more money than they were worth. So they were spending

1:04:24

so much time like having to talk to everyone and know

1:04:26

everything and know everyone and like everything that's going

1:04:29

on. It started as a gap year to make money for college.

1:04:31

And he was like, I was never making money for college.

1:04:34

I also don't think he was ever planning on going to college. Yeah.

1:04:37

When I look back on it, that's what hustling was. It's maximal

1:04:39

effort put into minimal gain. The hood is

1:04:41

also a low stress, comfortable life. All your mental

1:04:43

energy goes into getting by. So you don't have to ask yourself

1:04:45

the big questions. The hood was strangely

1:04:48

comforting, but comfort can be dangerous. The

1:04:50

hood has a gravitational pull. It never leaves you behind,

1:04:52

but it also never lets you leave because by

1:04:55

making the choice to leave, you're insulting the place that raised

1:04:57

you and made you and never turns you away. That

1:04:59

place fights you back. As soon as things are going

1:05:01

well for you in the hood, it's time to go because the hood

1:05:03

will drag you back in. It'll find a way. There

1:05:06

will be a guy who steals a thing and puts it in your car and the

1:05:08

cops find it something. You can't stay. You

1:05:10

think you can. You'll start doing better and you'll bring your hood

1:05:12

friends out to a nice club. And the next thing you know, somebody

1:05:14

starts a fight and one of your friends pulls a gun and somebody's

1:05:17

getting shot and you're left standing around going, what just happened?

1:05:19

So he eventually has to like sort

1:05:22

of back out of the hustle because his hard

1:05:24

drive gets completely fried because

1:05:26

a cop raids a party. The cop doesn't

1:05:28

understand Windows 95. And so he's like, turn off

1:05:30

the music. Actually my grandpa would have loved

1:05:33

him. He was properly shutting down all the programs

1:05:35

as opposed to when I was little, I'd always like turn it off.

1:05:37

Yeah. And my grandpa, oh my God, every week I would

1:05:39

go to my grandpa's house and he would be so frustrated

1:05:41

that I wouldn't properly shut down a computer. I was like, it doesn't matter.

1:05:44

I know. I always would just like push the button. So

1:05:46

anyway, my grandpa would be so happy with Trevor

1:05:48

Noah shutting everything down properly, but they

1:05:51

didn't understand why it wasn't shutting off right away. And

1:05:53

so he shot it in the monitor, try to fix things and

1:05:55

get it shut down quicker. Would you believe that didn't fix

1:05:57

a thing? It ended up blowing up the hard

1:05:59

drive and it never...

1:05:59

worked again

1:06:00

his entire music library was white.

1:06:03

So that kind of ends that and I

1:06:05

guess that's when he goes on to become a comedian but we

1:06:08

never hear another frickin word about his career. He

1:06:10

does not get into his career at all which I was very

1:06:12

shocked about. I was very curious about it.

1:06:14

I would love for him to like write another book. I guess this

1:06:17

one does have a very specific point of like what

1:06:19

he's trying to tell us. Yeah he's

1:06:21

trying to teach America about South Africa and I find it incredibly

1:06:23

effective. Me too but I would love to

1:06:26

get to know him next. Maybe over

1:06:28

dinner if you're around. So

1:06:30

then he gets into a story about like why his parents were

1:06:32

so hard on him. It's because they like want

1:06:35

you to not get yourself in trouble but he

1:06:37

still got himself in trouble. So his

1:06:39

stepdad was a mechanic and

1:06:41

at one point had his own garage but

1:06:44

could never keep it afloat and so then he had to sell

1:06:46

it because of debts and then

1:06:49

he was just fixing cars out of their garage

1:06:51

for years and so there's always extra cars and he would

1:06:53

always just steal them and then at one point

1:06:56

he got pulled over and there were cars that were

1:06:58

being fixed from customers and there were

1:07:00

cars that they just kind of had around

1:07:03

and this car had no owner. It had

1:07:05

no title so he was pulled over with a car

1:07:08

that had no title and he was not linked to

1:07:10

officially in any way and people

1:07:12

were stealing cars all the time in South Africa. They would just like

1:07:14

kill someone and steal their car. So now he's

1:07:17

being held on suspicion of murdering

1:07:19

someone and stealing a car. Like they have no reason to believe

1:07:21

that that's not what happened here and he doesn't

1:07:24

realize he's like in deep

1:07:26

shit and he refuses to call his mom because he's like

1:07:28

well my mom will be meaner to me than the cops will and

1:07:30

it's just like you might be charged with murder.

1:07:33

It never sinks in how serious this is

1:07:35

until like a cop takes him aside and is like you

1:07:38

are gonna need to get your defense in order before

1:07:40

you have your bail hearing because otherwise you're fucked

1:07:42

forever and like there's this whole thing

1:07:45

he ends up spending like a week in jail. He was like

1:07:47

it actually wasn't that bad and he's able to use his

1:07:49

multi-languages and like chameleon skills

1:07:51

to not really get fucked over in jail but

1:07:54

finally he at the point where he's like okay actually if this goes

1:07:56

bad for me it will be so bad and

1:07:58

he

1:07:59

has a cousin bail him out and like pay

1:08:02

for a lawyer. And then it turns out his mom

1:08:04

was paying for it the whole time. He thought he had like

1:08:06

tricked his mom into not knowing where he had been for a week.

1:08:08

And he's going back to her house, sitting down at her

1:08:10

kitchen table, telling her about all the fun

1:08:12

he had that week with his cousin. And she

1:08:14

finally says, boy, who do you think

1:08:16

paid for your bail? Who do you think paid your lawyer?

1:08:19

Do you think I'm an idiot? Did you think no one would tell

1:08:21

me? And then it turns out of course she knew. And she

1:08:23

says, I know you see me as some crazy old bitch nagging

1:08:26

at you, but you forget the reason I ride you so hard

1:08:28

and give you so much shit is because I love you. Everything

1:08:30

I have ever done is from a place of love. If

1:08:32

I don't punish you, the world will punish you even worse. The

1:08:34

world doesn't love you. If the police get you, the police don't love

1:08:37

you. When I beat you, I'm trying to save you. When they

1:08:38

beat you, they're trying to kill you. Which

1:08:40

is a mixed message.

1:08:43

Ooh,

1:08:44

I feel her love. Me too.

1:08:46

Interestingly enough, when she has another baby, she does not hit

1:08:48

that kid. Yeah. It turns out she

1:08:51

thinks hitting your kid isn't necessarily necessary.

1:08:53

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1:08:55

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Goods, we're all out of the ordinary. So

1:10:28

then he finally gets into his stepfather,

1:10:31

Abel, who pops up throughout the book, but he never

1:10:33

really dives in on it. Abel, they

1:10:36

liked, like he was a fun guy. The

1:10:38

problem is he's an evil guy too. And

1:10:41

so they had been dating and he had been like kind of an older

1:10:43

brother to him, but he knew he had something

1:10:45

in him that was fucked up. Abel really wanted to be liked

1:10:47

by people. He was very helpful and the community liked him and

1:10:49

he was nice and he was jovial. But he's like,

1:10:51

I saw the way that he beat up that 12 year old. There

1:10:53

is something in him that freaks me out. And

1:10:56

the mom finally goes, hey, I wanna tell you something, we're getting married. Instinctively,

1:10:59

without even thinking, I said, I don't think that's a good idea. I

1:11:01

wasn't upset or anything, I just had a sense about the guy, an

1:11:03

intuition. If I had known the word sister, then

1:11:05

I would have used that. There's

1:11:07

just something not right about him. I don't trust him. I

1:11:09

don't think he's a good person.

1:11:10

Trevor's mom and Abel get married and

1:11:12

they have a kid pretty early. Sangha

1:11:15

culture, I learned, so Abel was Sangha. Sangha

1:11:17

culture, I learned, is extremely patriarchal.

1:11:19

We're talking about a world where the woman must bow when greeted

1:11:22

by a man. Men and women have limited social interaction.

1:11:24

He, pretty early on,

1:11:27

tries to assert himself as the dominant

1:11:29

man in this house. And he's like, why the fuck would

1:11:31

you marry my mom if that's what you wanted?

1:11:34

He's like an exotic bird collector, she said. He

1:11:36

only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put

1:11:38

her in a cage. So I guess pretty early

1:11:40

on, things were looking bad. And they

1:11:42

tell the story about going to visit his family and the way that he

1:11:45

was so furious with her because she wouldn't show proper respect

1:11:47

by waiting on him hand and foot. And Trevor's

1:11:49

like, I liked visiting that family because in that

1:11:51

family, men don't do anything. So I got to hang out and

1:11:54

play video games while all my girl cousins had to clean

1:11:56

up. Yeah, the mom did not love that. So

1:11:58

one night, Abel and. the mom get into an enormous

1:12:01

fight. So he had an alcohol problem. He

1:12:03

had always smoked weed and when they got married, she was like,

1:12:05

you have to stop smoking weed because of God. And

1:12:08

they're like, big mistake. The weed was at least chilling

1:12:10

him out. The alcohol revved him up. So he replaces

1:12:12

weed with alcohol. So he would get like piss

1:12:14

drunk every single night. And there was like kind

1:12:16

of a difference between is he like so fucked up he's peeing on

1:12:18

the sidewalk and doesn't know where he is, or is he like

1:12:21

so fucked up he's gonna kill you. One

1:12:23

night he comes home, tries to make himself some food, falls asleep,

1:12:25

and they wake up to smoke and the kitchen

1:12:27

is on fire. When they get him up, the

1:12:30

mom is like screaming at him, you're not a man,

1:12:32

you're a child, I can't have a child for a husband, I've got to

1:12:34

raise my own children. Then out

1:12:36

of nowhere, like a clap of thunder when there were no clouds,

1:12:38

crack. He smacked her across the face. So

1:12:41

she goes down and comes back up and yelled at him again and Trevor's

1:12:43

like, don't do that mom, like it's only gonna

1:12:45

get worse. And so he hits her again. Let's

1:12:48

go, we're leaving. We ran out of the house and up the road. It

1:12:50

was the dead of night cold outside. I was wearing nothing but

1:12:52

a t-shirt and sweatpants. They go to the police

1:12:54

station where she says, I'm here to lay a charge. My

1:12:56

husband hit me. And they said, ma'am,

1:12:58

why do you want to make a case A? You sure

1:13:01

you don't want to do this? Go home and talk to your husband. Do you really

1:13:03

want your husband going to jail? And she keeps doing like, yes, he hit

1:13:05

me, he hit me and they keep saying. They said his life will

1:13:07

never be the same. I had never seen anything

1:13:09

like it. I was nine years old and I still thought of the police as good

1:13:11

guys. You get in trouble, you call the police.

1:13:14

I remember standing there watching my mom flabbergasted,

1:13:16

horrified that these cops had helped her.

1:13:18

That's when I realized the police were not who I thought they were. They

1:13:20

were men first and police second.

1:13:22

So they go stay with the grandparents for a little while

1:13:24

and then Abel comes and apologizes.

1:13:27

And then the grandma's like, okay, give him a second chance. And she's

1:13:29

like, no, he hit me. And she's like, well, other men

1:13:31

will hit you, but he apologizes. With

1:13:33

nowhere to go, she goes back. And then Abel is

1:13:35

a mechanic. And I guess he was very skilled and people came from

1:13:38

all over to use him specifically. And

1:13:40

they decided to buy out the garage that

1:13:42

he works at and call it Mighty Mechanics

1:13:45

and start it together. And it turns out they did

1:13:47

not know that when you buy a business, you buy it's

1:13:49

debt. I wouldn't have known that either. I didn't know that. So

1:13:51

they like run the books and it is bad.

1:13:54

They can't get out from underneath their debt. He's also

1:13:56

not good at business. Like because of

1:13:58

the debt, he's getting these. parts for a huge

1:14:00

markup. Everything's bought on credit. And then the other, well

1:14:02

he's an alcoholic. So he drinks away all the profits

1:14:05

instead of paying off the interest. And so the debt

1:14:07

keeps going up of his own accord as well. Then

1:14:10

my mom sold the house that she had bought and put the

1:14:12

money into the business as well. She went all in, she gave up everything

1:14:14

for him. From that point on, we lived in the garage.

1:14:17

There were times that they had so little money they were eating

1:14:19

like worms. Yeah,

1:14:21

so at this point, the mom has sold the house and

1:14:23

invested in the business. They are living at the garage. Trevor

1:14:25

sleeps in cars every night. So like showering

1:14:27

in the sink, they have no money for food. At one point, the mom

1:14:30

quits her job to work for the business and run

1:14:32

the books, but then Abel gets jealous because

1:14:34

she is doing a good job running the business and people

1:14:37

are like, oh, your wife is so good at the business. And

1:14:39

he feels emasculated by that

1:14:41

comment. So she doesn't

1:14:44

get to do it anymore. And finally, she just gets another job.

1:14:46

She buys a new house and is like, fuck this. At

1:14:49

this point, he brings up that she never hit his

1:14:51

younger brother, Andrew, who was nine years younger

1:14:53

than him and the baby she

1:14:55

had with Abel. And he says, I grew up in

1:14:57

a world of violence, but I myself was never violent

1:15:00

at all. Yes, I played pranks and set fires and broke

1:15:02

windows, but I never attacked people. I never hit anyone. I

1:15:04

was never angry. I just didn't see myself that way. My

1:15:06

mother had exposed me to a different world than the one she grew

1:15:08

up in. She brought me books. She never got to read.

1:15:10

She took me to the schools that she never got to go to. I

1:15:13

immersed myself in those worlds and I came back looking at

1:15:15

the world a different way.

1:15:16

I saw that not all families were violent. I saw the

1:15:18

futility of violence, the cycle that just repeats itself,

1:15:20

the damage that's inflicted on people that they

1:15:22

in turn inflict on others. I saw more than anything

1:15:25

that relationships are not sustained by violence, but by love.

1:15:27

Love is a creative act.

1:15:28

When you love someone, you create a new world for them. My

1:15:30

mother did that for me and with the progress I made and

1:15:32

the things I learned, I came back and I created a new world

1:15:35

and a new understanding for her. After that, she

1:15:37

never raised her hand to her children again. Unfortunately,

1:15:39

by the time she stopped, Abel has started. So

1:15:41

then he explains the first time that Abel ever

1:15:44

beat him. And it was because he forged

1:15:46

his mom's signature on a school document. His mom wasn't even

1:15:48

mad about it. She was like, oh, why didn't you ask? I would have signed

1:15:51

it. But then Abel is like, why did you do that?

1:15:53

And he just starts beating

1:15:55

the living daylights out of him. It was the most terrifying

1:15:57

moment of my life. I'd never been that scared before. ever

1:16:00

because there was no purpose to it. That's what made

1:16:02

it so terrifying. It wasn't discipline and nothing about

1:16:05

it was coming from a place of love. It

1:16:07

felt like something that would end when he wanted it to end

1:16:09

when his rage was spent. I never trusted

1:16:11

him again, not for a moment. So

1:16:14

Abel and his mom end up having this like kind of on

1:16:16

again, off again. So they got a divorce for

1:16:18

their finances, but they did stay together.

1:16:21

And at a certain point, they live in different rooms. I

1:16:23

think they stay together. It seems mostly

1:16:26

for Andrew. Yeah, for the children.

1:16:28

And also because she has nowhere else to go. Nobody

1:16:30

will help her. Her family keeps telling her to stay. And I guess there's

1:16:32

this real understanding of, well, it's not better

1:16:34

out there. But eventually she gets a promotion

1:16:37

at her new job. She's making better money. His

1:16:40

garage becomes like a hobby almost.

1:16:42

He was supposed to pay for Andrew's school fees and groceries,

1:16:44

but he started falling behind on even that. And soon my mom

1:16:46

was paying for everything. She paid the electricity,

1:16:48

she paid the mortgage. He literally contributed

1:16:51

nothing. That was the turning point when my mother started

1:16:53

making more money and getting her independence back. That's

1:16:55

when we saw the dragon emerge. The drinking got

1:16:57

worse. He grew more and more violent. There was an undercurrent

1:16:59

of terror that ran through the house, but the actual beatings

1:17:02

themselves were not that frequent. It was sporadic

1:17:04

enough to where you think it wouldn't happen again, but frequent enough

1:17:06

that you never forget it was possible. He

1:17:08

said Abel kicked the dogs to Fufi mostly.

1:17:11

Panther was smart enough to say away, but dumb,

1:17:13

lovable Fufi was forever trying to be Abel's friend. Fufi

1:17:16

wasn't dumb. It turns out that

1:17:18

Fufi also like didn't have a sense

1:17:20

of feeling. So if you kicked her, she didn't

1:17:22

feel it. So she was just dust and

1:17:25

numb and didn't know that she was getting kicked.

1:17:27

And then that was mean. He says

1:17:29

that because Abel was so well liked in the community, he always

1:17:32

got a second chance. The able who was likable

1:17:34

and charming never went away. He had a drinking problem, but he was

1:17:36

a nice guy. We had a family growing up in

1:17:38

a home of abuse. You struggle with the notion that you can love

1:17:40

a person you hate or hate a person you love. It's a strange

1:17:42

feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is

1:17:44

good or bad, where you either love them or hate

1:17:47

them, but that's not how people are. So

1:17:49

he's kind of under the impression that his mom is

1:17:51

going to leave when Andrew turns 18. And

1:17:54

then her mom lets him know that she

1:17:57

got pregnant again. She had moved back into Abel's

1:17:59

room. It was like, like one night where they made up and

1:18:02

she got pregnant. And he's furious.

1:18:05

The weird thing is she had her tubes tied.

1:18:07

Like we don't know how she got pregnant. They thought it was crazy. She

1:18:09

was 44 and pregnant with tied tubes. I

1:18:11

guess I didn't tie him tight enough, but he literally

1:18:14

was like, I was boiling with rage. All we had

1:18:16

to do was wait for Andrew to grow up and it was going to be over.

1:18:18

And now it was like she had re-upped the contract

1:18:20

and he was so mad.

1:18:22

So he leaves home, he moves out.

1:18:24

And she's understanding. She goes, honey, I know what you're going

1:18:26

through. At one point I had to disown my family and go live

1:18:29

on my own too. I understand why you need to do

1:18:31

the same. So he leaves and

1:18:33

then he doesn't really

1:18:35

spend that much time with his family until one day he

1:18:37

gets a call. He's living with his cousin. And

1:18:39

he's like, I'm traveling all over the world at this point. Yeah,

1:18:42

so he just kind of skips ahead. He's quite successful

1:18:44

it seems. And he gets a call from Andrew.

1:18:47

His mom has been shot. So at this point, his mom

1:18:49

had actually left and got a new husband.

1:18:51

That's also kind of glazed over. But

1:18:54

one day they get home from church and Abel

1:18:56

is waiting for them in the front yard and he shoots

1:18:58

the mom once in her leg. It

1:19:01

was actually her butt and once

1:19:03

in her neck. And so he thinks

1:19:05

his mom is dying. Like he has no idea what's going on. He's

1:19:07

breaking down. Andrew's breaking down. Isaac is only four.

1:19:10

So he's not really sure what's going on. It turns

1:19:12

out Abel had like taken Isaac after the

1:19:14

shooting and dropped him off at a friend's house and

1:19:16

then like, take care of Isaac. I'm going to go kill myself.

1:19:19

And he went around to all of his friends and family and

1:19:21

we're like, hey, here's what I did. I just

1:19:23

tried to kill everybody. I killed my wife. I'm pretty sure

1:19:25

I'm going to go kill myself. And then finally a cousin

1:19:27

is like, you're a coward. You're a coward. You

1:19:30

did it. You think you're man enough to kill. You need to go be

1:19:32

man enough to handle the consequences. So they

1:19:34

drop him off at the police station where

1:19:36

he admits to killing his wife

1:19:38

or ex-wife. He shows up

1:19:40

and says, I'm going to kill all of you. Andrew jumps in front

1:19:42

of him and is like, don't.

1:19:44

I'm going to kill you. And Andrew's like, he really will.

1:19:46

So he gets out of the way. And then his mother jumps

1:19:48

in front of the gun next so that the rest of the family can

1:19:50

run away. He shoots her in the butt. She

1:19:53

falls to the ground. And then he's standing over

1:19:55

her and tries to shoot her again point blank

1:19:57

in the head. The gun misfires. four

1:20:00

times the gun misfires, she's able to get

1:20:02

up, she gets in the car and as she's trying to drive away,

1:20:05

he shoots her, he gets her in the back of the

1:20:07

neck. It goes in through the back of her neck and out

1:20:09

through her nose. Yeah, so somehow

1:20:11

it avoids every major artery, it shatters her

1:20:14

cheekbone and like clips a flap

1:20:16

of her nose off. And here's some most

1:20:18

American parts. So she's in there bleeding

1:20:20

to death, they don't know how bad it is yet and they come out and they go, we

1:20:22

just heard that your mom doesn't have health insurance, we're gonna have to take her to

1:20:25

a state hospital. And they're like, state hospital? She

1:20:27

was shot in the back of the fucking head, you can't put her in an ambulance, she's out

1:20:29

of hospital, do whatever it takes. He's like, here take my

1:20:31

credit card, whatever it takes. And she's like, it could get really

1:20:33

expensive. And he's like, it's literally my mom and she's

1:20:35

like, it could be 3000. He's like, yeah, that's my mom.

1:20:37

And she goes, but what if she's in the ICU? What if she's here

1:20:40

for a while? It could maybe even be millions, you could be in

1:20:42

debt for the rest of your life. And then he's like, really? That's

1:20:45

a lot of money. He's like, I thought about it. He's like,

1:20:47

you know, you think you're doing anything for your parent, but then you think millions?

1:20:49

Would that even make her happy? Who would take care of my brother? And

1:20:51

he goes, no, okay, anything, do anything. And

1:20:54

so then they go and it turns out it actually wasn't even

1:20:56

that expensive. She sent four days in the hospital. Literally,

1:20:59

the doctor goes, I don't like to say miracle, but

1:21:01

the fact that it Mr. Verdebrae missed all of

1:21:03

her major arteries, Mr. Medulla Blangata,

1:21:06

and all she had was a tiny little rip through her nose.

1:21:08

It was in and out perfectly clean. They still have the bullet.

1:21:11

My mother was out of the hospital in four days. She was back

1:21:13

at work in seven. That's

1:21:15

insane. And when he's like, mom,

1:21:17

why don't you have health insurance? She's like, I have Jesus.

1:21:20

And he's like, but Jesus wasn't gonna pay the bill. And she goes, Jesus

1:21:22

gave me you and you did pay the bill. So

1:21:25

anyway, here's the most horrific fucking part of the whole book. This

1:21:28

is like an addendum at the end. That's where it ends. She

1:21:30

looks at him and starts laughing and says, the good news is now you're

1:21:32

the most beautiful one in the family. Hilarious.

1:21:34

Love that. I'm laughing. I'm

1:21:37

not traumatized at all. So

1:21:39

they later find out what happened. And basically,

1:21:42

there was that little baby, Isaac, the third

1:21:44

son, I guess, because Andrew got

1:21:46

in the car with his mom and they drove to the hospital together.

1:21:49

Isaac has just been left. They're like, fuck, where's that little

1:21:51

one? Isaac's four at this point. Abel

1:21:53

had grabbed him and taken him to the cousin as we learned. And

1:21:56

I guess in the car, the little kid goes, dad,

1:21:58

why'd you kill mom? because I'm very unhappy,

1:22:01

because I'm very sad. Yeah, but you shouldn't kill mom.

1:22:04

So he dropped him off, he turns himself

1:22:06

in, because he had no priors

1:22:08

for domestic violence, because

1:22:10

every time she tried to file, the police said no. She

1:22:12

actually went to the police to try to file against him more

1:22:15

than once. Yeah, multiple times they always said, go home,

1:22:17

that's our friend, you can work it out,

1:22:19

what did you do? So because he has no priors, and

1:22:22

because he was apologetic, he

1:22:24

gets three years probation. And the kicker is because

1:22:26

they said, well, we can't send him to jail, he has three kids he has

1:22:28

to look after. Meanwhile, he had never paid a dollar for them.

1:22:31

The case never even went to trial. Abel pled guilty

1:22:33

to attempted murder, he was given three years probation,

1:22:36

he didn't serve a single day in prison, he kept joint custody

1:22:38

of his sons, he's walking around Johannesburg today, completely

1:22:40

free. The last I heard, he still lives somewhere

1:22:42

around Highland North, not too far from my mom. What

1:22:45

the fuck? Can you fucking believe

1:22:47

that? And that's where the book ends. I

1:22:49

mean, this book was so interesting, so

1:22:51

well done. I would love like more on

1:22:53

Trevor. I think he will write a second book. Me

1:22:56

too. And now that he's left The Daily Show, I bet he has time.

1:22:58

We should reach out to him. We should see if

1:23:00

he needs any of our contacts at publishing.

1:23:03

Okay, final thoughts? Love him, love

1:23:06

the guy.

1:23:07

Great book. How fertile was the soil?

1:23:09

I would say four and a half

1:23:11

out of five. I'd give it five out

1:23:14

of five. I guess it is like a fertile story,

1:23:16

but again, I feel like there is so much of

1:23:18

him that is like yet to be tilled.

1:23:21

I feel that he gave me enough that I don't need

1:23:23

him, I got a lot else. Okay. And

1:23:25

then, would you like to have a drink with him? Yeah, five out of five, it's

1:23:27

gonna be fucking sloppy. I

1:23:30

would not like to have a drink with him, but I'd like to walk

1:23:32

by the big window where I see him and Ashley chatting

1:23:35

at the bar and go, oh boy.

1:23:37

Uh oh.

1:23:40

And Ashley, who else would you like

1:23:42

to get a drink with? I would love

1:23:44

to cheer with some of our five star wormies,

1:23:47

you sweet gorgeous gorgons. HJFits93,

1:23:50

I wanna throw an absolute fit about

1:23:53

how much I adore you. Helldog56789,

1:23:55

you are a dear. to

1:24:01

me, one of the dogs, Trisha Smiley

1:24:03

Face, this review gave me a smiley face.

1:24:06

Miss Judy, I don't really call people

1:24:08

Miss and Mister, but if you want to

1:24:11

teach a class, I would take it. Oh,

1:24:13

I think that's all for new reviews this week,

1:24:15

but I freaking love you guys. Thank you so much.