What Now? with Trevor Noah - Between the Seasons: Stories from a South African Childhood

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

As we gear up for our new season launch on September 18, we’re taking a trip down memory lane with some of our favorite stories from Trevor’s childhood in South Africa.

Before the new season begins, we return to where Trevor's story was first written, South Africa. In the laughter and struggles of childhood lie the roots of who he became. These are the tales we gather now. Our journey begins where Trevor's family always begins. again with prayer in the townships prayer was more than faith it was identity a reminder of where you belong this is the awkward part how you start a conversation it's the worst part of every conversation why don't we start with a prayer this is actually why our grandmother started meetings with prayers oh yeah the cut the awkwardness yeah because it's to cut the awkwardness

because now you can't just come together and be like your son has a drug problem and your our husband is cheating. If you start with a prayer, then it opens it up. But it was also a township power move. Because everyone here will know whose house this is. Because you can't lead a prayer. You can't lead a prayer at somebody else's house. When you pray in a South African household, right?

First of all, like, I don't know if your grandmother did this. My grandmother used to give her address and she used to give like where she's from and her name and everything. No, my grandmother did that. No, really? My grandmother would do that. She'd be like, by way to Samazudan, Francis, Noah. And then she'd be like, slalala, yeah, 6-2-6, Orlando East. Yeah, who you are, where you're from, whatever.

And I remember I asked her once, I was like, why are you doing this? And then she was like, why do I assume he knows where I am. Yeah, she said, she said, Trevor, I must just assume that God is always listening to me. She said, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not fair. And if you think about it, most South African, like, prayer in general, I think is very, like, considerate of God. It's very much like, we know that you're doing stuff and we know that, like, you know what I mean. Yeah, but I think because of missionaries, we never, as black people thought that God is. with us. God was brought to us.

So we always have to identify ourselves and also separate ourselves from the non-believers. It's funny. Now that you say the missionary thing, I actually think a lot of that was real. Is that like, because I always think about this. I go like, imagine

being a black person anywhere on the continent, right? These people come with religion. Right? And then they tell you that the reason things are going bad in your life is because you don't have this god in particular because there was religion there were different religions all over the continent all over south america all over these places they would force um you know the native people that they would force them to buy goods from them that nobody else wanted to buy

at predetermined prices they would say they would do the work of like donkeys and mules and all of that stuff but the main thing was they also came in with religion so everywhere in the world i can see this this vibe where people have come in with religion saying to you hey all these bad things that are happening to you are because you don't worship God and then it must have been weird because the natives are like you are the bad thing that's happening to us they're like yes

exactly if you had prayed and you have penicillin this wouldn't be happening to you but I thought you didn't need penicillin because you can pray hey Trevor go put on clothes it's not cancer time yet

Trevor's my moved to its own rhythm, some sort of disorder yet. It was a gift, a gift that once left him shoeless on the side of the road on his way home. My record with my mom, the story that she keeps bringing up is one day I came home from school. I had no backpack and I had no shoes. Come on. And then my mom said to me, and my cousin always tells a story as well, because he says, that day, I got one of the all-time beating.

And he says he remembers, like, watching me going, but this could have been avoided. He was also a child, but he was like, he says he watched me, and he thought to himself, but he could have avoided this. And what had happened was, I came home. And apparently my mom was like, where's all your stuff? And I said to her, I said, the bag got heavy. Put it down.

So I put it down. I literally left it on the side of the road. Very logical. To me, logical. And then she said, and what happened to the shoes? and I said the shoes were new and I didn't want to finish them so I left them somewhere close to school

so that I don't have to wear them out on the way home because you know like your shoes would get worn out on the sides right? Like we couldn't afford new shoes the same way other kids could so I noticed kids always had like a flat heel on their shoe Look at how observance you are though Exactly and then my shoes had the slant That looked terrible

So I was like okay if I can preserve my shoes Then I won't get laughed at as much So I'll leave the shoes near school and then walk home barefoot. And we went back and everything was where it was, which means my plan worked technically. Technically. Yeah, but she couldn't understand. And my brain, I remember thinking this made sense. To me.

To me, it makes complete sense. Yes. As children, Trevor and his friends turned the streets into playgrounds, claiming space where none was given. He remembers how community can be built from nothing, but bricks. And courage. I think the truth is that we think we don't have the third spaces, but it's just because we've made every space a private space. I was just thinking this walking around like parts of Brooklyn the other day.

I've noticed a dip in how many block parties there are. Just that was a simple event where you close the streets. You agreed. Neighbor at the end, neighbor at the end, we all agree. on Saturdays we are going to close our block and everyone's going to just open their door and like walk out and the kids can kick a ball and can hit a ball and I've seen a few parts of New York

where they do it now like this is like in Manhattan by the way like Chelsea somewhere there I remember driving one day and I was irritated because I was in the car trying to get to an airport and the road was closed but I loved the fact that like I saw like someone hitting a ball a baseball and then people running the whole street

was just closed and I was like oh we've been tricked into thinking the thing that's right outside our door is not a third space. No, but that's not a third space. That's a home. Third spaces are like actual, I'm talking about parks, libraries. They have decimated them. I'm with you.

And I'm telling you that when I grew up, they didn't exist. Black kids couldn't go to a library. There was no park. During apartheid, none of this exists. But I have the full childhood that you're talking about. Because the third space was the streets. Okay, I get what you mean. If your grandmother told you.

You travel around the world, sometimes you don't see girls, but you always see boys playing in the street. Yes, the third space is the street. Yeah, that's right. So you go, you tell the kids, go. Okay, we need to get rid of these SUVs. I would let my son play in the street if Americans didn't have these huge off cars. You know, and you see?

If he runs in front of the car. Yes, but that's what I mean by close the street. Yeah, yeah. So I go, I would love to live in a society where we go. Like, we used to do this on, I wish I could like take you to the picture in my brain. We as the kids ran the street as if we were adults. So we would close the street with bricks. You take the responsibility.

Yeah, we would take bricks and we would put them at the beginning of each road and close each road. And then when a car would need to turn into the street, because this is like a road, you know, it's not a public, I'm not talking about like main roads. So if you're listening to this, I'm not going to permission to do this. This is an informal thing you did. Yes, I'm not talking about a highway. I'm not talking about like... In your neighborhood. Yeah, your neighborhood.

It was a township, but it was still a neighborhood. We put bricks there. A car would need to turn. There would be kids stationed at every corner and you'd shout, Coloi, you know, car. And then you'd run there together, you'd move the bricks, everyone would clear the road. The car would drive either through where it needs to go to

or it would like stop at the house that it's stopping at, and then we'd put the bricks back on the road, and then we'd continue playing. Because I agree with you. I'm not saying like go play in the street, but I'm saying sometimes we look at problems in life. And they seem insurmountable because we're looking at them the wrong way.

Okay, no phones and no this and no, and now are we going to build third space? How much is a third space? Where do you get it? How do we build a park? Do we get permits? Guys, everyone, if you are lucky enough to have a house, if you're lucky enough to be renting a space of you,

you literally have the third space right outside your door. You just have to claim it back. You literally just have to claim it back collectively. In his home, drugs and drink were shadows never touched. But one day, Trevor's mother offered him a cigarette and a sip, teaching him that even temptation could be faced with honesty. I think about growing up and my perception of drugs. So I didn't touch weed my whole.

Okay, so I'll even take it before even like drugs, drugs. My mom doesn't drink, my mom doesn't smoke. My dad doesn't drink, my dad doesn't smoke. So I grew up in a home where that wasn't a thing, my grandmother, etc. And my mom said to me when I was, was 13, 12, 13, maybe even younger. She came to my room and she had cigarettes and she had beer. And she said to me, do you want?

And I was like, oh, this is a trap. Obviously, this is a trap. And I was almost disappointed. And I was like, come on, lady, I'm not going to fall for a trap like that. You're going to come into my room and offer me cigarettes. And she was like, do you want, do you want to try them? And I was like, no, because these are bad things and we shouldn't. And then she said to me, listen, you're going to encounter alcohol.

You're going to encounter cigarettes and things. So if you're going to use it, I would rather know that you use it and then you use it at home. And then I don't worry that now you're out in the world using it, you know, hiding it from me and then getting into situations where you can't share that you're using it. Harm reduction. Exactly. It's amazing. Which is wild.

I mean, my mom is like super religious and super strict. super very progressive yeah and so then she didn't even know how to like light a cigarette so we had to go to an uncle of mine and then he was like treva what's it and she said he wants to try cigarettes and the guy's like okay want to smoke and he gave gave us the cigarettes and I puffed with him and I was like this is trash this is so I was like how is the taste in your mouth you know what I mean it tastes like someone's like eating everything disgusting and then farting it into your your your oral cavity and then the alcohol beer just tastes like like old water that has you know dribbled down a sewer into I'm a bad brink I don't like I don't like it so I didn't like any of that

and then drugs was almost in the same category for me because of that in initial experience yeah okay yeah in fact drugs the way I grew up was you are a loser you are going to end your life that's how I knew that hasn't changed now that was just when you got up that's how I knew drugs That's all I was told. These are the things that will happen when you take drugs. So I didn't touch weed. I smoked weed for the first time when I was 21. Okay.

That's how like anti-drugger. I used to judge people and I would look at them and I would say to them, it is a pity that you've chosen to do this with your life. I used to say that to my cousin. In South Africa, thinness was not beauty. Not at all. It was struggle. To gain weight was to be blessed.

Trevor recalls. how the meaning of a body can change, depending on where the story is told. I think that one of the things that our whole fascination with Ozumpik is based on is, and it's interesting, you know, Christian, I wonder if you have thoughts with little kids, right? Part of beauty is thinness, as it's taught to you from a really early age, like fatness, queerness, darkness, all of these things are like coded as signs of deviance. Like, you learn as a really young child in Disney movies, in anything, like, beauty is really coded as morality and there's this Protestant work ethic thing, right?

It's something that you should achieve through hard and punitive work and discipline, right? And when people use Ozzympic, it's like, you cheated. You skip the hard work part, you know? And so you got the thing we demanded of you, but now we find this a vaguely immoral thinness. Like you worked hard to achieve the right thing. Okay, I hear you just say it's funny because I don't know how it was for you growing up But so I have had an interesting journey with weight and how I perceive it and fatness, et cetera Because I grew up in South Africa genuinely growing up this is such a weird thing to try and explain to people in South Africa

You did not get made as much fun of if you were fat like so like a fat person you just be like I mean I don't even remember if we had that many names but I remember all the ones for skinny people people were sticks man zanza it was that was my favorite ones sticks man zanza skinny manili it was like there were all these names where it was just like you you're a twig you're thin you and it was a sign there of of a lack of having yeah if you got married and you didn't gain weight people would say that your marriage is not going well literally they'd be like is your wife not treating you well ah man ah ah no man look at you if i would come home from the states And like many times I would.

I'd come back from America and I gain weight. And so whenever I go home, people would like, ah, you're looking good, man. You're looking good. America's treating you well. You're looking Trevor, no, man. You're looking good. Look at your cheeks.

You're looking good. And so where I grew up, fatness was considered like sort of a choice. And then being skinny was like, well, your life is not going well and you're not making the right choices. For sure. So it's interesting how it flips, you know,

and I'm sure it's time as well. As a child, Trevor learned that even authority could be questioned. Around the dinner table, disagreement birthed new ways of seeing. He explores how questioning can spark creativity. There's some classic research looking at families. looking at what does it take to raise a creative child? And it turns out that creative children come from families more often than not that had regular arguments and disagreements.

Really? Yeah. So if you want to raise a creative kid, you can at least increase the probability. I'm not sure if it's causal, but by arguing with your spouse a little bit more. What do you think that is? I have an idea, but I'd love to do what you think that is. Well, I want to hear your hunch before I tell you what I think, because I've been thinking about this for a long time.

Okay, so here's what I think it is. I think the reason children who grew up in houses that are a little more argumentative might be a little more creative is because they're existing in an environment where there isn't one way to think. And so what happens is they're both stumbling on what I like to call third thoughts, right?

I had this idea when I was working on the daily show with my team. And I'd say, I think everyone has a thought, right? And then like you can have a second thought, in by yourself. But I think there's this elusive third thought that can only come from two different thoughts clashing together and forming a third thought that isn't from one specific place. And so I think if you are watching people who don't agree as a child, people who you generally love or you care for, et cetera, you are listening to a person and you are agreeing with them

maybe or just seeing their point of view. You're looking at another person agreeing with them and seeing their point of view. And then maybe you are holding both, including a third, which might be yours, which is another opinion of it, and that might force your brain to think of more things than just the things that exist, which I think is what creativity fundamentally is. I love this. Okay. So your theory is cognitive complexity comes from seeing people argue that you don't default.

I need to remember all the – you make some of my ideas sound way smarter and fancier than they are, which I like, cognitive complexity. Write that down. All right. I just give you terms for things you already know. Okay, okay, cool. I also think you learn to be a nonconformist through that same process. Oh, interesting.

That instead of just defaulting or deferring to whatever an authority figure tells you, you realize, well, there are two different authorities in the room, and they don't agree. And you, I think that can both lead to cognitive complexity, but it can also lead to more courage when it comes to challenging the status quo. Because there's not a right answer coming from above. There is not one coming from above. Yep. you know it's funny you say this my mom is very religious extremely extremely religious but i also

think she is one of the most progressive thinkers i've ever come across in my lifetime and one thing i always noticed as a child was how sometimes she would disagree with the sermon that the pastor gave when we'd leave church and i'd be like huh and i'm just a kid i'm just sitting in the passenger seat listening and she goes i didn't agree with that i didn't i didn't i didn't i i didn't i i i i i i i hear where the pastor was coming from, but I think he was, that, that story of Joseph is not about, and then she'd go into her thing and, and then I'd be like, but he's the pastor. And she's like, yeah, he's a guy who reads the Bible. He's not God. Yeah, but he's not God. He's like, we also have the Bible. And it was an interesting way for me to view, even religion is going like, huh,

don't assume that the person who stands on the pulpit has like a monopoly on knowledge. Yeah. You too have the book that you can read. And so now, Now, that makes me wonder now. I'm like, huh, was that part of me, you know, would, okay, I like this. I like it too. I mean, you can see both of those effects playing out. Yeah, yeah, definitely. You're not just going to assume that the pastor's answer is gospel.

Right. And then you're also not going to be afraid to question what somebody in power says. Trevor was part of the first generation to sit in classrooms across color lines. A fragile experiment, very fragile. If I'm to be honest with you. shaped by apartheid's shadow. He recalls what it meant to grow up in that moment of change.

You know, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, Dale, and we were talking about how at our school, they had a program where, because we were the first generation that was like, literally, you and I were the first generation, how old are you, Dan? 31. 31, yeah. So we were the first generation

of kids that went to school with kids of a different race. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally, I sometimes think about how crazy that was when I go like, literally, the first year in my school, that there were black kids, Indian kids, colored kids, with white kids. That was the first time that had ever happened. You guys were round one. You were the first child. We were literally.

All an experiment could have gone so wrong. Our teachers had never seen a black child in front of them in a classroom before. Our parents had to wear their Sunday best for the first drop off. Drop off. Our parents didn't even know what a drop off was. I mean drop off. Life. No, but just think about that as a concept.

I remember being shocked that when I went to school, kids were dropped off by their parents in a vehicle that they owned. Like one child got out of one car. Meanwhile, when the black kids got there, it looked like a circus trick. We were like one car and they'd open a door. So many. You're 15. And that's how we just traveled around.

The back of every bucky, the back of every van was all of us. You know what I mean? But that exposure, like our school had this program where they went. We want every kid to go and stay at another kid's house who they're friends with. They weren't even like, they don't like a stranger. But they said, hey, you guys are friends. But it was a deliberate program. Yo.

Yeah. It was amazing to see. Talking about like exposure therapy. It was amazing to see how the black kids weren't particularly surprised by what they experienced because many of them had moms who were working for. white people. So they had seen a glimpse of a white life. That a sense of it, yeah, for sure. Let me tell you something. Every single

white kid who went to go and live with a black family for a weekend, every single one of them went home and said the same thing. They said, mom and dad, do you know how black people live? And not in like a righteous way. Just as like a child. Like a curious way.

Like a 14 year old, 15 year old. They went, yo, do you know how they live? Do you know how they come to school every day? Do you know that they have to take three buses to get here with other people with strangers do you know that they don't have hot water in the morning at their house you you have to make a fire and then heat it up and then they call that out and then you have to do it again for each person and they have to you know they don't have their own bathrooms you know that their toilets outside i go to school with this kid i see

myself as his direct like competition in that way yeah but i'm going how is he doing math when he woke up like that. In the spinning of a simple roundabout, young Trevor found joy in bringing people together. He uncovers how that childhood game revealed the purpose guiding his life. Oh, yeah. Okay, tell me an early, specific happy childhood memory, something I can relive with you. An early, specific, happy childhood memory. Damn, this is an interesting one.

Let me think, because there's many. How old? Give me an age and I'll tell you. I don't care. No, but when does childhood end? Forties two. Okay. No, I'm being serious, though.

When you're a child, like under, you know, in school. Okay, my early childhood memory. One of my happiest childhood memories is me playing. The only one who's ever asked me, what do you mean by childhood? Yes, because I think your memories at different ages are very, yeah. Definitely an early specific childhood memory. Yeah, so, okay, when I think of Young, one of my favorite memories was playing on the roundabout

at a park near my house. This is something, a specific time, not just a thing you did. No, no, no. This was a specific one. Okay, yeah, go on. And we were all seeing how, we were all teaming up. I got a bunch of people together to see how fast we could make this thing spin.

But like it was, it was a monumental effort. Do you know what I mean? Because everyone had to be at the right place, swinging the thing at the right time to get it our goal was to make it fly that was the dream we thought if we spin it hard enough

it's going to take off and this was a but that was one of my when I think back I go like wow what a day what a day and of all the amazing things you had happened in this magical childhood

that you've talked about what specifically was it about this one thing that stands out so much that you want to talk about it now it's collaboration I chose the people I was doing it with

we didn't pick the random kids who in you had no coordination because the things are going to smack you in the hands right so we got the strongest fastest smartest like you know most affable we put the people together and we were like this work so it wasn't like if you were the small kid then your job might have been to be more on the inside if you were the big kid your job was to push but we put people together and it matched in many ways right and the most important thing funny enough simonick

the most important thing was that we were having fun and i mean this genuinely we were having we had a purpose but man we were having fun so you so so now what i'm doing is is I'm looking for the connection between those things and saying, okay, that's the common factor, right? Which is where you find great joy is when you can bring the right people together to do something that matters and have a ton of fun doing it.

And that's sort of your purpose in life, which is to bring people together, to do something bigger than themselves and have a good time doing it. And if everything you do in your life, is that, is that, is that, is that, Yeah, we also call a merry-go-round. And everything in your life was like that roundabout,

that is what a game on is. Yeah. And so the opportunity for you is to remind yourself of that, right? So whether you get a Lego merry-go-round or a picture of a merry-go-round or just that merry-go-round... Oh, this is... I like this. I like sentimental things. Right? The merry-go-round is, it's your, it's your talisman. It's the thing that reminds you of why you get out of bed today.

All you want to do in life is work tirelessly to create the merry-go- around, right? And the thing is, is because you have vision, we're going to make this thing fly. Yeah. Okay? So people go, huh? And you go, you, you, you and you. Yeah. Okay. And now they're all coming in and you're having a blast. And whether it succeeds or fails, it didn't fly. It did not fly. It did not fly. It did not fly. So it actually failed if we're really honest with ourselves. But it didn't matter because it was the joy of the together and the fun, even with the vision that made it worth. You. You never said at any point, and I fricking nailed it. No, that's not the point. Right? The point wasn't the result.

No. The point was the people coming together. The outcome is a bonus. I always say this. The outcome is a bonus. And so this chapter ends. Childhood stories fade, but their lessons remain. Carrying us until we meet again. Thank you.