The Reality of Fiction with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [VIDEO]

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Speaker 4 Like I always said, and I I mean, this is something that I learned in South Africa, because we have such a large Nigerian population.

Speaker 4 I always go, like, Nigerians were the first Africans who taught me to believe in myself. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Like, every other African that I met always had like a certain level of, like, how are you doing? I was like, ah, I'm okay.

Speaker 4 You know, I'm fine. Like, you know, we even say in South Africa, you'll be like, ah, I'm Yang Nang, which means like I'm almost like I'm begging.
I'm begging my way through. I, yeah, you know, I make

Speaker 3 I try.

Speaker 4 I, you know, and Nigerians, I remember like, literally, we're the first ones who are like, you're not trying, you're doing

Speaker 3 you are doing it.

Speaker 4 What do you mean you are trying? Are you not winning?

Speaker 3 And I was like, I mean, yeah, I mean, they're like, no, you are winning. Don't say you are trying when you are doing it.

Speaker 4 This is What Now

Speaker 4 with Trevor Noah.

Speaker 3 How are you?

Speaker 3 I'm well.

Speaker 3 I'm tired. Tired? Tired?

Speaker 2 You don't look tired. You look great.

Speaker 4 You look fantastic. But wait, wait, tired from life or tired from...
No, I've always feel like you should ask people because sometimes we ask people, how are you? Then they'll say tired.

Speaker 4 You think they mean they haven't slept. But what they mean is I'm exhausted tonight.

Speaker 3 No, you don't. They're about to take their own life.

Speaker 4 No, I don't know why we not don't think of it like that.

Speaker 3 No, I'm on book tour. I've been traveling.

Speaker 3 That's what I mean.

Speaker 3 I just assumed you would know that that's what I meant.

Speaker 4 I don't assume anything when people tell me how they are.

Speaker 2 Some people find it invigorating, like going on the road, talking about their work. Okay, all right.

Speaker 3 No, it's true.

Speaker 2 We have people here that are like, I don't know.

Speaker 4 Some people are, they're just like, they are, they're like, I love getting out there and meeting the people.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 I do.

Speaker 3 I mean, but after five days of doing that when you haven't really slept, and I don't sleep well when I'm traveling, I don't sleep well in strange places and in hotel rooms. And

Speaker 3 I left Seattle at 4.30 this morning. Oh, okay.
Yeah, then you should be tired. Yeah.
So, so I'm not at all suggesting that I don't like meeting my fans because I actually do. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But no, it's, but it's a good problem to have.

Speaker 4 So sometimes I think the phrase good problem robs us of our ability to like feel what we're feeling. Like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Sometimes people will say it to you almost like you're not allowed to feel something because of the position you're in relative to another position.

Speaker 2 So you have to be grateful for the problem.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 People be like, wow, but these are good problems. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's just a problem.
Just say it sucks.

Speaker 3 I don't think it needs to be a good one.

Speaker 4 And I mean this for me. I'm just

Speaker 4 completely projecting, by the way.

Speaker 3 But I think it depends on the context, though. I think for me, it's a way of saying it is a problem.
Yes.

Speaker 3 But I kind of like that I have the problem. Okay.
Which is to say that I kind of like that people are interested in the book, yeah, right? If they weren't, I would not be traveling for the book, so

Speaker 4 but I don't think, well,

Speaker 3 yeah, but I think when you say a good problem, you're already saying the problem part, no?

Speaker 3 I think if somebody said that to me,

Speaker 3 I would not take it well. Okay,

Speaker 3 you do not get to decide for me what my goodness is. Oh, no, no, then we're on the same page, yeah.
Okay, no, no, no, no, no,

Speaker 2 because sometimes there's like this human, you have to embrace humility, you have to like coach, couch everything you say, And yes, it's this, but but I'm grateful.

Speaker 3 You know, that thing that you have to do. But sometimes you're like, traveling sucks.
I hate hotels. I don't like the food.
I don't lose my family.

Speaker 3 I don't do that fake. Okay.

Speaker 4 Oh, by the way, we'll port you a fresh one if you want it.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Right now, we port it.

Speaker 4 It's up to you.

Speaker 3 I got this from Seth Meyers. Oh, God.

Speaker 4 Christiana and I were chatting earlier about,

Speaker 4 first of all, your name and the fact that

Speaker 3 you are

Speaker 4 i think in many ways a dying breed right you you said you said a beautiful you said a literary giant yes a literary you just go chimamanda and people are like oh oh wow okay

Speaker 4 one name yeah it's like it's like being beyoncé but in the world of books do you do you know what i mean there's no denying any type of art that comes with fame then comes with the pressure and in a in a weird way I feel like art

Speaker 4 for the most part, not to be highfalutin about it, but like art is almost supposed to be like bumping up against things all the time it's it's sort of it's accepted but not accepted challenging but you know but still accessible it's it's like it's like in this weird space how do you feel about your fame relative to what you're doing like do you do you feel it hinders you or do you feel like it it it liberates you neither but hold on so but do you think so are you suggesting that fame means somehow that that fame corrupts art so i think what happens oftentimes is fame interferes with how art can be perceived.

Speaker 4 That's what I think it does, right? So I'll speak through the lens of, let's say, stand-up comedy alone.

Speaker 4 Any comedian who's like worth their salt will tell you the difference in how an audience perceives a perspective or a joke when the person, when the comedian is famous is very different.

Speaker 4 Because now they're not listening to what you're saying. They're trying to listen to it through the lens of them having a perception or an idea of who you are and where you are in relation to them.

Speaker 4 So they don't go funny, not funny, insightful, not insightful. They'll go,

Speaker 4 that's stupid for you. And I'm like, what do you mean that's stupid for me? If I told, I would have told that joke 10 years ago, although I like that style of joke.

Speaker 4 And they'll be like, yeah, but come on, you're Trevor Noah. And I'm like, no, no, you see, that's where I feel like you're making the mistakes.

Speaker 2 Like if you make a joke about traffic, people are like, well, you can get a helicopter, which I often say. Exactly.

Speaker 3 You love standing.

Speaker 3 You love standing up. No, but I mean, yeah.
I think of it like,

Speaker 4 you know, and sometimes we only afford this to artists, for instance, let's say actual painters when they're dead.

Speaker 4 I love how much gravitas is awarded to, let's say, Picasso for a random napkin sketch.

Speaker 3 People are like, oh, look at this, Picasso's sketch.

Speaker 4 And you're like, guys, it's like a stick figure.

Speaker 3 Yes, but even in it, you can see it hearkens to

Speaker 3 his view of the world.

Speaker 4 I'm like, guys, the guy was just sketching on a napkin. Yes, but it was Picasso's sketch.
Do you understand what I'm saying?

Speaker 4 So, how do you feel about it?

Speaker 3 About fame, I

Speaker 3 don't think about it really.

Speaker 3 I mean, but here's why. I think of fame

Speaker 3 and it's such a strange thing. I don't even know what to do with my face.
And I'm saying, I think of fame.

Speaker 3 It's kind of live to me.

Speaker 3 And I'm more honest, just think of, but it's just,

Speaker 3 I don't think of,

Speaker 3 I think that when I'm writing fiction, because that's, for me, there are distinctions. in what I do and in how much they mean to me.
So fiction is the thing I love.

Speaker 3 Like I really think it's my vocation. I think it's the reason I'm here.
I really believe that. I really believe that I have an ancestral gift.
So, with fiction, nothing else matters.

Speaker 3 When I'm writing, I'm not, I'm not, I don't remember that I'm supposed to be this famous person when I'm writing fiction.

Speaker 3 When I'm done writing fiction and I'm editing it, and someone else is sort of, you know, there's an editor looking over it, that's when I sometimes have to think about the audience.

Speaker 3 But even then, I almost never change anything. Because for me, fiction is almost, it's sacrosanct.

Speaker 3 I don't think about my audience, it's truly almost magical honestly but the other things i can tell when people are bullshitting me when people say i love your work and i'm thinking no you don't right you actually don't but

Speaker 4 have you told anyone that some yes i love that oh wow i love that that is the most nigerian thing i've ever come across

Speaker 3 no i mean i'm sitting next to this is like wow

Speaker 3 no i mean this is amazing you know but but i think it can be a good thing right for someone and usually

Speaker 3 it's my wonderful Nigerians. Oh, Jimanda, I love your work.
And so I said to him once, I was like, which one have you read? He said, I've read them. I said, which one have you read? He's like,

Speaker 3 the one about Biafra. I said, okay, what happened?

Speaker 3 So he starts laughing. So he starts laughing.
And then he tells me, I'll read it. I'll read it.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 when it's non-Nigerians.

Speaker 3 You know, usually I can tell, but then I'm slightly gentler because, you know, sometimes non-Nigerians don't know how to handle the sort of Nigerian directness. Yes.
But I think in general, because

Speaker 3 I wanted to be read, I've always wanted to be read. And I really do feel very grateful.
You know how you said people have to say that, but I am actually quite grateful to be read.

Speaker 3 But I think fame was never a thing that I sought.

Speaker 3 And in some ways, also, because I'm not on social media, because sometimes I'm still surprised. I'm just like, oh, so that person actually knows me.
So I'm not,

Speaker 3 yeah, it doesn't occupy me.

Speaker 4 Was that an intentional choice to not be on social media?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 What was it?

Speaker 3 Self-preservation.

Speaker 3 So not in a high-minded way, by the way. Just because I know that I will get into fights with people and it will not end well.
So I thought.

Speaker 2 So you're the person you would reply if somebody acts you and says to me.

Speaker 3 Oh, I would find where you live and come to your house.

Speaker 4 You know, that's how we met.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wait, what? How

Speaker 3 crazy.

Speaker 2 When Trevor first got his job at the Daily Show, he had

Speaker 2 a guest on that I didn't agree with that I thought he shouldn't have had it. I stand by that.

Speaker 3 Does this guest have a name perhaps?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Tommy Loren.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it was like a super viral interview and there was lots of reactions. And

Speaker 2 credit to Trevor. He came across tweets where I was critical of him in a very respectful way, I think.

Speaker 3 I was kind of

Speaker 3 how you were critical?

Speaker 2 Not critical. I was just discussing, I was

Speaker 2 just, I was discussing the fact that he'd had this guest on his show. And because he disagreed with me, he followed me.
He was just like, I don't think she's right.

Speaker 2 Because he stands by what he had to interview, which I love about him.

Speaker 3 And he,

Speaker 3 someone reached out to me, was like, oh, Trevor's, Trevor Noah's a fan. Do you want to, what have you thought about working at the show?

Speaker 2 And the Nigerian in me was like, ah, this man is trying to trick me

Speaker 3 and tell me off. That's the first thing I told my parents.

Speaker 2 I was like, I got this email. I think this man is trying to trick me and he's holding a grudge because I said he should have had that girl in.

Speaker 3 But there was like that. No, but I see why, though.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 But it was, but we'd engage in a few conversations where he was like, you know what, you've made me think I don't necessarily agree.

Speaker 2 We had a few exchanges, not disrespectful ones, but like, Trevor's very kumbaya. But I'm a child of Biafra, so I always want to fight.

Speaker 2 So there is that, I think there's that, not tension, but normally bring different things to yeah, it's how we approach it completely great.

Speaker 4 I think like what I connected with you on was most important for me is like, I, and you know this, even till this day, I don't care about agreeing with people, but I love a well-structured argument.

Speaker 4 I love an idea that makes me think. Yeah.
And then something for me to butt up again. I actually find it boring when people all hang out in a group and agree with each other.

Speaker 4 I personally think we're losing a lot of that. Yeah.
You know, like we live in a world now where we go, I don't agree with you, so it's finished. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, no, but guys, if I was to get rid of everyone in my life who I didn't agree with on an issue, I would have no one in my life.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Yes. This is a gospel that needs to be preached more in America.

Speaker 4 You think in America particularly? Yes.

Speaker 3 This is not the case in Nigeria, for example. And I would argue in most of Africa, people know that you can disagree with a person and still have a relationship with them.

Speaker 3 I think what's happening in the US is a kind of, you know, this kind of practice of purity, this kind of,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 you have to have these particular views, otherwise, and then the moralizing of opinion. So

Speaker 3 somebody feels a certain way about something, it's not just that you think they're wrong, it's that you think that they're bad people.

Speaker 3 And I think that that moralizing then means like, because you think this way, you're a bad person and I cannot talk to you and you cannot be in my life.

Speaker 3 I think it's a particularly American thing. I really think so.
And it's quite contemporary. I mean, it's recent.
I came to the U.S. in 97.

Speaker 3 I don't think America was like that when I came to the US. I think it's recent.

Speaker 4 Do you find it like that?

Speaker 2 Well, I came to America in 2014. And I say this a lot.
And maybe I'm coming from like a Western lens of being in the UK and communicating with my friends in the UK.

Speaker 2 I think in the UK also, people are wearing their politics more or whatever, their label of whatever you identify as, whether the Republican, Democrat, socialist, or whatever.

Speaker 2 And that is being at the front of a conversation in a way that is tainting how you can experience a person in real life. Yeah.
In a way that I didn't feel when I first came to America.

Speaker 3 When you first came?

Speaker 2 When I first came. Yeah.
Because remember, I came when Obama was still in.

Speaker 3 You're not wrong, actually. Yeah.

Speaker 2 When I came at the tail end of Obama, everyone assumed Hillary would win. And to be a Trump voter was a very quiet thing.

Speaker 2 I mean, we only discovered there were so many voters when the guy won because everyone was, it was just those red hat people over there you never thought it was the people around you and i think there became this scrutiny after trump mummy did you vote for him did you vote for him i think you voted for him like that suspicion yeah or people who weren't in active mourning that hillary wasn't president and then it it changed changed the timber of our interactions in a way that i don't think we've recovered from or gone back to and i think that's even deepened now in his second term

Speaker 4 and and You know, I always try and grapple with this. I try and figure out, especially now because I spend more time in South Africa than I've done over the the past 10 years.

Speaker 4 So when I was doing the daily show, most of my life was just in America and in the US, I couldn't really leave much. And now I get to spend more time going back to South Africa and traveling around.

Speaker 4 And one of the biggest things I've realized is in America, more than most places I've been to, people wear their politics as their culture. But where I'm from, your culture is your culture.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Do you know what I mean? So no one would dare say where I'm from, I am a Republican or I am. No, no, no.
I'm Qhasa. I'm Zulu.
I'm Tuana. I'm Peggy.

Speaker 3 But that's also because our politics in Africa is not ideological, though.

Speaker 4 Oh, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 But it's not, though. I mean, is there in South Africa a party that you could say is on the left and on the right and in the center based on their policies?

Speaker 4 You know, now,

Speaker 4 I know it sounds crazy, but because of Trump,

Speaker 4 they're emerging in some ways.

Speaker 4 But previously, there wasn't, let's put it this way, all the major parties in South Africa will have very similar um promises or ideals they just have differences on how they believe they're going to get there so most of them wouldn't argue that health care is a right they all go like no no we everyone should have health care and there should be free education and but then they'll argue about the permutations of how to get there to you and i think that you know in agreeing with what you're saying yeah but i'm just thinking about what i think that this kind of polarization even that word i don't like i think it preceded trump interesting i think think Trump made it worse, but do you, I mean, I think it was,

Speaker 1 I felt it with Trump.

Speaker 2 Maybe, maybe, maybe that's a result of like the bubble I was in myself. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I just think we're in a time where people feel really defensive about what they believe and there's not much step base for negotiation.

Speaker 4 I felt a lot of that reading your book.

Speaker 2 Which we actually read, by the way.

Speaker 3 You did read it. I loved it.

Speaker 4 I loved it so much. Oh, I loved your work.
Your book was fantastic.

Speaker 3 I loved it.

Speaker 2 I love that one you just.

Speaker 3 No, no, I read it.

Speaker 4 Cover to cover to cover. This is how much I read it.
I remember the first, maybe like the first 50 pages. I thought it was a, I thought it was like a memoir.
I know this is crazy to you.

Speaker 4 Please don't get me wrong. I opened and I was like, oh, is this like your nickname? And are you telling me your real story? No, I'm being serious.
And then I start here.

Speaker 4 I started Googling your father. I was like, oh, I knew he did statistics.
I didn't know that he was this mega rich person. And I was like,

Speaker 4 I was like, yeah, and I was like, what do I not know about this person that is now changing how I see this guy reading the book?

Speaker 3 And nothing that I'm Googling is coming together.

Speaker 4 No, because I think in the way that it's written, it really felt like a personal account. You know, from how, like, most of the time, when I, when I read a novel, it is told sort of third person.

Speaker 4 Then she went and did this. Then they were.
This felt like a me story from the beginning.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're immersed into this world of COVID. Yes.

Speaker 3 COVID and the people arguing with families that you then went to Google to wait, this doesn't sound right.

Speaker 4 No, I was, I was, but I would love to know what inspired

Speaker 4 or like

Speaker 4 because you live in a world of fiction, you can go anywhere.

Speaker 3 Yes, because you

Speaker 3 do know that there is such a thing as the first person narration.

Speaker 4 No, no, I do, I understand this, I understand this completely. But what I'm saying, oftentimes, the first-person narration isn't so closely tied to the author.

Speaker 3 I love that you find it so amusing.

Speaker 3 no i i'm just saying for me but also it's a wonderful compliment can i just say that because it means that you so believed this world that i created only for the first 50 pages

Speaker 4 by the time we got once we started getting to like zecora's story and once we were in like you know what i mean kadiatsu's story that i was i was like okay i'm i knew what was happening give me some credit but i'm just saying for the first first 50 i was like this is a very i even was planning my first question to you was going to be like how do your friends feel about the stories you've revealed about them?

Speaker 4 The things you've said about their sex lives. I was like, wow, I mean, Africans are generally conservative.

Speaker 3 How can you? Africans are so private.

Speaker 4 I was like, you've told this, your closest friends, the sex that she's having with her husband. And, oh, wow.
And the fact that he ravaged her in a way that she had never been.

Speaker 3 I was like, damn, this is.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 2 He said that it felt like sneaking into a diary entry.

Speaker 4 It really did feel like that. Initially.

Speaker 4 So I would love to know the why, because you talk about the world we're in now, and you mentioned it as well. How much of the world we're in now influences or influence this book?

Speaker 4 You know, in you going,

Speaker 4 I think, like, why is the book set in and around COVID? It takes place right before COVID and then into COVID and then sort of out of COVID. Why does it take place then?

Speaker 4 Why does it take place, you know, at liberal American universities? Why does it take place in this moment in time? Is what I'd love to know.

Speaker 3 Because I'm interested in this moment because I think, well, COVID,

Speaker 3 COVID is,

Speaker 3 I think for a writer, COVID is gold, because especially lockdown, lockdown was so surreal, so unique, so original that you cannot but use it.

Speaker 3 It's like perfect material because you can do anything with lockdown. And I think people reacted to lockdown in such different ways.

Speaker 3 So you kind of start with lockdown was your canvas and you can really do anything with it. So I remember, I'm not sure, I didn't set out to, I don't even think of it as a COVID novel.

Speaker 3 I think of it as, because COVID in some ways is, is only a,

Speaker 3 so you want a character who's looking back. You want a character who I'm very interested in looking back.
I'm very, I'm almost addicted to nostalgia.

Speaker 3 I'm kind of always, you know, and a kind of melancholy as well. COVID just felt to me the perfect setting to have that character look back.

Speaker 3 Right. So she's locked down, she's, she's alone in her house

Speaker 3 and she's she looks back so so i think if covet hadn't happened i suppose i would have maybe i would have made her fall sick and then be in hospital okay you looked at you wanted to isolate her to look back on her life yes okay yes

Speaker 3 it's not that i think that covid had any part

Speaker 3 well talk to the reader i was going to say i don't think covet has any particular meaning in the novel

Speaker 3 But I think it's to say that the sort of authorial intent was not to make

Speaker 3 COVID a character, really, but to make COVID backdrop.

Speaker 3 Because I think that COVID,

Speaker 3 I don't think I've written, if I, this is not the COVID novel, because I think there's just so much more that would have to be in it to make it the COVID novel, if that makes sense.

Speaker 4 What novel would you say it is then?

Speaker 3 Love, Dreams,

Speaker 3 A Certain Kind of Melancholy, longing. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think it's my most grown-up novel, which is to say that it's my most,

Speaker 3 the novel in which I'm most willing to

Speaker 3 acknowledge, even embrace uncertainty. And I don't need to have all the answers and

Speaker 3 I don't need to

Speaker 3 have it all together.

Speaker 3 I feel like I had a sense of responsibility with Half of a Yellow Sun, for example. And with Americana, I was setting myself free from being the good daughter of literature.

Speaker 3 I was like, I'm just going to do what I want, and I'm going to. And now I feel like I've grown up.
So dream counts.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, of course, it's also my diary, as Trevor said.

Speaker 4 It feels like it to me.

Speaker 3 It really does. That's the best thing I've heard in the world.
It really is.

Speaker 4 It feels, you know, and you know why it feels like a diary is to what you're saying about like love, right?

Speaker 4 Every single one of the stories in the book,

Speaker 4 I think, are in many ways an honest reflection of how we experience love in our lives. Funny enough, men and women.

Speaker 4 I was honestly intrigued by that part of the book. I was going,

Speaker 4 was it an intentional choice that you made?

Speaker 4 to sort of keep us blind from how the men were experiencing the love and only have it be how the women were thinking that the men were experiencing the love?

Speaker 3 Because I don't know how the men were experiencing it.

Speaker 4 Wait, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 Because it's a book about women's lives.

Speaker 2 So you that's interesting because, like, Darnell and you know, all of these horrible men in the book, their interior lives.

Speaker 3 They're so horrible.

Speaker 3 I found them.

Speaker 3 It's my reading. Okay, okay, okay.
Okay. What? I find a lot of them horrible.
Oh, come on. What did you find the most horrible?

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Well, you guys know I'm anti-men in general, but like.

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 you know my life is just filled with brilliant women yeah well okay because i have some pretty good men in my life and i don't know that i would i could have that rule are they like brothers family members

Speaker 2 friends yeah i just speak to them during the night between nine to five so really back to trevor's question what who did you

Speaker 3 yes we know that you're okay so

Speaker 2 In terms of who disturbed my spirit the most that like left me vibrating a bit, Kwame.

Speaker 2 and that's because i'm postpartum myself and those scenes of zikora like knowing her mother in a new way because of the vacuum of that man not being there was really beautiful to me because i've me and my friends talk about all the time like it took us becoming mothers to actually see our mothers as girls and like it's just it's a dialogue we're constantly having um

Speaker 2 kwame because of how he behaved and how his family behaved that created a resentment i'm like that's a that's not an honorable person so like to me that's like a a horrible man.

Speaker 3 That's lovely.

Speaker 3 No, I love that you're thinking about such things as being an honorable person. Yeah.
Yeah. I think the whole idea of being in love is that you, you are not, in fact, sophisticated.

Speaker 3 I mean, there's a kind of lowering of your, just every imaginable

Speaker 3 barrier and guard that you have when love happens, I think.

Speaker 3 And Kwame,

Speaker 3 um,

Speaker 3 okay. I mean, could we have some empathy for Kwame? I don't know.
Oh, interesting. Tell me,

Speaker 2 Can you go into that a bit more?

Speaker 3 I would love.

Speaker 4 No, I'm now intrigued. Yeah.

Speaker 3 No, I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, I don't know what happened.

Speaker 2 But on the empathy point, when people listen to this after they've read the book,

Speaker 3 why would what would evoke empathy? I mean,

Speaker 3 I think the question with Kwame would be why?

Speaker 3 I mean, what do you think happened? Something, I just feel like something must have happened to him.

Speaker 3 Speaking of trauma and trauma response, maybe it was a kind of exaggerated trauma response.

Speaker 4 This is what i felt while reading the book as as a man okay i felt like it was

Speaker 4 and i i'd love to know your perspective as the author but it's like

Speaker 4 everyone sees love from their point of view you know yeah everyone in every story that they tell makes sense from their point of view so whenever someone's telling me their love story I've met very few people who tell me the love story where they are the villains in it.

Speaker 4 I meet very few people who are aware of the elements that they contributed. And I'm always intrigued by that.
I'm always intrigued by how people will tell you a love story where

Speaker 4 they've just been slighted. The world has done them wrong.
They just keep bumping into these wrong characters. And I'm like, yeah, I know this may be true, but

Speaker 4 that's only one half of the story.

Speaker 3 But is this... Do you mean women and men? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Huh. Yeah, completely.
You don't agree? No, I'm just curious. So men tell love stories about how

Speaker 3 they were completely...

Speaker 4 I think the difference with men for the most part is

Speaker 4 because we aren't really comfortable with our emotions and naming them and we don't spend as much time in them, especially with our friends, we may, I think we, we will water them down or we'll compress them into a simple feeling like anger.

Speaker 3 I'm angry.

Speaker 4 You know, we'll very seldom say like, I felt ashamed. We'll very seldom say like, I felt inadequate.
I felt, no, we'll, it's just angry. You know, it's a simple one.

Speaker 4 But I think men will tell very similar stories similar stories to you know to to to the ones that I found in your book where I'll say to a man friend what happened yeah she was this and she was that and it wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna and I go like okay but what I understand you but what was the we

Speaker 3 right because every love story has to have a we in the same yes Trevor Boat and we I'm just worried that we're sort of going into the both sides territory.

Speaker 3 I think that there are some relationships where one person is the asshole. Oh, completely.
Yeah,

Speaker 3 that's completely true. And that asshole may not acknowledge that they were the asshole, but it doesn't mean that they're not.
I just feel as though, um,

Speaker 3 reading this book that's about women's stories, about men, I'm struck by how it's been out, um, I don't know, two weeks. I'm struck by how many people have said to me, What about the men?

Speaker 3 What about the men's stories? Which is what Trevor is doing. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I didn't say that.

Speaker 4 We can rewind the tape. I didn't say that.
I did not say that.

Speaker 3 You did. Don't you dare get me.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Speaker 4 like that you said how no you said how do the men no you said something about what what about the men's point of view i didn't say what about the men's point of view i would never say that what i was asking you because remember you're the author you're omnipotent so what i was asking you was if you chose to keep it opaque on purpose so you didn't give us the answers about why that happened the answer doesn't have to do with like the man's point of view but it's the answer nonetheless so many of the characters they don't know why it happened they they the person disappears but they never get the closure, they never get the answer, they're left with this ghost that haunts them.

Speaker 4 And so, what I was asking is, like, if you did that on purpose,

Speaker 4 I don't want to know, like, oh, but what was his version of it? I'm more intrigued by why you left us with characters that were sort of unresolved in the answer that they were looking for.

Speaker 4 That's what, like, I found

Speaker 4 like a hook. Does that make sense? And I think there's a difference between the two.

Speaker 3 No, there isn't. Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 That was very cleverly cleverly done. But no, because, but anyway, it doesn't matter because I'm, I'm,

Speaker 3 it just struck me because I think that there is a kind of expectation we have, I think, that

Speaker 3 in reading, that we maybe even unconsciously,

Speaker 3 that we still look for the men, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 I think if it were a book about men telling their stories, that I don't think as many people would have asked me, well, but what did the women think?

Speaker 3 Hmm.

Speaker 3 I would have. Not that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, you definitely would have.

Speaker 3 But we all know that you're different.

Speaker 3 But anyway,

Speaker 3 so Trevor,

Speaker 3 what else do you want to know?

Speaker 4 No, I want to know everything.

Speaker 4 I would actually like to know as well, like,

Speaker 4 you know, and maybe it's because of Christiana's, like, I mean, just presence in my life as a person.

Speaker 4 I think you were, other than my mom, probably the woman who's given me the most insight into the like, just like the nitty-gritty of like, like, ugly womanhood, if I'd call it that, you know, as ineloquently as unvarnished, completely.

Speaker 4 And this book, in a really weird way for me, felt like an extension of the conversations I've had with Christiana.

Speaker 4 And like when we're talking about the inner workings of a woman's body and how it's quote unquote betraying her in some ways and how it's not doing what it's supposed to do for her.

Speaker 4 And then like even the frustration, you know, there's, there's one.

Speaker 4 There's one line which I'll misquote, but it was essentially something to the effect of how, I forget which character was saying this, but but they were basically saying there was almost like a resentment in the fact that their future and the dream and the life they were looking for was tied to men they couldn't achieve that dream without the man being attached to them yeah and one of my favorite lines is the character that they basically says when you marry when you get married they leave you alone even if you divorce them i'm like this is brilliant Nigerian logic, but it's the truth.

Speaker 3 Because like, so my friend just said, I just got married for freedom freedom from the question from the judgment oh because your family leaves you alone yeah yeah now you're in your husband's house i'm not even going to complain about the things you do because you're under his dominion right right right so to speak and it's and often you're actually not you know but it's a perception people have right so you're in your husband's house nobody knows what you're doing what sort of life you actually have So for many women, it's a kind of freedom, really, in a strange kind of way, in a perverse kind of way.

Speaker 3 Obviously, we want to live in a world where a woman doesn't need to do that to achieve freedom.

Speaker 3 But if you live in a society that imposes that kind of thing on you, it would be nice to be in a society that doesn't impose anything on it. Yes, but that is the reality.

Speaker 3 Yes, which is why it can then be a kind of strange freedom.

Speaker 2 Which is so unvarnished, because that's not necessarily a thing, even as direct and honest as us Nigerian women are. It's what we'd say in a forum that is not private.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It was just like, I felt like in moments, you're in the inner sanctum of the things women say to each other that they don't tell other people that I sometimes tell Trevor.

Speaker 3 I felt like that about a lot of it.

Speaker 4 And I actually had that as a question as well. Was,

Speaker 4 you know, it's strange when it's a novel. I feel like when it's non-fiction, it sort of has a very direct approach.

Speaker 4 With fiction, like most art,

Speaker 4 it's at the discretion of the artist. How much are they revealing to you and how much are they not?

Speaker 4 How much of the book are you intending as a direct commentary on society and how much are you allowing to live in a complete fantasy? Like,

Speaker 4 are these rich africans on purpose are they interacting with like white liberals on purpose like and and if because i think you're very intentional i'd love to know like the why like what are you what are you hoping to reveal to us through those things like

Speaker 4 you know it becomes so much more complex but why do you choose it i don't know

Speaker 3 I really don't know.

Speaker 3 This is the thing about writing fiction.

Speaker 3 I don't like the why questions.

Speaker 3 Because there's a lot that's not.

Speaker 3 I am intentional. I hate that word, about

Speaker 3 lectures and essays, right? I can tell you

Speaker 3 what I had in mind for

Speaker 3 The Danger of a Single Story, for example. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But with fiction,

Speaker 3 it's different. It's

Speaker 3 so rich African.

Speaker 3 Because it's true. I mean, because I'm interested in...
So I think I write about things that I'm interested in, obviously, right?

Speaker 3 So when you talk about academia, American academia, I'm interested in that. It's also a world I kind of know know because I've spent time there.

Speaker 3 And so I can write about it with a kind of authority and authenticity, I think.

Speaker 3 But it's also because I'm interested in all of the

Speaker 3 permutations of American academia. I think DreamCount,

Speaker 4 I don't like the why questions.

Speaker 3 I think you could say that DreamCount is, I think in some ways it's part satire, especially the bits that are about academia. Okay.

Speaker 3 Right. But I think as satire always does, there's truth there.
Like I'm kind of holding up a slightly mocking mirror to certain things that happen.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I mean, there's also, obviously, I'm writing realism. And so

Speaker 3 it's kind of, you know, when you say

Speaker 3 people who read Dickens,

Speaker 3 and there's a sense in which you could say reading Dickens can give you a clearer sense of London at the time, clearer than reading history.

Speaker 3 I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, So I kind of like to think that that's what I am doing with my fiction, which is

Speaker 3 I'm creating art, but there is of course also a kind of social and political component to it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But I'm not, I don't set out to,

Speaker 3 I like to think that my points are more blurred in my fiction.

Speaker 3 So in other words, if I had to write an essay about American academia, I think it would be very blunt.

Speaker 4 We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

Speaker 2 I'm interested because

Speaker 2 we kind of started this where we're talking about, you know, you don't look at the fame, you don't think about audience for fiction.

Speaker 2 For fiction, are there moments when you're writing fiction when you're like, that feels, I can't go there. Never.
Never.

Speaker 2 So you it's kind of there's a fearlessness that comes with yeah the fiction yeah i call it a radical honesty okay and that's the only way that i can feel

Speaker 3 happy fiction really makes me happy when it's going well really makes me happy and and i can tell when and i you know there are a few times in my life when i've held back in my fiction and i i can tell okay you know i can tell that i am

Speaker 3 in some ways it's like letting yourself down i can tell can you say when you felt you held back in some of the stories in the thing around your neck, I think that I, you know,

Speaker 3 I held back in a way.

Speaker 2 Why did you? I know you don't like the why questions, but why did you?

Speaker 3 No, this is a different one, different kind of why question.

Speaker 3 I guess because

Speaker 3 I just felt like maybe I just shouldn't go there. Maybe I shouldn't be as honest as I think.
Maybe I shouldn't let this character be its full self in a way.

Speaker 3 His or her full self. I don't know.
But anyway, the point is, I think if I learned anything from doing that, it's that it just doesn't make me happy. It doesn't feel true.
It doesn't feel authentic.

Speaker 3 So some of those short stories I don't like, actually.

Speaker 3 But no, dream count, no. I don't hold back.

Speaker 4 I go where the character takes me.

Speaker 3 It's a revelation.

Speaker 2 You have some very direct.

Speaker 3 Yes. But I also think I feel so strongly about literature and about fiction.
I think it's our last frontier.

Speaker 3 This is, it's only in literature that we can learn things that we cannot learn anywhere else. So journalism cannot tell us about human motivation.

Speaker 3 Journalism cannot go deep into like the terrain of the human heart, which I think is really key for almost everything in the world. I mean, I really think the psychology of people

Speaker 3 can explain so much about the world. I mean, just the psychology of the people who are in leadership positions, I think, you know,

Speaker 3 journalism can't do that. Politics doesn't do that.

Speaker 3 To write non-fiction, especially about other people's lives, is to be constrained by certain things that you cannot possibly know. But I think fiction

Speaker 3 lets you just,

Speaker 3 it's the essential thing I think that we need when it's done well.

Speaker 2 That kind of as was done in this case. Yeah, and I was going to say that brings us to one of the characters in the book is based.
on a woman who exists in real life. Can you tell us a bit more?

Speaker 3 So, yes, inspired by her. The legal department of my publishers.

Speaker 2 Inspired by.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we need to use the right language. Inspired by.
Okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so inspired by. So I remember when I.
Did you follow the story of Dominique Strauss Kahn? I didn't actually. I didn't.

Speaker 4 No. I now went and read up.

Speaker 4 It wasn't, I don't think it was really that big in South Africa when

Speaker 2 it was big in the UK. It was big in Europe.

Speaker 3 It was a big story. Yes, and in the US.
I mean, until the case was dropped. So this woman who was from Guinea and who worked as a hotel housekeeper accused him of raping her.
So

Speaker 3 she walks into the room to clean it, and there's a naked white man running toward her.

Speaker 3 And I remember when I first heard about it, I was just riveted by it. And it was also very melodramatic.

Speaker 4 He was arrested.

Speaker 3 He was already inside the plane, about to fly to Paris,

Speaker 3 where he would then have started his campaign for president. It was almost a done deal that he was going to be the next French president.

Speaker 3 And so he's arrested. And Americans, as is their want, did this very dramatic thing of parading him in front of journalists, which I hate.

Speaker 3 I just, I think it's a terrible thing.

Speaker 4 Why? Why is it?

Speaker 3 Because I think, especially when it comes to sexual assault cases, we really have to be very careful to get it right.

Speaker 3 Because the world is so deeply immersed in misogyny that there are people looking for the smallest reason to discredit a sexual assault case.

Speaker 3 And so you imagine the misogynists just

Speaker 3 aching to say things like, see, this is wrong. We don't know if you did it or not.

Speaker 3 You're already parading him i wish they had kept it very quiet i wish they had gone to court i wish they had found him guilty i wish they had publicized the evidence that would have made me very happy because then i think the story would have ended differently but anyway so he's arrested and he's let out on bail and then

Speaker 3 we're all kind of looking forward to the to the the trial and then at some point the case is dropped and the cases dropped because they said she had lied on her asylum application

Speaker 3 And I just remember thinking,

Speaker 3 I was just shocked. I really was.
I almost couldn't believe it. And also just the way that his lawyers talked about her.
They just kept repeating liar and lied, lied, liar.

Speaker 3 And for the average person watching this, your assumption is going to be that she lied about what had happened. And I think this was also very, I think they deliberately did that.

Speaker 3 But in fact, they said she lied about her asylum. And my thinking is what what we're saying to women is if you ever expect to get justice for sexual assault, then you better be perfect.

Speaker 3 Like, you better be sinless,

Speaker 3 which therefore means you better not be human because we're all flawed. I found it, it really,

Speaker 3 I felt hurt actually, and also very angry. So I wrote this very angry essay,

Speaker 3 non-fiction,

Speaker 3 very blunt, which was, you know, my point was this is bad. And I think I framed it in a kind of America is not not like our, you know, not like Nigeria, not like Guinea.

Speaker 3 In Guinea and Nigeria, the big man would probably not be arrested at all. So that America did this was wonderful.
I felt very heartened by it.

Speaker 3 But America has disappointed me and in some ways has failed this woman. But I didn't think I would write fiction about her.
I didn't plan to.

Speaker 3 So when I started writing this novel, again, a character came to me.

Speaker 3 And so I think it means that even without knowing it, I carried her with me. And then suddenly something drops into your life and changes it forever.

Speaker 3 For me, there was just a great sadness there. Like I felt,

Speaker 3 yeah, I felt so upset on her behalf. But anyway, so I wrote this character who is not really her

Speaker 3 because I've invented this character's past life.

Speaker 3 I've invented this character's interior life, but I have kept the one story about Nafisatu Jello, that's her name, the story that Nafisatu Jello tells about what happened in that hotel room, I've kept as close as possible to that version because I just think that

Speaker 3 it's in some ways I think it's a way of paying tribute to her, but also it's about so many women like her. It's about you know, women who are powerless and who are not allowed to have dignity.

Speaker 3 The way she was

Speaker 3 the way they talked about her, just

Speaker 3 it

Speaker 3 wounded my African spirit.

Speaker 2 My parents were

Speaker 3 it just painted me like it pained. It wounded me because I just thought this is so wrong.

Speaker 3 And even the interviews that, I mean,

Speaker 3 I kind of fictionalized it in the novel, but there's an interview where I'm watching her and I'm thinking, they haven't done this right. English is not her native language.

Speaker 3 And so you're asking her about something so intimate and so difficult in a language that she doesn't really speak well.

Speaker 3 It cannot go well. In some ways, you're setting her up to look as though she's lying.

Speaker 3 And I remember a friend of of mine who said to me at the time that she had watched the interview and she said, Oh, I don't believe her because she was so dramatic. She was using her hands too much.

Speaker 3 And that made me very angry as well. I thought, first of all, you don't understand there's an African world in which that is not dramatic.
They gesticulate all the time.

Speaker 3 But also, this woman was trying, she was put in a position where she had to make up for what she lacked in

Speaker 3 sort of in her ability to express herself right you know so anyway all of that is to say this character is inspired by nafisa to jello but um isn't her you know it's interesting that you say the thing about um

Speaker 4 the the public trials and all of it i don't know if this is still true but i believe in germany when a case is happening, when it's you know when you're being investigated, the press isn't allowed to report on it.

Speaker 4 And they have a very strict system that tries to prevent the press from sensationalizing the case in any way.

Speaker 4 So it's supposed to be the way you're saying, which I actually think would be good for everyone involved, because I think,

Speaker 4 number one, there's nothing worse than a public trial because it does not have any of the respect nor the expertise of a trial.

Speaker 4 The most recent example, let's say like the Diddy thing, the amount of random stuff that now comes up. doesn't help anything.
So what happens is someone can put up a fake piece of a fake, you know,

Speaker 4 deposition or whatever it might be, and it sullies somebody's case that's not involved with that. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 But it's just the spectacle of it all.

Speaker 3 It just creates noise.

Speaker 4 Another example is the Luigi Mangione.

Speaker 2 Oh, but we like to see Luigi.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but what I was saying is, but I was going like,

Speaker 4 you tell me how you have that trial when

Speaker 4 publicly they've already said, you know, the shooter and when he shot. And how do you now then have a trial of somebody when that's already been done?

Speaker 4 And you see, it's interesting when you say that and you talk about the perp walk, I can think of maybe at least 10 examples in the book where the fiction of this book still comments on the realness of America.

Speaker 4 And it's like a critique on it. So, you know,

Speaker 4 American academia. how people are discussing issues in and around the world and how they feel they can and cannot have the discussions.

Speaker 4 The justice system.

Speaker 2 The character says, in America, money is justice.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 Which was very powerful to me because you just sue. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, that's like,

Speaker 3 yeah, and I should say that I agree with the character in my just user horror. Yeah.
I remember when I came to the US and they would say things like, oh, something terrible happened.

Speaker 3 I'd be like, but the family got money. You know, somebody was shot maybe.
And then somebody would be like, oh, the family got money.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking, yeah, but why are you talking about it like that sort of thing? I mean, somebody died. Yeah.
You know? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but fundamentally, that's what America was based on. And I think every culture thinks that justice is the thing that the culture most values.

Speaker 4 You don't think so? Think about like if it's like, okay, if I think about like some parts of South Africa, I remember talking to Kaya about this, like a friend of mine from South Africa. And

Speaker 4 his dad was, his grandfather was a chief in the village. And if they found someone, very seldom, but if somebody stole something or if they did something wrong, you would just get beaten, right?

Speaker 4 You would, no, you would. You wouldn't get arrested.
You wouldn't get put away. You wouldn't, you just get beaten.
And then they would talk to you and say, please don't do that again.

Speaker 4 That's all it was. And him and I were joking about it, saying, it's interesting how in that setting in particular, in like a village, you know, where many of our grandparents grew up,

Speaker 4 that was the thing that you like.

Speaker 3 So what was valued? Violence?

Speaker 4 No, no, no, no. It was the other way around.
Our culture valued non-violence and our culture valued like the culture itself. It was like a very like, that's not the thing that we want.

Speaker 4 Do you understand what I'm saying? So if the violence, the violence takes away from you the thing that the culture holds most valuable, I find.

Speaker 4 So in some parts of the world, time is the thing that they really look at. Other places in the world think that shame is a more powerful tool.
So their sentences may not be as long,

Speaker 4 but how they handle the case is worse. But I feel like in America, because money,

Speaker 4 whether we like it or not, money is like almost the foundation of America.

Speaker 4 They go, then if we give you money, you have been made whole. And the other person lost money, so they've really been punished.

Speaker 3 And also, now, money being speech, yeah, I mean, in this country, I mean, of course, completely

Speaker 3 citizens United. But anyway, let's talk about dream counts.

Speaker 4 But I feel like dream count is everything.

Speaker 4 I agree with you. Like, for instance, academia, let's talk a little bit about that.
Yeah,

Speaker 4 it felt like the book was making a criticism of

Speaker 4 how America's liberal academia treats discussions,

Speaker 4 contrarians, contrarians, arguments, etc. And

Speaker 4 I found myself reading it going like, I was like, oh, I wonder how much of this Chimamanda thinks, or is it just the character that's thinking?

Speaker 4 Like, what do you think of the current state of America's academia and how students are taught to think or not think?

Speaker 3 I think that's fairly obvious.

Speaker 3 No, is it though?

Speaker 3 I think it's a fair reading. Actually, it's a reading that I agree with, which is that, yes, the book

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 clearly not enthusiastic right

Speaker 3 about the form and even the function of american academia today i mean obviously but so you have a woman who's nigerian and who doesn't know anything about that whole thing yeah who comes looking for something better than she is right so she's come from she's come from a life in nigeria that she thinks she kind of wants to atone for right in a way and so america becomes this i want to find something noble and beautiful and good and honorable, because America is aspirational still, even to

Speaker 3 people who

Speaker 3 know that it's a very complicated place. There's still an aspirational element to America.
And so she comes and she wants to do a master's and she wants to study pornography.

Speaker 3 I think we should be able to say that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you can say that.

Speaker 3 So pornography, pornography.

Speaker 3 And she,

Speaker 3 so, so it's interesting for me as the writer, to look look at this world from the point of view of a person who just does not know it and is not familiar with it. So this person is just

Speaker 3 taken aback, surprised, just like, you know, what is going on? And also then she becomes so disillusioned by it. I think if someone wants to read that as a cautionary tale, I'm not opposed to it.

Speaker 3 Okay. Okay.
I mean, this is what can happen. which is you can make people lose

Speaker 3 that thing in them that wants to be better and dream and aspire. You know, there's something actually, I think, quite cynical about,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 it's not an obvious cynicism, but there's something quite cynical about the way that academia operates. It doesn't feel to me,

Speaker 3 um,

Speaker 3 I don't know, there's something, there are beautiful things that are lacking. So

Speaker 3 it's not just about

Speaker 3 letting our imaginations be free and we should be able to exchange ideas. It's also just more fundamental things like

Speaker 3 compassion.

Speaker 3 Do you know?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I don't even like to use kindness because that word is so overused and always by people who are spectacularly unkind.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I will not use kindness, but compassion.

Speaker 3 Do you...

Speaker 3 No, I'm

Speaker 3 MSE. Yes.

Speaker 3 The ability to understand that there are multiple points of view in the world.

Speaker 3 It's a very strange thing because, and I'm a person who grew up on a university campus, so academia has always been part of my life.

Speaker 3 Like, it's my, I'm, I'm, I get into a university campus anywhere in the world, and I'm already at home. Like, it's just, I feel comfortable.

Speaker 3 And you will think, and this is what it was like in Osuka when I was growing up. It was a place of

Speaker 3 many-ness,

Speaker 3 of, you know, it was

Speaker 3 multi-ideas, ideas, people. Right.

Speaker 3 And that's not the case in America. It's not the case at all.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 sometimes it's difficult to talk about because I, you know, it's, you don't want to, sometimes one doesn't want to agree with one's enemies.

Speaker 3 So the people. And who are your enemies? That's amazing.
There are people on the

Speaker 3 people on the political right in this country who I think

Speaker 3 espouse the most ridiculous ideas, but who also

Speaker 3 criticize American academia.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I think there's truth there.

Speaker 3 But acknowledging that, kind of, I just think, oh my Lord, do I agree with these people?

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 my feelings come from a different place. It comes from love.
Comes from wanting this. thing that I love to be better.
That's where it comes from.

Speaker 4 How or what would your advice be if, let's say, there's an aspiring author or even just like a student who loves your work out there, somebody who is in academia right now, they come to you and they say, Chimamanda, I hear what you're saying about empathy and seeing another person's point of view, but I feel like this person who I disagree with, the thing that I disagree with them on is the fundamental humanity or existence of another human being, per se.

Speaker 4 Because that's what I've heard a lot of people say. They'll go, no, no, no, this is not a difference between 30% tax and 20% tax.

Speaker 4 I'm disagreeing with somebody who fundamentally believes that black people should not get this or that this group should not get that or that, you know what I mean? How would you encourage them then?

Speaker 3 But I don't even agree that that's the case.

Speaker 3 I don't agree that that's the case. No, because I think that we.

Speaker 4 Wait, that they're feeling that or that, which part are you not agreeing with?

Speaker 3 No, I'm sure that they feel that. Okay.
But that you feel something doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't.
And I think that when you widen the definition of

Speaker 3 something,

Speaker 3 so this is somebody who believes that black people should not have maybe that person just feels maybe that person supports school choice okay but and i and this is an exact example actually i know somebody who is very upset because somebody um supports school choice and then the very strange conclusion was that this person who supports school choice doesn't like black people

Speaker 3 that's not i mean you you could feel that but that's not that's not necessarily rational thinking

Speaker 3 so i guess my point is it's either people have become

Speaker 3 incredibly terrible in the past 20 years

Speaker 3 or something has changed in the way in our capacity to

Speaker 3 have compassion, to be more broad-minded, to think in more complex ways. My point being that 20 years ago, I don't think we, that this was happening.

Speaker 3 In other words, universities were places where you could still exchange ideas. You weren't terrified of saying something because you'd be blacklisted for saying the wrong thing.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 which is it? Is it that there are many more people now who fundamentally

Speaker 3 just have these really odious beliefs about other human beings?

Speaker 3 You said that, you said something about wearing our politics more closely. Is that what it is? And has it then tainted the way we look and the way we judge? and the conclusions that we draw? So

Speaker 2 as I say often, I have a very dim view of human nature. It's very Hobbesian.
So, I've always thought people are terrible, and I still think they're terrible.

Speaker 3 I don't think that's true.

Speaker 2 I really ask this guy.

Speaker 4 Christiana works on it's guilty until proven innocent. That's how she works with all humans.

Speaker 2 Talk about generational trauma. I always say to my, like, my father and his two brothers miraculously survived Biafra.

Speaker 2 And considering what they've gone through, they are such good, compassionate, and empathetic, and non-suspicious people.

Speaker 3 You would think I went through the war.

Speaker 2 But then what I tell my therapists is that the generational trauma is that I'm hyper-vigilant.

Speaker 2 I'm probably speaking nonsense. But what I do say is some people have a more dim view of human nature.
And if that is true, because

Speaker 2 I always say, you know, there are racists, racists need their outlets, sometimes their Twitter. Like there are some people who have odious points of view.

Speaker 2 So there's people that do not see my humanity.

Speaker 2 How do we go from there? Because I think there's, maybe there's an in-between.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I don't think that those are the people we're talking about though that's my point oh okay so in

Speaker 3 i mean in these circles that you know so people in on university campuses who

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 3 you know who

Speaker 3 don't feel comfortable

Speaker 3 saying what they think are not the crazy racists on twitter the crazy racists on twitter do not interest me because i don't think it's even worth i mean there's some people that you shouldn't even bother engaging with with or trying to change themselves.

Speaker 2 So you're not talking about the fringe or

Speaker 3 you're talking about maybe

Speaker 2 the masses, the collective in the middle.

Speaker 3 Yes, and I think it's important to say that because sometimes I think that instead of talking about that, we then sort of reach for the fringes as examples.

Speaker 2 As a justification for that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's kind of also like saying that people who think that women, there are in this country many people who still, I mean, there are people in this government who think that just by virtue of being a woman, you're somehow incapable of certain things, right?

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I don't mean those people. So the atmosphere on university campuses today in this country

Speaker 3 just seems to me.

Speaker 3 And so when Trevor says and someone says, well, I can't speak to them because fundamentally they believe something that is so.

Speaker 3 And so that's my point. I'm thinking, did many people suddenly turn?

Speaker 3 Or did our own perception change?

Speaker 3 Because these people that somehow have become so bad that you can never speak to them again,

Speaker 3 they're kind of in your circle. I mean, they were there 20 years ago, right? I mean, they're not in the fringes on Twitter.

Speaker 2 They're in your community. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 And so what is it that has happened? It just feels to me a kind of

Speaker 3 confusing extremeness of

Speaker 3 of reaction and perhaps maybe of opinion.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I don't fully understand it, but I I don't trust it. So I don't, I don't okay.
Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 4 Okay, so I'll this is this is how I think about it. One, I think social media dramatically changed our perception of where people sit in reality, right?

Speaker 4 It gave us a flattened view of people because that's what gets the algorithm,

Speaker 4 it's what ropes us in. So I will see the worst of you because the worst of you is what inflames me the most.
Or I'll only see the best of you because it attaches me to you.

Speaker 4 But the nuance is unit's boring, you know? So, and they show you this with the algorithms. Like if you sit down with the engineers, they'll show you.
If somebody writes,

Speaker 4 it's a lovely day outside, it'll go nowhere. If you say best day ever, it goes somewhere.
And if you say worst day ever, it goes somewhere.

Speaker 4 But if you use adjectives and descriptors that are like, they don't evoke something extreme, it doesn't really do anything.

Speaker 4 If you wrote a little tweet about a president and you said, you know, this president's not great, but they're also not the worst.

Speaker 4 And i guess everyone has their flaws it's not going to go anywhere you go this president is destroying this country they are the they are the worst thing and i think that started to filter into the discourse in american politics and i think politicians i genuinely put a lot of blame at their feet because i think american politicians spent a lot of time using the language that really only wrestlers should use about their opponents.

Speaker 4 You know, so they would come out there and they would say things like, I remember

Speaker 4 you weren't there at the Daily Show yet, but in our first few years,

Speaker 4 we went to New Hampshire for the primaries. And I remember being so shocked at how Lindsey Graham's team was buddy-buddy with Hillary Clinton's team.

Speaker 4 And Lindsey Graham would send Hillary Clinton birthday messages and talk about her family. When you saw these people on a stage speaking about each other,

Speaker 4 they didn't even mince words. They would say, this person is going to destroy this country.
They are killing this country.

Speaker 4 You know, and I've spoken to people who are far smarter than me in the world of politics, and they say it all started with Clinton around the Monica Lewinsky.

Speaker 4 They say that's when American politics became personal and like quote unquote evil, not evil.

Speaker 3 Did they say it was created by Newt Gingrich?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. But I think that's where it became a thing.
So if your leaders are saying, you see, now this is where now we come back to other politics.

Speaker 4 One of the things I've loved about going back to South Africa frequently is realizing that even in the doldrums of fighting in in in politics i've never heard a politician say the other person is a devil or they're destroying the country or they they don't agree with how they're doing it they'll say they're incompetent at their job they haven't met service delivery they but i i really i maybe

Speaker 4 those those attacks the thing think of the things that people have said right

Speaker 4 about other politicians And then think of how incongruous that is with them and how they are with each other. They have lunch together, they have dinner together,

Speaker 3 right?

Speaker 4 What then happens is their fans then adopt a thing that they don't believe in. But now the fans are the ones who control the theater of it all, the spectacle.

Speaker 4 And I don't know if you, there's a really amazing documentary I watched about Vince McMahon.

Speaker 4 It's fascinating. Even if you don't like wrestling, I recommend everybody watching wrestling.

Speaker 3 Who is Vince McMahon?

Speaker 4 Vince McMahon is the man who basically made wrestling what it is today, right? I promise you now, don't you do, it's even better if you don't like wrestling, in fact. Go and watch it.

Speaker 4 And one of the most revealing...

Speaker 3 Life is so short. Oh, let me tell you how much I want to watch it.

Speaker 4 I would not recommend this to you if I did not believe it would give you an insight into America that very few documentaries can, right?

Speaker 4 Because one of the main things it shows you is how, like,

Speaker 4 there's a point where, long story short, the wrestling federations are splitting. And the wrestlers decide.

Speaker 4 before these, like a few of the wrestlers leave, they decide they're going to give each other a big hug on the stage and they're going to, they'll basically drop the facade.

Speaker 4 And you should see the crowd and the way they react.

Speaker 3 The crowd,

Speaker 4 I was like, but surely they know that it's quite real.

Speaker 3 So the crowd got very angry. The crowd got, they were furious.

Speaker 3 They were like, how, how could you, how could Sean Michaels hug, you know, Triple H? How, how?

Speaker 4 It was, and I was like, oh yeah, this is, this in many ways is what I think has happened with American politics. And to your point, the discourse.
The leaders said, these are my, these are our enemies

Speaker 4 people then adopted them how do you now discuss with your enemy

Speaker 3 i think we're i think we're putting too much blame on politicians oh no i'm not putting all of it and not enough responsibility on

Speaker 3 on individuals yeah and then also i mean which came first what you said about social media i i agree more with which is

Speaker 3 yeah i mean this whole politician thing you think everybody watches politicians i mean i think everybody's affected by them

Speaker 2 i think donald trump has shifted But he's running a cult.

Speaker 3 That's a bit different. No, but he's still different.

Speaker 4 Aren't they all in some way, shape or form?

Speaker 2 The Democrats is a bad culture.

Speaker 4 No, but it's still, but I'm saying, like, let's take the Democrats away. Let's look at people because the Republicans also weren't great.

Speaker 3 Obama? Trump.

Speaker 2 Yeah, cultie. Right.

Speaker 4 We talked about it with Josh where he said, that's why he calls him white Obama. He says, and people get angry and understand why.

Speaker 4 On that episode, when we talk about it with Josh,

Speaker 3 it's because

Speaker 3 he calls Trump white Obama.

Speaker 4 So he says

Speaker 4 what Obama represented to so many people, especially black people, Trump represents to like so many white people where they go, ah, this is our moment, this is our

Speaker 4 sort of lost dream, the lost idea. And it's a comedy premise, but he's not going, these are the same people.
He's just saying for them, that is their promise.

Speaker 2 You say one, one speaks to the darkness, the other speaks to the light. There's an overlap in their voters, and they both speak to some aspirations, but in different ways.

Speaker 3 That's the ugly, you know.

Speaker 4 It's hope, but in different directions.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 2 Obama goes, you're not sold. I love it.

Speaker 3 No, no, I'm not.

Speaker 4 I mean, Chimamana is not sold on anything, though.

Speaker 3 I like it. No, I mean, this is

Speaker 3 not true. That's cool.

Speaker 4 This is true. The same way Christiana is not sold.
I don't expect to sell you on something.

Speaker 3 No, I am sold on something.

Speaker 3 No, I'm just thinking about it.

Speaker 3 Whatever. It's not interesting to me.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, so I will say this.

Speaker 4 I think it's a lot harder.

Speaker 4 I understand where

Speaker 4 a student or any person comes, and I, to talk of empathy, I understand it in all ways, to be honest with you.

Speaker 4 I can see somebody who goes, no, this, this country, we, we have to completely change this and it's gone to the dogs, quote unquote.

Speaker 4 But then I also understand somebody who says, a lot of the language you're using or a lot of these ideas, you don't even know where they came from.

Speaker 4 So you may be thinking of it just through the lens of school choice.

Speaker 4 But for many people who have like dug into the trenches of where ideas come from, you start to realize that some of the ideas are innocuous in their sound,

Speaker 4 but where they were, where they were written, you know what I mean? Like how they were created.

Speaker 3 That's fair. That's fair.
But the person who supports school choice does not know. I agree with this.

Speaker 3 I agree with their complete

Speaker 3 position that that person should know. And then that person is judged on that.
And then that person is ignored and blacklisted. But that person does not know.

Speaker 3 And it's also this new world where you're not even allowed, I mean, curiosity is dead.

Speaker 3 And I, you know, as a person who just, I love learning, and I just keep thinking, what, what have we lost in this new sort of world where people don't even, even to ask a question, you're uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 I remember when I spoke at

Speaker 3 an Ivy League University, which will be unnamed. And

Speaker 3 so I had a few of the students in a sort of private meeting where I just, because I like to know what young people are really thinking

Speaker 3 away from the grown-ups. And so we started talking.
And then I said, you know,

Speaker 3 are you of you like uncomfortable to say what you really think?

Speaker 3 Everyone was like, no.

Speaker 3 And then one person goes, yeah, but sometimes, and suddenly all of them were like, yeah, sometimes.

Speaker 3 And even that struck me because I remember thinking we've gone from that kind of almost forced conformity to suddenly thinking, okay, maybe it's, maybe I can actually say what I'm really thinking.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 And there was something about it that just made me sad because I thought they were graduating. And I thought, what have they lost out on learning in the four years they've been here?

Speaker 3 Because they've been too unsure, uncomfortable about asking questions. And again, so what I mean about these, these kids are not

Speaker 3 the fringe on Twitter. Do you know what I mean? But they already know that I better be careful.
Otherwise, somebody will think that I'm

Speaker 3 a person who hates black people.

Speaker 3 And so I don't know. It just made me, it just made me so sad.

Speaker 4 Do you think that's a byproduct of who actually holds the power in universities?

Speaker 4 You know, like you see funding being pulled, you see rich donors saying if you teach that, then I'm pulling my funding.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think a large part of America's academia problem is money. There's just so much money that,

Speaker 3 I mean, even the even the entitlement of the students is about money too

Speaker 3 i mean the school fees are high they are high right they are high and so students feel like well i've bought this i mean when i was when i taught i taught creative writing at princeton when i was doing a fellowship and i remember a student coming to me and saying you gave me a c i've never gotten a c in my life And I was like,

Speaker 3 how is that my point?

Speaker 3 I said, can we, I can show you why. I mean, so I thought if the student had come to me to say, I want to prove to you that you've kind of, you know, here's why I should not get the C.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing on my paper. But no, the student said, I have never had a C in my life.
This is my first C. And so I want you to change it.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 so my first thought was, you know, I don't blame you. Maybe your father gave money to Princeton.
But my dear, this is your grade because this is what you wrote in your paper.

Speaker 3 And we can discuss your paper. But you know,

Speaker 3 I feel like.

Speaker 3 So it's money, money, no, really.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, they have so much money and the endowments, but there's, you know, people are giving them money and so they have special dinners for them and and so money i think is a major problem and that's happening so much more this whole you know i'm going to i won't i will withhold my my um my promised grant

Speaker 3 if you don't do and then i think israel israel palestine has really made that so much more you know whether like if you you're doing that therefore and i just think

Speaker 3 I also just wish that universities were not so beholden to people who have money, because then I think they would be more

Speaker 3 courageous.

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 there's very little courage left in the public space. That's what I mean about longing for,

Speaker 3 I'm like a mellow going dream count.

Speaker 3 I want, I'm longing for

Speaker 3 what is noble, what is beautiful. I want heroes.
I want people I can look up to and admire and learn from. I think there's a large part of me that is disillusioned, disappointed, even heartbroken.

Speaker 3 I hide it in sarcasm, but it's all there.

Speaker 4 Don't go anywhere because we got more. What now after this?

Speaker 4 Do you think there's a part of you

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 4 not wishes? I wonder if, you know, this happens to everyone in the public space. You and I were talking about this.
I've experienced this. Almost everyone has.

Speaker 4 There will be a moment where it feels like you are a hero and then it feels like the natural part of that journey is to now

Speaker 4 be the villain or to have like, you know, and I don't know if it's art imitating life or vice versa.

Speaker 3 So like you're placed higher up that the only

Speaker 3 way to come down.

Speaker 4 You know, like I think about how if you and I had a conversation, I remember our first conversation,

Speaker 4 it was like I was speaking to Jesus.

Speaker 3 Not really. That's how people,

Speaker 4 they're like, wow, you're going to speak to Chima.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow. I, oh, I ask her how, how,

Speaker 4 but it was, it was such a, in a beautiful way, but it was really, but people were like, wow, oh, I, and, you know, your words were gospel and this whole thing.

Speaker 4 And then I remember saying now to people, I was like, oh, I'm going to speak to Chimaman.

Speaker 3 And they were like, ooh, yeah,

Speaker 4 it gets you in trouble. Just so you know, you might get in a little trouble.
There might be the, and, and I, I,

Speaker 3 that's interesting to know.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, I, well, I mean, you're not on social media, I guess, but I don't know if it's because people wish for it to be the natural progression or if, sort of going to what we started with, your fame

Speaker 4 sort of metastasizes for some people where they wish for you to be. They creates an idea of everything that you must think.

Speaker 4 And if you deviate at any point from what they think you think, then they go, the whole thing must come down.

Speaker 4 Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 That's interesting. How would it get you in trouble, though?

Speaker 4 How would what get me in trouble?

Speaker 3 Talking to me.

Speaker 4 Oh, everyone has a different opinion on why some people will be like oh you're going to talk to her she's anti-trans how

Speaker 4 i mean are you going to talk to a transphobe and then i'm like i don't think chimamanda's transphobic and they're like oh oh oh you you better check then someone else will go oh she's um

Speaker 4 right wing leaning and i'm like i'm pretty certain chimamanda's not right wing leaning then they're like no you see what she says about anti-cancel culture and and then i go okay now this is me as trevor What I always try and do for myself is I try and

Speaker 4 at all costs form my my own opinion on something and then allow the world to in some way, shape or form, bump up against that opinion because I don't live in isolation.

Speaker 4 But when I read your piece on how we, it wasn't cancel culture. You said something was beautiful.
It was about,

Speaker 4 was it purity or forgive me, I remember the message, but not all the words.

Speaker 4 But it was, I remember reading it thinking, damn, this is a really insightful, messy and honest view on how we're dealing with conversations in society.

Speaker 4 You're failing a purity test and we're writing people off. And you know, I've said this to you a thousand times, Christiana.

Speaker 4 I go, guys, it's not sustainable to lose your whole family because your uncle said this thing. I was like, politicians will come and go.

Speaker 4 Topics will come and go. The people in your life hopefully won't.
I'm a big fan of that, right?

Speaker 3 This is the reason I'm not on social media.

Speaker 2 I come for it from a different perspective.

Speaker 2 I think I hate how in America it's like, you're right, you're left, you're right leaning, because I think people contain multiple ideological positions on some issues on some like right-wing leaning on what?

Speaker 2 Left with there is no one

Speaker 4 buffet politics.

Speaker 3 I don't know what are right-wing ideas. I mean, right, even

Speaker 3 that has to be. How do you divide?

Speaker 3 Which is why

Speaker 3 it's not about, and I agree with you that nobody, we're not, we're not pure.

Speaker 3 I mean, we, you know, and especially when you're a person who comes from, you know, um, the reasonable, reasonable regions of the world, that is, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East.

Speaker 3 You kind of understand, you know, you have uncles who, I mean, I have relatives who still think that women really should not be working outside the home.

Speaker 3 And, you know, and then there's me.

Speaker 3 And we still happen to get along. And I think that there are certain views that

Speaker 3 some of my views have changed as I've become older.

Speaker 3 Even I think in some ways my feminism has changed. I think, for example, when I was younger, I didn't want to talk about women's bodies because I felt that

Speaker 3 this is how they stigmatize women. I felt like, no, nobody should talk about PMS because they use that to justify excluding women.
They'll say things like, how can a woman be president?

Speaker 3 When she has PMS, she's going to press the button, right?

Speaker 3 But now I realize, actually, men press the button without PMS as an excuse.

Speaker 3 So maybe women are still the better choice, right? Because

Speaker 3 if we can just get the hormones stable, then we're fine. But man, my God, no PMS and they're just doing crazy things.
So, but that has changed for me.

Speaker 4 I can list people in every field, comedians who say, I mean, now I say a thing that's a joke. It used to be agreed that this was a joke.
We all knew that this wasn't real. It's fiction.

Speaker 4 I do not want to kill my mother-in-law. And now someone goes, oh, for you to be furthering the idea of violence.

Speaker 3 You're like, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 You know, like Jimmy Carr says it really beautifully, the British comedian. He had this thing that he used to play at the beginning of his shows in response to this.

Speaker 4 And he'd have a message that would come on and would say, hello, I'm Jimmy Carr, and I'm a comedian. I want you to know that I'm going to be making some jokes about terrible things tonight.

Speaker 4 But remember, these are jokes about the terrible things. These are not the terrible things.

Speaker 4 The jokes are not making the terrible things and the jokes are not changing the terrible things, but these are the jokes about the things.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 4 have a good time. These are jokes.

Speaker 4 But I was amazed that even he had to put that in his show. Do you get what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 But I do think, though, that I can tell you that person, there's certain jokes I will not laugh at. There's certain things I refuse to laugh about.

Speaker 3 But that's fine that's comedy it's like there's some people who don't like spicy food i judge them but i i don't mind that they no i think no i i don't think that's a good analogy why not because when i say i won't laugh it's not like oh it's just my taste it's more that i think

Speaker 3 in some ways similar to what you said about school choice yeah about how the people who know that maybe

Speaker 3 deep down the language or in the foundation of that idea, there's something that's actually quite, you know, toxic or something pernicious.

Speaker 4 So that's what I mean about the certain jokes I won't laugh about because i just i think that there's certain jokes that are not just jokes i think sometimes people are not laughing with you they're laughing at you ah but i think this is a dangerous road to go down because you're yeah you're a fiction writer so if someone could say to you chimamanda your book we this cannot exist in because it is not it is you know no no not cannot exist so here's the difference yeah i will not laugh at that joke but i'm not going to say you cannot say that joke okay no no no but then we're on the same end but that's what i mean by it that's why i'm saying it is taste so comedians and we love even doing this as comedian we'll be in a show we'll watch a comedian tell a very racist joke we'll go that's funny and it's racist and as comedians we say the the craft of what the person is doing in terms of making a thing funny they've done but we're also acknowledging the roots of it it is racist the same way i can look at like food yeah and i go like well this food is poisonous but it's delicious do you know what i mean and so i i think

Speaker 4 i think we're on the same page there. I'm not saying people should laugh at everything the same way I don't think people should enjoy every book or every point of view, et cetera.

Speaker 3 However,

Speaker 4 that's why I think we're actually saying the same thing.

Speaker 3 But no, but Trevor, I want to go back to you. You asked me a question about making a decision sort of almost solo on your own.
Yes.

Speaker 3 And I don't think of it as that kind of clear-cut dichotomy because I don't think it's even possible.

Speaker 4 Oh, I wasn't saying clear-cut. I was saying more like, how do you find the balance? Like, what do you think the responsibility is? Because

Speaker 4 I don't think it's clear-cut but you you you you you exist somewhere on that spectrum i exist on the

Speaker 3 i'm sort of lean i lean right wing leaning i lean towards thinking okay

Speaker 3 i really believe in sort of lucid thinking yeah so and i like clarity and you know i'm a writer i also like words to mean what they mean

Speaker 3 I like clarity of language. I like clarity of thought.

Speaker 3 I like thinking about things.

Speaker 3 And, you know, from the time I was a little girl,

Speaker 3 I just was never a person who went along with what I was supposed to

Speaker 3 do or believe. I've always kind of wanted to wait.
I want to sit with this for a while and think about it. But also, I want to make decisions based on knowledge and information.

Speaker 3 So I'm very keen on learning. Like if there's a subject and so I want to go read about it.

Speaker 3 So AI, I've been reading books about AI because I don't know what the hell that's about. So now I know things like this generative AI, there's predictive AI.

Speaker 3 And did you know about the training models?

Speaker 3 But so when I say make up my own mind, it's not that I just sit there with nothing.

Speaker 3 I want to gather information and then I want to process it for myself. You're a student.
Yes, I'm a student. And I always want to be a student.

Speaker 3 But what I can tell you is that I'm never going to be swayed by

Speaker 3 criticism. Never.
That's never going to happen. I am the daughter of James and Grace Aditche and it's not going to happen.

Speaker 3 That's it.

Speaker 3 I have my opinions.

Speaker 3 And, you know, and I can have conversations with you about why I have those opinions. And I'm also very keen to know why you disagree.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, if you're, if, if you're a person who can actually make coherent sentences about why you disagree.

Speaker 2 So yeah. So you encourage the discourse and the dialogue, but it has to be grounded in, I guess, intellectual curiosity.
And it seems like from reading your essays and your work, a mutual respect.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 Because the affront to you is just like, don't be disrespectful, which is how I would don't disrespect me or I'm gonna leave.

Speaker 3 Exactly, yes.

Speaker 3 If there's disrespect, I will not take it, I'm just not going to. And I think also, I mean, I remember once saying to somebody, you know, I was loved

Speaker 3 and I am loved. I had the best parents in the world, so I do not need to campaign for your love.
You know, I don't need to do it, I don't need to change myself for you.

Speaker 3 If you like me, I'm happy that you like me. If you don't like me,

Speaker 3 I'm still me.

Speaker 3 And I wish that it was easier for more people,

Speaker 3 especially women.

Speaker 4 There's a line in the book where one of your characters is basically talking about,

Speaker 4 I think, like how the world is shaped. And they basically say something to the effect of,

Speaker 4 it's almost like America doesn't know that the world isn't America.

Speaker 3 Yes. And only America is a world.

Speaker 4 And I remember having this discussion with a friend of mine who was taken aback because they really felt offended. And and I understood why.

Speaker 3 It was... Trevor, is there anything you do not understand?

Speaker 4 No, I try to understand most things genuinely.

Speaker 3 I think everything is bad. By the way, it was a joke.
Oh, everything is...

Speaker 4 No, everything is understandable, but I'm just like, agreeing is different, I think.

Speaker 3 So I remember... You would make a good fiction writer.
This is actually how we're supposed to see.

Speaker 3 You know, you're supposed to kind of understand everybody's point of view without necessarily agreeing.

Speaker 2 Because he's biracial and he was born in apartheid.

Speaker 3 I think so. He's been in anywhere, so he had to.

Speaker 4 no i think so in many ways i think the different bias i've i've been forced i've been trained from my birth to be that way as a person so i had no one way of eating food i had no one way of celebrating a christmas i had no one way of speaking a language i had no one way of my hair looking my face looking i had no one way of my country being i had so i've never believed that there is a one way you get what i'm saying so so i remember like one of the first ones that came to me was i remember i told this as a joke in one of my shows long ago but i said i've always found it interesting that people would mock someone with another accent.

Speaker 4 But I'd go, but somebody who has an accent, it means that they're fluent in another language.

Speaker 4 And that was something that, so for me, when you talk about understand, I would always go, yeah, if somebody has a funny accent, it can be funny, but don't ever forget that it means that they speak another language fluently.

Speaker 4 That's why they have the accent.

Speaker 3 And so.

Speaker 4 When I think of these things,

Speaker 4 I was doing shows in the Middle East and my friend said to me, hey, ma'am,

Speaker 4 I mean, aren't you conflicted? You go to the Middle East and you do shows. And, and I said,

Speaker 4 what do you want me to be conflicted about? And they said, well, I mean, you know, their views on gay marriage.

Speaker 4 And I said, it's interesting that you asked me this because America's views on gay marriage are not as old as you think. Like, this is a now thing.

Speaker 3 Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, but we have to remember homophobia is alive and well in America.

Speaker 4 But what I'm saying is, what got me with that was, I was saying, I'm not dismissing it,

Speaker 4 far from it. You know what I mean? But what I'm saying is,

Speaker 4 it's interesting how, for me, when America has finished with an issue or has decided a place, it then now goes, that is correct now for the world.

Speaker 4 So, before gay marriage is accepted in America, Americans go like, no, gay marriages, no, God, Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Come on, we all agree on this.

Speaker 4 America says gay marriage, and then America goes on a conquest around the world, pointing at every country to be like, Where's your gay marriage?

Speaker 3 And then I go, guys,

Speaker 4 how old is the UAE as a as a place, like as a as an actual country how old is it and i go if you look at the advancements they've made in the time that they've been a country versus how long it took america to get to those places it's actually pretty impressive now you want them to do it overnight because you've already agreed upon it but you're not giving them their time to get to it which i think we all do as people why have you not found jesus yet i found jesus then you're like yeah but there was a time when you hadn't found jesus

Speaker 4 yes but now that i found him why don't you find jesus

Speaker 3 do you do you understand what i'm saying yeah when you say we all do it, I don't think we all do it. But anyway.
Oh, maybe you

Speaker 3 don't.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, but I think when I say all, I mean the collective, you know?

Speaker 3 But you know what's interesting.

Speaker 3 And it's true. It's true about Americans.
And

Speaker 3 I think it comes from, I mean, just listening to you and, you know, this person says to you, aren't you conflicted? And then you're saying, you know, let's look at the UAE. How old is it? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I'm just thinking, you know, that American point of view often comes from

Speaker 3 a place of of just not knowing very much about the world. And also not,

Speaker 3 I sometimes feel that arguments in this country are not rooted in information and knowledge.

Speaker 3 It's not just that often they can feel like performances, but it would be nice if, so someone said, why aren't you conflicted? And someone else says, no, I'm not conflicted.

Speaker 3 Well, people like jokes and so I'm going to go where people like jokes. I think that's kind of what you would often hear in America.
Okay.

Speaker 4 rather than how old is a uae

Speaker 3 um how long does it take a society to evolve what are the changes that have happened that speak to a certain kind of hopeful progressivism that doesn't happen so trevor you need to start um classes i mean this is the class

Speaker 3 which you teach people how no but really i'm just thinking and i think it is true about really a lot of things you know i just wish that sometimes if there was a huge issue of the day outrage of the day that that people would be like, I'm not going to have an opinion until I've read a book about it.

Speaker 2 Take a bit. You know what? Trevor's the king of that.
Not the book, but remember at the show, the daily show, I think it was Jussie Smille is the example always come to mind.

Speaker 2 Jussie Smille, the incident happened where he said he was assaulted by these Trump people. We're doing the meeting, we're watching the videos and, you know.

Speaker 4 People are, oh, this is so outrageous.

Speaker 2 This is so sad.

Speaker 2 Myself, who's like Trotsky on the far left, and another writer who I won't name, but is pretty right-wing we both said there's something not right and Trevor said you see these two people they never agree

Speaker 2 and he's like guys let's pause Trevor said we're not gonna we're not gonna cover this yeah we're not gonna go for like MAGA racists and we had all the roles because it's like it's a big production to get all these clips we had all the roles people had the take people had made jokes about how it was and Trevor's like let's take a beat and this was like on the Monday or Tuesday Wednesday more's coming in you know people are saying justice for justice.

Speaker 2 Justice Molly, like Pamela Harris, everyone's tweeting. Trevor's still like, let's take a beat.

Speaker 2 I think it wasn't until like Wednesday or Thursday, it emerges that, you know, the story wasn't what he was professing it to be. And Trevor was like, okay, now we're ready.

Speaker 2 And I always think about that when.

Speaker 2 a story breaks or there is some hot button issue because i'm listen i'm always like i'm quite fiery as you may have gathered i used to be of the view of like this is my opinion but trevor's very good at let's take a beat, let's read more.

Speaker 2 I used to get frustrated because I'd be like,

Speaker 2 this happened to these people, they're dying. And Trevor said, well, people die every day.
We can't like, we have to have an informed response to what's happening.

Speaker 3 I feel the same.

Speaker 4 So here's where I have a compassion for people. I think it's unfair for us to expect that of people because they are living in the world that they are living in.

Speaker 3 No, I honestly, unfair to expect it of everyone. Yes.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you what I expect to do. No, no, no, no, no, Trevor.
Yeah, you can disagree with us.

Speaker 3 It's unfair to expect it of people who are deep inside something.

Speaker 3 So, for example, to say, if you said to me, it's unfair to expect people in Gaza, or it's unfair to expect people who lived through what happened in Israel to be rational or objective.

Speaker 3 I agree with that. But the average person,

Speaker 3 no.

Speaker 3 Okay. We have a responsibility.

Speaker 2 But now here's...

Speaker 3 So are you, are you Jesus then? Are you above everyone else? How come you?

Speaker 4 No, but really.

Speaker 3 No, let me explain how come you

Speaker 4 let me explain why okay let me explain why because this argument i'm going to say that the foundation of it is very self-aggrandizing i'll i'll tell you why okay i love it so here's what i think i think we all have areas where we are able to see what others cannot see It might present itself differently.

Speaker 4 I think LeBron James sees things on a court that most human beings cannot. That just happens to be his area where he sees it.
There'll be things that I see that other people cannot.

Speaker 4 You can choose a field. You can choose a world.
There are people who see things that others cannot.

Speaker 4 I think in society, once we created institutions, we basically outsourced that expertise to institutions in a very good way. And that became a lot of what advanced society, right?

Speaker 4 And so like, let's think of it this way.

Speaker 4 Let's look at a nutrition label on a box of something or food. When they would say healthy or whatever, people are relying on the fact.

Speaker 4 that that food has been inspected and so it is healthy and so they will ingest it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but that but that's kind of different though. No, but why? Different from there's a new outrage of the day, like this story that you told of the guy who said someone had mugged him.
Yes.

Speaker 3 And suddenly people have opinions. My thing is, often people don't, so I'm.

Speaker 4 But there's no book to read on that. What do you want them to do?

Speaker 2 But I think we're not disagreeing all the way. Are you talking about that? The reflexive urge to take a side.
Yes. And you want people to take a beat.

Speaker 3 Yes. I'm with you.
So we're with you on this.

Speaker 3 My thing. And so I often also say, go to the primary source.

Speaker 2 Like, so so sometimes someone will forward something to me is this true and i'm just like where did you get this from but chima man i think you are overestimating people's ability to even know what the source should be like i went to journalism school and sometimes i've been tricked but that's i've been tricked by what way in what way you know there's sometimes it's just like

Speaker 2 there

Speaker 2 wasn't I think it was an AI thing. I was sent something recently and I was momentarily duped until I dug a bit deeper and I was like, oh, this is not true.
This is manufactured.

Speaker 2 And I think we assume people to be a lot more literate than they are. And that's not, that's not coming from an arrogant place.
I think we're just flooded with information.

Speaker 2 And I tell you, I'm like, sometimes I get WhatsApp forwards from my auntie. I'm like, auntie, where did you, especially during COVID, chew ginger?

Speaker 2 And I was like, auntie, but she was like, no, don't get the vaccine, chew ginger, and you'll be fine. Right.

Speaker 2 And to task that person with finding the truth, a lot of people don't know where to start, especially where we are being flooded with misinformation.

Speaker 2 So I think Trevor's saying maybe we should have a bit more grace because not everyone is able to maneuver.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 4 I'm saying that we should not take for granted the fact that the systems have been corrupted in such a way that the people who are looking for the thing are often the ones who are duped the most.

Speaker 4 A perfect example is vaccines, right? Most of the parents who don't want to get their kids vaccinated read more than the parents who get their kids vaccinated.

Speaker 4 They go out there and they say, I want to do the research. I want to learn.
I want to inform myself. What is a vaccine? What's going into my child? What's happening?

Speaker 4 And because of that and the information that they then get their hands on, they then make the decision to not vaccinate their child because they think that they have been able to do quote unquote more research than an institution or than a body of science or medicine.

Speaker 4 And so in the same way, like you, like you've gone, you've read a book on artificial intelligence. That's what I think a lot of people are doing.

Speaker 4 And I'm not saying you are doing this, by the way, but then someone might go, no, I've read a book on artificial intelligence. Ergo, I now know it for myself.
And it's like, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 Trust me, a data scientist and an engineer who's actually coded that, they know it more than you do.

Speaker 4 The book has tried to give you some sort of introduction to it, but the expert is still the expert of it. And so I think what I mean by all of this is

Speaker 4 we like America is an example. I used to think that a lot of America's decisions were from like a lack of knowledge.
And I think it is in many ways, but

Speaker 4 I also think it's like, it's like the history of the place, right? Look at what America was when it becomes this world power. It's a coming together, it's a university

Speaker 4 of everyone, the brightest thinkers, you know, the smartest from Eastern Europe, the most brilliant from like the UK.

Speaker 4 It's just this melting pot of the most brilliant human beings who've come together.

Speaker 4 And you could argue at some point America is the bastion of like science and freedom and ideas and thinking and the schools are different, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 4 And I think like most systems or even like most people, you can think that that will just maintain itself,

Speaker 4 but you might be stuck in time. And so I think America still thinks that it is ahead of the world in everything because it may have been at a time.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I have a lot of compassion for people who are in that system because I go,

Speaker 4 you know, it's Plato's cave. If you're in the cave, how can you know that you're in the cave if the cave is telling you that it's not a cave? It's the only world you've ever been in.

Speaker 4 So how do I give you that responsibility?

Speaker 4 I think we should put the responsibility at the feet.

Speaker 4 The same way, I don't think it's our responsibility to recycle, I think it's the government's responsibility to make sure that the things that need to be recycled aren't even made in the first place.

Speaker 3 So, I think both things can be true, though.

Speaker 4 I'm with you. Ah, they're my sister.
100%.

Speaker 3 Because, I mean, no, they're 100%. And because I really do believe in the idea of experts, I really do.

Speaker 3 Like, I want, and this is also the thing I often say: I want a president who knows more than I do. Like, I want, you know, I want someone in every country that I know.
But anyway, that's not the case.

Speaker 3 But I, yes, we want experts. And yes, misinformation is increasingly a problem.

Speaker 3 But I think there is still, and what you said about people who read about vaccines, I mean, I take your point.

Speaker 3 But I think that those people, is it fair to say that they have already started with a kind of conspiracy theory point of view, which will then,

Speaker 3 I think, shape where they read? Because if we are talking about experts, maybe they should go to the maybe the CDC website, but they don't to that point, though.

Speaker 3 Well, I think there is there is no center right now, you know, when we're talking about the so that's that's the point, that's what I mean about even the even the idea of experts has become corrupted.

Speaker 3 That's what I mean.

Speaker 4 Because don't forget the CDC were the same ones who told people not to wear masks

Speaker 4 because they actually just wanted to make sure masks didn't get run out, like masks weren't taken away from the doctors.

Speaker 3 But they lied to the people. They were more honest about that.

Speaker 4 You see, so now now imagine somebody going, wait, they lied.

Speaker 4 And they go, yeah, but we lied for good reasons. The same way like any child therapist will tell you, your kid doesn't care why you lied.
They just know that you lied.

Speaker 4 And now they know that lying is allowed, even though mommy or daddy says lying is not allowed because they've watched your actions.

Speaker 4 And I think that's what I mean is like, if somebody has been lied to by the CDC about maybe they had good intentions, but they've been lied to.

Speaker 4 How do they now then trust that same CDC versus now the account that told them something else? And then that account happened to be true.

Speaker 4 And you just need like a few truths to start sprinkling in the rest of the lies, right? If the, if your baseline.

Speaker 3 But that's CDC action. How do we feel about it? I mean, can we really not make a distinction between.

Speaker 4 I think it was terrible.

Speaker 3 So do I, yes. But does it cause you to then distrust everything the CDC says?

Speaker 2 No, I think for most rational people, it doesn't, but we're in a heightened time where there is just like a lot of institutional distrust.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm so, I, I'm, my husband thinks I'm susceptible to cults.

Speaker 3 No, but I think everyone's

Speaker 3 like, I think everyone is.

Speaker 2 It's not just what the algorithm feeds you, but it's been a destabilizing few years. And you're, that, I think everyone's asking themselves this question, what is true?

Speaker 2 And what do I believe? What am I? And that's why we're, because of the fear, we're going to all these extremes. And for a lot of people, they're just like, I, I, the CDC did this one thing wrong.

Speaker 2 Forget the CDC. Yes.
Do you know what I mean? Um, whether that's right or not, I can't really judge. But I think there's just so much mistrust.

Speaker 4 You know, honestly, that's probably one of the biggest reasons I do love fiction. One of the biggest reasons I love fiction is because I do not have to question whether it's real or not.

Speaker 4 And then I'm more susceptible to the message that it's giving me.

Speaker 3 I mean this, honestly.

Speaker 2 You said it's the last frontier.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Because when it is fact,

Speaker 4 who said this? Who said what's the data? What's the information? What's we do episodes on this all the time? We talk about these things. The data's flawed.
The study was flawed. The people running.

Speaker 4 But with fiction, I just go, this is the world you've created.

Speaker 4 I don't have to question its realness, but the messages i can completely accept disagree with respond to because in a weird way fiction creates i mean the most real reality it does it does you couldn't have said it better

Speaker 3 people should read more novels and short stories i agree and sometimes even the old ones because there's just lovely wisdom in them i think i mean do you have any favorites you'd recommend

Speaker 3 Old or recent?

Speaker 3 I really like Middlemarch. I think it's very, it's very long, but it's very wise and just really,

Speaker 3 I was going to say teaches you, but actually it does. Yeah.
You know, in a way that you're having fun, but you're also learning and you're in the hands of a very wise writer.

Speaker 3 There's a wonderful writer from Poland.

Speaker 3 who wrote this book called The Beautiful Missus. And I cannot pronounce the name, Sidon Man.

Speaker 3 But if you just go to the beautiful Mrs.

Speaker 3 May will come up.

Speaker 3 I also just find it very

Speaker 3 wise. I love realism.
I don't really like speculative fiction. I'm not interested in science fiction.
And I just feel like I learned the most from novels because

Speaker 3 I learn about human beings. And I think

Speaker 3 it helps me understand the world and helps me. Oh, there's something I forgot to say, which I have to say.
Which is.

Speaker 3 So I increasingly I'm fascinated by how what people think is sophisticated is in fact not at all.

Speaker 3 I mean, there's a sense in which the arguments and the positions

Speaker 3 are really incredibly simple and simplistic.

Speaker 3 But the people who talk about them think that they're very sophisticated. Yes.

Speaker 3 And I'm thinking about that because of what you said about a certain kind of

Speaker 3 maybe

Speaker 3 an insufficient self-knowledge. So in other words, the way that America thinks that it is still

Speaker 3 leading the world

Speaker 3 is the same way that I think certain people in America think that they're incredibly sophisticated in their thinking, but actually, it's very provincial and simple. Yes, that I can agree with.

Speaker 3 On that note,

Speaker 3 thank you. Thank you.
Thank you,

Speaker 3 thank you very much.

Speaker 4 For real, this was too much fun for me.

Speaker 3 So, Miss Trotsky, tell me

Speaker 3 very much.

Speaker 4 What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yameen, and Jodi Avigan.

Speaker 4 Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Claire Smalter is our producer.
Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 4 Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.