Trevor - a worldwide known comedian and recognisable satirist originally from South Africa, extremely witty and insightful, capable of great depth when analysing and.... not to forget...also very good-looking! Enjoy! ☺
Let's start with more superficial stuff. If you are into stand-up comedy and enjoy comedians capable of imitating accents and other people, you may laugh at this compilation.
From 2015 to 2022, Trevor hosted The Daily Show, an American satirical news programme and a talk show. In case you don't know it, here comes a taster from his shows - a short compilation. Very enjoyable!
And in case you like it, here are two full episodes: one from November 2022 and one on racism from June 2020.
Despite the fact they are no longer topical, they still offer interesting insights into the American 'culture' and provided you're interested in cultural differences, watching his show will both inform you and make you laugh (sometimes out of desperation, though).
And now, let's move to something a bit deeper, but not too deep yet:
Interview from 2017 with Trevor on Guardian Live about his book Born a Crime, his mother, upbringing and social and cultural background. Again, if your interests lie in other cultures, this provides quite a few glimpses into the South African one, including apartheid. The culture is explained while he shares personal experience. Linking the history to his childhood stories makes it easy to grasp and remember, for us, non-South Africans.
What were the practical implications of apartheid in people's everyday lives? How did it separate even family members? Until I heard his stories, I didn't know how "well" designed the apartheid was.
Ready to go deeper still?
You already know that my ♥ heart always jumps with joy when people whom I've followed for quite some time meet on stage or in a podcast studio and create something together. These are powerful exchanges.
Here Trevor meets Esther Perel, whom I introduced two months ago. It's an unusual episode of Esther's podcast Where should we begin?
What happens when the best from stand-up comedians and couples therapists meet on stage in a dialogue? Well, they - among other topics - talk about comedy, therapy and humour in relationships.
What do therapy and comedy have in common? How does doing comedy resemble seduction?
The dialogue has both depth and wit - it is to be learned from and laughed at.
Humour always requires truth and it relies on shared reality. You can only laugh together at something that you relate to.
Trevor and Esther discuss the importance of small talk, comedy, humour and shared reality and experiences, stage fright and nerves, ambiguous loss, listening, and, lastly, moments off the record that have become rather scarce in today's interconnected online world.
"The key to good small talk is acknowledging the environment that we share. That's why weather is the most widely used small talk possible because it's the one thing that we all have to experience whether we like it or not, independently of where we are from and what we have experienced." (Trevor Noah)
"Listening is one of the most priceless tools we have in the society." (Trevor Noah)
This leads me to Chris Voss and his book on negotiating I'm reading now called 'Never Split the Difference'. In its early chapters, he mentions that it takes several people to actively listen to a kidnapper when negotiating a hostage situation or a bank robbery. Luckily, most of our daily interactions are not that extreme, but it does illustrate the importance of good listening skills, doesn't it?
"You just don't listen with your ears. The whole body listens. The more you listen like that, the quality of your listening is what the speaker will tell, how much, how open, how deep. Listening is not just the passive recipient. Listening shapes the speaker." (Esther Perel)
I will conclude with an earnest and more serious interview with Jay Shetty that goes deep and is
almost therapeutic. It's about home, the loneliness of stand-up comedians, roots, trauma, mindset searching for understanding,...
I hope they'll give you some food for thought and you'll like them.
Happy summer!
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