Trevor Noah on the Power of Humor: Recorded LIVE at The INBOUND Studio

Hello guys, welcome to the

inbound

studio

. I'm Josh Horowitz by day. I'm going to be a correspondent for MTV News, but today I'm talking about the

power

of

humor

with my guest, Mr. Trevor Noah, of course, you know him as an author, comedian, and host of The Daily Show. Trevor thanks for stopping by, thanks so much for having me, this is fun, we

live

, this is the first incoming

studio

on Facebook

live

for the first live. what I've done in my life I don't think it's true that's not true but you can lie Whaley laughs it's good it's good this one let's talk a little bit about the

power

of

humor

in your life growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa in the 80s no It seems to be the most hysterical scenario and the time and place of the story depends on who you were some people were like there was a good time, well tell me, it was with humor immediately a way to cope with what you faced as a child.

I know that when I was a child I found in my family that we used humor to cope. You know that humor is a tool that you can use to process information, it is a filter through which you see the world and, therefore, it does not minimize what happens to you. It doesn't minimize how you feel about what's happening, but it helps you deal with the information that's coming in and that's how we've always used humor in my house. Can you give us a specific example from when you were a kid and you relied on humor to get you through a tough moment oh wow, although there are tons of times I'm trying to think of which particular moment.

You would know that growing up I always realized that humor was a tool that I could use, I mean, if it was. getting away from bullies, whether it was, you know, making my mom laugh, that she wouldn't hit me, whether it was basically, it was always to keep them from doing serious bodily harm to me. Yeah, that's what you use humor, you say, do you know what they did? Let's say that a laughing jury is not a hung jury, right, yes, I mean my life was marked by a comedy, but trying to remember a moment is difficult.

I know there was a time when I was seven or six years old and I was sent to the principal's office because I had been naughty with a friend and I went to a Catholic school originally and the principal was going to beat us up and he took out like a little piece rubber no. I don't know what it was and my friend Knights leaned over and then proceeded to spank us, which is very formal. I had never been spanked before. Well, when you grow up in an African family, you get hit, you don't expand, you jump right into that yeah, so it was like a spanking, it was very formal, very like, you know, like in the butt, countdown five four three two one and then I counted down while he did it because first he gave my friend five spanks and you know, five. and then when he came up to me, I was like five four, my friend laughed and then I loved him in the stomach like it's not funny, it's not funny, man, he just was and I was like and then he didn't just couldn't. do it.

You must have already felt like a creep and enjoyed it, they don't slaughter, but yeah, if you enjoy it, then if you sing the fun for this poor guy who just wanted to hurt you exactly, I think of him, Trevor, that's what I felt. that's where your sense of humor came from in terms of your family video, do you have a similar cycle to your mom? Oh yes, my sense of humor definitely came from my mom, my sense of humor came from my grandfather, they are the funniest people in my family. I thought my grandfather was or was a wild man, very boisterous, a real man. lovely named Temperance Noah and he used to walk around our neighborhood so we are called meteor lands where we grew up. and like I was walking around saying random phrases in English because I knew that most people with that name live couldn't speak English, but I didn't know what they meant, I just knew that I was one of them, you know, so like If someone greeted him and then he It would be like good afternoon, remember that today is a day that is not promised but we must not abandon our future as we see fit and I would say: What does that mean?

He says it doesn't matter because he would do exactly that. I want to talk to you about the way you connect with your audience because as a host of a show like The Daily Show, you know your background is primarily stand-up and you have some kinds of masters of service when you host. On a show like that, you have to connect with the guests, you have to connect with the studio audience in the studio and maybe most importantly you need to connect through that lens, definitely the audience at home is the one that has conflicts there and defend what serves you.

Well, give me an idea of ​​where your head is at in terms of who you're trying to connect with when you're doing what I think is trying to create a balance, so you're trying to be in a space where we're creating a show that essentially is for the home viewer, but what we're trying to do is take the home viewer into the space where the show was properly made and therefore trying to communicate with someone who isn't there and yet at the same time. They are, it's trying to do almost what you do on FaceTime or Skype with the family when a person doesn't try anything and has a Hangout and using stand-up I can communicate with my audience, but the most important thing is to get the message across to the people. home viewers.

And finding that balance is what makes it a challenging format, but the great thing about stand-up is communicating, yeah, and then if you build a relationship with the person at home and you can imagine who they are, which I always do. try and do it, then I find it's easy to communicate with people, you know, in both statements. I read an interview with you recently where he talked about you, he said a quote. I'm not selling you anger, you were talking about wanting to create a connection. with everyone with your audience as we spoke and I think it also strikes me that you know that you interview people whose politics you don't agree with Tommy Larren, etc.

And that interview got a lot of press, is it important to you? reach an audience that doesn't necessarily agree with you politically find moments of connection well, you don't necessarily know, it all depends on what you get out of an interview, you can't determine it at the beginning of an interview, many times you go in and when you leave the other On the other hand, you discover that you have obtained something that you did not anticipate. Sometimes I find that bringing someone in from the other side, whatever it is, whether it's the political spectrum or just a world that you're in. what you're not familiar with is really bringing someone in to help you refine your point of view will help you challenge yourself because if you spend too much time in your own world you only know what you know and you believe it and you reinforce it when you meet someone. who disagrees with you forces you to challenge your beliefs and in challenge comes the galvanization of ideas that I encounter and that's what I appreciate that's why I'll get involved with some that I don't agree with, I don't think' I'll change everyone that I know.

I'm not trying to persuade everyone. I have a sharper conversation with you than yes, but it's like it also pokes holes in my arguments where I walk away saying "ah, okay, why do I think that?" Why do I say that? Can I strengthen it? Can I go and read or can I reinforce what I believe? Is it a view that I now have to question as a whole because I'm just parroting something other people have said? Your job changes the day after the U.S. Do you think the election, oh yeah, how well? I think you know, as I would say with my friends, they were real essentially because before that there was a general sense of arrogance, maybe for a lot of people who watched the US election there was a sense that everything is a foregone conclusion, It almost feels like it's just, you know, paint by numbers, as well as the ability to avoid what was going to happen, yes, the joy of the race, but the truth is that we know how it's going to end, it's inevitable. . and after Donald Trump won, you could feel the change in how people perceived politics, you could feel a change in how people perceived the future of the United States and even the world, and at that moment I realized that there was now a purpose not just for myself, if it weren't for the program to inhibit the space where we would be examining, probing and questioning the world we now lived in, you know, then some people, oh, it seems like you've become much more serious after Donald Trump oh yeah because now there was something to take seriously the world got serious exactly whereas before that there were times when I felt a serious list was needed but I've never been a fan of panic artificial, because then what happens is if you exist in a constant state of panic, then panic becomes the norm and by default it becomes something that is not important.

Did you say anything to your staff like the day after the day after in terms of I don't know, you know your staff policy, but like? I would assume that morale was maybe not good on a personal level for his staff, so he has to rally the troops to figure out what their purpose is and what their objective is. Well, I told them all, I told them I know some of them. of you they are afraid. I know some of you feel like you are in a country you don't know anymore. I know some of you don't know how to deal with this.

I said what I could. I'm telling you, you're lucky to be in the best place to have that video situation. This is a space where you can come and share those feelings and hopefully we can connect with people who have similar views and all the time you will. Find more and more people connecting with you, you know that feeling and that's what I told myself and I said let's go out and do it like we're doing it for ourselves because that's essentially the kind of show I think you should do . We also have some questions from the Facebook audience.

Here's one about where to draw the line on humor. Can humor go too far? This is an essential question for comics. You've known this for years. You have an internal barometer. Do you know when it arrives? such a thing as going too far with comedy. I think comedy, the definition of comedy is going too far, that's why they have a visceral response to Oaks, you know, it's something that people don't plan, sometimes they don't want to laugh. but it comes out of them I don't think comedy can go too far I think a person's ideas maybe ideas that can offend people but the offense I've learned when I travel the world changes so dramatically that you realize it really it's based on the person and how they're perceiving something correctly, you know, it takes the comedy out of the equation, sort of like a thumbs up sign, if you take it around the world you'd be surprised how many different countries this is in It means something totally different, yeah, so go. this is a good thing and then somehow, no, this is a bad word, you know, you're saying bad words to my family and so comedies are kind of the same depending on your audience, depending on the space here and depending on what you're talking about and most importantly, the context, you know, that's the line that I find, so I use a barometer, my barometer is the context.

I ask myself the question all the time. I say what is the context in which I am telling this joke. One of the contexts of the audience is listening to me, but you can tell a joke to your friends that you couldn't tell or anywhere else because your friends know where you're coming from, so you can tell a joke to your comedy audience. that you can't tell anywhere and then there's a joke that you tell everyone because you know it connects as widely as possible, so having said that, when you started working in the United States here, did you find that there was a curve of learning in terms of what works here and what if there is an American sensibility towards comedy.

What they responded to, even as you know, within the United States, a different state, yeah, when parts of the country responded, yeah from the material, that's a challenge for a comedian first and the community grows here. It's kind of an adjustment with its investment period, yes, but you know I'm lucky because I've traveled a lot and I've enjoyed being in new places, learning how people do comedy and discovering what makes people love it. I've come to learn that for the most part human beings are connected by the same fibers what changes is the pace of the comedy what changes the way you tell a story but the story remains the same you know that's why Movies go around the world essentially everyone in the world is watching the same movie at some point, but the language probably changes the nuance of what the movie actually means, so it's the same with comedy, you start to learn that you like, oh, if I change this a little bit, it will connect with people more if I change that. a little bit then he does the same thing and that's all I have to learn depending on what's going on so Vin Diesel brings the world together and then diesel brings the world an aspect or one of those truths together that we hold on to which is true another.

Facebook question in this sense: where in the world would you like to share your comedy that you haven't been to? Is there a place you haven't beengone? Oh, we are in the world. Would I like to share my comedy that I haven't been to? I would still love to do comedies in Asia hmm, I haven't had the chance to do that, that would be exciting. I would love to do comedies in South America, where else? Wow, I've been to most places. M, I wanted to go, so yeah, I guess you know, my dream has always been, you know, one time, you were done with the daily show and then I stopped traveling the world and I started learning comedy in other languages ​​and then I started a new one. trip on him or stand-up as you know they will show you have welcomed many political presidents it is not because of evil possibly President Trump could be on your show one day who knows yes, what would you ask President Trump?

I already got it, what would he do? Ask President Trump if Donald Trump came to the Daily Show. I think the question I would ask him would be if they gave him a reset button that would show all our memories and erase everything we know about him, his tweets, his public statements. his rhetoric on the campaign trail, you know, he confuses the tape on his boarding gate on a bus, all if he could push that button, who would be the new man that he would like us to see in the future and what would he like that to be? legacy now?

What I would like to know about Donald Trump I hope we can see him Do you think we are in a golden age for political comedy? There are a lot of great Daily Show veterans. Know? Know? vehicle there, obviously, yeah, there's a lot of interesting content out there. I'm sure you probably see other things that you want to maybe not imitate others, but you tell me? I mean, oh, I'm fine, I'm lucky I can't imitate. others like, I mean, that's something I learned when we started the Daily Show: you know there's literally José John, well, yeah, some of the writers stayed in John's era and they all had the right to joke about John.

Stewart, but even my accent changes the way you write a joke is that I can't say it the same way, there's a rhythm that changes, so in essence you're forced to be original, which is really nice and then I look at my story . I look at where I come from, I look at who I am and all of that influences my comedy so you know we're in a golden age of comedy and I think the nice thing about having all these different shows is that you get different perspectives yeah. You know, I enjoy the fact that Sam B can give me his perspective from a woman's point of view instead of letting this man tell you what he thinks women feel good about.

It's like no, it's good to say, "Oh, I didn't know that." You were thinking it's good to see Colbert and think about something else. You know, it's also nice that people tell his stories and that's what I inherited at The Daily Show and that's a legacy that I hope to continue in the future. Finally, do you think comedians always are? a kind of cloning of your craft throughout your career. Do you think you will always be learning? Oh yeah, definitely, you're sure that's not a point you think about. I realized this. I know how comedies never end.

Yes, they never end. Sex never ends, man, you may think you're good, right? and then one day you'll get into a situation where we think, oh, I have a lot to learn. Words to live by from Trevor. Thank you very much for stopping by. Thank you. first Facebook live in an incoming studio and thanks for watching guys on this Facebook live, see you next time.