Carter Sherman: How Shame Became the New Sex Ed

Speaker 0:00 Gen Z is having a sex recession.

Carter Sherman 0:02 20 and 30-somethings are having less sex than previous generations-

Trevor Noah 0:05 Wow

Carter Sherman 0:05 ... and are starting their sex lives later.

Eugene 0:07 Gen Z have been done dirty when it comes to dating, and people's views of dating is more polarizing than ever. For many teenagers, greater use of social media means a far greater sense of isolation.

Speaker 0:18 The average 14-year-old boy today has seen more hardcore porn than all of the American fighting forces in the Second World War.

Carter Sherman 0:24 Sex ed here in the United States is nonsense and confusion because it teaches you how to be safe, but not the pleasures, and porn teaches you the pleasures, sort of, but not how to be safe.

Speaker 0:35 Carter Sherman, reproductive health and justice reporter with The Guardian, who interviewed over 100 young people for her new book. It's called The Second Coming. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 0:49 This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. [upbeat music] I'm truly ex- so excited to have this conversation.

Carter Sherman 1:06 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:06 You don't understand.

Carter Sherman 1:06 Well, thank you for having me on.

Trevor Noah 1:07 Yeah, because, like, sometimes you reading a book and then it's just, like, facts, facts, data, data, facts, facts, facts, and then here it's like facts, data, sex.

Carter Sherman 1:16 [laughs]

Eugene 1:17 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:17 Good times.

Eugene 1:18 Why didn't you lead with that?

Trevor Noah 1:19 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:20 I mean, I don't-

Eugene 1:20 We're here. Coffee, coffee, marriage, coffee-

Trevor Noah 1:23 [laughs]

Eugene 1:23 ... hospitals, hospitals, research. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:26 You know, I like to surprise.

Trevor Noah 1:27 Okay. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:28 But yeah, that's the secret thing that I also write about, in addition to healthcare, is sex. Which is more fun, that's for sure.

Trevor Noah 1:35 Sherman, your husband's name?

Carter Sherman 1:37 No, it's my name.

Trevor Noah 1:38 [laughs]

Eugene 1:39 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:39 So.

Trevor Noah 1:41 What? [laughs]

Eugene 1:44 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:44 He asked if Sherman was my husband's name, and I was instantly like, "No."

Trevor Noah 1:48 [laughs]

Eugene 1:48 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:48 Just no way.

Trevor Noah 1:49 [laughs] Oh, that's funny.

Carter Sherman 1:52 Well, his name is, his last name is Conway Pearson, and so I would like to combine our names and be, like, Conman and Sher- or Sherman and Sherman-

Trevor Noah 2:00 Sher- Sherman and Conman

Carter Sherman 2:00 ... and be Conman. And so I'm a journalist.

Trevor Noah 2:03 I just like that.

Carter Sherman 2:03 I could be journalist Conman. He's a doctor. He could be Dr. Conman, I think it would be. That's the only

Carter Sherman 2:08 way I would change my name is for this bit.

Trevor Noah 2:09 Those are some of, that's, I mean, like, those are some of those things in life that are terrible in the thought-

Eugene 2:13 Yes

Trevor Noah 2:13 ... but man, what a beautiful idea.

Eugene 2:16 Yes.

Trevor Noah 2:16 That would be a great one.

Carter Sherman 2:17 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 2:18 Do- Dr. Conman. Especially if anything went wrong, you- you've i- you've, like, immunized yourself.

Carter Sherman 2:22 Yeah. You're like-

Trevor Noah 2:22 What went wrong?

Carter Sherman 2:22 ... "What were you expecting?"

Trevor Noah 2:23 Well, when Dr. Conman, "I'm sorry you trusted, Dr. Conman."

Eugene 2:27 [laughs] Totally your fault. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 2:28 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:28 It just becomes that in everything.

Carter Sherman 2:31 I know.

Trevor Noah 2:31 Dr. Conman. Well, but-

Carter Sherman 2:32 His malpractice insurance might be really hard to come by, but.

Trevor Noah 2:35 Right? [laughs]

Eugene 2:36 I loved your reaction when I asked if that's his surname or yours and you were like, "Mine."

Trevor Noah 2:39 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 2:40 [laughs]

Eugene 2:41 So y- so you haven't changed your surname, or you only use your surname when you're doing business?

Carter Sherman 2:45 I haven't tr- changed my surname.

Eugene 2:46 At all?

Carter Sherman 2:46 No.

Trevor Noah 2:47 South Africa just made it, uh, did you see the-

Eugene 2:49 Yes

Trevor Noah 2:49 ... the law just changed?

Eugene 2:50 Yes.

Trevor Noah 2:50 Now y- now, I did, I was shocked that you could do it now.

Eugene 2:54 Now husbands-

Trevor Noah 2:54 Now husbands can take the woman's name.

Carter Sherman 2:56 It was illegal to do?

Trevor Noah 2:57 But I was like, "Now?"

Eugene 2:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:57 You know when you, you learn about-

Eugene 2:58 No one had ever thought of it before.

Trevor Noah 2:59 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 2:59 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:59 But I was just like, "Wait, I didn't know that there was a law against this."

Eugene 3:03 Yeah. Would you?

Trevor Noah 3:04 Would I what? Take my wife's name?

Eugene 3:07 Yes.

Trevor Noah 3:08 Depends on if her name made my name cooler or more interesting.

Eugene 3:11 Ah.

Trevor Noah 3:11 Like it, like it's like, let's say her last name was like Webber.

Eugene 3:14 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:14 I wouldn't want to be like Trevor Webber.

Carter Sherman 3:16 I don't know.

Trevor Noah 3:16 I'm not-

Carter Sherman 3:16 I like that, actually.

Trevor Noah 3:17 No, I'm not doing that.

Eugene 3:18 I actually do as well.

Trevor Noah 3:18 Trevor Webber?

Carter Sherman 3:19 Yeah.

Eugene 3:20 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 3:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:20 No, no. Now it's like I'm ro-

Eugene 3:22 Well-

Trevor Noah 3:22 I'm roasting myself. Everywhere I go, people are roasting me. "Oh, Trevor Webber." No, I'm not, I don't want that.

Eugene 3:26 Okay, maybe ... [clears throat]

Carter Sherman 3:27 So it'd have to be, like, Lightning, so you could like-

Trevor Noah 3:29 Trevor Lightning?

Carter Sherman 3:30 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:31 No. [laughs] Okay.

Carter Sherman 3:32 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:32 I like that-

Carter Sherman 3:32 It's like, "What is this war?" [laughs]

Trevor Noah 3:33 I like that this was your, I like that this was your contribution. Trevor Lightning.

Eugene 3:36 No, you're surprised by the person who said Conman. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 3:39 Well, like, what, what's like a cool last name?

Trevor Noah 3:41 No, what I mean is, like-

Eugene 3:42 Yeah

Trevor Noah 3:42 ... you've got to take me, like Eugene Koza. It has a, it has a music to it.

Eugene 3:46 Because you're used to it.

Trevor Noah 3:47 No. No, no, no. It does. There's certain names that don't have a music, and to those people, I apologize, because your parents messed you up. Carter Sherman. That has music to it.

Eugene 3:55 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 3:55 Carter Sherman.

Eugene 3:56 That is best-

Trevor Noah 3:56 You know what I mean?

Eugene 3:57 Best-selling author-

Trevor Noah 3:57 If you, if you-

Eugene 3:58 ... written all over.

Trevor Noah 3:58 Exactly.

Carter Sherman 3:59 Somebody did tell me it would be a good name for, like, a airport paperback thriller writer.

Trevor Noah 4:03 It would indeed.

Eugene 4:03 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 4:03 Like, The Latest Carter Sherman.

Trevor Noah 4:04 It would indeed.

Eugene 4:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 4:05 The Latest Carter Sherman. It has that vibe. Even, like, a rapper would say it.

Carter Sherman 4:08 Hm.

Trevor Noah 4:09 Carter Sherman, never heard him. You know what I mean? It's got, like, a co- like there's a-

Eugene 4:12 Clearly not German.

Trevor Noah 4:13 There we go. What, you see? You see what I'm talking about? This is what I'm talking-

Eugene 4:16 Uva Thurman.

Carter Sherman 4:16 I'm gonna leave here-

Trevor Noah 4:17 Man

Carter Sherman 4:17 ... with a theme song. That's what's gonna happen here. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 4:19 This is, you see what I mean? These are good names. Eugene Koza has a flow. Trevor Noah.

Eugene 4:23 Trevor Webber.

Trevor Noah 4:23 It's like Tr- no. Trevor Webber. It just sounds like you stumbled after saying it. I wouldn't do that. But that's, that's for your next book.

Carter Sherman 4:32 Okay.

Trevor Noah 4:33 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 4:33 The Best Names.

Trevor Noah 4:34 The Best-

Carter Sherman 4:34 Just a list of the best names

Trevor Noah 4:35 ... Who Should Take Whose Last Name is your next book.

Eugene 4:39 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 4:39 I mean, I would adv- I think it is cool when men take their wives' last name.

Eugene 4:43 Why?

Trevor Noah 4:44 I also think it's cool.

Carter Sherman 4:44 Because it's unusual.

Eugene 4:45 Do you want to be the unusual guy at the bar? [laughs]

Carter Sherman 4:48 I mean, not, no. It depends.

Eugene 4:50 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 4:51 Is it like, "Oh, I think this guy is ..."

Eugene 4:54 Mrs. Conman.

Carter Sherman 4:55 Yeah.

Eugene 4:55 Think about this carefully.

Carter Sherman 4:57 I would ... [laughs] I think that would be so fun. [laughs]

Eugene 5:00 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 5:00 Just sign everything as, like, Carter Conman.

Eugene 5:03 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 5:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 5:04 It could, you know what? It could be your natural evolution because, like, I l- I look at all this, this stuff, not all the stuff that you've written.

Carter Sherman 5:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 5:09 Um, but I, I was going back i- into some of your older writings, and one of the first pieces I could find was the one that you did for Ms. Magazine, right? That's-

Carter Sherman 5:19 Oh.

Trevor Noah 5:19 That's, that's, I think you s-

Carter Sherman 5:20 I love it. Yeah, no way

Trevor Noah 5:20 ... you were still an intern.

Carter Sherman 5:21 Yes.

Trevor Noah 5:21 And it was a piece about, um, why co- why aren't condoms designed for female pleasure?

Carter Sherman 5:27 Hm.

Trevor Noah 5:28 You know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 5:28 I have no memory of writing this.

Trevor Noah 5:30 Oh.

Carter Sherman 5:30 So what's the answer?

Trevor Noah 5:31 No, uh-

Carter Sherman 5:32 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 5:32 No, the quest- you were asking the question.

Carter Sherman 5:33 Oh, okay.

Trevor Noah 5:33 You were saying, like, "Why aren't they?"

Carter Sherman 5:35 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 5:35 "Why are they not considering?"

Eugene 5:36 Well-

Trevor Noah 5:36 "Why is it, like, how does it fit on the penis? Does it work well on the man's penis? Does he like it? Does it work well for him? Does it feel this? Does it feel that?"

Carter Sherman 5:42 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 5:42 But you were like, "But none of this work and none of this research is around but how does it feel for her?"

Carter Sherman 5:46 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 5:47 And as I was reading that, and then reading through your book, I went, "Oh, wow, this is ... It's, it's cool to see somebody's trajectory and, and, and watch them ... " You, you know, like, you, we always meet people as they are now.

Carter Sherman 5:59 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 6:00 But it's cool to meet them as they-

Carter Sherman 6:01 Yeah

Trevor Noah 6:01 ... sort of were at a different time. And it made me wonder, like, what was the first thing that got you obsessed with the topic of sex, how we view sex, why sex is important to a society, a culture? Like, what, what was that first lightning bolt in your world?

Carter Sherman 6:16 Oh, I mean, I think it was one of the stories I used to open up the book, which is that I was pathologically obsessed with my own virginity. I was so upset to be a 17-year-old virgin. I thought I was the-

Trevor Noah 6:26 Upset?

Carter Sherman 6:27 Upset. I thought I was the last 17-year-old virgin on the planet.

Trevor Noah 6:29 Might have been.

Carter Sherman 6:30 I mean-

Trevor Noah 6:31 Who were you?

Carter Sherman 6:31 [laughs] It felt like it.

Trevor Noah 6:32 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 6:33 Like, I fully... My, one of the last girls in my friend group-

Trevor Noah 6:38 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 6:38 ... to lose her virginity texted me during class that she had lost it, 'cause she cut school-

Trevor Noah 6:43 Wow

Carter Sherman 6:43 ... and, yeah, had sex with this guy on her laundry room floor. I mean, it was great it sounded like. And I kept it together for the rest of school.

Trevor Noah 6:52 Mm.

Carter Sherman 6:52 And then I got into the car when my mom picked me up from school, and I just burst out sobbing-

Trevor Noah 6:58 Mm

Carter Sherman 6:58 ... because I was so upset over the fact that I had-

Trevor Noah 7:01 You were the last one standing.

Carter Sherman 7:02 I know. And it was so tragic.

Trevor Noah 7:02 Wait, did you tell your mom why you were crying?

Carter Sherman 7:04 Oh, yeah, of course.

Trevor Noah 7:05 Wait, of course?

Carter Sherman 7:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 7:06 Oh, there's no of course in my w- wait. So your mom was like, "Why are you crying?" And you're like, "Well, 'cause, 'cause I can't get some."

Carter Sherman 7:12 Yes. And she was like, "You know, it's fine. Like, everybody loses it at different times. It's not a big deal."

Trevor Noah 7:18 Oh.

Carter Sherman 7:18 And I was like, "Well-"

Trevor Noah 7:19 These are the families I watched in movies and thought never existed.

Carter Sherman 7:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 7:22 But also, we're talking about-

Carter Sherman 7:23 Imagine

Trevor Noah 7:24 ... h- how people were born to be villain- I mean, their villain origin stories. Yeah, their villain origin story. These are the opposites.

Carter Sherman 7:28 Yeah, like.

Trevor Noah 7:28 Like Carter Sherman, the last hymen.

Carter Sherman 7:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 7:31 [laughs] You-

Carter Sherman 7:32 That's my next book.

Trevor Noah 7:33 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 7:33 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 7:35 Can you imagine, Eugene? Let's, let's just play.

Eugene 7:37 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 7:37 I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you... I'm gonna take you through time.

Carter Sherman 7:41 Okay.

Eugene 7:41 Yes.

Trevor Noah 7:41 We're gonna transport you to a Black family, a, a South African family.

Eugene 7:45 To be exact.

Trevor Noah 7:46 To be exact.

Carter Sherman 7:47 Okay.

Trevor Noah 7:47 Okay? I will play Carter Sherman. The s- Trevor Noah as Carter Sherman, all right?

Eugene 7:53 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 7:53 And then I am, I am going to-

Eugene 7:55 Am I-

Trevor Noah 7:55 And then you will be-

Eugene 7:56 ... Mama Sherman?

Trevor Noah 7:56 You will be my mom and dad. You can be both at the same just-

Eugene 7:59 Oh, Parent Sherman?

Trevor Noah 7:59 I want Parent Sherman.

Eugene 8:00 Okay, cool.

Trevor Noah 8:01 But in South Africa.

Eugene 8:02 Who was in the car with you that day?

Carter Sherman 8:03 My mother. Just my mom.

Trevor Noah 8:04 Okay, yeah.

Eugene 8:04 Just your mom.

Trevor Noah 8:04 So it's just, just the two of us. All right? And action.

Eugene 8:09 [cries]

Trevor Noah 8:09 And then-

Eugene 8:10 [cries]

Trevor Noah 8:16 You know what? If you don't stop behaving like a white girl in this car, I'm going to drop you off now.

Eugene 8:20 [cries] S- s- so- sorry, Mom. Sorry, Mama. Sorry. It was just such a hard day, Mom. It was such a hard day.

Trevor Noah 8:27 What happened?

Eugene 8:28 Uh, uh, my friend texted me, Mom, and I found out that I'm the last virgin. I'm the only person who's not getting sex, Mama.

Trevor Noah 8:36 What?

Eugene 8:36 [cries]

Trevor Noah 8:37 You had a phone at school? [laughs]

Carter Sherman 8:40 [laughs]

Eugene 8:43 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 8:45 Oh, man. Okay, wait, so your mom-

Carter Sherman 8:47 Wow, she shouldn't have had that reaction. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 8:51 [laughs]

Eugene 8:51 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 8:51 Okay, wait. So, so your mom, your mom goes, "Don't worry, it'll happen in time."

Carter Sherman 8:57 Yes. And then I was like, "Well, did you... Were you a virgin when you were my age?" And she was like, "Oh, no. No, no."

Trevor Noah 9:04 [laughs]

Eugene 9:04 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 9:04 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:04 Your mom, your mom is Black.

Trevor Noah 9:07 What's wrong with... [laughs] Oh, this is amazing. Oh, wow, this is amazing.

Carter Sherman 9:11 It was a really... Yeah.

Trevor Noah 9:12 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 9:13 I, she of course totally forgot the story, 'cause you know how parents just-

Trevor Noah 9:16 Yes

Carter Sherman 9:16 ... fully forget the experiences-

Trevor Noah 9:18 Yes, yes

Carter Sherman 9:18 ... that shape you forever?

Eugene 9:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 9:20 She forgot this, and then I was telling her the story again, you know, when I was writing the book. And [laughs] she was like, "I can't believe I said that. I really should have lied." And I was like-

Trevor Noah 9:29 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 9:29 ... "Okay, I get it. Like, you were not a virgin at 17. Cool. Thank you for that."

Trevor Noah 9:34 [laughs]

Eugene 9:35 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 9:35 She really wanted to impress upon me. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 9:38 [laughs]

Eugene 9:38 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 9:38 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:38 Yeah, but, but-

Eugene 9:39 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:40 [laughs] I feel like, I feel like that, that story-

Eugene 9:42 Oh, man, sorry. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:45 It's, it's, it's the perfect jumping-off point into, into what... You know what? It's, I don't know if there's right or wrong in it.

Carter Sherman 9:52 Mm.

Trevor Noah 9:52 I think rightly and wrongly, our obsession with sex. 'Cause on the one, there's one part of my brain that goes, "Why are we so obsessed with sex?" There's another part of me that always goes like, "Why aren't we more obsessed with sex?" In that-

Carter Sherman 10:01 Mm

Trevor Noah 10:01 ... it is, it is the thing that means most of us are here.

Eugene 10:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:05 It is the reason the human race will or will not continue in many ways.

Eugene 10:09 Mm.

Trevor Noah 10:10 But what I love about your book is, and, and, and we'll, we'll go

Trevor Noah 10:13 through, like, you know, all the different topics that you get into in every, every single one of the chapters. I think you do it amazingly, is like, it- it's not necessarily our obsession with sex that's wrong, it's what elements of sex we're obsessed with-

Eugene 10:23 Mm

Trevor Noah 10:24 ... that become detrimental to a society. And so, like, let's, let's talk about virginity. You know, when you look at virginity throughout the decades, it's amazing how it changes. 'Cause you're, you're, you're talking about crying-

Carter Sherman 10:34 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 10:34 ... because you're the last virgin. And then you just rewind time or go to a different place, and the, the tears are because people aren't a, a virgin. Do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 10:44 Right. It, I mean-

Trevor Noah 10:44 Mm

Carter Sherman 10:44 ... for so long virginity was something to be prized, and in many places of the world is still something to be prized, particularly for women.

Trevor Noah 10:51 Mm.

Carter Sherman 10:51 Like, it is essential to maintain your virginity-

Trevor Noah 10:53 Yeah

Carter Sherman 10:53 ... in a lot of places, at risk of, I mean, potentially even death-

Trevor Noah 10:57 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 10:57 ... depending on where you are in the world.

Trevor Noah 10:59 Mm.

Carter Sherman 10:59 And so it is kind of stunning how quickly that has flipped here in the United States, where it is seen as lame to be a virgin past a certain age. And I was really struck in writing the book that the feeling that I had that it was so uncool to be a virgin was shared by so many young people I talked to. Like,

Carter Sherman 11:17 all of them felt like having held onto their virginity for as long as they did, even if they lost their virginity early on, like, that was the wrong age to do it.

Trevor Noah 11:24 Oh, wow.

Carter Sherman 11:25 I talked to one young man who, what, like, as soon as, at 14, he started feeling really bad, that he-

Trevor Noah 11:30 14

Carter Sherman 11:30 ... at 14, yeah, that he had not yet had sex.

Trevor Noah 11:33 Feel like his numbers was going down.

Eugene 11:33 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 11:34 Well, but it's interesting because younger people are actually having less sex than previous generations. So these young people are telling themselves, "Oh, I'm so lame for not having sex" but it doesn't match the reality that, like, most of their peers probably aren't having sex at this point.

Trevor Noah 11:48 So do you find that, are people just lying about having sex, or are they-

Eugene 11:51 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 11:52 I mean-

Trevor Noah 11:52 Which one is it?

Carter Sherman 11:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 11:53 If ev- if everyone thinks they're lame for not having sex, but they are having less sex than ever before-

Carter Sherman 11:58 I don't know if it's lying so much as we don't really have open conversations about sex. I think the extent to which we talk about sex in public is oftentimes to stigmatize sex, or when you talk about sex amongst your friends, you're oftentimes, like, em- not lying, but maybe embellishing stories or talking about-

Trevor Noah 12:13 Trust me

Carter Sherman 12:13 ... like, only the good stuff.

Trevor Noah 12:15 Yeah.

Eugene 12:15 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 12:15 You're not really discussing the complexity of it or maybe your own feelings about how much sex you're having, how much sex you're not having, what your last sexual experience was like. And so I think that we're not really able to have conversations that get into the nuances of sex and the role that it plays in our lives because I think that we see sex oftentimes as something that, like, should be private. And I'm not saying it's not something that can't be deeply personal and something that you should hold for yourself, but I do think that we underestimate the ways that what's going on in public shape our approach to sex-

Trevor Noah 12:46 Oh

Carter Sherman 12:46 ... and shape even our ability to have the kind of sex that we like.

Trevor Noah 12:49 Yeah, there's some, there's some parts of the book where it feels like, it feels like you're, you're forcing us to ask the question, who is obsessed with whose sex and why? And what does it, what does it mean? You know, like w- when I, when I was reading through, I was thinking of y- you know, going through the decades, and there's always these new moments in media where they'll be like, "Hook-up culture: Is it out of control? Is there a hook-up cult? What does it mean for your kids?" You know, and there's-

Carter Sherman 13:14 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 13:14 ... n- those news headlines. And then you, like, fast-forward a few years and they'll be like, "There's a virginity recession. There's a," wa-wa. And there's like ... They always have these, like, these, these catchphrases.

Carter Sherman 13:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 13:22 But it always focuses on young people. That's something your book really made me realize. I, I hadn't thought of it before, but they very seldom are talking about 50-year-olds or 40-something-year-olds or 60-year-olds even. It's always focused on a peculiar thing that is happening in and around young people's sex.

Carter Sherman 13:40 Mm.

Trevor Noah 13:40 Like, why do you think that is? When you researched it,

Trevor Noah 13:42 what did you find?

Carter Sherman 13:43 Yeah. Why do we love telling young people that they're doing sex wrong?

Trevor Noah 13:45 Yeah. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 13:46 I mean, I think that-

Trevor Noah 13:47 Like

Carter Sherman 13:48 ... in a lot of ways, like, controlling how young people have sex means you control the future.

Trevor Noah 13:51 Huh.

Carter Sherman 13:52 You can reset the narrative about what an American family should look like, what an American life should look like, how to be good in the United States-

Trevor Noah 13:59 Hmm

Carter Sherman 13:59 ... depending on how you condition young people to think about sex. I mean, I would also argue that there's probably some element amongst people as we get older and maybe lose more of our sex appeal that we feel like-

Trevor Noah 14:10 Jealous

Carter Sherman 14:11 ... yes. Yeah, like, we wanna control these young people who are sort of like, you know, rising up, flourishing, what have you. But I think that there is also a great political utility-

Trevor Noah 14:20 Yeah

Carter Sherman 14:20 ... in telling young people how to live their lives, and in particular making them feel certain types of ways about sex and making them afraid of certain kinds of ways.

Trevor Noah 14:27 Yeah, absolutely. I feel like y- you've nailed it, and I guess that's why you are a great author and I'm...

Carter Sherman 14:33 Well, I don't know about great author, but thank you. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 14:36 Yeah. You don't be... Hey,

Trevor Noah 14:38 you're Eugene Cozier. You don't forget that.

Eugene 14:40 Thank you, Trevor.

Trevor Noah 14:41 Yeah.

Eugene 14:42 Thank you so much.

Trevor Noah 14:43 You ... I don't care what happens in your life.

Eugene 14:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 14:44 You never forget that, right?

Eugene 14:45 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 14:46 Yes, she's a great author.

Eugene 14:47 Yes.

Trevor Noah 14:47 And you might be useless at everything, but you're still Eugene Cozier. [laughs]

Eugene 14:50 Thank you. Okay.

Carter Sherman 14:50 Your name has a... What was-

Trevor Noah 14:52 Your na-

Carter Sherman 14:52 What did you say?

Trevor Noah 14:53 Your name has a r-

Carter Sherman 14:53 A rhythm

Trevor Noah 14:53 ... it's a musicality to it.

Carter Sherman 14:55 Yeah, a musicality.

Trevor Noah 14:55 You don't forget that.

Eugene 14:56 Yeah?

Carter Sherman 14:57 Yeah.

Eugene 14:57 Guys, I don't know what to say. I'm, I'm touched. I mean-

Trevor Noah 15:00 Thank you, Eugene.

Eugene 15:01 Thank you for seeing me, guys.

Trevor Noah 15:03 We see you.

Carter Sherman 15:03 You're welcome.

Trevor Noah 15:04 Well-

Carter Sherman 15:04 We can all go now. We're done here. We [laughs] ...

Trevor Noah 15:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 15:06 The interview is over.

Eugene 15:06 Let's move the fuck from that.

Carter Sherman 15:07 Yeah.

Eugene 15:07 What was the question?

Carter Sherman 15:07 [laughs]

Eugene 15:09 My thing is y- you're absolutely right. It almost feels like sex, money, religion are the only levers that parents can still use to control their children. And once they've lost one, they'll try to cling onto another, because-

Trevor Noah 15:24 Oh, damn

Eugene 15:24 ... while they're still your dependent, you can tell them what car to drive, what w- how they must do at school because you are paying.

Carter Sherman 15:30 Yeah.

Eugene 15:30 And then you can also tell them, "Yeah, if you become morally corrupt by having sex, all of this goes away."

Trevor Noah 15:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 15:38 You know?

Carter Sherman 15:38 But I don't necessarily think, at least here, that it is parents that are passing on this messaging to young people-

Trevor Noah 15:45 Hmm

Carter Sherman 15:45 ... telling them that certain kinds of sex are bad or that sh- they should be ashamed or afraid of certain kinds of sex. I think it is institutions. Like, in general, most Americans believe that it is okay to teach young people about more than abstinence in sex ed.

Trevor Noah 16:00 Okay.

Eugene 16:00 Okay.

Carter Sherman 16:00 They do accept that premarital sex is a normal part of life. They would like their young children to know ... Well, maybe not young children. But they would like their children to be provided with age-appropriate, uh, medically accurate information-

Trevor Noah 16:12 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 16:12 ... about things like condoms and STIs and pregnancy prevention.

Trevor Noah 16:15 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 16:16 But what we see instead in this country is an extreme support among politicians and institutions for abstinence-only sex ed. The US government has, since 2000, poured more than $2 billion into abstinence-only sex ed, which in general does not work.

Trevor Noah 16:30 $2 billion-

Carter Sherman 16:31 $2 billion. It-

Trevor Noah 16:32 ... into convincing people that they should not have sex?

Carter Sherman 16:37 Until marriage. When-

Trevor Noah 16:38 $2 billion?

Carter Sherman 16:39 Yeah.

Eugene 16:39 We're in the wrong business.

Carter Sherman 16:43 [laughs]

Eugene 16:43 Nope. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 16:46 [laughs]

Eugene 16:46 Who did I get? Did I get Trevor Noah or Trevor Webber?

Trevor Noah 16:48 We're like, "What did you just..." [laughs]

Eugene 16:50 $2 billion.

Carter Sherman 16:52 It's ... And ev- I mean, and this continues under Democratic administrations. It's not like just Republican presidents are in favor of abstinence-only sex ed. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing to abstinence-only sex ed.

Trevor Noah 17:03 W- what is, what is their ... Like, to play devil's advocate-

Carter Sherman 17:05 Mm

Trevor Noah 17:05 ... what is their argument for? What is, what is their intention? Before I assume anything.

Carter Sherman 17:09 Yeah, I mean, it's true that abstinence is the only way to totally avoid getting things like STIs or getting pregnant. And, but I think that that is not only the message that's communicated-

Trevor Noah 17:21 Yeah

Carter Sherman 17:21 ... through abstinence-only sex ed. Like, oftentimes abstinence-only sex ed has been embedded with specific notions around, like, who, what a man should be or what a woman should be-

Trevor Noah 17:29 Mm

Carter Sherman 17:29 ... or what a family should look like. And so I think for many of the advocates of abstinence-only sex ed, this is about creating a kind of American family that looks a lot like the American family of the 1950s.

Trevor Noah 17:39 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 17:40 Which is to say, like, two very young people getting married-

Trevor Noah 17:43 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 17:43 ... because in the 1950s the average age of marriage dropped to an unprecedented, I think it was 20 for women and 22 for men.

Trevor Noah 17:49 Wow.

Carter Sherman 17:50 So as a man and a woman get married, they have 2.5 kids, man works-

Trevor Noah 17:53 What's the .5?

Carter Sherman 17:54 ... woman stays at home.

Eugene 17:55 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 17:55 The dog.

Trevor Noah 17:56 I've always-

Carter Sherman 17:56 Yeah

Trevor Noah 17:56 ... I've always loved that .5.

Carter Sherman 17:57 Yeah.

Eugene 17:58 But never in Black families have I heard of a .5.

Trevor Noah 18:00 [laughs]

Eugene 18:03 Never.

Carter Sherman 18:03 It's always ... Maybe it's, like, the always the possibility of more children.

Trevor Noah 18:06 Or you just count-

Carter Sherman 18:07 You know what I mean?

Trevor Noah 18:07 ... your neighbor's child.

Carter Sherman 18:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 18:07 They have three and you have two.

Carter Sherman 18:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 18:09 Then the like-

Eugene 18:09 Oh, that's the, that's the .5.

Trevor Noah 18:11 Yeah, that's the .5.

Carter Sherman 18:11 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 18:11 That's the half.

Eugene 18:12 Okay. Got it.

Carter Sherman 18:13 Yeah. And, I mean, implicit in this is the idea that this family is white, because, like, this was not-

Trevor Noah 18:19 Yeah

Carter Sherman 18:19 ... the reality for Black families in the 1950s. This was how white people-

Eugene 18:22 We only had 3.5

Carter Sherman 18:22 ... in the 1950s lived.

Eugene 18:23 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 18:23 Yeah. They, the white families had the two, had the .5. And so I think that a lot of these abstinence-only advocates, like, they're not just really talking about sex.

Trevor Noah 18:31 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 18:32 They're talking-

Trevor Noah 18:32 They're talking about a lifestyle.

Carter Sherman 18:33 Right

Trevor Noah 18:33 ... they're talking about a way to be, a way to be perceived or-

Eugene 18:36 Values, yeah

Carter Sherman 18:36 ... they're talking about a way that they want the United States to look.

Trevor Noah 18:38 Oh, damn. Damn So when you dig into it-

Carter Sherman 18:44 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 18:44 ... you know, like, the, the, when I came across your work, it was, it was around, there were all these headlines about the sex recession. That's what, that's what got me intrigued 'cause I'd be reading the news and then all of a sudden I'd see a headline, "Sex Recession." I was like, "What, what is this?" And you, and you click into it, and it was like, "Gen Z are not having sex. They're having less sex than ever before. The sex is going down. No sex for Gen Z. What does that mean for your

Trevor Noah 19:09 children?" You'd see all these headlines. And you really-

Carter Sherman 19:13 Yeah

Trevor Noah 19:13 ... in truly one of the most brilliant ways, you break down what people are missing, is that it's not a sex recession because, like, kids are like, "Ah, no sex," or, "I don't want sex," or... You go into the nuanced ideas in and around sex, intimacy, the responsibility, the bonds that people have.

Carter Sherman 19:30 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 19:30 What do you think people miss when they just go, "Gen Z doesn't wanna have sex"?

Carter Sherman 19:35 I think we take the idea of sex as being, like, good in and of itself, for whatever reason. Even though there's so much shaming around sex, it's, like, treated as a bad thing, a knee-jerk bad thing that the sex recession is going on.

Trevor Noah 19:48 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 19:49 And I think we should be asking ourselves, like, to why does it matter if young people aren't having sex? 'Cause, like, to be honest, I don't really care if young people are having sex or not. Like, what I care about is whether or not they are willing to be vulnerable, whether or not they learn skills like how to risk rejection and how to handle rejection-

Trevor Noah 20:06 Oh, yeah

Carter Sherman 20:06 ... and what it means to connect with other people, not just sexually, but platonically and romantically. And so, like, the reason I, I find all these headlines about the sex recession to be very interesting is because I think we don't actually interrogate what sex is or means or the role that it plays in our lives.

Trevor Noah 20:24 Sure.

Carter Sherman 20:25 Which goes back to this earlier question-

Trevor Noah 20:27 Yeah

Carter Sherman 20:27 ... that you were asking about, like, what are we not talking about when we talk about sex, and I think that that's what we're not really talking about. And I think the way that the sex recession headline happens is it sounds really dramatic, and you can understand why people would avoid

Carter Sherman 20:39 having sex-

Trevor Noah 20:39 Right

Carter Sherman 20:39 ... 'cause sex is kinda fun. But-

Trevor Noah 20:42 Hmm?

Carter Sherman 20:42 ... I think that it's- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 20:43 I like the way you said, "Kinda fun."

Carter Sherman 20:45 I mean, I mean-

Trevor Noah 20:46 You're selling it well, eh? Kinda fun.

Carter Sherman 20:47 Yeah.

Eugene 20:47 Kinda fun.

Trevor Noah 20:48 Kinda fun.

Carter Sherman 20:49 I like it. I've had-

Trevor Noah 20:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Eugene 20:50 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 20:50 I've enjoyed it in my time.

Trevor Noah 20:52 I mean, look-

Carter Sherman 20:52 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 20:52 ... you know, kinda fun.

Eugene 20:56 Kinda fun. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 20:56 Was, was-

Eugene 20:56 Well, you know [laughs]

Carter Sherman 20:57 ... sex is kinda fun. Yeah, like from my-

Trevor Noah 20:58 I'm not, I'm not against it.

Eugene 20:59 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 20:59 That's a great sticker, by the way. "Sex is kinda fun."

Eugene 21:02 Kinda fun. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 21:03 It's kinda fun.

Carter Sherman 21:03 I mean, it's breaking news right here.

Trevor Noah 21:05 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 21:06 I don't know, I don't know if anyone's heard.

Trevor Noah 21:08 [Instrumental music plays] We'll be right back after this short break. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. You know how Thanksgiving always sneaks up on you? One minute you're eating leftover Halloween candy, and the next everyone's arguing about who's making what for Thanksgiving dinner. Who are you talking to? Luckily, Whole Foods Market makes it easy to pull it all together. With great prices on turkey, sales on baking essentials, and everyday low prices from the 365 by Whole Foods Market brand, you can actually prep for the holiday without losing your mind or your budget. Yo, why are you speaking like that? They've got high quality organic produce and grab and go sides, which honestly save your life when you said you'd bring something and completely forgot to cook. Is this an ad? Did you just teleport us into an ad? The 365 brand is all about better everyday essentials, affordable pantry staples, baking must-haves, all the basics that still meet Whole Foods Market's quality standards. So whether you're hosting, contributing a dish, or just showing up hungry, Whole Foods Market has everything you need to make this holiday season easier and more delicious. We're sponsored. Shop everything you need for Thanksgiving now at Whole Foods Market. Can we go back to the episode? [Instrumental music plays] So when, when you talk to Gen Z, when you talk to young men, young women, you know, however people identify, like, across the board people are saying that at that age they generally have a different relationship to sex than maybe the mainstream would think they should have. But what, how do, how do they express themselves? What, what do they say their views on sex are or aren't? What, what, what is, what is happening from the inside?

Carter Sherman 22:59 I mean, there's definitely no one-

Eugene 23:00 Nothing's happening on the inside.

Carter Sherman 23:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 23:02 No, that's, that's not what I meant, Eugene. That was a great joke, but that's not what I meant.

Eugene 23:05 Sorry. Yes.

Carter Sherman 23:07 I appreciate that. I love a sex pun.

Eugene 23:09 You're welcome.

Carter Sherman 23:09 I wanna be really clear.

Trevor Noah 23:10 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 23:10 Um, I don't know if the headline or the title-

Trevor Noah 23:13 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 23:13 ... of the book made that clear, but, uh, I mean, I think it's, it depends on who you're talking to.

Trevor Noah 23:19 Mm.

Carter Sherman 23:19 Like, people, these young people that I, I interviewed more than 100 people under 30 for the book, and so, like, every conversation felt really different depending on where these people had come from-

Trevor Noah 23:29 Yeah

Carter Sherman 23:29 ... and what their backgrounds were and, you know, how they identified their sexual orientation or their gender.

Trevor Noah 23:35 There's a lot. Mm.

Carter Sherman 23:36 But I think what was uniform amongst these young people is they really hadn't been asked a lot of the questions that I was asking them.

Trevor Noah 23:43 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 23:43 They all, virtually all of them had had sex education that they thought was incompetent. There was a lot of references to, if you've seen the movie Mean Girls-

Trevor Noah 23:52 Yes. Yes, yes

Carter Sherman 23:52 ... you know how Coach Carr says, like, "If you have sex, you will die"? A lot of people unprompted brought up that exact analogy to me and said that that's what their sex ed was like. But then beyond that, they, a lot of them had never, they didn't have parents like mine. They couldn't talk to them about sex. They didn't have friends that they felt like they could speak openly about sex with. And so I think a lot of them enjoyed being able to have these in-depth conversations, 'cause each of these interviews ran, like, maybe 90 minutes.

Trevor Noah 24:16 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 24:17 Um, and I think particularly f- what I found was interesting, there was kind of a gender divide that happened-

Trevor Noah 24:24 Yeah

Carter Sherman 24:25 ... which is that a lot of the young women, and also a lot of the queer folks I interviewed, they came to the table with more to say.

Trevor Noah 24:33 Okay.

Carter Sherman 24:34 They had th- thought about it even if they hadn't had these conversations before, whereas a lot of the young men I interviewed had not necessarily thought about or even, like, come to the table with things to talk about. And I thought that, my theory around that is I feel like the young women and the queer people Had understood that their sexual desires or their interests maybe created more friction for them.

Trevor Noah 24:55 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 24:55 Because, like, those desires, those interests were not treated as im- as being as important as young men's interests, young straight men's interests.

Trevor Noah 25:02 Right.

Carter Sherman 25:02 Whereas the young men, like, they ... It sort of took them longer to come to start thinking about some of this stuff because they hadn't really had to put as much thought into it.

Trevor Noah 25:12 Yeah, and it's-

Eugene 25:12 Good point.

Carter Sherman 25:12 Yeah

Trevor Noah 25:12 ... it's, it's interesting because society-

Eugene 25:14 Hmm

Trevor Noah 25:15 ... s- tells you what your story is

Trevor Noah 25:18 a lot of the time, you know?

Eugene 25:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:20 So if I, if I think of it from a young man's perspective, when you're a young man, you're sold a story of yourself. You're sold a story that tells you where you should be at a certain time.

Eugene 25:32 Oh.

Trevor Noah 25:32 How you should be s- viewing sex, what you ... And you think of, like, there's like-

Eugene 25:35 The character

Trevor Noah 25:35 ... the fun version, like Superbad, a movie like Superbad, or for me growing up, American Pie. You know what I mean? It's just this, "You gotta lose your virginity by prom, man. You gotta lose it by prom, man. Come on." You, you get what I'm saying?

Carter Sherman 25:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:44 But there's this idea, and even in those stor- And, like, don't get me wrong, those are comedies. I'm not saying don't make them, but society's telling you a story as a young man about your relationship with sex.

Eugene 25:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 25:54 And what your relationship with sex means about you and your, your success in life.

Eugene 25:59 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 25:59 And I can only imagine, you know, if you're a woman, uh, you know, if you're queer, if you're any ... If you identify as anything, th- y- ... This is a very different relationship, and maybe, maybe you have less influence and more room to think about it, but also less m- support maybe for, for lack of a better word.

Carter Sherman 26:15 It's harder to make it real-

Trevor Noah 26:16 Yeah, yeah

Carter Sherman 26:16 ... or to see it out in the real world. There was this concept that I came across while I was, uh, reporting the book called hegemonic masculinity. Just-

Trevor Noah 26:24 Hegemonic mas- masculinity.

Carter Sherman 26:25 Yeah, which is a sort of weighty word for, I think, something that people understand very easily, which is that there are a lot of very narrow ideas about what a man should be.

Trevor Noah 26:35 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 26:35 And, like, and particularly when it comes to sex, like, men should be big, strong, tall, emotionless cavemen who are good at obtaining sex and always want to have sex.

Eugene 26:44 Good at obtaining it?

Carter Sherman 26:45 Yes.

Eugene 26:46 And also want it.

Carter Sherman 26:47 Also want it.

Eugene 26:48 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 26:48 So, like, there's not a lot of space-

Eugene 26:51 For the in- between

Carter Sherman 26:51 ... in those stereotypes for men to have the feelings that they do have-

Eugene 26:55 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 26:55 ... about sex.

Eugene 26:56 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 26:57 And I feel like we've done a very good job in the United States over the last 50 years of expanding the ways that we think about, like, women's relationship with sex in some ways. Um, and, you know, even if it's harder for those young girls that I was interviewing or the young queer folks I was interviewing, it's harder for them to see this out in the real world or h- they have to think about it more, and they have all these ideas and s- like swirling around inside them. But, like, we haven't even created the space for men to start having those conversations or thinking about those stuff-

Trevor Noah 27:25 Yeah

Carter Sherman 27:26 ... for themselves. And so I, when I was interviewing these young men, they talked a lot about dealing with those stereotypes and feeling like they had to be a particular kind of way-

Trevor Noah 27:35 Yeah, I remember having a-

Carter Sherman 27:36 ... when it came to sex

Trevor Noah 27:36 ... yeah, a conversation about this. It was, um, uh, I for- I forget where this was, but there was, there w- there was a panel that was being hosted, and there were some really interesting, um, psychologists talking about it. And then afterwards, there was a little break-off, and everyone was just chatting. And one of the therapists there, they, they, they were family therapists, sex therapists, all of this. They said something that stuck with me for years. They said, "We've lived in a world where men have been taught that they only think about sex, and sex has no feelings. And we've taught women that sex is only their feelings, and it defines them as a human being, and y- you know, it's, it's the most, it's the most valuable, powerful, like, 'Oh, this is your ...'" And so you, you have this imbalance where men go, "Stick it in. Good times." And then women are like, "It is my sanctity." And she was saying that, "No, no, no, the truth lies somewhere in the middle."

Eugene 28:26 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 28:26 "Men need to be taught that they do have an emotion. They do have a little bit of a fear. They do have a connection. They do have a warmth. They do have a tenderness. They ..." You get what I'm saying? And then women can also be taught, like, "Hey, there's a liberation in going, like, it is yours to wield as you please. It is not only your sanctity. It's just yours." So you know what I mean? In the same way someone can choose to spend their Friday night drunk or reading a book,

Trevor Noah 28:48 there's gotta be a freedom in saying to people, "Your sex is your sex. Do with it as you please and don't think that it defines you in, like, a singular forever." Do you know what I'm saying?

Eugene 28:57 I, I think all of this is, and it makes total sense, I think all of this, much like anything else, is a byproduct of marketing. I think sex products don't need to use sex to market anything anymore. For example, cigarette smoking.

Carter Sherman 29:11 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 29:12 Going, um ... Remember those ads where you used to see guys and girls at the beach having a, a bonfire?

Trevor Noah 29:19 Yeah.

Eugene 29:20 Car ads. There's this famous Mustang one where there's a woman and a man and the arm over. Have you noticed how car ads look now? It's usually one guy driving it, being responsible.

Trevor Noah 29:30 [laughs] Or it's, like, a family or-

Eugene 29:32 Yeah, it's-

Trevor Noah 29:32 Yeah, yeah.

Eugene 29:32 Yes, but it's nev- s-

Carter Sherman 29:33 Car ads are wildly gendered, I have to say.

Eugene 29:36 Right?

Trevor Noah 29:36 [laughs] They really are.

Carter Sherman 29:37 Like, yeah. They'll, they'll pop up when I'm watching television.

Carter Sherman 29:39 I'm like, "Gosh, this is like, it's like a car for big strong men-

Eugene 29:41 Yes

Carter Sherman 29:41 ... or a car for families."

Eugene 29:43 Yes.

Trevor Noah 29:43 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 29:43 And, like, those are the two genders of cars.

Eugene 29:45 There's n-

Trevor Noah 29:46 [laughs]

Eugene 29:46 There's ... They don't sell the M3 or the m- the, the whatever fancy super sports car with a man and a woman. The only time you see that is when you watching those videos of people in Monaco. So now people have sold, have, have ... Brands have stopped being interested in selling sex to use to sell a product. So I think now when kids that are younger, Gen Zs, look, this just my opinion, when they look at the kind of women of the people that they idolize, they know they'll never have that woman. When they look at their favorite sports star, their favorite rapper, and they look at the kind of women that they're with, I don't think they see themselves with that kind of person.

Trevor Noah 30:19 So you think that's affected how they see sex because of that?

Eugene 30:22 Yes, but that's why kids now, when you ask them, "What do you wanna be?"

Eugene 30:25 They say, "Rich or-

Trevor Noah 30:27 Famous

Eugene 30:27 ... yes," 'cause they know that's the only way to get-

Trevor Noah 30:30 To get to that place

Eugene 30:30 ... the kind of girls that they want. Yes, because now the normal is not marketed anymore p- 'cause one or the other. It's either a guy, macho, macho guy in a car by himself-

Trevor Noah 30:38 Yeah

Eugene 30:39 ... or you have a whole guy with five kids, and the person's like, "I'm 16. I don't want-

Trevor Noah 30:43 I don't want either of these outcomes

Eugene 30:44 ... yeah, if I'm gonna have sex, must it come with these ones?"

Carter Sherman 30:47 I, I mean, but it's interesting though because young people are growing up on, in a, on an internet that is saturated with sex. Like, they're being exposed to so many more different kinds of sexuality-

Trevor Noah 30:56 Mm. Oh, yeah, that's true

Carter Sherman 30:57 ... than we ever had growing up. I mean, I'm 31, so I grew up- A bit on the internet, but not in the way that young people are now. And so I think that this is also sort of one of the questions that perplexes people with the sex recession is, like, how is it possible that young people are running into, like, every possible kind of sex that they want, and probably a few that they don't, on the internet-

Eugene 31:16 Yeah

Carter Sherman 31:16 ... and yet not having-

Eugene 31:18 Hmm

Carter Sherman 31:18 ... IRL sex. And so I think that it's, it's really hard to say what the messaging is that young people are getting around sex right now, because the world of the internet is just full of all kinds of different sex.

Eugene 31:28 Well-

Trevor Noah 31:28 Is, is that part of the

Trevor Noah 31:29 problem-

Eugene 31:29 Yeah

Trevor Noah 31:29 ... though, in like the-

Eugene 31:30 Exactly, yeah. It is

Trevor Noah 31:31 ... you know, when we, when we think, when we think about sex-

Eugene 31:33 Yeah

Trevor Noah 31:34 ... and you, you talk about this in the book, it is pretty crazy that one of the most important aspects of your life as a human being-

Eugene 31:43 Hmm

Trevor Noah 31:43 ... something that will stick with you until you probably leave this planet, is not taught to you in any formal way for ... Like, yes, you can say there's sex ed, but, you know, as you, as you write and as we've seen, sex ed has, has dropped its, um, the, the, the window that it thinks of sex through.

Eugene 32:01 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 32:01 So it tells you, like, the, the, the, the, the physical function of sex.

Eugene 32:05 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 32:05 This is a penis. It goes into a vagina.

Eugene 32:08 Hey, whoa, whoa, yes. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 32:08 [laughs]

Eugene 32:08 Hey, Bubba.

Trevor Noah 32:11 [laughs]

Eugene 32:11 We're still from s- Africa, yeah?

Trevor Noah 32:13 [laughs] And so, no, but I'm saying, like, when you think of that-

Eugene 32:17 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 32:19 ... what do you think that's also done to, to ... Not that it was better per se, but there's a flattening of sex and its edu-

Carter Sherman 32:27 Yeah

Trevor Noah 32:27 ... and the education that goes around it.

Eugene 32:29 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 32:29 It means-

Trevor Noah 32:29 That-

Carter Sherman 32:29 ... that you have to go to the internet-

Trevor Noah 32:30 That doesn't-

Carter Sherman 32:31 ... for sex ed

Trevor Noah 32:31 ... equip people with the tools-

Carter Sherman 32:32 Yeah

Trevor Noah 32:32 ... to know what sex encompasses, you know?

Carter Sherman 32:34 Right. 'Cause all they hear in school is, like, "Don't have sex. You'll die."

Trevor Noah 32:37 Yes.

Eugene 32:37 Yes.

Carter Sherman 32:37 And then they open up their phone or their laptop or whatever, and then they see porn.

Trevor Noah 32:42 Yes.

Carter Sherman 32:42 I mean, three-quarters of American teenagers have seen porn by the time they're 18. And so I think ... And what porn purports to do is, like, show you what sexual pleasure looks like and what it feels like to give it and what it feels like to receive it. And so especially if you are coming from a school that teaches you next to nothing about sex-

Eugene 33:00 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 33:01 ... like, of course porn is gonna feel like, "Oh, well, this is sex ed."

Eugene 33:03 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 33:03 "This is what I should use instead." And, like, young people do say, like, "Oh, I know that porn is not accurate."

Eugene 33:09 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 33:10 And yet they still rely on it for this.

Trevor Noah 33:12 But what does it not tell you? So if, if a m- if a kid is watching porn thinking, "Oh man, this

Trevor Noah 33:17 looks like so much fun," what is it not telling them?

Carter Sherman 33:21 I mean, it's not telling them a lot. Like, 'cause porn is scripted, right?

Trevor Noah 33:24 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 33:25 It's basically-

Trevor Noah 33:25 Wait, what?

Carter Sherman 33:26 I know.

Trevor Noah 33:27 No, no, no.

Carter Sherman 33:27 I'm so sorry. I'm yet again breaking news [laughs] here on the podcast.

Trevor Noah 33:31 Ah. Mr. Penis over here is surprised. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 33:34 [laughs]

Eugene 33:36 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 33:37 Captain Penis. [laughs]

Eugene 33:41 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 33:41 I mean, it's basically ... Like, I use this analogy in the book, but it's basically like if you learn to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto.

Trevor Noah 33:47 Right.

Carter Sherman 33:47 It's just not, it has very little to do with what real-life sex looks like. And-

Trevor Noah 33:53 What does, Carter, real-life sex? 'Cause obviously it's bang, bang, choo.

Eugene 33:59 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 33:59 Wee, swing from the chandeliers.

Carter Sherman 34:01 Wow.

Trevor Noah 34:02 Send me-

Carter Sherman 34:02 What porn are you watching

Trevor Noah 34:02 ... send me that

Trevor Noah 34:03 link.

Carter Sherman 34:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:04 Please send me that link, Eugene.

Eugene 34:05 I got you, fam.

Trevor Noah 34:06 We'll put that in the show notes.

Carter Sherman 34:07 Yeah. [laughs]

Eugene 34:08 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:08 Let's get that link to everyone.

Eugene 34:09 Which-

Trevor Noah 34:10 I wanna watch that video.

Carter Sherman 34:12 [laughs] It sounds acrobatic.

Trevor Noah 34:13 It really sounds fantastic.

Carter Sherman 34:14 Very flexible, yeah.

Trevor Noah 34:15 And classy. There's a chandelier.

Eugene 34:16 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 34:16 Oh, yeah. This was a really nice set that they probably ... Yeah.

Eugene 34:20 It's called Cirque du Soleil. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 34:24 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:24 Oh, Soleil.

Eugene 34:25 It's called-

Trevor Noah 34:25 I see what you did there.

Carter Sherman 34:26 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:26 Nicely done.

Carter Sherman 34:27 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:28 Oh, nicely done.

Carter Sherman 34:30 You need to catch up on the sex studies, by the way.

Trevor Noah 34:32 [laughs]

Eugene 34:32 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 34:32 I don't feel like you're really pulling your weight.

Trevor Noah 34:35 [laughs] So what ... So if, if that's advertised clearly through these clips that they watch and these movies that they watch-

Carter Sherman 34:44 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 34:44 ... what is the reality of it? Because we're so quick to say, "That's not realistic," but what's the realistic part of it?

Carter Sherman 34:49 What is realistic about porn?

Trevor Noah 34:51 Yeah. No, what is realistic about sex that porn is not showing people?

Carter Sherman 34:54 Oh, I mean, it's, it's not showing, like, communication.

Trevor Noah 34:57 Ah.

Carter Sherman 34:57 It's not showing ... I mean, I think the things that make people-

Trevor Noah 35:00 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 35:00 ... good at sex are an ability to communicate, having a sense of humor, a willingness to be awkward. 'Cause, like, let's be honest, sex, in addition to being kinda fun, is usually fairly inelegant. And, like, none of those things are present in porn, because porn is very sleek and scripted-

Trevor Noah 35:17 Mm

Carter Sherman 35:17 ... and these are professionals operating on a closed track.

Trevor Noah 35:21 Mm.

Carter Sherman 35:21 And that's fine. I really don't want the message from me or from the book to be that porn is bad. It's just porn has very little to do with the way people, and particularly young people,

Carter Sherman 35:32 fuck around. And so what I found was interesting in the book is I kind of had thought that young people on the right would be opposed to porn, and I thought that young people on the left would-

Trevor Noah 35:43 Yeah

Carter Sherman 35:43 ... have better feelings about it. But what I found inside is that young people almost routinely thought that porn was bad for them.

Trevor Noah 35:50 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 35:50 And they felt that it had warped their sexuality. There's this concept in sociology called the deep story, which is basically the story that people feel is true, and that story can have more power than the actual facts.

Trevor Noah 36:02 Wow.

Carter Sherman 36:02 And we see this in politics all the time, right? People vote for the guy who they just have a good feeling about-

Trevor Noah 36:06 Yeah

Carter Sherman 36:07 ... even if he doesn't actually align with any of your opinions. And so the deep story among young people is that porn has been very bad for them, and they feel like, in particular because they can't talk to their parents about sex or their friends, and because sex ed has so failed them, that they're just stranded in front of all of this pornography, and they've just been left to deal with it on their own. In particular, one of the things that really stuck with me is they really felt that porn had normalized rough sex and, in particular, choking.

Trevor Noah 36:34 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 36:34 If you're under 40, you are almost twice as likely to have been choked during sex as someone-

Trevor Noah 36:40 If you're under 40

Carter Sherman 36:41 ... if you're under 40, compared to people over 40. And, like, if you like choking, that's fine. Just do it safely and consensually. And the thing is that most people-

Trevor Noah 36:48 Hmm

Carter Sherman 36:48 ... or many people I should say, are not asked for consent before they're choked. And choking is ... You know, it can be strangulation. It can be actually very dangerous.

Trevor Noah 36:56 Yeah. Right.

Eugene 36:56 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 36:57 And so it was fascinating to me to talk to these young people, and they would So many of the young women I talked to just would relay spontaneously that they had been choked during sex. Like, there was one young woman who told me that, you know,

Carter Sherman 37:09 they called it a love squeeze in her high school. And again, it's just one of those things where if you like it, go for it, but it's not a normal part of sex.

Trevor Noah 37:18 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 37:18 It's not, like, an average part of sex, and you do have to have a real conversation about it before you do it, and that's just not something you see in porn.

Trevor Noah 37:24 Yeah. As, as you're saying this, I realize the paradox of not having a thought out and centralized form of education means that the normal becomes defined by the abnormal.

Eugene 37:41 Oh, wow. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:41 Do you know what I mean?

Eugene 37:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 37:42 'Cause, yeah, you just said choking's not normal.

Eugene 37:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:45 And then I went, "Except when it is."

Carter Sherman 37:47 Right.

Trevor Noah 37:48 Because everything-

Eugene 37:48 Hmm

Trevor Noah 37:49 ... that's in sex was not normal at some point. I remember when I was, how old was I? I think I was 12 or 13 years old, and I remember seeing, it was like d- distant aunts and uncles, but they kissed using their tongues, and I remember

Trevor Noah 38:06 my mind was like, "What?" Just I'd never seen adults do that.

Carter Sherman 38:10 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 38:11 Like, because at that time in my life, that was not normal. Even in TV shows, people kissed, it was just like a, a smooch. You just plucked your lips and you-

Carter Sherman 38:18 Camera swirls around them.

Trevor Noah 38:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carter Sherman 38:19 You can't really get a good view of what's happening.

Trevor Noah 38:20 The camera just does... Yeah, it's exactly that.

Carter Sherman 38:21 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 38:22 You know what I mean? And then one day there were tongues, and there were more tongues, and there were more tongues. But now if you said to somebody, "Kissing with your tongue is not normal," they'd go like, "What are, what are you talking about? That's, that's weird that you're not-"

Carter Sherman 38:32 Hmm

Trevor Noah 38:32 ... "opening your mouth. What's wrong with you?"

Eugene 38:33 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 38:33 So the, the, the paradox then becomes that normal does exist, or, or rather, like, the Overton window of normal exists, but what's really wrong is where, is how it's being defined.

Carter Sherman 38:44 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 38:45 You know? It's like if nobody's talking about the thing that's not happening in porn, then porn becomes the only teacher in, in, in essence. You know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 38:53 Yeah. Well, the thing is they're also, like, they're not even really talking about it either, right?

Trevor Noah 38:57 Oh, yeah. Silence.

Carter Sherman 38:58 Like, they're-

Trevor Noah 38:58 Silence is the-

Carter Sherman 38:59 Yeah. It's just like this is just happening.

Trevor Noah 38:59 Yeah, yeah. $2 billion to be quiet.

Carter Sherman 39:00 Yes.

Trevor Noah 39:01 Yes.

Carter Sherman 39:01 Exactly. And so they're just, they're not even talking about it, and it's going on behind closed doors and, you know, there's been like... I was reading stories and studies where, like, women would talk about having a guy, without asking, use his belt around their neck.

Trevor Noah 39:14 Use his what?

Carter Sherman 39:14 His belt.

Trevor Noah 39:15 His belt?

Carter Sherman 39:16 Yes.

Trevor Noah 39:16 Oh, jeez.

Carter Sherman 39:16 Or, like, a necklace to choke her, and it's like, you know, these are things that can be dangerous.

Trevor Noah 39:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carter Sherman 39:21 And if you like it, do it safely.

Trevor Noah 39:23 Right.

Carter Sherman 39:23 Do it consensually, again. But we're not really, as the internet has shown us more and more different kinds of sex and maybe helped normalize more and more different kinds of sex, sex education has receded-

Trevor Noah 39:34 Yeah

Carter Sherman 39:34 ... as a resource that people can find in institutions.

Trevor Noah 39:37 I also think there's a-

Carter Sherman 39:37 Hmm

Trevor Noah 39:38 ... there's a, there's an ex- Like, um, there's almost an amplification effect that can happen with algorithms and social media. 'Cause you, you're saying this, and I'm thinking about all the videos young men see where women are mocking them for the type of boring sex they have. Do you know, do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 39:55 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 39:55 It's not abnormal to see, like, young men going, "Oh, yeah. Like, like, you still out here?" Like, you'll see these videos, and I'm not blaming those people.

Carter Sherman 40:02 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 40:02 You make whatever video you wanna make.

Carter Sherman 40:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 40:04 But you'll see some of these videos where they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, wh- when he still wants to hug you before da, da, da," and, you know, like, it's like a little TikTok, and it's, and it is funny, but I can also imagine being a young man and going, "Oh, man, I, I guess

Trevor Noah 40:18 I've gotta know this stuff because if I don't know it, do I know sex?"

Carter Sherman 40:21 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 40:22 "And do I wanna be mocked, and do I wanna be teased, and do I wanna be..." To, to, to rewind to back in my day, but I remember in, in high school how boys, and obviously I wasn't spending all the time with the girls, but how boys particularly were mocked if they didn't, like, seem to know things. And back then it was much less sex based, but it was still, "Do you know how to do th- Do you know how to finger somebody?" And it was like, "Uh, uh, uh." And it's like, "If you don't know..." Exactly like that, Eugene. See, I taught you well. So [laughs] But it was-

Carter Sherman 40:54 This podcast is not sex ed. I just want to be really clear. [laughs]

Eugene 40:58 You said $1 billion. You had us there.

Trevor Noah 41:00 Yeah, you had us there.

Carter Sherman 41:01 A billion. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 41:02 $2 billion.

Eugene 41:02 One for you, one for me.

Trevor Noah 41:02 We're coming for that billion.

Carter Sherman 41:04 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 41:04 We're, we're doing our best here. But no, what I... Yeah. It's, it's... Do, do you see what I mean? The conundrum is, is like-

Eugene 41:10 Yeah, yeah

Carter Sherman 41:10 Yeah. Well, like-

Trevor Noah 41:11 You, you, you're in a world where it's, as you, as you so eloquently say, you've got women who are saying, "Oh, man, this is my experience of the men and what they're doing." And I also go, yeah, there's a world where the men are going, "This is my experience of what I've been told a woman likes, and because I don't meet a woman until I'm having sex with her, I don't know actually what the thing is, and I don't wanna get there and then not know what the thing is." And you don't wanna be the fumbling guy, and then wh-

Carter Sherman 41:33 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 41:33 So to your point, because the-

Eugene 41:35 Yeah

Trevor Noah 41:35 ... the original sin is committed by not having the education, everyone is now bumping. It's the blind leading the blind.

Carter Sherman 41:41 Well, it also, I mean, it goes back to what we're talking about with, like, these stereotypes of masculinity, where-

Trevor Noah 41:44 Yes

Carter Sherman 41:44 ... it's this idea that men have to know everything about sex and should be good at sex, and, like, there's no room for men to ask questions-

Trevor Noah 41:50 Yes

Carter Sherman 41:50 ... including of their partner, which is the person they should be directing these questions at, because it's seen as not being cool, including oftentimes by women. It's not like, oh, men are just telling men to be this way. There's a lot of messaging from all kinds of areas, including from women at men, to tell them to be a particular kind of way when it comes to sex.

Trevor Noah 42:06 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 42:07 And I should say one of the things I wanted to do in the book was also explain, like, porn is not a monolith.

Trevor Noah 42:12 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 42:12 And a lot of the young women I talked to, they're, the kind of porn that they liked wasn't video porn.

Trevor Noah 42:17 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 42:17 It was something like erotica or fan fiction or romance novels.

Trevor Noah 42:21 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 42:21 Which oftentimes can also feature rough sex,

Carter Sherman 42:25 but because they also had this idea of, like, rough sex from those forms of pornography-

Trevor Noah 42:33 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 42:33 ... like, they brought that to the table as well. And so if these young men are watching video porn-

Trevor Noah 42:38 Mm-hmm. Mm

Carter Sherman 42:39 ... where rough sex is being normalized, and these women are reading porn where rough sex is being normalized, the story that young women were telling me and the story that young men were telling me and the, the sort of deep story among young people is, like, that's how rough sex becomes just treated as just another kind of sex-

Eugene 42:53 Mm

Trevor Noah 42:53 Right

Carter Sherman 42:53 ... and not something you need to have a conversation about. And I, I should also say, I do wanna say, we actually don't really know what porn does to us. Like, the science on porn is incredibly muddied. It's very hard to find a control group these days of people who haven't seen-

Trevor Noah 43:05 Who haven't seen it

Carter Sherman 43:05 ... internet porn.

Trevor Noah 43:06 Oh.

Carter Sherman 43:06 Yes.

Trevor Noah 43:07 Jeez. Yeah, that's a good point.

Carter Sherman 43:08 So, you know, to the extent that this is the story that's being told, I find that valuable and I find that interesting, but we don't actually know from a scientific perspective exactly what is happening to us and our sex lives because of the proliferation of internet porn.

Trevor Noah 43:22 I think from just listening to you and the research that you've done, the people that you've spoken to, I think the whole entire world is missing a big part of what sex education should be. Instead of, uh, sex health education, they should focus more on sex mental health education.

Carter Sherman 43:39 Oh, damn.

Trevor Noah 43:39 The ability to connect or disconnect should the act not go right. Because I feel like a lot of men who ... I mean, young men who grow up to be men and how they view relationships, it's usually having to prove yourself, and then finally when the act is done, you realize you don't have to be someone that you are not all along.

Carter Sherman 43:57 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 43:58 Because, again, of the romanticization of relationships and the end goal being sex. And on the other end, it's the,

Trevor Noah 44:04 "Now that we've done it, let's talk."

Carter Sherman 44:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 44:06 You know-

Carter Sherman 44:06 Well, advocates of comprehensive sex would say, like-

Trevor Noah 44:08 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 44:09 ... healthy relationship-

Trevor Noah 44:10 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 44:10 ... education is also a part-

Trevor Noah 44:11 There

Carter Sherman 44:11 ... of sex ed.

Trevor Noah 44:12 Oh, yeah.

Carter Sherman 44:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 44:13 Healthy relationship.

Carter Sherman 44:14 Yeah, like how to talk about your relationships, your feelings, the sex you wanna be having. Like, that could also be a part of sex ed. And honestly, the first time someone said that to me, I was like, "My mind has been blown." [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:24 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 44:24 But ... 'Cause I thought I had pretty good sex ed. Like, my sex ed, I'm from Seattle, Washington, which is a very liberal place, and it talked about STIs, and it talked about condoms, and it talked about pregnancy prevention. But it did do its best to pathologize sex. Like, they had us watch a video of, I think this woman was giving birth to a 16-pound-

Trevor Noah 44:44 Yeah

Carter Sherman 44:44 ... baby.

Trevor Noah 44:45 Damn.

Carter Sherman 44:45 Which is huge. It's large.

Trevor Noah 44:46 Damn.

Carter Sherman 44:46 Yeah. What's the point of that video other than to make me afraid-

Trevor Noah 44:49 Traumatize you

Carter Sherman 44:50 ... of sex?

Trevor Noah 44:50 Big babies, they out. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 44:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:53 Well.

Carter Sherman 44:54 I am, I would love to track down the woman from that video-

Trevor Noah 44:57 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 44:57 ... and be like, "What's up?" [laughs]

Trevor Noah 45:00 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 45:00 Like, "Why did you-

Trevor Noah 45:00 Damn

Carter Sherman 45:01 ... participate in this?"

Trevor Noah 45:01 Wow. That's one way to learn.

Carter Sherman 45:03 Yeah. But, and it didn't include ... Like, it, they made sex seem scary, even if they were trying to provide me-

Trevor Noah 45:09 Okay. Okay, okay. Yeah

Carter Sherman 45:09 ... with the resources, much more so than other schools do.

Trevor Noah 45:11 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 45:11 And they didn't talk about, like, "H- and here's how to talk to your partner," or, "Here's how to talk to someone you might be interested in," about not only sex, but about just the relationship that we're in.

Trevor Noah 45:20 Is part of this because-

Carter Sherman 45:21 Hmm

Trevor Noah 45:21 ... parents are also saying, "I don't want my kids learning about sex"? 'Cause you, you, you see that happening more and more in America, and, and I mean, but it, it, it, it flares up all over the world at different times. Parents will say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hey. You don't know. You don't tell

Trevor Noah 45:36 my kid anything." And, and there's many parents who I think very naively think if they don't hear about it, they won't know it exists.

Carter Sherman 45:43 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:43 You know? But, but how much of it is that? How much, how much of it is, is like we, we sort of blame the schooling system, but parents oftentimes can shape what a schooling system does or doesn't teach.

Carter Sherman 45:52 I think it's a s- vocal minority of-

Trevor Noah 45:55 Yeah. Oh, that's-

Carter Sherman 45:56 ... parents who feel-

Trevor Noah 45:56 Okay

Carter Sherman 45:56 ... the way that you're describing. And I think we-

Trevor Noah 45:58 That's interesting

Carter Sherman 45:58 ... especially see that in the United States post-2020 and post the pandemic.

Trevor Noah 46:02 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 46:02 Where, you know, we've always had a lot of conversations around sex in the l- ed, and a lot of fighting around sex ed here in the US, but post-2020, I would say that those fights have reached a new level, where people at school board meetings, for example, have just started spouting off things that have nothing to do with reality.

Trevor Noah 46:20 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 46:20 So I describe in the book, um, there was in 2020 a school board meeting in Texas, because Texas was changing its sex ed curriculum for the first time in two decades. And during this school board meeting, parents were coming up and talking about things that, I mean, I struggled to even understand what they were saying because it didn't make any sense.

Trevor Noah 46:42 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 46:42 Like, they were talking about ... I kept on having to rewind and be like, "Am I hearing this right?" But it, they were talking about, like, you know, teachers grooming students and-

Trevor Noah 46:50 Oh, God

Carter Sherman 46:50 ... teachers grooming students not only for sex, but f- into being transgender, which is not a thing.

Trevor Noah 46:56 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 46:56 And they were talking about, oh, comprehensive sex ed is just a way to, you know, make students gay or trans. And consent even of itself, consent even by itself is

Carter Sherman 47:06 a gateway word, is what one, um, actually a school board member said, where they were saying, like, "This is a gateway word," so that, like ... I believe he said that, like, Planned Parenthood and NAMBLA, the male, [laughs] was it Man Boy Student? Man Boy ... National Man Boy ... National American Man Boy Love Association. Sorry, that took me a minute.

Trevor Noah 47:26 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 47:26 To, like, consent is a gateway word so that those organizations, Planned Parenthood, NAMBLA, et cetera, can sink their hooks-

Trevor Noah 47:34 Wow

Carter Sherman 47:34 ... into these young people. And I'm paraphrasing what he said, but it was a very staggering thing to hear.

Trevor Noah 47:39 Right.

Carter Sherman 47:40 And obviously it doesn't have anything to do with reality.

Trevor Noah 47:45 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 47:45 And so it got to the point where it's like, oh, we can't even necessarily talk about consent in schools because that is a politicized word-

Trevor Noah 47:52 Yeah

Carter Sherman 47:52 ... at this point.

Trevor Noah 47:53 The tough thing is it doesn't have to do ... Do you know, to go back to what you're saying about, like, a slither of porn, a slither of people, is that I, I, I truly feel bad for those parents because I think they sort of care the most. Do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 48:07 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 48:08 I- think of what you must feel like as a parent. You're watching the news. You see a story a- about a teacher who had sex with one of their students.

Carter Sherman 48:16 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 48:16 Man or woman.

Carter Sherman 48:17 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 48:18 You see another story where teachers had sex with their students. You see a story where this child was kidnapped or this child was this. You see a, you see a story of grooming. You see people come out and say they were groomed from a young age. I, it, it's so hard to say to that person, 'cause I, I ... And I've been guilty of this, don't get me wrong. 'Cause I would dismissively go like, "That's not a thing." But then I'm like, "Oh, man," but how do you, how do you get through to people or how do you help them balance out the weighting of risk? Because they're saying, "I'm trying to protect my child at all costs."

Carter Sherman 48:50 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 48:51 And then you wanna go, "Yes, but what cost is too great? At what point are you not protecting the child?" Do you, you know?

Carter Sherman 48:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 48:57 'Cause it is, it is a tough one because there are teachers- Who've molested kids. There are kids who've e- you know what I mean? It's, it's this weird-

Carter Sherman 49:03 I mean, the world is a scary place.

Trevor Noah 49:05 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 49:05 And schools are a scary place.

Trevor Noah 49:06 Yeah, but I-

Carter Sherman 49:07 Yeah

Trevor Noah 49:07 ... you see, it's funny, I don't think the world is a scary place in that way. No, genuinely.

Carter Sherman 49:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:09 And I, I don't mean this, like, facetiously, I just think the world feels scarier when you know everything that is happening in it at the, at the same time, but most of the world is not a scary place. You know? Like, people are like, "Oh, I'm scared of flying," but they're scared of flying because of the plane crashes we focused on. Yeah. But there's no news story about planes that land. Yeah. There just, there just aren't, you know? And- Yeah ... and we do this with everything, and I'm not saying we shouldn't focus on those things- Right ... but the human brain is very difficult at understanding how much or how little to focus on something

Trevor Noah 49:39 depending on how much it's been told to us.

Carter Sherman 49:40 Accurately gauging risk.

Trevor Noah 49:42 Yeah. It's, it's-

Carter Sherman 49:43 Yeah

Trevor Noah 49:43 ... you know?

Carter Sherman 49:43 Well, I think also during the pandemic, in particular, you know, people were trapped at home-

Trevor Noah 49:47 Yeah

Carter Sherman 49:47 ... on their computers-

Trevor Noah 49:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Carter Sherman 49:49 ... looking constantly at bad news, and conspiracy theories proliferated.

Trevor Noah 49:53 I thought you said bad nudes.

Carter Sherman 49:54 Oh, [laughs] well even that too.

Trevor Noah 49:55 [laughs] I was like, "I've had those during the pandemic."

Carter Sherman 49:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:57 Trapped with bad nudes. I was like, "Eh, man, eff it." [laughs]

Carter Sherman 50:00 There is nothing worse than lockdown with bad nudes.

Trevor Noah 50:02 Oh.

Carter Sherman 50:02 Lockdown on itself.

Trevor Noah 50:03 And I'm like, "I know those stores are run, run out of razors now." You, you, let, actually, let's talk about social media because you, you talk about what you call the fuckability trap. Huh? You know? Hey, hey, Carter.

Carter Sherman 50:14 I'm sorry, yes.

Trevor Noah 50:16 [speaks foreign language]

Carter Sherman 50:16 Oh, okay. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 50:18 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 50:18 I didn't realize that was approval. Thank you.

Trevor Noah 50:20 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 50:21 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 50:22 That, what is it again? The fuckability

Trevor Noah 50:25 trap.

Carter Sherman 50:25 I mean, I have to-

Trevor Noah 50:26 Yeah

Carter Sherman 50:26 ... credit, fuckability is not my concept. It's a concept of this philosopher whose name I'm definitely gonna mispronounce.

Trevor Noah 50:33 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 50:34 It's Amia Srinivasan. I'm so sorry.

Trevor Noah 50:36 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 50:37 I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. But she is, um, a philosopher who talks about basically fuckability is sexual desire as constructed by our pol- our politics.

Trevor Noah 50:47 Right. Wow.

Carter Sherman 50:48 Which is the idea that, like, you know, how can we differentiate the ways that, like, racism and sexism and all other kinds of isms affect which bodies are seen as most desirable.

Trevor Noah 50:58 Mm.

Carter Sherman 50:58 Um, so that's the definition of the fuckability trap.

Trevor Noah 51:01 Yes. But-

Carter Sherman 51:01 I don't know where you're going with the actual question

Trevor Noah 51:02 ... no, but, but the-

Carter Sherman 51:03 Yeah

Trevor Noah 51:03 ... but the trap that you were

Trevor Noah 51:04 talking about.

Carter Sherman 51:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:05 And you see, this, this is where I, like, I get stuck because it, it's so complicated and layered.

Carter Sherman 51:10 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:10 You talk about social media and how we, we're given these signals. We're sh- we're shown these signals. Post a picture of yourself, you know, just sitting in a park drinking your coffee. Yeah, get a few likes. Post the same picture in a bikini.

Carter Sherman 51:26 Mm.

Trevor Noah 51:27 Likes go up. Go back to a picture of you reading a book. Eh, a few likes. A bikini, likes go up. And, and, and y-

Carter Sherman 51:34 Am I reading in the bikini in this case? Is-

Trevor Noah 51:36 Ah.

Carter Sherman 51:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 51:38 Cut.

Carter Sherman 51:39 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 51:39 Cut. I mean, that's good for another conversation.

Carter Sherman 51:41 Yeah. Are you?

Trevor Noah 51:41 Let's have this conversation later. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 51:41 I mean, look, everybody-

Trevor Noah 51:42 I mean-

Carter Sherman 51:42 ... everybody wants to be smart and hot. Like, that's the goal for everybody.

Trevor Noah 51:45 That is the goal.

Carter Sherman 51:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:45 Can I tell you, and I-

Carter Sherman 51:46 Yeah

Trevor Noah 51:46 ... can I tell you, we need to normalize that, by the way. I'm so jealous of that line because I wish I had it. No, but it's true, though.

Carter Sherman 51:51 You can steal it.

Trevor Noah 51:51 Okay, okay. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 51:53 You can.

Trevor Noah 51:53 But no, I, I like this because I, I feel like we, we, we make it seem like it has to be one or the other. Yes. We make it seem like ... We also make it seem like it, it, it shouldn't, like, exist. And, and maybe, maybe th- that goes into this, this conversation, but, but, but, like, what did you notice in how social media has played a role in how we define ourselves and portray ourselves in, in, in society in and around sex?

Carter Sherman 52:14 I think it is exactly what you're talking about with the bikini photos and the ways that those are valued more.

Trevor Noah 52:20 Mm.

Carter Sherman 52:20 So there was one young man I was talking to, and I appreciated that he said this, where he was talking about, you know, if he might see a girl that he likes on In- on Instagram, he might keep scrolling and see another girl he likes, but she'll be in a bikini, and he's like, "Well, I'm probably gonna like her more."

Trevor Noah 52:32 Mm.

Carter Sherman 52:32 Like, he's gonna be more into her, and that's, I think, this thing that people have internalized-

Trevor Noah 52:39 Mm

Carter Sherman 52:39 ... which is that they understand their sexual value and how to convey it online because they're constantly getting feedback in the form of likes and matches and follower counts, and they can quantify what makes them, uh, appear to be sexually desirable to other people.

Trevor Noah 52:54 Right. Yeah. Appear to be being

Trevor Noah 52:56 the key phrase.

Carter Sherman 52:56 Right. And I think for young people who grow up constantly having that kind of feedback loop, it leads to a kind of self-objectification-

Trevor Noah 53:04 Mm

Carter Sherman 53:04 ... where they don't think about their bodies and what their bodies can do for them. They think about what their bodies look like and how other people think about their bodies.

Trevor Noah 53:10 Mm.

Carter Sherman 53:11 And that feeling is linked to all kinds of negative outcomes, like eating disorders or low self-esteem or even potentially people having less sex because, you know, if sex is another occasion for you to be judged and found wanting, you're not gonna do it. If you feel like your body is perfect, has to look perfect in order to be, get naked, you're probably just not gonna get naked.

Trevor Noah 53:30 Yeah, I think- Yeah ... I think about when I was young- Yeah ... we thought the worst thing ... You know, when society was talking about this, the worst thing was the magazines have very perfect bodies and perfect people. Yes. What does this mean to you? And we thought that that's the worst it could get, but now you're on the cover of your own magazine, and no one's buying your magazine. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, what does that do to you? And you can see it now. Yeah.

Carter Sherman 53:49 That would be devastating.

Trevor Noah 53:50 But that's what's happening.

Carter Sherman 53:51 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:51 Think about it.

Carter Sherman 53:51 Yeah, it is.

Trevor Noah 53:51 Because before you could go, like, "Oh, that's a supermodel, and I'm not that, and that's the beauty standard," but the judgment wasn't about you. You knew what people were aspiring to, and you knew where you were maybe in relation to it, but it wasn't about you, but now it's completely about you because now you've put your magazine right next to somebody else's

Trevor Noah 54:12 magazine online. Mm. And then a little button tells you how your magazine stacks up against somebody else's. Mm. And so now it's, it's not just an aspirational thing that you cannot reach. Yeah. It's a realistic one. Yeah. And- You see it here. Right here and right now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Carter Sherman 54:28 Yeah. And, you know-

Trevor Noah 54:29 Oof

Carter Sherman 54:29 ... also we've been given, young people have been given many more tools to make themselves appear more attractive.

Trevor Noah 54:35 Ah, damn.

Carter Sherman 54:35 Like, there was one young woman I was talking to who was talking about, you know, she posts on TikTok a lot, and she took somebody else's filter, and she didn't realize that the filter had made her cheeks look slimmer. And when she accidentally removed the filter, she realized, "Oh, I don't like my face this way. I don't like the way my face actually looks. I liked it with the filter more."

Trevor Noah 54:54 Yeah. She catfished herself.

Carter Sherman 54:56 Yeah. [laughs] I mean, kind of.

Trevor Noah 54:57 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 54:57 And she was saying, like, that's a terrible feeling.

Trevor Noah 54:59 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 54:59 Like, looking at your own face and being disappointed by it. And so not only are you ... Like, you're given all the tools to change how your body looks on social media- Can't really change your body in the same way without a lot more money, and it's probably some surgery in real life. And so you're, again, just constantly being compared and contrasted and falling short

Trevor Noah 55:19 Could, could that be one of the things? I don't, I don't know. I don't, I haven't done any research in this field, but could that be one of the factors? If people are living in a world where they're able to augment themselves so perfectly online, could it prevent them from interacting in real life?

Eugene 55:32 Mm.

Trevor Noah 55:32 Because you, you, to your, what you just said-

Eugene 55:34 Mm

Trevor Noah 55:34 ... the catfishing of it all.

Eugene 55:36 Mm.

Trevor Noah 55:36 I know

Trevor Noah 55:37 how I look online.

Eugene 55:38 Mm.

Trevor Noah 55:39 I don't wanna show up in person 'cause I ca- I can't do anything. There's no filter.

Eugene 55:42 Can't match it.

Trevor Noah 55:43 There's no-

Eugene 55:43 Yeah

Trevor Noah 55:43 ... I can't, I can't match it. And so if I stay online, I never get disappointed. I keep accruing this feeling and this, you know. But if I come into the real world, it all, it all falls apart. D- did you speak to anyone where that happened? Were there people who were more comfortable existing as their full filter selves and then wouldn't go into the real world anymore?

Carter Sherman 56:02 I think that what has happened for young people is like just so much more of their lives has been outsourced online.

Trevor Noah 56:06 Oh, yeah

Carter Sherman 56:06 And the pandemic contributed to this, right? Because these are young people who are growing up. Like, they didn't have prom, they didn't have-

Eugene 56:12 Mm

Carter Sherman 56:12 ... graduation.

Eugene 56:13 Missed a few years of school.

Trevor Noah 56:14 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 56:14 Yeah, they missed a lot of the-

Eugene 56:16 Yeah

Carter Sherman 56:16 ... sort of teenage-

Trevor Noah 56:17 The formative moments

Carter Sherman 56:17 ... yeah, the ways that, the moments that teach you how to handle being embarrassed or being rejected or just the nuances of human connection. And so instead, they were on their screens all the time, and that, for them, replaced a lot of those interactions, but there's nothing that can really replace-

Eugene 56:32 Yeah

Carter Sherman 56:32 ... an IRL connection.

Eugene 56:32 Real life-

Carter Sherman 56:33 Yeah

Eugene 56:34 ... battle experience.

Carter Sherman 56:35 Exactly.

Eugene 56:35 I'm

Eugene 56:36 a big fan, me personally, of real-life battle experience, and I feel like there's nothing that will make you tougher and nicer at the same time than being done a favor instead of being rejected.

Carter Sherman 56:49 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 56:49 Kat, I'm gonna tell you the truth, neh. There's some women back in my life where I look back and I'm like, "Why did you date me?"

Carter Sherman 56:55 [laughs]

Eugene 56:55 But [laughs] you ... but you know what it did for my self-esteem? It took it from here to the ... That was real battle life. And also, so I've decided every year I do charity drive. I date someone who I wouldn't-

Trevor Noah 57:08 [laughs]

Eugene 57:09 It's my outreach.

Carter Sherman 57:10 That's so generous of you.

Eugene 57:11 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 57:11 Oh, my God.

Eugene 57:12 I write it off with my taxes.

Carter Sherman 57:13 Oh, my God.

Eugene 57:13 I'm like,

Eugene 57:14 "No, this is time I will never get back."

Carter Sherman 57:15 You are a philanthropist.

Eugene 57:16 A few-

Carter Sherman 57:16 Yeah

Eugene 57:16 ... a few tanks of gas that I used and, uh, I put my credit card.

Carter Sherman 57:20 [laughs]

Eugene 57:20 I write it off, and I'm going, "Okay, this is my-

Trevor Noah 57:22 Oh, gosh

Eugene 57:22 ... corporate social responsibility."

Trevor Noah 57:24 Oh, gosh.

Eugene 57:24 Like, so that that person goes home, what they'll do is they'll say to themselves, "If that guy saw me, then someone else can see me." And we laugh, neh.

Carter Sherman 57:34 [laughs]

Eugene 57:34 But there's a lot of marriages that I think are based on my theory because now people are like-

Carter Sherman 57:39 Unch, really?

Eugene 57:39 ... "Do you know who I dated?"

Trevor Noah 57:40 Yeah.

Eugene 57:40 Now they look at me going, "I dated that guy," and the person behaves.

Trevor Noah 57:43 [laughs]

Eugene 57:43 But [laughs] no, I love that idea that they're using you as the metric. So they go like ... I'm just picturing a couple right now, and then the husband is saying something. "I don't know if this is working for..." "Working for you? Do you know who I used to date?"

Trevor Noah 57:58 [laughs]

Eugene 57:58 You know, they pull up your profile and then they're like, "Mm."

Trevor Noah 58:00 [laughs]

Eugene 58:01 It's like, "You dated him?" "Yeah." Why is he wearing a bikini and reading a book in the-

Trevor Noah 58:04 [laughs]

Eugene 58:04 ... in the park?

Carter Sherman 58:06 He's smart and hot, yeah. [laughs]

Eugene 58:08 So but that's my thing on, on a, a less ch- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 58:12 But you're right, though. Good. No, but I, you, I, I do like the point, yeah, which is beautiful.

Eugene 58:15 Yes.

Trevor Noah 58:15 And we forget that it's all real life.

Eugene 58:17 Yes.

Trevor Noah 58:18 We often will say, like, the, the, the bad and the ... But man, the good of real life as well.

Eugene 58:22 Yes.

Trevor Noah 58:22 Being real-life accepted-

Eugene 58:23 Yes

Trevor Noah 58:23 ... being real-life chosen.

Eugene 58:24 Yes.

Trevor Noah 58:25 Oof.

Eugene 58:25 Yes.

Carter Sherman 58:26 I mean, there's nothing to replace it, for sure.

Eugene 58:28 Nothing to replace the feeling of being told, "Look, man, I'm out of your league, and I've realized that I can do better in life." And then at that moment, you feel, you know, shattered, broken, but you go, "I, look, if I were you, I would totally do the same." And then you move on, and then you start punching in your weight class. And then when you're in your weight class, you're like, "No, man, I actually can do better than you."

Carter Sherman 58:48 [laughs]

Eugene 58:48 And then ... But I think the craft macra of relationships-

Trevor Noah 58:51 [laughs]

Eugene 58:52 ... is what's missing. It's, it's, the end goal has become the win, where people ... I've heard people saying, "Why would I wanna go out there and meet people i- when I could be sitting here watching porn?"

Trevor Noah 59:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 59:01 I've heard people saying that.

Trevor Noah 59:02 Yeah.

Eugene 59:02 So I feel like the, the close-quarter combatness of dating that eventually leads to sex, the adventure of it all has been, has been taken out.

Trevor Noah 59:10 It's all outcome based.

Eugene 59:12 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 59:12 Yeah.

Eugene 59:12 It's Netflix and chill, and then we skip to URL, and then we come back again, and then now you're talking to your friends online. You're watching girls that you will never have online. You're watching people having a good time online who else with us. You had to go out there and be rejected, so that's why my outreach program is still continuing till this day. I w-

Trevor Noah 59:31 [laughs] It's so beautiful, Eugene.

Eugene 59:33 Thank you, Trevor.

Trevor Noah 59:33 So beautiful.

Eugene 59:34 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 59:34 I'm touched and I think inspired as well. I think a lot of people don't consider.

Eugene 59:38 Imagine what kind of impact you would have with your reach.

Carter Sherman 59:43 [laughs]

Eugene 59:44 With, with your everything. You can just ... The r- the impact, I mean, you can have one in Harlem, the Bronx. You can outr- even in Africa, you can d- definitely do an outreach where a person can say, "Look who I took a self, and look, I dated this person." And then you can just lift up your self-esteem one girl at a time, sometimes a man here and there. But if, if anyone can do both.

Trevor Noah 1:00:12 Thank you.

Eugene 1:00:12 I've seen the things you do when no one is looking.

Trevor Noah 1:00:14 Thank you for seeing me, Eugene. Thank you so much for seeing me.

Eugene 1:00:19 I've got you.

Trevor Noah 1:00:20 That's me almost crying. Thank you.

Eugene 1:00:22 Sharp.

Trevor Noah 1:00:23 Beautiful.

Eugene 1:00:24 Over to you, Carter.

Carter Sherman 1:00:25 Oh, thank you. [laughs]

Eugene 1:00:26 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:00:26 I don't have anything to add. Yeah. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:00:30 Don't press anything. We've got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music] W- let's talk about sexting. Um, throughout time, the way humans have expressed their sexuality has constantly evolved and changed. And, and you, you spend a section in the book talking about, like, you know, like, how people see sexting and, and what it should be-

Eugene 1:01:02 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:01:02 ... and how they communicate their sexuality to each other. W- what would you say has been the biggest change for, like, Gen Z from w- what a previous generation might have considered what's appropriate,

Trevor Noah 1:01:12 not appropriate, what they're doing or not doing? Has there been a shift?

Carter Sherman 1:01:15 I mean, it might be sexting.

Trevor Noah 1:01:17 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:01:17 I think that, you know, when I was growing up, my parents were always like, "You know, everything you put online, be prepared for the New York Times to publish on its front page," which-

Trevor Noah 1:01:24 Oh, wow

Carter Sherman 1:01:25 ... I know, really puts the fear of the New York Times into you.

Trevor Noah 1:01:28 [laughs]

Eugene 1:01:28 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:01:28 Um, but now I think like everybody sends nudes.

Trevor Noah 1:01:33 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:01:34 And that's just how it is.

Trevor Noah 1:01:35 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:01:35 And I think that there is a much more generational acceptance that like, yeah, probably, you know, depending on the future of American democracy, if we end up having a younger president, that president will probably have nudes out there.

Trevor Noah 1:01:46 Oh.

Carter Sherman 1:01:46 And that's just how it is.

Trevor Noah 1:01:47 Wow.

Carter Sherman 1:01:48 And so I don't think that, like, sexting is an inherently bad thing. I think it gets stigmatized a lot of the time because it's new and because it's lewd.

Trevor Noah 1:01:54 Wow.

Eugene 1:01:54 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:01:55 But it-

Eugene 1:01:55 But one day it could be the norm.

Carter Sherman 1:01:57 I, I-

Eugene 1:01:57 Ask not what pictures your president can send to you.

Carter Sherman 1:02:00 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:02:00 [laughs]

Eugene 1:02:00 Ask what pictures you can send to your president. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:02:07 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:02:07 [laughs] That was the best Kennedy ever.

Eugene 1:02:10 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:02:10 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:02:11 [laughs]

Eugene 1:02:14 Even the Kennedy with a, with a bad radio speaker.

Trevor Noah 1:02:17 Yeah. [laughs]

Eugene 1:02:17 Like, Kennedy's like, "I never sounded like that." [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:02:21 I mean, look, if any president got a lot of nudes, it was probably Kennedy. [laughs] Let's be honest.

Eugene 1:02:25 Touché.

Trevor Noah 1:02:26 Yeah.

Eugene 1:02:26 Touché.

Carter Sherman 1:02:26 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:02:27 [laughs] I knew you had it in you.

Eugene 1:02:31 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:02:32 Thank you. Um, but yeah, and I don't think that... I think that we just, like porn, treat sexting as a monolith-

Trevor Noah 1:02:38 Yeah, yeah

Carter Sherman 1:02:38 ... and treat it as a bad thing. And the thing is, though, that by, in so doing, similar to how we pathologize sex through sex ed-

Trevor Noah 1:02:46 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:02:46 ... we make it impossible for people to handle it when something does go wrong.

Trevor Noah 1:02:50 Mm.

Eugene 1:02:50 Wow.

Carter Sherman 1:02:50 We don't create avenues for people to be able to seek accountability or to even feel better about themselves when their nudes are leaked-

Eugene 1:02:57 Yes

Carter Sherman 1:02:57 ... or shared, oftentimes without their consent,

Carter Sherman 1:03:00 and that kind of stuff happens all the time, and we just blame those people-

Trevor Noah 1:03:05 Right

Carter Sherman 1:03:05 ... for having sent out the nudes-

Eugene 1:03:07 Victim blaming

Carter Sherman 1:03:07 ... instead of recognizing everybody sends nudes, and actually leaking somebody else's nudes without their consent is a violation.

Trevor Noah 1:03:12 But to your point-

Eugene 1:03:13 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:03:13 ... the difficulty, and I think this is something we, we struggle with in society across the board, we love flipping between binaries.

Eugene 1:03:21 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:03:22 You know? And we think the equilibrium gets reached when we go to the opposite end of a spectrum-

Eugene 1:03:26 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:03:26 ... but it doesn't, you know?

Carter Sherman 1:03:27 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:27 So people will go, "Oh, this is unequal. Uh, let's switch to the complete opposite." Now it's then it's like, then it's like, no, now it's an unequal the other way.

Carter Sherman 1:03:36 Right.

Trevor Noah 1:03:36 You know? And I remember-

Eugene 1:03:37 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:03:37 ... like I think of-

Eugene 1:03:38 Goes from exclusive to super inclusive.

Trevor Noah 1:03:40 Yeah. And it's like, but-

Eugene 1:03:41 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:03:41 ... but if you think of the, um, uh, f- and Nelson Mandela, for instance.

Eugene 1:03:45 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:46 A lot of people wondered why he said, what he w- he was like, he was like, "I do not s- seek the, the oppression of Black people. I do not seek the oppression of white people. I do not..." And people are like, "Why is he saying that?" 'Cause he was like, "I wanna be crystal clear with you. I'm fighting for equality."

Eugene 1:04:00 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:04:01 "I'm not fighting for a role reversal."

Eugene 1:04:03 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:04:03 And, and sometimes people miss that, and I think when you're saying that, to go back to what your parents said, that is one of the dichotomies that we also face in this world. One half of sending nudes-

Eugene 1:04:16 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:04:17 ... and your nudes getting leaked is not your fault, because somebody leaked your nudes.

Eugene 1:04:22 Definitely, yes.

Trevor Noah 1:04:22 One half is your fault-

Eugene 1:04:24 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:04:24 ... because you've sent nudes. Now, I'm not saying you deserve it. Please don't get me wrong.

Eugene 1:04:27 Absolutely.

Trevor Noah 1:04:27 I'm not saying that.

Eugene 1:04:28 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:29 But I'm saying there's, there's like, we don't wanna live in a world where there's nuance. We don't wanna live in a world where there's gray. But it, I think it's important for us to say to each other and to the parents and to also go like, "Hey, hey, hey, please know you are making it more likely that a nude can be..." I'm not saying it's good if it happens to you, and I'm not saying you deserve it, and I'm not saying you should.

Eugene 1:04:45 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:04:45 But just understand that there's a risk that you're taking.

Eugene 1:04:47 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:04:47 But on the other hand, even if that risk, if you are a victim of that, I'm not gonna now blame you-

Eugene 1:04:52 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:04:53 ... but understand

Trevor Noah 1:04:54 like the, the, the complicated ramifications of this thing, you know?

Eugene 1:04:57 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:04:57 Yeah. I mean, I think in the flipping from one side to the other, like you just, it's a rejection of reality.

Trevor Noah 1:05:02 Yes.

Carter Sherman 1:05:02 'Cause reality-

Trevor Noah 1:05:03 Yes, mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:05:03 ... is always in the middle.

Trevor Noah 1:05:04 Yes.

Carter Sherman 1:05:04 And so we can't actually a- acknowledge or grapple with the nuances of reality if we're constantly moving from one extreme to the other.

Trevor Noah 1:05:10 Oh, I like that actually.

Eugene 1:05:11 Yeah. I- I'd even say it's the language that people use to not make that a crime. People call it revenge porn, and you're like, no. Porn is an industry. It's a business with-

Carter Sherman 1:05:20 Right

Eugene 1:05:20 ... actors, with willing participants, with incentives. Someone leaking your nudes-

Trevor Noah 1:05:25 You're not wrong

Eugene 1:05:25 ... is not revenge porn.

Trevor Noah 1:05:26 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:05:27 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:05:27 Yeah. It's not porn at all.

Trevor Noah 1:05:28 'Cause it was never, 'cause it was never porn in that way.

Eugene 1:05:30 At, at all.

Trevor Noah 1:05:30 Yeah.

Eugene 1:05:31 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:05:31 Yeah.

Eugene 1:05:31 So I think the wording around it gives these tech companies plausible deniability, because once they get dragged into what they allow someone else to do-

Trevor Noah 1:05:38 Yeah

Eugene 1:05:39 ... as a proxy of someone else's, uh, uh, willingness, then they'll be in trouble.

Trevor Noah 1:05:44 Yeah.

Eugene 1:05:44 Right?

Carter Sherman 1:05:45 Well, there's new, I mean, advocates now would say instead of using revenge porn, we should use terms like non-consensual image abuse or intimate image abuse.

Eugene 1:05:50 Oh, yeah. There you go.

Trevor Noah 1:05:51 There you go.

Eugene 1:05:51 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:05:52 Yeah.

Eugene 1:05:52 You, you nailed it.

Carter Sherman 1:05:53 Yeah. And acknowledge, yes, to your point, like, porn is an industry. People participate in it for money. It's their job. Like, someone whose nudes leaks, that is not them agreeing to be a performer. That is them being victimized.

Trevor Noah 1:06:06 Yeah. It's a completely different thing, and now we've made it seem like they're part of an industry that they're not.

Carter Sherman 1:06:11 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:06:11 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:06:11 Which i- l- how do we expand that into the world of dealing with sex and the w- and the way we think about it? You know, you, you talk in the book about, um, college campuses and how there's this swing that goes back and forth in how college campuses have dealt and then are now dealing with sex that is consensual or non-consensual-

Carter Sherman 1:06:32 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:06:32 ... or somewhere in this gray area on campus. W- what have you found in, in the, has happened in the past few years?

Carter Sherman 1:06:39 I think in general, college campuses are oftentimes treated as like ground zero for all of the kinds of battles that we're having-

Trevor Noah 1:06:45 Yeah.

Eugene 1:06:45 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:06:45 ... in American life.

Trevor Noah 1:06:46 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:06:46 Um, like right now, for example, there's a lot of discussion around free speech on college campuses and what we should do there.

Trevor Noah 1:06:51 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:06:51 But one of the things that I was looking at in the book is Title IX, and Title IX is the

Carter Sherman 1:06:56 federal civil rights law that protects against sex discrimination in education.

Trevor Noah 1:07:00 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:07:00 And it has become a political football over how we should be treating s- non, uh, sex and rape on college campuses.

Trevor Noah 1:07:09 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:07:10 Which is to say, like, under the Obama administration, it was, its powers were- I don't wanna say expanded, but maybe more illuminated to the extent that you could use Title IX to combat sexual harassment and-

Trevor Noah 1:07:22 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:07:22 ... sexual abuse. And that sparked a huge backlash from the right that said that, you know, this was overreach by the Obama administration.

Trevor Noah 1:07:30 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:07:31 And for example, they took specific aim at the standard of proof that the Obama administration set that should be used in adjudicating these kinds of cases. And so then when the Trump administration came in, they changed a lot of the rules around Title IX, and they rewrote them to, for example, make it that you have to have, like, in-person,

Carter Sherman 1:07:53 uh, hearings-

Trevor Noah 1:07:54 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:07:54 ... around these kinds of things, where both the survivor, the alleged survivor-

Trevor Noah 1:07:58 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:07:58 ... and the alleged perpetrator have to be there.

Trevor Noah 1:08:01 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:08:01 And this, amongst other changes, made it, as one activist told me, basically Title IX became unusable for survivors.

Trevor Noah 1:08:08 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:08:08 It just did not do-

Trevor Noah 1:08:09 Became a kangaroo court.

Carter Sherman 1:08:10 I mean, that's the... I mean, they ... Basically, the Trump administration said that, "You guys made Title IX a kangaroo court first, and then-

Trevor Noah 1:08:18 Huh

Carter Sherman 1:08:18 ... we're fixing it."

Trevor Noah 1:08:19 We're going the opposite direction.

Carter Sherman 1:08:20 Right. And then, so, like, basically it's now, at this point, the Biden administration rolled in. They, again-

Trevor Noah 1:08:27 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:08:27 ... rewrote the rules of Title IX. Trump administration, as people might have heard, is back in power and-

Trevor Noah 1:08:32 Wait, what?

Carter Sherman 1:08:33 I know.

Trevor Noah 1:08:34 Argh.

Carter Sherman 1:08:35 It's-

Trevor Noah 1:08:35 How long have we been in here?

Carter Sherman 1:08:37 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:08:37 [laughs]

Eugene 1:08:40 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:08:40 I mean, what is interesting is, like, there are things-

Trevor Noah 1:08:43 [laughs]

Eugene 1:08:46 Hi

Trevor Noah 1:08:46 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:08:47 [laughs]

Eugene 1:08:48 Oh, man.

Carter Sherman 1:08:48 There are things in the book that I predicted would change under a Trump administration, and Title IX was one of them.

Trevor Noah 1:08:53 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:08:53 But I did not predict the speed at which a lot of this stuff would change.

Trevor Noah 1:08:56 Oh, yeah, okay.

Carter Sherman 1:08:57 So, like, in between ... I mean, writing a book takes time. In between turning in the final draft and the book actually coming out, some of the stuff that I predicted would happen over the course of a four-year Trump administration happened more or less immediately. And so the Title IX rules have reverted at this point to-

Trevor Noah 1:09:12 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:09:12 ... what they were underneath the Trump administration. And I think for a lot of survivors on college campuses, it's been very difficult and upsetting to see, like, sex effectively being treated as a political football.

Trevor Noah 1:09:27 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:09:28 And not really being ... The nuances of it not really being reckoned with.

Trevor Noah 1:09:32 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:09:32 Just people, again, flipping from one side to the other. And you know, I think we have to think about, like, what is a college campus? Like, a college campus is where people go and learn about the world.

Trevor Noah 1:09:45 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:09:45 And if they're being taught at that age that maybe there are not consequences for sexual abuse-

Trevor Noah 1:09:50 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:09:50 ... for sexual harassment, for rape-

Trevor Noah 1:09:51 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:09:51 ... like, what does that say for the rest of their lives?

Trevor Noah 1:09:54 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:09:56 Sex or ... Rape is one of the ... Rape is one of the number one reasons that women leave college campuses.

Trevor Noah 1:10:02 Damn.

Eugene 1:10:02 No way.

Carter Sherman 1:10:03 And so when that happens, we're creating a situation where women are less able to flourish. They're not able to get the education. They're not able to get the jobs. They're not able to ultimately have as much of a public voice. And so we create, like, a snowball effect here when we don't take sexual

Carter Sherman 1:10:18 abuse and harassment on college campuses seriously in all kinds of ways.

Trevor Noah 1:10:23 It- it's also, um ... I always feel like it's also a little disingenuous to deal with the people who are dealing with the ramifications of a system without thinking of the system itself.

Carter Sherman 1:10:36 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:10:37 Like, like one of the biggest ones that throws me in my daily life is ... I'll think about, like, drunk driving. I always think it's confusing that if you sign a contract and you are inebriated, most courts would argue that you did not have the capacity to sign that contract.

Carter Sherman 1:10:56 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:10:56 Let's say you were drunk at the time.

Carter Sherman 1:10:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:10:57 So you couldn't agree.

Eugene 1:10:58 Altered state.

Trevor Noah 1:10:59 You were in an altered state. If somebody drives drunk and they crash their car into people, they are prosecuted fully because the law says they made a decision to drive drunk.

Carter Sherman 1:11:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:10 But I'm like, yeah, but that same law in another instance says you did not have the capacity to make a decision.

Carter Sherman 1:11:16 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:16 Do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 1:11:17 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:17 And it's these small paradoxes that are complicated, and that's what law needs to get into. That's what I think law was fundamentally meant to be about, is trying to understand the complicated nuances in a society-

Carter Sherman 1:11:28 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:11:29 ... provide clarity as to how to deal with them on a case by case basis. But the messiness of the system

Trevor Noah 1:11:35 isn't dealt with. Like, whenever these college things came up, I would see them have all these conversations, but very seldom would I see colleges say, "What do we think about how we allow alcohol on a campus?" Do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 1:11:48 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:49 And I'm not saying that that is the cause, but I'm going, you cannot separate a conversation about sex and young people from alcohol. But you're just gonna talk about the people and not the environment that the people are in and how they're consuming the alcohol, and then what then happens. And the ... You-

Eugene 1:12:06 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:12:06 ... you with me?

Eugene 1:12:06 100%.

Trevor Noah 1:12:07 And, and sometimes I think it's, it's such a, it's such a shortsighted and, and, and small approach that you may end up swinging back and forth the whole time because you just go, "Oh, yeah." You know, one administration goes, "It's the guys who are the problem." Then now it's the girls who are the problem. Then it goes, it's just gonna keep going back and forth.

Carter Sherman 1:12:23 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:23 And the institutions never actually have to ask themselves-

Eugene 1:12:25 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:12:25 ... "Wait, what environments are we creating?" To your point, in educating, in ... They, they do those campus tours. They tell you about the morals of the camp- th- this is what it's like to be a student here. This is where you should go for this. This is ... I feel like even on that level, colleges should say, "Hey, we're gonna teach you about sex on campus. This is part of your onboarding."

Eugene 1:12:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:12:46 This is part ... Not sex also in life, but we're gonna, like, we're gonna talk about sex in a college setting. We're gonna talk to people about sex. We're gonna talk to you about shame. We're gonna talk to you about pleasure. We're gonna talk to you ... But these things are all part of sex itself, and if we don't, we're just gonna be living in a world where everyone is coming in with, like, their own little manual that was written by porn or their friends-

Carter Sherman 1:13:07 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:13:07 ... or their parents or a random school teacher that taught them nothing.

Carter Sherman 1:13:10 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:13:10 And then we wonder why there's so many breakdowns in that world. Do you know ... Do you get what I'm saying?

Carter Sherman 1:13:15 Yeah. I mean, I do think colleges do- Try to some extent. Like, I remember on my college campus, we did get, uh, you know, a talk about how to handle sex, how to handle drinking, and the thing is, like, I still didn't really know that Title IX existed until my senior year.

Trevor Noah 1:13:31 Oh, got it.

Carter Sherman 1:13:32 And so it's not something that I think can be solved by, like, one talk that the college campus gives to incoming freshmen, especially, I mean, when you're in an Ivy League-

Trevor Noah 1:13:39 Yeah, no, I mean more than a talk

Carter Sherman 1:13:40 ... Ivy League school. Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:13:41 ... I mean, uh, like it's, it's, to me, it's a syllabus.

Trevor Noah 1:13:43 It's part of life. But, but carry on, sorry.

Carter Sherman 1:13:45 Yeah, no, I mean, I think that it just ... I don't know. I think, I'm thinking back to all these young women I interviewed. So in the course of doing these interviews, I never asked people-

Trevor Noah 1:13:56 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:13:56 ... if they had been sexually assaulted. Like, that was not a standard question that I had because I didn't necessarily want to put people into a space that they weren't willing to talk about it.

Trevor Noah 1:14:04 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:14:04 But I was staggered by the young, number of young women, and some young men, who told me that they had been sexually assaulted, that it ca- it just came up organically in the course of the conversation. And to me, I feel like we are just simply not at a place where we are dealing with this or thinking about this at the scale that it's occurring.

Trevor Noah 1:14:23 Right.

Speaker 1:14:23 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:14:24 You know, post ... I did ask young people, you know, "Can you tell me about a, uh, cultural or social or political event that shaped your approach to sex?" And almost all of them said Me Too.

Speaker 1:14:36 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:14:36 That they, most of them had memories of it. Some of them didn't, which was very shocking to me because it made me feel very old. Um, but, like, it turns out that very little has really changed post-Me Too in terms of, like, actual legal reforms, actual changes on college campuses.

Trevor Noah 1:14:52 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:14:52 Like, the main change we saw post-Me Too was reforms

Carter Sherman 1:14:56 in NDA laws, which are not very helpful-

Trevor Noah 1:14:57 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:14:57 ... for college students, who are-

Trevor Noah 1:14:58 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:14:58 ... not working, and better HR trainings, or more HR trainings, I should say, on sexual assault.

Trevor Noah 1:15:03 And yet again, they're also not at work.

Carter Sherman 1:15:04 Right. And so it just ... We really, I think, have a resistance to having any of these kinds of conversations about the system or about how the system can be improved or what the law should do or what even, like, we should talk about as terms of culture. Like, is the law always the best mechanism for dealing-

Trevor Noah 1:15:20 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:15:21 ... with the aftermath of sexual assault?

Trevor Noah 1:15:21 Yeah, that's a, that's a great question, actually.

Carter Sherman 1:15:23 Like, not everybody actually wants to go through the legal system.

Trevor Noah 1:15:26 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:15:26 I can tell you, I was sexually assaulted in college. I never thought about going to the cops, 'cause it was me and him alone in a room, and, like, I knew that it was my word against his, and it wasn't gonna end well. And incarceration is also not necessarily the same thing as justice.

Trevor Noah 1:15:39 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:15:40 And so I felt like what c- became very clear to me is in talking to these young people is, like, there is just a resounding failure across the board to take sexual assault and sexual abuse and its aftermath seriously.

Trevor Noah 1:15:52 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:15:53 And, like, maybe Title IX ... Uh, we at least need to be talking about Title IX as more than a political football in this environment. It can't just be something that Democrats and Republicans use to wield against each other to prove that one, "Oh, you're attacking men. You're attacking women."

Trevor Noah 1:16:07 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:16:07 It has to be something that we actually have real conversations about as a law or as, like, the beginning of a foundation for cultural change.

Trevor Noah 1:16:17 It, it's a noble thought, but I can't-

Carter Sherman 1:16:20 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:16:20 No, I can, I can-

Carter Sherman 1:16:21 No, fair enough. Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:16:21 ... I can't help but think to myself, is that a possibility, like, ever in our evolution as humans? Because y- you can go back and read, I mean, like, like, ancient texts, and it's shocking to find, like, the Greeks and the whatever, like, on a,

Trevor Noah 1:16:38 on a legal level talking about morality and what is and isn't permissible-

Carter Sherman 1:16:41 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:16:41 ... and what a pervert is and, you know. It feels like it's always going to be politicized. It's always gonna be political because to what you said in the beginning of the conversation, there's a power attached to it.

Carter Sherman 1:16:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:16:54 And it's also a very, a very, um, uh ... It's the perfect tool to define where morality lies in a society.

Carter Sherman 1:17:02 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:17:02 You know? You, you think of, like-

Carter Sherman 1:17:03 Law or ...

Trevor Noah 1:17:04 Yeah, no, no-

Carter Sherman 1:17:05 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:17:05 ... but, like, how we view sex and the, and the ... even beyond the laws around it itself, but the, how we view it, you know. You know, you think of colonial writing, the, the, they ... the savages, the way they have sex and the savage sex and the ... It, it's such a powerful tool-

Carter Sherman 1:17:19 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:17:19 ... to define where the norm exists-

Carter Sherman 1:17:22 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:17:22 ... and where the other starts. And I actually wonder, because you do write, uh, quite a lot about this. I actually wonder how much you think we can learn from societies or peoples who have been pushed to the fringes of society. 'Cause I often find that they do a lot of work in defining sex in a way that, like, mainstream doesn't. Y- you know what I mean? Like, I remember in and around the Me Too movement, I learned more from the BDSM communities that came up online.

Carter Sherman 1:17:47 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:17:48 W- everyone was like, "But how would we know?" And then BDSM people were like, "Oh, uh, so this is what we do. This is because we have been choking."

Carter Sherman 1:17:54 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:17:55 "We have been whipping."

Carter Sherman 1:17:56 Consent. Right.

Trevor Noah 1:17:56 "We have been..."

Carter Sherman 1:17:56 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:17:57 And it's, it was, I was ignorant to it.

Carter Sherman 1:17:59 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:18:00 I couldn't believe that people who were in those communities had checklists and had very, you know, like-

Carter Sherman 1:18:06 Guidelines

Trevor Noah 1:18:06 ... tender and interesting guidelines on how to go about this. And I, so I wonder what, like, what you learned about what we could learn by engaging with groups or communities who have generally been pushed out to the fringes.

Carter Sherman 1:18:17 I mean, a lot. I think that a lot of these groups ... I mean, B- BDSM is a great example, and I'm paraphrasing, um, somebody else who said this, uh, a philosopher at Yale who's talked about BDSM needs hierarchy

Carter Sherman 1:18:31 into, or an erotic resource through consent.

Trevor Noah 1:18:33 Wow. Oh.

Carter Sherman 1:18:33 And so you can use consent to take, you know, all of these different hierarchies in society and, like, work with them and make them a part of your sexual play and your pleasure. And the fact of the matter is, like, I don't think that we should necessarily be aiming at abolishing hierarchies or that, because I just don't think it's necessarily possible.

Trevor Noah 1:18:53 Right.

Carter Sherman 1:18:54 But I do think that there are a lot of communities that have thought a lot about, like, how do we take the world as it is-

Trevor Noah 1:18:59 Hmm

Carter Sherman 1:18:59 ... and figure out a way to wring pleasure out of this?

Trevor Noah 1:19:02 Hmm.

Speaker 1:19:03 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:19:03 Um, I, I was really inspired in, in doing these interviews by the number of young people I spoke with who were interested in activism around sex. I talked with a lot of young people who were fighting against sexual assault, who were fighting for abortion rights, against abortion rights, who were fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, and there was one young woman- Who I talk about in the book, Zoe, who actually she had been sexually assaulted, and she had also had her nudes leaked multiple times. And she ... It was, it was devastating for her. It was profoundly difficult for her to pick herself up again after that. But she got involved in pleasure advocacy on campus and s- became really invested in sex ed. And she got to a point where, you know, she is interested in sending nudes to her now boyfriend.

Trevor Noah 1:19:48 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:19:48 And so the answer isn't necessarily, you know, never send nudes again.

Trevor Noah 1:19:52 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:19:52 You've been hurt by it.

Trevor Noah 1:19:53 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:19:53 It's to create a framework for yourself where you can say, "Okay, I recognize the risks."

Trevor Noah 1:19:58 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:19:58 Like, "Maybe my nudes will get leaked again. Maybe this boyfriend who I love so much will betray me. But if I go into these situations knowing the risks-

Trevor Noah 1:20:07 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:20:07 ... I will feel more empowered than I did in a previous situation that I was in." And I found that those kinds of stories to be very inspiring because, you know, people do pick themselves up and go on after these circumstances, and they do think about new frameworks for themselves that make them feel comfortable as opposed to just rejecting the thing that had hurt them in the past.

Trevor Noah 1:20:25 I, I, I don't wanna probe into your past, so please feel for it free, feel free to not share, but I'd love to know what you would have thought justice would have looked like in your story. Because you say you

Trevor Noah 1:20:35 weren't comfortable in going to the police, but you wanted something to happen. But, uh, you said an interesting phrase after that. You said you don't necessarily think that incarceration would have been the right solution. So when, when you look back on that, and again, like I say, we can move on, uh, but, like, what do you think justice would have looked like for you?

Carter Sherman 1:20:51 I think an apology would have actually done a lot.

Trevor Noah 1:20:53 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:20:54 Like, it actually ... I wasn't, I wouldn't-

Trevor Noah 1:20:55 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:20:55 ... have really needed frankly that much. And I should say that I, I wasn't raped. It, I describe it in the book.

Trevor Noah 1:21:00 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:21:01 But it basically became, like, he wanted a blow job. I didn't wanna give him one. We had, like, a physical tussle over it.

Trevor Noah 1:21:08 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:21:08 And I ultimately was able to effectively push him out of my apartment. And so maybe if someone had had, like, a different kind of assault, it was just a different person, they would have wanted more. But I would have felt that if he had acknowledged what had happened as something that had hurt me-

Trevor Noah 1:21:20 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:21:21 ... and said, "I'm sorry that I did that"-

Trevor Noah 1:21:22 Mm-hmm

Carter Sherman 1:21:23 ... that would have been enough for me.

Trevor Noah 1:21:25 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:21:25 And, you know, this is something that gets talked about in the concept of restorative justice-

Trevor Noah 1:21:29 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:21:29 ... which I bring up a little bit in the book, which is that you can have ... If you have

Carter Sherman 1:21:33 conversations and create a safe space for conversations, I think people don't re- necessarily realize that, like, you know, there's actually a wide variety of outcomes that some people would accept-

Trevor Noah 1:21:41 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:21:41 ... that are not just punitive.

Trevor Noah 1:21:43 Yes.

Carter Sherman 1:21:43 But we don't create the space for those kinds of outcomes. We don't create the possibility for envisioning a world where it's like it's not necessarily the law that's gonna solve all of this stuff for us.

Trevor Noah 1:21:54 Yeah. In a, in a world where the law-

Carter Sherman 1:21:57 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:21:57 ... has now become responsible for handling all of community's conversations, like every, every aspect of a, of a conversation that should be held in a community-

Carter Sherman 1:22:06 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:22:07 ... everything becomes legal. Do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 1:22:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:10 And it's ... That's like one of the, the things that you see. It's really big in America, but it's expanding to the rest of the world as well, where people have lost or misunderstand the value of, as you said, "I'm sorry."

Carter Sherman 1:22:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:22:23 Or the value of, "Do you acknowledge the thing that happened to me?" The value of ... And because of the business side of it-

Carter Sherman 1:22:30 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:22:30 ... you know, which you talk about all the time, there isn't really value in the other one. There's no, there's no money in the sorry side.

Carter Sherman 1:22:37 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:37 But there's money in the legal side.

Carter Sherman 1:22:39 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:39 You know what I mean? There's money in the-

Eugene 1:22:41 Punitive side

Trevor Noah 1:22:41 ... in the punitive side.

Carter Sherman 1:22:42 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:22:42 You put the person away in jail, there's money to be made somewhere. But there's no money in connecting human beings on a restorative, on a, a restorative path. So that's like a ... It's a, it's a beautiful way to think of it. Thank you for sharing that.

Eugene 1:22:53 Yeah. I, I think, uh, in the, in the most softest side of it, which is the one extreme, which is an emotionally unavailable boyfriend for a woman, is

Eugene 1:23:07 again, the battleground is a female body. And on the extreme side of it, which is assault and rape, is still the female body. And on the other end of it, there can only be one perpetrator because they come from one gender. So even the innocent parties feel like one step could get me in a wrong place.

Trevor Noah 1:23:26 Mm.

Eugene 1:23:26 So I think young people are not having sex because they don't like the human connection. I think they're scared. Women are scared for what might happen to them. Men are scared of what they might do because they don't know much. So I think you're right when you're saying it should be all-encompassing when it comes to, um, sex education because I think it exposed how much is missing from those people that we look at and go, "Those were the nuclear family who were conservative in, in how they behave."

Trevor Noah 1:23:54 Yeah.

Eugene 1:23:54 "Who are religious."

Trevor Noah 1:23:54 How they show the world.

Eugene 1:23:55 Yes, because at some point we have to admit that that generation also raised well-balanced and well-rounded individuals. So now this freestyling that's going on has left kids to their devices quite sooner. Kids take themselves to school earlier.

Eugene 1:24:08 They do their own homework. They bring themselves back. So there's no conversation. There's no way, and also there's no, um ... For males especially, I can speak for myself. I'll see that with younger ones, there's no examples of what a good man is, of what a good, uh, a protector is. You know, I've had these conversation in South Africa where during GB gen- gender-based violence month, I would say I hate how-

Trevor Noah 1:24:32 That's why we're against it, by the way.

Eugene 1:24:33 Yeah, that one month.

Trevor Noah 1:24:34 Just ... No, but we're-

Carter Sherman 1:24:35 Okay

Trevor Noah 1:24:35 ... against it, just so you know. 'Cause you don't even know how-

Eugene 1:24:36 I meant night on the 31st.

Trevor Noah 1:24:37 You never, you ... But you can't just say the month.

Eugene 1:24:40 Okay.

Trevor Noah 1:24:40 'Cause you never know if you're for or against, against. You-

Carter Sherman 1:24:42 I assumed against, but-

Trevor Noah 1:24:43 You ... I'm just letting you know.

Carter Sherman 1:24:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:24:45 I don't want you walking away being like, "In South Africa-"

Eugene 1:24:47 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:24:48 "... they ce-

Eugene 1:24:48 That one month

Trevor Noah 1:24:48 ... they celebrate gender-based violence for a month."

Eugene 1:24:49 Month. We don't celebrate it.

Trevor Noah 1:24:50 Against. Against.

Eugene 1:24:51 We highlight it.

Trevor Noah 1:24:52 Against.

Eugene 1:24:53 Yes. So I, and I said these activists and these NGOs, I feel like there's someone behind them obviously because the assault side of it, like punitive side of it, is a big business.

Trevor Noah 1:25:02 Yeah.

Eugene 1:25:02 And when they say they wanna take the drive to younger men at school, I'm like, "No, you can't a- automatically assume that a young man is going to commit sexual assault against or gender-based violence against a woman." You're not giving them the benefit of a doubt. You're already accusing them before they've gotten their first kiss or their first crush.

Trevor Noah 1:25:21 Fear, to your point-

Eugene 1:25:22 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:25:22 ... is something you talk about even on the, you talk about in the book in and around, like, Roe v. Wade.

Carter Sherman 1:25:26 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:25:27 Ah.

Trevor Noah 1:25:28 It, it is, it is something that has to be ... Again, we, we don't know any number conclusively.

Carter Sherman 1:25:33 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:25:33 But I do appreciate how you talk about what fear does to us and how we, how we should, like, counting all these things. You're in school.

Carter Sherman 1:25:39 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:25:40 The fear is you have sex, you're gonna die.

Carter Sherman 1:25:42 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:25:42 Or you're gonna have a 16 pound baby. These are your options.

Carter Sherman 1:25:45 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:25:45 And then you move on to another one, and then it's like your fear, if you're a virgin, you're a loser, you're gonna die.

Carter Sherman 1:25:50 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:25:50 You know, it's fear. And then there's another type of fear. If I come forward, I'll be shamed, or I, I will be, you know, I won't be listened to, or this, or it'll be a kangaroo court. It becomes a fear.

Carter Sherman 1:26:00 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:00 And then you come into another situation-

Carter Sherman 1:26:02 If I say no, I'll be rejected

Trevor Noah 1:26:02 ... if you,

Trevor Noah 1:26:03 if I say no, it's a fear.

Carter Sherman 1:26:04 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:26:04 If I, if I don't say yes, even as like guys.

Carter Sherman 1:26:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:26:07 You know how many young men I've talked to who go, "I don't think that as a man I have the option to not want sex."

Carter Sherman 1:26:13 I just-

Trevor Noah 1:26:13 This is-

Carter Sherman 1:26:13 Yeah, I wanna be clear. Also, you know, one in 25 young, one in 25 men in the US has been penetrated against their will, and one in nine has been made to penetrate somebody else against their will.

Trevor Noah 1:26:24 Wow.

Carter Sherman 1:26:25 So there's-

Trevor Noah 1:26:25 But I'm saying that's-

Carter Sherman 1:26:26 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:26:26 ... that's them, like, even against their will. I, I-

Carter Sherman 1:26:28 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:26:28 ... wonder if that includes men who will say, and this is what I mean by the complicated nature of it.

Carter Sherman 1:26:33 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:34 They may go, "Not, not against my will, but I didn't know that I can say no." I, I, and I think it was-

Carter Sherman 1:26:40 Yeah. Because men are expected to always want sex.

Trevor Noah 1:26:42 Yeah. For take-

Carter Sherman 1:26:42 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:26:42 ... forget it from, like, even kids' sides. You know how many couples are in therapy because-

Carter Sherman 1:26:47 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:26:47 ... the wife is going, "He doesn't wanna have sex," and the man's like, "Yeah, well, I, I don't always wanna have sex." She's like, "Uh, I mean, that, the, clearly there's something wrong with me."

Carter Sherman 1:26:54 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:54 And then now you're living in a world where one half of the couple's going, "There's something wrong with me because men always want sex. Why doesn't he always want sex?"

Carter Sherman 1:27:02 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:27:02 And the man's like, "Ah, men don't always want sex. That's not, like, a real thing, but now I can't say this to you. Now y- do you ... "

Carter Sherman 1:27:07 Or the man is thinking, "Men always want sex. Why don't I always want sex?" Yeah, yeah. "What's wrong with me?"

Trevor Noah 1:27:12 That's exact-

Carter Sherman 1:27:12 Mm-hmm. Fear

Trevor Noah 1:27:12 ... so when we talk about that fear-

Carter Sherman 1:27:13 You're right

Trevor Noah 1:27:14 ... I think of, you add another layer to it.

Carter Sherman 1:27:16 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:27:16 People go, "Oh, Gen Z, why are they so afraid of s-", and then you go, yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:27:20 Have you seen sex lately?

Trevor Noah 1:27:21 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:27:22 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:27:22 And also, like, look at Roe v. Wade. If you've told somebody-

Carter Sherman 1:27:24 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:27:25 ... that the actions of your sex could lead to somebody being pregnant when you, they didn't wanna be pregnant, you didn't wanna be pregnant, and now that, that's your life. That's your baby. You're moving forward, otherwise you're a criminal. I can see some people going, "Ah, then I don't even wanna have sex then," you know? And I, I'm assuming you, you, you saw this or you felt this. How much-

Carter Sherman 1:27:45 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:27:45 ... how much do you think that affected how Gen Z now sees sex in America?

Carter Sherman 1:27:50 I think one of the theses of the book is that the changes in the landscape around sex have added so much anxiety and fear around sex that-

Trevor Noah 1:27:57 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:27:58 ... it is, for young people, easier to opt out, and I'm not saying that this is a conscious decision that they're making.

Trevor Noah 1:28:03 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:28:04 But when it feels so fraught to be vulnerable with another person, to have sex with another person-

Trevor Noah 1:28:09 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:28:09 ... you know, why do it when porn is out there?

Trevor Noah 1:28:11 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:28:12 Actually, one of the sort of moments I decided to write the book was there was a young woman who messaged me right after Roe was overturned. I think it was the following day, and she told me that she was pregnant, and she didn't wanna be. But she lived in Arizona, and Arizona had a law on the books that was centuries old that

Carter Sherman 1:28:32 banned virtually all abortions.

Trevor Noah 1:28:33 Right.

Carter Sherman 1:28:34 And abortion providers were afraid to provide abortions because they thought that the law might be back in effect.

Trevor Noah 1:28:39 Wow.

Carter Sherman 1:28:39 And so she could not end her pregnancy in the state where she was living. She ultimately ended up ordering abortion pills online and ending her own pregnancy in a motel room-

Trevor Noah 1:28:47 Jeez

Carter Sherman 1:28:48 ... with her ex-boyfriend. And, you know, that is safe to do. Medical experts widely agree you can order pills online, and you can end your pregnancy in your first trimester of, you can end the pregnancy in the first trimester of pregnancy safely. But what she told me, and what really stuck with me, was that she felt like she was being humiliated for having sex.

Trevor Noah 1:29:06 Hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:29:06 That even though the abortion was something she wanted, she felt empowered in the dec- in having it. She felt like that was a good decision for her. She felt like Republicans in particular were trying to punish her-

Trevor Noah 1:29:16 Jesus

Carter Sherman 1:29:16 ... for having been a person- Yeah ... that had sex. Mm-hmm. And I think that that is a feeling that a lot of young people are grappling with-

Trevor Noah 1:29:24 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:29:24 ... right now, which is that, oh, there is, politics is making me a bad person for having sex, or the-

Trevor Noah 1:29:33 Hmm

Carter Sherman 1:29:33 ... the state of politics, I would say right now, is making me a bad person for having sex. And, you know, with Roe v. Wade gone and more than a dozen states having banned almost all abortions at this point, you know, we're creating a generation that has to grapple with that fear every day.

Trevor Noah 1:29:49 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:29:50 And has to think about, "Okay, if I did get pregnant or if I do get somebody else pregnant, what are we gonna do? Do I have the money to end-

Trevor Noah 1:29:56 Hmm

Carter Sherman 1:29:56 ... this pregnancy? Could we go out of state? Would, what does it mean if I just continue to have this baby?" Um, one in five men have been involved with somebody who went on to have an abortion, and so this is not just something that affects women. Knowingly or unknowingly?

Carter Sherman 1:30:11 Uh, both. Mm-hmm. And so this is not just an issue that just affects women. It is something that many of the young men I spoke to were also thinking about-

Trevor Noah 1:30:19 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:30:19 ... and were also racked with anxiety over. Yeah. I, I've seen how it also, what's happening in the world affects how men date. Because sometimes disagreements with someone that you're dating are very tricky when you think what could happen when they leave here. You know, I've seen people who are going, "Yeah, but, you know, we might not agree about me not wanting to have sex with her or her wanting to do it with me. Now, now she's here, I must play along so that at least I'm safe." It's not a thing of when she can go out there and change her mind about what happened here. Because also we've heard peop- stories of people who become malicious and weaponize the fact that many women get raped and many women get sexually assaulted, and a slight disagreement in a relationship can turn to, you know-

Trevor Noah 1:31:03 We had, we had a few-

Carter Sherman 1:31:04 ... turn to accusation

Trevor Noah 1:31:04 ... of those stories. It, it, it is actually sad how that happens. We're, we've seen a few of those stories recently in the news.

Carter Sherman 1:31:09 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:31:10 And it is, it is interesting to, to use the airplane analogy.

Carter Sherman 1:31:15 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:31:15 It's amazing how people can use a few stories-

Carter Sherman 1:31:18 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:31:18 ... to create so much fear and do, do, do you know what I mean?

Carter Sherman 1:31:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:31:23 It's, it's like a, it's, it's, it's, it's messy, and it's complicated. And it's like I, I wonder if you came to any, um- I wonder if you came to any light at the end of a tunnel, and n- not that this is a morbid thing, by the way, you know?

Carter Sherman 1:31:42 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:31:42 But, but like, listen, like-

Carter Sherman 1:31:43 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:31:43 ... to what Eugene is saying now-

Carter Sherman 1:31:44 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:31:44 ... I, I agree with completely. Do you know what I'm saying? Think about, like, some of the conversations we've had on this podcast in different episodes. You, you know, you, you have a healthcare industry that does something that's pretty good for people with their kidneys, dialysis, and then there's a few companies who come in and go, "This is how we can use this to-

Eugene 1:32:03 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:32:04 ... to make money," and it hurts people.

Eugene 1:32:05 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:32:06 In the same instance here, you know, some people can use the laws in their favor to hurt somebody. They can hurt, women can use a law to hurt men. Men have been using the law in their favor to hurt me- women for, you know, decades and decades. But wh- where's, where's, like, the, is there a hope in all of this, or is it just us-

Carter Sherman 1:32:24 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:32:24 ... always grappling with the messiness that is never contained?

Carter Sherman 1:32:27 I mean, I think grappling with the messiness can be something that is a hopeful process.

Trevor Noah 1:32:31 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:32:31 'Cause I think the messiness of sex is what makes it interesting. It what, is what makes it kind of fun.

Trevor Noah 1:32:35 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:32:36 And I think that we shouldn't try to make sex something that is black or white or that is very strictly one thing or the other.

Trevor Noah 1:32:43 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:32:43 Like, I think we should try to look at sex in the landscape of its messiness and enjoy that. Um, and I, I think one of the things that did give me hope was the extent to which young people were trying to do that.

Trevor Noah 1:32:54 Hmm.

Eugene 1:32:54 Ah.

Carter Sherman 1:32:54 And I think because these young people have grown up seeing Roe get overturned, seeing Me Too break out, dealing with a profoundly turbulent political environment-

Trevor Noah 1:33:05 Mm

Carter Sherman 1:33:05 ... I think they understood a lot earlier than, say, I did, that

Carter Sherman 1:33:09 sex has political dimensions.

Trevor Noah 1:33:10 Mm.

Carter Sherman 1:33:10 And that no matter what we do, sex will always have those political dimensions and that political valence. And they said to themselves, in many instances, "Okay, given that that is true, what can I do in my community to change those dimensions and make sex be something that is something that I don't have to be afraid of or that my friends don't have to be afraid of?"

Trevor Noah 1:33:29 Yeah.

Eugene 1:33:29 Mm-hmm.

Carter Sherman 1:33:30 And I think that as much as the political elements of sex can make people anxious, it can also be, it can also give them the feeling like, "Okay, I can create change-"

Trevor Noah 1:33:41 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:33:41 ... around sex. It's not just something that happens in a bedroom between me and my partner or me and my partners. It's something that I can go out and try to redefine the terms of in school rooms, or go out and try to redefine the terms of in school board meetings-

Trevor Noah 1:33:55 Yeah, yeah

Carter Sherman 1:33:55 ... and in courtrooms-

Trevor Noah 1:33:56 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:33:56 ... and in state legislatures and in Congress. Like, it is possible to change.

Trevor Noah 1:34:01 Yeah.

Carter Sherman 1:34:01 As opposed to thinking that sex is just this dirty thing-

Trevor Noah 1:34:04 Yeah

Carter Sherman 1:34:04 ... that we can never, ever seek to make better.

Eugene 1:34:07 100%. I think what's tricky about sex is, it's both a want and a need at the same time.

Trevor Noah 1:34:12 Oh, damn.

Eugene 1:34:14 So it makes people, you know, very confused about where to draw the line. So yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:34:19 Yeah.

Eugene 1:34:19 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:34:20 That, it, I never thought of it like that.

Eugene 1:34:21 Did I, you see what I did there?

Carter Sherman 1:34:24 You, you won.

Eugene 1:34:24 So these things happen, happen often-

Carter Sherman 1:34:26 Yeah, yeah

Eugene 1:34:26 ... in this podcast.

Carter Sherman 1:34:27 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:34:27 [laughs]

Eugene 1:34:28 Where I, I take it to the top, top, top, then we get stuck there.

Carter Sherman 1:34:32 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:34:32 [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:34:33 Then there's just a moment of silence, of reverence.

Eugene 1:34:35 There's a, there's a moment-

Trevor Noah 1:34:36 Yeah. [laughs]

Carter Sherman 1:34:36 To the-

Eugene 1:34:36 There's a moment of silence. And in the f-

Carter Sherman 1:34:37 The pointedness-

Eugene 1:34:38 Yes

Carter Sherman 1:34:38 ... of your, just that was incredible insight. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:34:40 [laughs]

Eugene 1:34:41 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:34:41 I mean, I mean, more than that, what happens is I think to myself, we're so lucky that he would dare

Trevor Noah 1:34:46 to be with us.

Eugene 1:34:46 Oh, man.

Trevor Noah 1:34:47 This community service is just, I go, "Wow, we-

Carter Sherman 1:34:50 Again, your philanthropy. It's incredible

Trevor Noah 1:34:51 ... we just don't deserve."

Eugene 1:34:52 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:34:52 I just, I, that's what I think to myself. I'm like, "Man, I've gotta go and talk to somebody who doesn't deserve it the way-

Eugene 1:34:57 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:34:58 ... I don't deserve to listen to you."

Eugene 1:34:59 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:35:00 Um, Carter, we, uh, we, we really had fun. This was, this was great.

Eugene 1:35:03 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:35:03 Um, I, I, I think I appreciate more than anything how nuanced your book is.

Eugene 1:35:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:35:10 You know? Uh, in, in a world where everything is turning into, like, one thing or another, it's so rare to read an account of just, like, human complexity. You know? Age, gender,

Trevor Noah 1:35:26 legal, parent, child, you, you name it. I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't be seen in this book.

Eugene 1:35:31 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:35:31 And so thank, thank you for coming and chatting to us about it, and, you know, I, I, I hope everyone reads it, and I can't ex- I can't wait to see what you write about in the next one.

Carter Sherman 1:35:40 Thank you so much. That's very kind of you to say.

Trevor Noah 1:35:43 Thank you very much. This was dope. Too much fun.

Carter Sherman 1:35:46 [laughs] Thank you for all the sex puns.

Trevor Noah 1:35:49 Yeah.

Eugene 1:35:50 You are so good.

Carter Sherman 1:35:50 Yeah.

Eugene 1:35:51 You made this so much fun.

Trevor Noah 1:35:52 Yeah, man.

Carter Sherman 1:35:52 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:35:52 Thank you very much, for real.

Carter Sherman 1:35:53 Of course.

Eugene 1:35:54 You're good, Carter.

Carter Sherman 1:35:54 Thank you.

Eugene 1:35:55 Geez, that was fun.

Trevor Noah 1:35:59 This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market is the place to get everything you need for Thanksgiving, with great prices on turkey, quality organic produce, grab-and-go sides, and everyday low prices from 365 brand. You can prep for the holiday with big savings. Shop everything you need for Thanksgiving now at Whole Foods Market. Thank you so much for watching the episode. If you enjoyed it, pass it on to a friend. If you didn't enjoy it, pass it on to your friend still. Let them suffer for a change. And don't forget to engage with us in the comments. Uh, if you wanna, uh, suggest a guest, maybe there's questions you want, maybe there's ideas that you have, you can chat to us. We will read through the comments, and we'll get into it. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for hanging out with us on What Now? And remember, we do this for you, so we would like to hear from you. Till next time. Thank you. [upbeat music]