Cleo Abram: What Could Go Right?

Trevor Noah 0:00 [funky music] Oh, wait. Let's talk about aliens, actually.

Eugene 0:06 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 0:06 That's good.

Trevor Noah 0:06 Eugene is a huge fan of aliens.

Cleo Abram 0:09 I am also.

Eugene 0:09 We love aliens.

Cleo Abram 0:10 Me too.

Trevor Noah 0:10 Have you, have you discovered anything like-

Eugene 0:13 Apparently we're close to making first contact-

Cleo Abram 0:15 So-

Eugene 0:15 ... in the next two years or so.

Trevor Noah 0:16 You see, I love it. Now we're at the party. He's just said that.

Cleo Abram 0:19 Tell me more.

Eugene 0:19 Yeah. So there's a guy called-

Trevor Noah 0:20 Well, first, first, first have your drink and say it.

Eugene 0:22 So-

Trevor Noah 0:22 I think it, it sets the scene.

Cleo Abram 0:23 We're at a party.

Trevor Noah 0:25 [beatboxing]

Eugene 0:25 Hey, uh, um-

Cleo Abram 0:27 So, aliens. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:29 [beatboxing]

Eugene 0:30 [laughs] So there's an extraterrestrial, uh, being that comes through a guy called Darryl Anka.

Trevor Noah 0:37 [trilling] [laughs]

Cleo Abram 0:39 [laughs]

Eugene 0:44 Don't you just hate it when your pessimistic friend is a DJ?

Trevor Noah 0:47 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 0:47 [laughs]

Eugene 0:48 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:53 [upbeat music] This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:06 You take your time. [laughs] You take your time. You just go ahead and take your time. Every moment, every second you need, you just take it. Do they have that on, on YouTube? I know they have subtitles and dubbing, but can you dub to other accents? That would be dope.

Eugene 1:24 That would be nice.

Trevor Noah 1:26 We should just have the whole-

Cleo Abram 1:27 I mean, they let you-

Trevor Noah 1:27 ... episode in a Southern accent.

Cleo Abram 1:29 They ... I think you should do that for this episode.

Trevor Noah 1:32 We really should.

Eugene 1:33 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:33 I think you should ADR it after.

Trevor Noah 1:35 Just do the whole thing.

Cleo Abram 1:36 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:36 What's ADR?

Cleo Abram 1:37 Uh, I think it's the word for-

Eugene 1:38 I'm, I'm techno-challenged.

Cleo Abram 1:39 I actually don't know what the-

Trevor Noah 1:40 By the way

Cleo Abram 1:41 ... I, I... Oh, I did what I always hate, which is using an acronym when I don't know what it stands for. I think what ADR means is when they go back in a movie-

Trevor Noah 1:49 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:49 ... and make the same sounds again, uh, when they didn't catch it-

Trevor Noah 1:54 Oh

Cleo Abram 1:55 ... earlier.

Eugene 1:55 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:55 So like if-

Trevor Noah 1:55 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:56 ... I don't know. You've acted in movies.

Trevor Noah 1:56 No, that, that is ADR.

Cleo Abram 1:57 Is that right?

Eugene 1:57 Additional dialogue recording.

Trevor Noah 1:59 Ha! Additional dialogue recording. But they should have a name for it when it's over the other one, 'cause not additional. This is the same dialogue recording.

Cleo Abram 2:07 Yeah, yeah. Just do it again.

Trevor Noah 2:08 It's just, it's not, it's not-

Cleo Abram 2:08 In a Southern accent

Trevor Noah 2:09 ... it should be called DDR.

Eugene 2:10 It is.

Trevor Noah 2:10 Duplicate dialogue recording.

Cleo Abram 2:11 And you can upload your own audio files on YouTube.

Trevor Noah 2:14 [laughs] What do you mean?

Cleo Abram 2:14 So you could post the video.

Trevor Noah 2:16 Yeah?

Cleo Abram 2:16 And then you post another audio file, and I think you'd have to call it, you'd have to choose a language. I don't think, like, South American is one of them.

Trevor Noah 2:22 I'm, I'm actually, we should start doing that.

Eugene 2:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:24 We'll make every episode in another accent as well. Because people, people think of everyone who speaks other languages.

Eugene 2:30 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 2:30 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:30 But what about other accent speakers? What about them?

Eugene 2:33 Yeah, no one cares about them.

Trevor Noah 2:34 We could be doing this whole episode in an English accent. Eugene. I, I say, Eugene.

Cleo Abram 2:39 I couldn't, but you could.

Eugene 2:40 Yo, but the universal African accent must never see the light of day ever again.

Trevor Noah 2:44 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 2:44 I'm definitely not doing that.

Eugene 2:44 'Cause whoever came up with that universe, 'cause even in Africa, we like-

Trevor Noah 2:47 You, you, which accent are you talking ab- about?

Eugene 2:51 You see-

Trevor Noah 2:51 It's ... I can't even, like, do it. It's hard.

Eugene 2:53 Yeah. That accent's in, like, every movie-

Trevor Noah 2:55 It's in, like, every movie where there's Africans, but they're not African.

Eugene 2:57 Mm.

Cleo Abram 2:58 Oh, oh, oh.

Trevor Noah 2:58 Africans hear it.

Cleo Abram 2:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:59 But we're

Trevor Noah 3:01 ... It's a very, it's a very specific kind of accent.

Eugene 3:04 Mm.

Trevor Noah 3:05 I don't even know how to do it.

Eugene 3:06 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 3:06 Because it's nowhere.

Eugene 3:06 You shouldn't know.

Trevor Noah 3:07 It's nowhere.

Eugene 3:08 'Cause if you did know.

Trevor Noah 3:10 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 3:12 Then you can't do Howie.

Eugene 3:14 [外国语]

Trevor Noah 3:14 Uh, [laughs] no, but do you, do you, um ... You know, it's, it, we, we, we were talking about this just before we started recording. And I wonder if you have to think about this, you know. As, as your platform's grown, as you've gotten bigger, do you have to think about balancing out, like, what you'll do for a view, and then what the views will do for the people who are viewing the thing?

Eugene 3:34 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 3:35 Tell me more about what you mean by that.

Trevor Noah 3:36 Oh, so what we were chatting about earlier is, let's say I'm interviewing somebody on the show, right? We're hanging out here. It's me, Eugene, the person, who- whoever it is. Let's say they're a politician. And then you go ... Like, for instance, we had Zoran on, on, on the show. And then someone's like, "Oh, it'd be cool if you did a thing on Trump and whatever." And then I go, it could be cool, and it could be crazy, and you could do whatever you want.

Cleo Abram 3:56 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 3:56 Right? So I could go off and, and do, like ... I, let's say I do, like, a mini roast of Trump or whatever. Here I am with Zoran.

Cleo Abram 4:02 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 4:02 So it's like Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. And then you're like, "Oh, let's play out what happens, Zoran." He's like, "Welcome, Zoran. Nice to see you in my office, Mamdani. Nice to see you, Mamdani." Now, if he joins in-

Eugene 4:13 Mm

Trevor Noah 4:14 ... and Trump sees that, and Trump gets pissed off, and then goes, "Oh, I'm gonna cut funding for New York," was it worth it?

Eugene 4:20 Mm.

Cleo Abram 4:20 No.

Trevor Noah 4:21 That's my point.

Cleo Abram 4:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 4:23 So now ... But I wouldn't have to think that if we only had, like, 50 viewers. Then you just do whatever you want.

Eugene 4:30 Yes.

Cleo Abram 4:30 Yeah, but you wouldn't feel good about it, even if you had 50.

Trevor Noah 4:33 Oh, I would definitely feel good about it. Do you ... How, how can you not feel good about an act out?

Cleo Abram 4:37 It ... Well, I'll just say about my show, I've constructed the whole thing so that it prevents that question, because the premise of the show is I'm gonna genuinely explain something to you-

Trevor Noah 4:51 Yeah

Cleo Abram 4:51 ... that's complicated-

Trevor Noah 4:52 Yeah

Cleo Abram 4:53 ... that I want you to understand. I'm gonna do it in a way that is, in the end, optimistic. You're gonna have a specific feeling about, like, "Oh, there are smart people working on a hard problem, and I can see how we could make this better." And then it's gonna be visual and beautiful and joyful all at the same time. And if it does those three things-

Eugene 5:13 Visual-

Cleo Abram 5:13 It-

Eugene 5:14 ... beautiful, and joyful.

Cleo Abram 5:15 Mm. It's, uh-

Trevor Noah 5:16 That's how I think of Eugene

Cleo Abram 5:17 ... the, the three things. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 5:18 Whenever I look at you, Eugene-

Cleo Abram 5:19 That's lovely

Trevor Noah 5:19 ... that's what I think of. I think you are visual, I think you are joyful, and I think you are beautiful.

Cleo Abram 5:24 That's really beautiful.

Eugene 5:25 It's not often.

Cleo Abram 5:27 Your hands are warm, and mine are cold.

Eugene 5:29 Thank you.

Cleo Abram 5:29 That was nice.

Eugene 5:29 Yeah, let's go. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 5:30 Um, the three things. No, the three things are a genuinely good explainer.

Trevor Noah 5:34 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 5:35 Genuinely optimistic.

Trevor Noah 5:36 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 5:37 And visually stunning. A visual piece.

Trevor Noah 5:39 Huh.

Cleo Abram 5:40 And so if it's those three things, then it gets to be on Huge. And if it's not one of those things, then it shouldn't be there. And so that prevents-

Trevor Noah 5:47 So that's, so that's your guiding-

Cleo Abram 5:48 ... a lot of the ... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 5:48 Oh, okay.

Cleo Abram 5:48 Those are the three characteristics.

Eugene 5:49 It's your North Star.

Cleo Abram 5:50 Yeah. And if so it's not one of those things Then the pressure is on me and on my team and on, I mean, frankly, the audience now, now knows, like, what feels like huge

Cleo Abram 6:00 and what doesn't.

Trevor Noah 6:00 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 6:01 And it, it's a pressure that counterweights a lot of the other pressures on journalists and on-

Trevor Noah 6:07 Okay

Cleo Abram 6:07 ... news.

Trevor Noah 6:07 Okay. Got it.

Cleo Abram 6:08 To be-

Trevor Noah 6:08 Got it. Got it

Cleo Abram 6:08 ... clickbait-y. To be-

Trevor Noah 6:09 Right

Cleo Abram 6:10 ... pessimistic.

Trevor Noah 6:11 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 6:11 To be, um-

Trevor Noah 6:12 Un- unscrupulous, insensitive.

Cleo Abram 6:14 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 6:14 All of those things, na?

Cleo Abram 6:15 Yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's a counterweight.

Trevor Noah 6:16 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 6:17 And I'm not saying, like, it's, it's perfect every time. We, we also think a lot about how do I do those three things in a way that millions of people wanna watch. So there's absolutely, like, a, a storytelling element to it. But it strips away a lot of the things that I didn't like as a journalist, that I don't wanna watch, that aren't, in the end, helpful for me to actually understand something, make me feel optimistic about the future that I can participate in building-

Trevor Noah 6:43 Hmm

Cleo Abram 6:43 ... um, and that use the fact that it's a video, right? Like, watching a video requires a lot of your time and attention. It requires your eyes as in addition to your ears. And so I think a lot about how do I earn that from my audience. So anyway, if those, if I'm doing those three things-

Trevor Noah 6:57 Yeah

Cleo Abram 6:58 ... then it should be on the show. And in those moments where, like, you can feel the pressure to, to do something else because you think it'll spike in viewership.

Trevor Noah 7:07 Mm-hmm. I mean, everyone talks about that. Everyone who's been involved in YouTube, every ... 'Cause I'm, it-

Cleo Abram 7:12 Yeah

Trevor Noah 7:12 ... because I think there's a, there's a specific, um, there's a delineation between the types of content you make when you w- when you're making it for, like, what we call, like, mainstream media, let's say.

Cleo Abram 7:23 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 7:23 Your bosses have already confirmed it, it goes out, it's commissioned, it gets put on TV or in the movies, and then it's done. YouTube, you are the boss. You're making, you're making the decisions, you're putting it out there, you're doing your thing. So in essence, the only driving force behind whether it does or doesn't go out is you.

Cleo Abram 7:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 7:41 Right? But that means that people ... I remember talking to, uh, is it Jake Paul or Logan Paul? I always forget which brother. I think it was Jake. I think it was Jake. But it was ... And, um, w- w- was interviewing him, and we were talking about his life and his show, and then he talked about how the, the click cycle got him.

Cleo Abram 8:00 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 8:00 He did one thing.

Cleo Abram 8:01 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 8:01 He, he, he fell somewhere, he broke something, and the people are like, "More of that. More of that." And they didn't say it verbally, but people loved it.

Cleo Abram 8:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 8:08 And then him and his team were like, "You gotta do it again." And then you're jumping off the top of your stairs, the banister in your, in your house. And people are like, "More, more."

Cleo Abram 8:14 You're going higher and higher.

Trevor Noah 8:15 And the next thing you know you're in, like, you know, a forest, a suicide forest in Japan. And you are looking at yourself going, "How did I get here?"

Cleo Abram 8:22 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 8:23 But stand-up has a lot of those elements, right?

Cleo Abram 8:24 Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Trevor Noah 8:25 St- stand-up, when we first started, was just us trying to see how far we can push the envelope.

Cleo Abram 8:29 Yeah, you're not wrong.

Trevor Noah 8:30 And then you get one TV gig, and now you have to be careful. You get one endorsement, now they're like, "Also, are you gonna say that for real, real, real?"

Cleo Abram 8:36 Yeah, it, it, but it's almost the, the other way around funny enough with stand-up now that you mention it.

Trevor Noah 8:40 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 8:40 It's almost like stand-up, they, they almost calm you down in a way. 'Cause as stand-ups what we're trying ... You see, like, your rules.

Trevor Noah 8:48 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 8:48 I, I don't know about all stand-ups, but, like, I, I can say-

Trevor Noah 8:50 Yeah

Cleo Abram 8:50 ... for myself and this gentleman s- seated across from me.

Trevor Noah 8:52 Again, gentlemen.

Cleo Abram 8:53 This fine squire right here across from me.

Trevor Noah 8:55 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 8:55 I would say it's like if we think of our rules, you go, "Do we find it interesting?"

Trevor Noah 8:59 Yes.

Cleo Abram 9:00 "Do we think it's funny?"

Trevor Noah 9:02 Yes.

Cleo Abram 9:02 Then that's it.

Trevor Noah 9:03 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 9:03 It's as, it's as simple as ... It doesn't matter where it goes and how it goes.

Trevor Noah 9:06 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 9:06 You're trying to break everything. You're trying to- But there are things, there are things that you know the audience might like that you don't think are funny.

Trevor Noah 9:13 Yes. Yeah.

Cleo Abram 9:13 That you think are just-

Trevor Noah 9:14 Yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 9:14 Not-

Trevor Noah 9:15 Yeah, yeah. Yeah

Cleo Abram 9:15 ... gonna make you feel good.

Trevor Noah 9:16 Yes.

Cleo Abram 9:16 That would, that, that helps a lot. That feeling, like, for me, it's these three criteria I've come up with. This spec- ... And it helps to have a ... I think what I'm, what I'm really coming to in this is it really helps to have a mission.

Trevor Noah 9:29 Oh, I like that.

Cleo Abram 9:30 It really, really helps.

Trevor Noah 9:31 Okay.

Cleo Abram 9:31 These criteria are-

Trevor Noah 9:32 Hmm

Cleo Abram 9:32 ... part of the overall mission of the show, which is in my case, and everyone chooses their own, my mission is I make this show so I can show people, with those three criteria, explain to them things in an optimistic way, in a, a visually beautiful way.

Trevor Noah 9:50 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 9:51 I make this show so I can show people visions of the future. Because I believe that if they see those visions in a optimistic way, they can help build them.

Trevor Noah 10:00 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 10:00 So my goal, I'm not an engineer, I'm not a scientist. My goal is to present who's working on hard things and how are they doing it and what could it potentially do and how could it go wrong and how could it go right.

Trevor Noah 10:09 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 10:09 And make a optimistic explainer video that helps people see if you're watching it in the audience-

Trevor Noah 10:15 Yeah

Cleo Abram 10:15 ... and maybe you are someone who could help, and I believe that everybody can in their own way.

Trevor Noah 10:19 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 10:19 You can help participate in making that better somehow.

Trevor Noah 10:22 I look at people like you-

Cleo Abram 10:23 And that's the mission

Trevor Noah 10:24 ... with a mission and I go, "Why do you care?"

Cleo Abram 10:28 Well, now we could get into all kinds of, you know, my, the way that I grew up and, and why I wanna do this work. Um-

Trevor Noah 10:33 Then let's do it.

Cleo Abram 10:34 Let's do it. I'm happy to.

Trevor Noah 10:35 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 10:35 Let's do it. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 10:37 We're not-

Cleo Abram 10:37 Why do you care?

Trevor Noah 10:37 I like how you said it's like we don't have an option. You're like, "No, well, then I gotta get into it." It's like-

Cleo Abram 10:41 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 10:41 ...

Cleo Abram 10:41 "Let's do it"

Trevor Noah 10:41 ... you've come to the right place.

Cleo Abram 10:43 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 10:44 Why did you get it?

Cleo Abram 10:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 10:45 'Cause I remember when I ... So I'll, I'll give you a bit of context. When I first-

Cleo Abram 10:48 Yeah

Trevor Noah 10:48 ... came across your work, I had just started on The Daily Show. So, um, I joined The Daily Show in 2015, right, when Jon Stewart was still around. And so I was just a, a correspondent. Jon would phone me, be like, "Come and do this funny thing." I would be like, "Yeah." And then we'd leave. And then, you know what I mean?

Cleo Abram 11:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 11:04 Back and forth, back and forth. Jon announces he's leaving. They find a new host. The host happens to be me.

Cleo Abram 11:09 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 11:09 I've shrunk the process down. But before I was gonna host the show, I went through this, like, I wanna say, like, six, seven month period of just, I mean, like, gorging on every piece of content that I could, 'cause I just had to learn about this new country and this new place but from the inside.

Cleo Abram 11:26 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 11:27 You know? So what's the news? Where's the news coming from? And, and then America's unique, and I guess now it's not as unique as, as it was at that time, in that the news doesn't just come from one place.

Cleo Abram 11:36 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 11:37 You know? So we grew up where it was like, "Did you watch the news?"

Cleo Abram 11:39 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 11:40 "Yes, I watched the news."

Cleo Abram 11:41 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 11:42 And then now here it's like, "Which news?"

Cleo Abram 11:44 Hmm. Whose news?

Trevor Noah 11:45 Whose news?

Cleo Abram 11:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 11:47 Who said it's the new-

Cleo Abram 11:47 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 11:48 So now I'm watching all news, collecting all news. And I remember coming across your work, and at the time it was on Vox, right?

Cleo Abram 11:55 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 11:55 Yeah. And Vox was this new platform that had come out, and they were explaining stuff, and they made the news digestible. And let me tell you, if there's somebody who needed stuff explained-

Eugene 12:05 This guy right here

Trevor Noah 12:07 'Cause I was like, "What, what i- what is a filibuster? Wait, what is happening? Who's passing the laws?"

Eugene 12:11 Gerrymandering.

Trevor Noah 12:12 Who... Gerrymandering? Who's Gerry? Why is he mandering?

Eugene 12:13 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:14 What is going on here?

Eugene 12:14 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:15 Bro, I was like, "What is happening in this country?"

Eugene 12:17 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 12:17 And y- you know, the funny thing is, um, Americans will make it seem like they know what's happening.

Eugene 12:21 Yeah, they make it look like everything is normal.

Trevor Noah 12:23 Yeah.

Eugene 12:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 12:23 And then when you find out about it and then you ask most Americans, they'll be like, "I actually don't."

Eugene 12:27 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:28 "I, I actually don't." And, and not in like a shit way, just there's, there's so many-

Eugene 12:32 Yeah

Trevor Noah 12:32 ... intricate little details to the system.

Eugene 12:34 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 12:34 And that's when I came across your work. You're making these videos, making these videos, making these videos, and it was doing pretty well, and then you, you just left.

Eugene 12:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 12:43 And you left when things were going well at Fox, and you were just gone.

Eugene 12:46 Which is the best time to leave anything.

Trevor Noah 12:48 Ah, I mean, that's the cra- craziest

Eugene 12:50 But marriages. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 12:53 [laughs]

Eugene 12:53 There you have to-

Trevor Noah 12:54 [laughs]

Eugene 12:55 You really have to wait-

Trevor Noah 12:56 Leave your-

Eugene 12:56 For a workman's comp-

Trevor Noah 12:57 Leave your marriage-

Eugene 12:58 To kick in [laughs] at a high

Trevor Noah 12:59 ... Eugene's advice, leave your marriage on a high. [laughs]

Eugene 13:03 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 13:03 Make sure to leave your marriage on a high. "Honey, can I just say, I am having the best time ever with... I love you so much." "I love you so much." "I'm leaving." "What?" "Yeah, I mean, I just figured."

Eugene 13:16 [laughs] Can't get better than this.

Trevor Noah 13:16 Eugene's advice. So, so take us through-

Cleo Abram 13:18 It wasn't like that.

Trevor Noah 13:20 [laughs]

Eugene 13:20 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 13:21 No, so, so l- so let's go back. Let's, let's-

Cleo Abram 13:23 Mm

Trevor Noah 13:23 ... let's try and understand.

Cleo Abram 13:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 13:25 I think as Eugene eloquently pointed out, how do we, how do we get to the core of this person who wants to make things that are optimistic and informative-

Eugene 13:34 Visually

Trevor Noah 13:34 ... and visually beautiful in a world where you get more reward for making things that are negative and rage-baity? And, 'cause-

Cleo Abram 13:41 Mm

Trevor Noah 13:41 ... you could have a big show on YouTube doing that. You could go, "Let me show you why the Hadron Collider is gonna kill all of us. Let me show you why dinosaurs are gonna come back and kill all of us. Let me show you why asteroids are gonna kill all of..." You could, you could make that, and I think it would maybe do slightly better than what you currently have.

Cleo Abram 13:55 Mm-hmm. In the very short term, maybe.

Trevor Noah 13:57 Oh, I like this. So let's, let's go down a rabbit hole.

Eugene 13:59 You're good.

Cleo Abram 13:59 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 13:59 How do we

Trevor Noah 14:00 meet you at this point? What, what, what happened in your life that made you this person?

Cleo Abram 14:03 So I was, if we rewind all the way back, I was a kid who, I grew up in Washington, DC, and my parents were both lawyers. And my mom was working for Congress, and my dad was a litigator, and he did a lot of death penalty cases. And we would talk about these things. We would talk about my homework, and we would talk about their work at the dinner table, and I, b- both of my parents were the kind of people where if I gave them something that I'd written, they would, like, cross out the lines really brutally and say, like, "There's a simpler way to say this." Like, you can always say it in a simpler way that people can better understand.

Trevor Noah 14:36 Hm. Wow.

Cleo Abram 14:36 And my dad, in these, these cases that he would work on, I really saw as a young kid how if you can explain something complicated in a way that 12 normal people can understand, you can actually save someone's life, like in a real way. Like, that's what he was demonstrating when I was a kid. And I guess that lesson stuck with me. It's hard, sometimes it's easier now to draw lines b- b- from, you know-

Trevor Noah 15:01 Oh, yeah

Cleo Abram 15:02 ... what you did.

Trevor Noah 15:02 Yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 15:02 Like, now I see how that's connected. At the time, like, it was just a, a thing that I knew. And I grew up, and I go to college, and I graduate, and I begin working at Vox, V-O-X, and Vox at the time was doing explainer journalism, which I loved. Um, and I'll shorten the story somewhat, but-

Trevor Noah 15:21 No, no, no

Eugene 15:21 No, we don't have to

Trevor Noah 15:21 ... there's no rush.

Cleo Abram 15:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:22 There's no rush here.

Cleo Abram 15:23 Great.

Eugene 15:23 Please.

Trevor Noah 15:23 We were fully in.

Cleo Abram 15:24 Great.

Trevor Noah 15:25 Y- you only need to start... W- Eugene does the yawn, then we-

Cleo Abram 15:29 I'll look for it.

Trevor Noah 15:29 It's a very special-

Eugene 15:30 About four hours in

Trevor Noah 15:30 ... it's a very special type of yawn that Eugene has. It's fake, but it works well on people.

Eugene 15:35 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 15:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:36 I'll, I'll show you an example now. I'm, I'm gonna tell you about my morning-

Cleo Abram 15:38 Yeah, what's the cue? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:39 ... and then I'll show you-

Cleo Abram 15:40 How do you do that?

Trevor Noah 15:40 ... I'll show you how Eugene just gently lets you know that it's time to move on.

Eugene 15:44 Oh, great. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 15:44 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 15:45 So this morning, guys, I, I wanted to have oats. And you know how sometimes your oats are-

Eugene 15:50 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:51 [laughs] You know how sometimes your oats are like-

Eugene 15:52 I don't need you in my life, man. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 15:55 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 15:56 No, please, go on. Go on.

Cleo Abram 15:58 Um, so I... Uh, we can come back to my journey inside Vox because I started on the business side, and then I began, uh, working as a journalist.

Trevor Noah 16:06 We're here for it all.

Cleo Abram 16:07 I'll, I'll, I'll promise. Um, but fast-forward to I'd been working as a journalist for a couple years, and I'd been covering technology. I'd been making things for Explained on Netflix-

Trevor Noah 16:20 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 16:20 ... which is a, a wonderful show that Vox made, very intricate, deep dives into different things that matter in the world. I had made one on computer programming and one on Diamonds Explained, which were really fun to work on.

Trevor Noah 16:33 I've seen that one.

Cleo Abram 16:33 Really?

Trevor Noah 16:34 Yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 16:34 That's awesome.

Trevor Noah 16:35 Where it talks about artificial diamonds versus-

Cleo Abram 16:37 Yes. Yeah, yeah, we went through the whole like science-

Trevor Noah 16:37 ... real diamonds, the sentiment, the beers

Cleo Abram 16:39 ... of the geology and then the history of like why we buy diamonds.

Trevor Noah 16:41 Controlling the market.

Cleo Abram 16:42 Yes, and then we ended on artificial diamonds. It was so fun to make. I loved doing that.

Trevor Noah 16:46 I loved that.

Cleo Abram 16:46 Um-

Trevor Noah 16:46 It was so good.

Cleo Abram 16:47 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 16:48 It made me feel smart because I was like, "Oh, there is a... Yeah, okay."

Cleo Abram 16:51 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 16:51 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 16:52 Um, so I, I'd been working on, on Vox in that way, but I also was a, just a person who loves learning about technology, and I was looking out at my media diet,

Cleo Abram 17:00 and I was really unhappy with it. I was really frustrated.

Trevor Noah 17:04 Mm.

Cleo Abram 17:04 And I, I think to boil down the reason that I was frustrated was I felt like there was this knee-jerk pessimism-

Trevor Noah 17:14 Mm

Cleo Abram 17:15 ... in the news that I was consuming-

Trevor Noah 17:16 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 17:18 ... that was preventing me from understanding what was really happening in the world and also understanding how I could participate in making the world a better place.

Trevor Noah 17:26 Right.

Cleo Abram 17:27 And I, in doing some research, I happened upon an article. Um, I was looking through The New York Times archive for reporting reasons, and I found an article from 1903, October 9, 1903, and it was called Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly. This is a r- like you can go into The New York Times-

Trevor Noah 17:46 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 17:46 ... artic- uh, archive and find this article. It talks about how we will basically never have planes. It talks about how-

Trevor Noah 17:54 When is this?

Cleo Abram 17:55 This is 1903.

Trevor Noah 17:56 1903. Mm-hmm. We will never have planes.

Cleo Abram 17:57 We will never have planes. They basically say, it, it boils down to if it took birds thousands of years to dev- to develop evolutionarily the ability to fly-

Trevor Noah 18:06 Wow, I love this

Cleo Abram 18:06 ... it'll take humans millions of years. And it ends, my favorite line in this piece, I still remember it, is something like, um-

Trevor Noah 18:11 Good luck. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 18:12 It basically is. It basically is like, it basically is like, "The effort might be employed more profitably" or something. It was 1903. They were writing-

Trevor Noah 18:20 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 18:20 That's-

Trevor Noah 18:20 That's beautiful.

Cleo Abram 18:21 And, um-

Trevor Noah 18:22 Hm

Cleo Abram 18:22 ... and s- so basically they were saying like, "Do other things. This will never work."

Trevor Noah 18:25 Yeah. Effort might be employed profitably elsewhere.

Cleo Abram 18:26 More profitably elsewhere.

Trevor Noah 18:28 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 18:29 October 9, 1903. December 17, 1903, two months later was when the Wright brothers took their first assisted flight.

Trevor Noah 18:37 No way.

Cleo Abram 18:37 Yeah. Two months later. And I looked at that and I put the timeline together-

Trevor Noah 18:42 No way

Cleo Abram 18:42 ... and I was like, "What?" Like, that matters to me.

Trevor Noah 18:46 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 18:46 Somehow. Like, something, something is wrong here.

Trevor Noah 18:49 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 18:49 We've been doing this, and it felt similar to what we were doing today.

Trevor Noah 18:51 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 18:51 It wasn't just, like, a thing they did in 1903. This was, like, a knee-jerk pessimism about some- about new technologies or, or dreams or scientific efforts. "Oh, that won't work." Or once it starts to work, "Oh, people won't want it."

Trevor Noah 19:06 Mm.

Cleo Abram 19:07 Or, "This will go really, really wrong-

Trevor Noah 19:09 Right

Cleo Abram 19:09 ... and there's no way it'll help people. This is only gonna hurt people."

Trevor Noah 19:12 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 19:13 And I looked at that and I thought, like, first, this isn't a modern thing. I feel like it's been getting worse for reasons we can talk about, but, like, this has been happening. Look at this article from 1903. But then also, why does that matter? Like, why care? Maybe the media's generally a little bit pessimistic. Maybe there's also this, like, hype cycle that happens sometimes, and that's also a problem, and so all together, like, why is this really a problem? What ... Why should I start some new show that's gonna offer something different? I, I, you know. And I think there are two problems with that, that pessimism. The first is that it stops the conversation from getting interesting. Like, if I tell you, "Airplanes, they just won't work," we'll have like a five-minute conversation about why airplanes won't work.

Trevor Noah 19:56 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 19:57 But you'll never get to the conversation about, like, wait, if they work-

Trevor Noah 20:01 Yeah

Cleo Abram 20:01 ... that means that people are gonna start living in different places than their families. That means that people are gonna start traveling to other countries. That means that global trade is gonna fundamentally change a lot in the next 100 years.

Trevor Noah 20:09 It opens up possibility.

Cleo Abram 20:09 Like, if you told my grandfather-

Trevor Noah 20:11 Yeah

Cleo Abram 20:11 ... what that was gonna look like and just the ... I mean, he was alive when planes existed, but, like, just the, the absolute skyrocketing of the commercial-

Trevor Noah 20:19 Yeah

Cleo Abram 20:19 ... airline industry. That would've been a fascinating conversation.

Trevor Noah 20:21 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 20:21 If you, if you'd said, like, "Let's just assume that it works for the purpose-

Trevor Noah 20:24 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 20:24 ... of this conversation." That's basically what I try and do on my show. And let's assume all the ways in which it could go, you know, awry.

Trevor Noah 20:30 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 20:31 Like, okay, now we can have a conversation about CO2 emissions.

Trevor Noah 20:34 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 20:35 Now we can have a conversation about, like, the impacts of tourism.

Trevor Noah 20:39 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 20:39 You know? Like, but you only get to those conversations about real problems-

Trevor Noah 20:42 Mm

Cleo Abram 20:42 ... when you assume that it's gonna work and you don't have that pessimism. So that's the first reason. And then the second reason, the thing that was really frustrating me, was there's this kind of ... Maybe it's a nihilism that takes hold when people don't believe that the world can get better and that they can help make that happen.

Cleo Abram 21:00 It's like, if the world is just getting worse-

Trevor Noah 21:01 Hmm

Cleo Abram 21:02 ... and I can't do anything about it, and I'm not seeing stories about people that are helping make it better, and I'm not imagining technologies like quantum computers, for example. I'm only imagining the ways in which they're gonna be a security problem and not the ways in which they're gonna help develop new medicines and new materials-

Trevor Noah 21:15 Yeah

Cleo Abram 21:15 ... then I ... Like, why do I, why should I try?

Trevor Noah 21:18 It-

Cleo Abram 21:18 Why shouldn't I just be very self-interested and, like-

Trevor Noah 21:20 So pessimism coupled with helplessness always-

Cleo Abram 21:22 Yes

Trevor Noah 21:22 ... goes well together. Yeah.

Cleo Abram 21:23 That's a much more succinct way to put it. Yeah. Exactly.

Trevor Noah 21:25 That's what that said.

Cleo Abram 21:26 Yeah. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 21:26 You just scratched out the thing and you just went like-

Cleo Abram 21:28 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 21:29 Bam. Pessimism combined with helplessness.

Cleo Abram 21:32 Is bad.

Trevor Noah 21:33 Go do your homework.

Cleo Abram 21:33 And we're trying to do the opposite. Yeah.

Eugene 21:35 You know, I, I, I often find that, um, a healthy amount of pessimism is a good catalyst for people to act.

Cleo Abram 21:42 Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Eugene 21:42 So you've oft- you've, you've often heard people who are very successful talking about the teacher that told them they'll never amount to anything.

Trevor Noah 21:48 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 21:48 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 21:49 Then we have that conversation in hindsight of them being successful and the teacher seemingly being pessimistic and, and negative. But-

Cleo Abram 21:56 Yeah, they were reacting to it.

Eugene 21:58 Exactly.

Cleo Abram 21:58 But they had to have the optimism, right?

Eugene 22:00 Yes.

Cleo Abram 22:00 Like, they had to, like, push off against it somehow.

Eugene 22:02 Yes.

Cleo Abram 22:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 22:02 They never speak about the optimism that they had to have to push against the pessimism.

Cleo Abram 22:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 22:07 That's, that's true. But I sometimes think to myself in that same situation-

Eugene 22:11 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 22:11 ... to what you're saying, I think a more positive catalyst is one that sort of prompts your optimism as opposed-

Cleo Abram 22:19 Mm.

Trevor Noah 22:19 You know, 'cause I think of how many people are defeated by that, that statement.

Eugene 22:22 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 22:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 22:23 "You will never. You'll never amount to anything. You'll never be anything. You'll never go anywhere." I think it works on a lot of people 'cause if your teacher's telling you that-

Eugene 22:31 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 22:31 ... who knows you better?

Cleo Abram 22:32 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 22:33 Do you know what I mean? If someone's like, "Hey, I've been looking at your body of work from the age of 8 to 11."

Eugene 22:39 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 22:39 "Yo, man, this shit's not gonna work out for you in life."

Eugene 22:41 But teachers never say that.

Trevor Noah 22:43 No, they say-

Eugene 22:44 Remember that teacher is per grade because people always remember one snippet of their school career-

Trevor Noah 22:50 Yeah

Eugene 22:50 ... where one teacher said that, and it's very rare that you go with a teacher from grade zero up until-

Trevor Noah 22:54 No, we went with, like, in primary school. We, like, we, we met them-

Eugene 22:57 So the same teacher said this to you for 12 years?

Trevor Noah 22:58 We ... You met them literally.

Eugene 23:00 What evil teacher did you have?

Trevor Noah 23:01 No, but this is what I'm trying to say to you.

Eugene 23:03 I know.

Trevor Noah 23:03 We all knew the ... And there was always, like, that teacher. Everyone knew them as that teacher.

Eugene 23:07 Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 23:07 Do you get what I'm saying?

Cleo Abram 23:07 And then-

Eugene 23:08 Wherever they catch you, they'll tell you.

Trevor Noah 23:09 Yes. Okay. Got you.

Cleo Abram 23:09 The number of people who must have been inspired also by a teacher who said-

Eugene 23:13 Yes

Cleo Abram 23:13 ... "By the way, have you ever considered-

Eugene 23:15 Exactly

Cleo Abram 23:15 ... that you could do this?"

Eugene 23:16 Exactly.

Cleo Abram 23:17 Like, I've actually heard more stories like that in the end of, of teachers ... When I think about my life, I think about the teachers who said, like, "Oh, you're very interested in this. Have you read this book? Have you, like, done this?"

Trevor Noah 23:28 Oh, that's fascinating.

Cleo Abram 23:28 They're sort of fueling you in this way. And I sometimes think of the show that we now make.

Trevor Noah 23:33 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 23:33 Um, the show is called Huge If True, that I left Vox to make this show independently on YouTube.

Trevor Noah 23:37 Okay.

Cleo Abram 23:38 And I think about it like that. I think about it like offering a menu of stories and options and futures that could come true-

Trevor Noah 23:47 Right

Cleo Abram 23:47 ... to people that might be able to help make them happen or to an audience that just wants to understand what they could potentially do with their lives and with their time or with their free time.

Trevor Noah 23:56 You take for granted how powerful that is because-

Eugene 23:58 Hmm

Trevor Noah 23:58 ...

Trevor Noah 24:01 I, I don't know if you've, if you've seen any of the, um, any of the polls that people have conducted around AI.

Eugene 24:06 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 24:06 Right? When they ask the general public, "What do you think of AI?" And not, not, not, like, how it's being applied now, just AI as a concept.

Cleo Abram 24:12 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 24:13 The sentiment is generally negative. Like, you go, "W- would you trust machines? Would you trust an all-powerful AI? Do you think it would be good for humanity?" Without fail, a majority of the population says, "No, it won't be good for us. It's gonna kill us. It's gonna take over. It's gonna ..." Do you know what I mean?

Eugene 24:29 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 24:30 It's also interesting that most of those people have had their views shaped by The images of AI that they, they had growing up. So they watched Terminator.

Cleo Abram 24:38 Yeah.

Eugene 24:38 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 24:39 They were watching Star Wars. They were watching ... So they go like, "Oh, no. There's only one path that technology can take."

Eugene 24:44 Yes. It only goes this way.

Trevor Noah 24:45 Yeah, it, it can only go this way, and it can kill you.

Eugene 24:46 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 24:47 An interesting poll that I saw the other day, and I, I was shocked by this, is people in Africa generally have a more positive attitude towards artificial general intelligence-

Cleo Abram 24:58 Huh.

Eugene 24:58 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 24:59 ... than people in the Western world.

Eugene 25:01 Yeah, 'cause people in Africa had to deal with racism for a long time. You see you, my man.

Trevor Noah 25:05 And that was man-made intelligence.

Eugene 25:06 You see you, my man.

Trevor Noah 25:07 So if you try artificial.

Eugene 25:08 Aha.

Trevor Noah 25:09 [laughs]

Eugene 25:11 Aha.

Trevor Noah 25:12 [laughs]

Eugene 25:14 But I thi- I-

Trevor Noah 25:14 Eugene is the other half of my brain.

Eugene 25:16 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 25:16 You know, when people are like, "Your left brain, right brain," I'm like, "Eugene." [laughs]

Eugene 25:22 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 25:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 25:22 But it's true.

Eugene 25:22 Yes.

Trevor Noah 25:22 No, but it, but it's, it's exactly what you're saying.

Eugene 25:24 Yes.

Trevor Noah 25:25 Right? It's interesting how people who have assumed that the intelligence will be built around them and their histories-

Eugene 25:31 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 25:31 ... and their pasts-

Cleo Abram 25:32 Yeah

Trevor Noah 25:32 ... now think that that same technology will go on to do to them what they did to others.

Eugene 25:36 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:37 But then the people who were only on, like, the receiving end in recent history of a thing-

Eugene 25:42 Yeah

Trevor Noah 25:42 ... go like, "Oh, yeah. Maybe-

Eugene 25:43 Any change is good change

Trevor Noah 25:44 ... they could be like, "Maybe this will work."

Eugene 25:45 Yeah, 'cause it also puts us in an equal footing. I look at wars the same. My, my-

Trevor Noah 25:49 Oh, damn. I didn't think about that.

Eugene 25:50 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:51 AI, AI would-

Eugene 25:51 'Cause you don't know, I don't know. Let's see what this thing can do for us.

Trevor Noah 25:54 AI would be the white people of everyone.

Eugene 25:55 Yes, yes, yes.

Trevor Noah 25:56 Hey, Bana.

Eugene 25:56 Oh.

Trevor Noah 25:57 Hey, Bana.

Eugene 25:59 'Cause that ...

Trevor Noah 26:02 Hey.

Eugene 26:07 You want?

Cleo Abram 26:08 I do. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 26:12 [laughs]

Eugene 26:12 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 26:12 I was ... I ... You noticed I was feeling a little-

Eugene 26:15 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 26:17 She wants a dip. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 26:18 I did. I did.

Eugene 26:23 Cleo, you have to take us seriously.

Cleo Abram 26:26 I am. [laughs] I am.

Eugene 26:28 Please continue with your point. Do you, do-

Cleo Abram 26:29 I am. I, I just-

Eugene 26:30 Yeah, yeah

Cleo Abram 26:30 ... I'm here to learn.

Trevor Noah 26:30 Actually, actually, that is a question, that is a question that I have. And maybe it's because I'm, I'm comedy biased. It's just because of my brain. It's-

Eugene 26:36 Yeah

Trevor Noah 26:36 ... it's not like how I ... I, I don't choose to have this filter on the world.

Eugene 26:39 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 26:40 But you also have humor in your content. You also-

Eugene 26:43 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 26:43 Do I? I don't think ... I mean, I'm not funny like you guys are funny.

Trevor Noah 26:46 No-

Eugene 26:46 Oh, you are funny. Trust me

Trevor Noah 26:46 ... no, no. But there's, I promise you there's humor in it.

Eugene 26:48 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 26:48 Like, when I was watching your, your, your asteroid video, it's funny.

Cleo Abram 26:52 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 26:52 Like, the fact that you have Mark Rober voicing an asteroid, that's a funny thing to do.

Cleo Abram 26:56 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 26:56 To be talking about the potential destruction of Earth-

Eugene 26:58 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 26:58 ... and then use a funny person's voice on the video-

Eugene 27:03 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 27:03 That's funny.

Eugene 27:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 27:04 You know, when you're talking about like the, when you're doing the dinosaurs one, and you're going around with the archeologist and you're brushing. There were funny moments in there. And that, that's-

Cleo Abram 27:10 Oh, you've really watched the show. This is awesome.

Trevor Noah 27:12 Wow. That ... Why would I invite you here if I hadn't watched the show?

Cleo Abram 27:15 No, I ... Well-

Trevor Noah 27:16 That would be a weird thing to do, just be like, "Come and hmm."

Cleo Abram 27:19 No, but you've, like, seen it. You, you remember. Uh, this is great. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 27:22 Yeah, but no.

Cleo Abram 27:22 'Cause you, you're, you're ... This is fun.

Trevor Noah 27:23 You know why? 'Cause you teach well, genuinely.

Cleo Abram 27:25 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 27:25 'Cause you teach well.

Eugene 27:26 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 27:26 It, it, it, it's, um, it's easy to consume, it's easy to digest, and it's engaging. But I remember the funny moments, even with like the-

Cleo Abram 27:33 Yeah

Trevor Noah 27:33 ... Hadron Collider.

Eugene 27:34 All your key pillars have been ticked off.

Trevor Noah 27:35 Or when you, like-

Cleo Abram 27:35 Yeah

Trevor Noah 27:36 ... when, when you were showing the-

Eugene 27:36 Yeah

Trevor Noah 27:36 ... um, the quantum computer, I was just like, the size of it, the scale of it. But the jokes in between-

Eugene 27:41 Mm

Trevor Noah 27:41 ... are something that, that I found myself fascinated by. I was like, why, why bring humor into something that most people go, "This is s- this is the future of mankind. There's no time for jokes"? But you're bringing jokes in.

Cleo Abram 27:52 I think it's, it's also that I'm, I'm the proxy for the audience. Like, I know very little. I know how to tell a great story. I'm a really, really good

Cleo Abram 28:00 visual storyteller.

Trevor Noah 28:01 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 28:01 But I am not an expert in anything that I'm talking about.

Trevor Noah 28:04 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 28:04 And so that requires me to come in by understanding, like, I'm the secondary character. The topic is the primary character.

Trevor Noah 28:11 Oh, damn.

Cleo Abram 28:12 My goal ... Like, why learn from me about quantum computers? You could learn from a quantum physicist on YouTube.

Trevor Noah 28:17 Oh.

Cleo Abram 28:17 Like, why am I there? The reason I'm there is so that I'm a proxy for the audience. I'm, like, having fun with it, like you might have. I'm asking the questions that you might ask. I'm, I'm there to recontextualize what the expert is saying, to kind of, like, translate for them a little bit. Like, that's the magic of what we do. Because the, the problem with that first bucket that we talked about, the, the feeling of like, oh, pessimism ends the conversation.

Trevor Noah 28:42 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 28:42 Explainers that are too complicated, like, they're just not ... They don't bring people in. The problem with that is you end up at, in a place where I think, unfortunately, despite the fact that Huge is growing really quickly, like we're-

Trevor Noah 28:55 Yeah

Cleo Abram 28:55 ... we're ve- we're small compared to, you know, mainstream media. The, um, the place that we're in is one where, like, most people hear about the future when it is, has largely been set up by a smaller number of people. And my belief-

Trevor Noah 29:11 Hmm

Cleo Abram 29:11 ... is that if you bring people more into the earlier parts of the conversation-

Trevor Noah 29:14 Yeah

Cleo Abram 29:14 ... if you say, like-

Trevor Noah 29:15 Definitely

Cleo Abram 29:15 ... "We're, we're gonna need to learn about quantum computers now," though you're, you know, not actually interacting with them anytime soon, m- more people at the beginning of that process is a good thing.

Trevor Noah 29:26 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 29:26 More people, to your point about AI, more people are helping to build that system if you show them what it is at the beginning.

Trevor Noah 29:35 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 29:35 Versus saying, "Oh, it won't work. Oh, don't worry about it. Oh, this is not something that's gonna be accepted, not something that people are gonna want. It's not gonna be a ... You know, maybe it'll change the world, but just you should be scared of it."

Trevor Noah 29:46 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 29:46 That posture mean- means that you are less likely to participate in helping it go right. And so that's something I think a lot about. Like, how can I make it fun enough and good enough and entertaining enough so that you want to be a part of it earlier in the process? So, like, now when you go about your day, you understand something about what we've discovered about dinosaurs.

Trevor Noah 30:04 Yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 30:04 You understand something about CRISPR or quantum computers or supersonic planes. And like-

Trevor Noah 30:08 Hmm

Cleo Abram 30:09 ... maybe you won't work on those things tomorrow, but maybe there's some way in which that is part of your life and you at least know about these topics, and you're, you're having conversations that are interesting, and you're more a part of it than you would be otherwise. I believe that having more people understand complicated issues means that more people will participate in making sure that they go right. That's what I'm trying to do on my show.

Trevor Noah 30:30 I like that you say that. I, um, I was in, uh, Washington State and I was at an event where- We're working with Microsoft on basically, like, getting AI into schools, like having kids learn, teachers learn, whatever. And they set up this, this program where the teachers are advising on it. So they're going, "This is what we actually need AI to do."

Eugene 30:50 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 30:50 "So don't just, don't just give us AI."

Eugene 30:52 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 30:52 "This is what we need you to help AI or make AI do for teachers."

Eugene 30:56 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 30:56 You know, so it's lesson plans, it's helping them mark and grade and all these things.

Eugene 30:59 Perfect teacher's aide.

Trevor Noah 31:00 Exactly.

Eugene 31:01 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 31:01 Supposed to be that.

Eugene 31:02 Not a teacher.

Trevor Noah 31:03 Right. Exactly.

Eugene 31:04 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 31:04 And then they will ... And then parents also like, "This is what we need AI to do." And we're at this launch event, and I'll never forget this moment. One of the student, um, journalists comes up, and at the end of, like, all the other, like, journalist-journalists, they've all asked their questions. And then this, uh, student journalist c- comes up and then asks the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, goes, "Hey, um, I see that you've got this panel convened that's gonna be doing all of this in the schools. Do you have any students on your panel?"

Cleo Abram 31:29 That's an amazing question. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 31:30 And all of us in the room were ... You know when you're like, "Huh?"

Cleo Abram 31:34 [laughs]

Eugene 31:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 31:35 All of us. And then Brad, to his credit, was like, "No, I didn't think about that. And why don't we?" And then literally on the spot was like, "Oh yeah, we, we, we gotta do this." But to your point-

Eugene 31:45 Mm.

Cleo Abram 31:46 That's awesome

Trevor Noah 31:46 ... even in that moment, I found myself going, oh yeah, you, you, you take for granted how we are constantly building futures-

Cleo Abram 31:53 Yeah

Trevor Noah 31:53 ... but not engaging all the people that the futures are being built for. And then when we get there, we're gonna be like, "How did we miss this?" And it's like, yeah, but did you just ask everyone? Did you ask everyone what they ... Like, Eugene, what do you need from AI? What do you want AI to do for you? Do you know what AI is?

Eugene 32:10 Can't wait-

Trevor Noah 32:10 Let me start with this, 'cause Eugene is very-

Eugene 32:13 ... to find out what AI is, first of all.

Trevor Noah 32:14 [laughs] Eugene is my Luddite.

Cleo Abram 32:16 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 32:16 Eugene is fully my Luddite friend.

Eugene 32:17 [laughs] I, I always compare everything new with how things were before there was technology. So I hear what you're saying, and I hear what he's saying, and I combine it to, before there was technology to disperse information and get people into doing something for the collective good, without sometimes general understanding of it-

Cleo Abram 32:37 Mm

Eugene 32:38 ... is wars. So a few men would decide this is a greater cause for what we're doing this.

Trevor Noah 32:44 Oh, damn.

Cleo Abram 32:44 Mm.

Eugene 32:44 And then there'd be conscription. So you don't have to understand fully why we're doing this thing.

Trevor Noah 32:48 We're just gonna-

Eugene 32:48 So we're gonna make you do it. So while you're at this thing, you might discover some people might make it, some people might not, but you look at the ones that came back from wars and how many industries were built. It's always been an accelerant for technology, for ideas, for industries, for businesses, customizing cars, building technology, weapons, private jets. It's always because of something huge, catastrophic that happened that included conscription.

Cleo Abram 33:12 Mm.

Eugene 33:13 And I guess once you add a little bit of pessimism in there, you can find a lot of ideas when people push back because people just usually go with something. So I like ... What I like with explainers is it always starts with, have you ever wondered why? But then you have to stick around to the end to go, what are you gonna do about it?

Cleo Abram 33:29 Yeah.

Eugene 33:29 So that usually in our normal society, you have ... It's elections. You have to wait to choose to almost feel like you have a choice because you've seen what happened in the last four years.

Trevor Noah 33:39 Did you see, sorry to interrupt-

Eugene 33:40 No, go ahead.

Trevor Noah 33:41 Did you see that, did you see that thing in, uh, I forget where this is-

Eugene 33:44 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 33:44 ... in Canada. I think they've, they, they, they, they had an election or they're planning to have one where everyone can just vote on their phones from home.

Eugene 33:51 Yeah. See?

Cleo Abram 33:52 Yeah.

Eugene 33:52 Yes. Like full-on.

Cleo Abram 33:53 We did a, we did an explainer about, um, digital voting, mobile voting. Um-

Trevor Noah 33:57 Like full on ... Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 33:58 Turns out it's extremely

Cleo Abram 34:00 difficult from an encryption perspective.

Trevor Noah 34:02 Wait, same, why?

Cleo Abram 34:02 Because voting is ... So, this was a, a little while ago, so I don't wanna butcher this too much. But the question I went into the story with-

Trevor Noah 34:10 Yeah

Cleo Abram 34:10 ... is why don't we all just vote on our phones?

Trevor Noah 34:12 I love this, love this question.

Cleo Abram 34:14 Wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be great?

Trevor Noah 34:15 It would be great.

Cleo Abram 34:15 And wouldn't it make, uh, for a more participatory democracy?

Trevor Noah 34:18 Sounds good to me.

Cleo Abram 34:18 But I, I generally believe more people voting is good.

Trevor Noah 34:21 Yes.

Cleo Abram 34:23 Let's make it easier to vote.

Trevor Noah 34:24 Love this.

Eugene 34:24 Bad idea.

Trevor Noah 34:24 I'm in.

Cleo Abram 34:26 And so I went and I talked-

Eugene 34:27 I'm, I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not a fan of-

Trevor Noah 34:29 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 34:29 [laughs]

Eugene 34:29 ... of total outright democracy.

Trevor Noah 34:31 Eugene.

Cleo Abram 34:32 Maybe we should start there.

Eugene 34:32 The-

Cleo Abram 34:32 Well, it would still be a representative democracy

Eugene 34:33 ... Eugene, the semi-dictator. I'm the-

Cleo Abram 34:35 You would vote for the representatives.

Eugene 34:36 [laughs] I'm like, some people don't deserve a voice.

Trevor Noah 34:39 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 34:39 Let's unpack that later. We should come back to that.

Trevor Noah 34:45 [laughs] Oh, man. Oh.

Eugene 34:48 As you were. Anyway. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:51 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 34:51 For the purpose of this conversation-

Eugene 34:52 Okay, okay, fine. Okay, stop

Cleo Abram 34:53 ... everyone-

Eugene 34:53 Stop. Stop. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 34:55 So I, I went and I asked all of these encryption experts.

Trevor Noah 34:59 Mm.

Cleo Abram 34:59 And so we talked to folks that were working on mobile voting. We also talked to people that deeply oppose mobile voting, we should not do that.

Trevor Noah 35:06 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 35:06 That's a really bad idea, and I wanted to understand why.

Trevor Noah 35:08 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 35:09 My ... What, what it boils down to is, um, that voting is not like online banking.

Eugene 35:16 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 35:17 It is not like the secure things-

Trevor Noah 35:19 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 35:19 ... that you do online.

Trevor Noah 35:20 Okay. And why is that?

Cleo Abram 35:22 Couple reasons. The first is that everything you do online accepts some level of fraud because the, the banks are basically backstopping-

Eugene 35:30 Jeez

Cleo Abram 35:30 ... a certain amount of fraud to make it easy for you to log in and, and do transactions-

Eugene 35:34 Yes

Cleo Abram 35:34 ... and all those things. They accept that there will be some level of-

Eugene 35:38 Acceptable risk

Cleo Abram 35:39 ... of acceptable risk, and that level has to be below the friction that they would have to put-

Trevor Noah 35:44 Oh, wow

Cleo Abram 35:44 ... on you to make it less risky.

Trevor Noah 35:46 Okay.

Cleo Abram 35:46 So they just have to mean, like, more activity that makes them more money-

Trevor Noah 35:49 Okay. Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 35:50 ... versus, uh, the amount of fraud that they have to pay for.

Trevor Noah 35:54 Okay. So if I, if I was to, like, dumb this down for myself, it's the equivalent of like a clothing store-

Eugene 36:01 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 36:01 ... going, "We'll only put a certain amount of detectors on the clothing-

Eugene 36:06 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 36:06 ... to make it sa-

Eugene 36:07 To deter people

Trevor Noah 36:08 ... to deter people.

Cleo Abram 36:08 Because you'll buy more?

Eugene 36:08 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 36:08 Yeah, but we, we can't, we can't cover the thing in detectors-

Cleo Abram 36:11 Yes. Exactly

Trevor Noah 36:11 ... because then you won't want to try it on. You won't see the thing.

Eugene 36:13 Mm.

Trevor Noah 36:13 So we have to accept-

Cleo Abram 36:14 Yes

Trevor Noah 36:14 ... a certain amount of risk to have you-

Cleo Abram 36:15 Exactly

Trevor Noah 36:15 ... comfortable in the buying experience.

Eugene 36:16 And what items in the store are we putting detectors on?

Trevor Noah 36:18 Aha. Okay. Got it, got it, got it.

Cleo Abram 36:20 Yes. Banks do this all the time.

Trevor Noah 36:20 Okay, got it.

Cleo Abram 36:22 We can't accept that in voting because the, the, the small amount of risk in, especially in the way that we vote in the United States with such small... pockets where it matters a lot. You can't accept any amount of risk that way. And also philosophically we don't believe that you should. The idea of if you tried to explain to people that like we're gonna accept some voter fraud because more people can vote-

Trevor Noah 36:41 I mean, America's-

Cleo Abram 36:42 ... like, not great

Trevor Noah 36:42 ... elections are basically like 50/50 at this point. So if you had like-

Cleo Abram 36:45 You could argue that-

Trevor Noah 36:45 ... like a 3, 4%, that's not good.

Cleo Abram 36:48 Right.

Trevor Noah 36:48 Oh, damn.

Cleo Abram 36:49 Yeah.

Eugene 36:49 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 36:49 So, so you can't accept-

Eugene 36:50 You're good.

Cleo Abram 36:50 You ex- you can't accept that.

Trevor Noah 36:50 She's fantastic.

Eugene 36:51 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:51 I'm in.

Cleo Abram 36:52 This is where this is a good, this is what I'm talking about.

Trevor Noah 36:53 This is fantastic. Hmm.

Cleo Abram 36:54 Um, it would help more if we had the visuals. We could have a map. We could have like a, you know-

Eugene 36:59 [laughs] Wave your hand

Cleo Abram 36:59 ... a franking system. Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 37:01 [laughs]

Eugene 37:01 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 37:01 I guess I do speak English the way that you- [laughs]

Eugene 37:06 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 37:06 [laughs] That was good.

Cleo Abram 37:07 Um, so that's reason number one.

Trevor Noah 37:09 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 37:10 Reason number two is that, um, it's just like nothing else on Earth-

Eugene 37:17 Hmm

Cleo Abram 37:18 ... when you have global powers that want to affect each other's outcomes. Like we are not-

Trevor Noah 37:23 Right

Cleo Abram 37:23 ... talking about stealing a million dollars, $100 million. We're talking about China and Russia and the United States trying to impact each other's-

Eugene 37:32 High stakes

Cleo Abram 37:32 ... elections. This is like, this is stakes like nothing else that exists at all.

Eugene 37:37 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 37:37 And so when you talk about that, like the way that these encryption experts talk about mobile voting, it's like the things that it would have to withstand are like nothing you've ever experienced online. Like, there's nothing in the world that matters as much-

Eugene 37:50 It, it, it-

Cleo Abram 37:50 ... as the outcome of the elections of the most powerful countries in the world.

Eugene 37:52 It makes absolute sense because if you think of online versus physical voting, you are more susceptible to whims if you vote online than you would if you were voting-

Cleo Abram 38:01 Maybe that too

Eugene 38:01 ... physically.

Cleo Abram 38:02 Maybe there's a-

Eugene 38:03 You're, what does that mean?

Cleo Abram 38:03 ... maybe there's a change in the way that there's-

Eugene 38:04 Because you might be sitting on your couch feeling a certain way.

Trevor Noah 38:07 And then?

Eugene 38:07 Then that might determine how you vote. But if you have to get up, take a day off, go queue-

Cleo Abram 38:13 I think that would be an argument-

Trevor Noah 38:13 Now I'm gonna vote, now I'm gonna vote worse.

Cleo Abram 38:15 Yeah, that would be an argument. I don't know that there's-

Trevor Noah 38:16 You just don't want me to stay at home.

Cleo Abram 38:17 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 38:17 Why are you, why are you doing this to me?

Eugene 38:19 Also.

Trevor Noah 38:20 Why are you doing this to me? Now when I get up, now when I go, I might change my vote, vote on the way there where I'm like-

Cleo Abram 38:25 Well, another thing-

Trevor Noah 38:25 ... this was a terrible day

Cleo Abram 38:26 ... about the-

Eugene 38:27 Really?

Trevor Noah 38:27 Terrible day.

Eugene 38:28 Not after you've ... My man, have you seen the conversation that happens at queues when you're about to vote?

Trevor Noah 38:33 That's even e- that's another reason I don't want that, 'cause now people are talking to each other about voting.

Eugene 38:37 Yes. Who should they talk to?

Trevor Noah 38:39 Nobody. Your vote-

Cleo Abram 38:40 See, this is it.

Eugene 38:41 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 38:41 See, now we're having a good debate.

Trevor Noah 38:42 Your vote is your secret.

Cleo Abram 38:42 'Cause we're assuming it could work. We're talking about-

Trevor Noah 38:44 Yeah.

Eugene 38:44 I, I, I think anything that you're struggling for will make it worth it. So if you're standing in a queue in the snow and you're about to make a decision around other people who took the same decision as you-

Trevor Noah 38:53 Boo

Eugene 38:53 ... to get out the- [laughs]

Cleo Abram 38:54 There is actually, hold on. There is, there is research.

Trevor Noah 38:56 Boo.

Cleo Abram 38:57 There is research on the fact that it's like a community builder.

Eugene 39:00 Exactly.

Cleo Abram 39:00 That's a separate, that's a separate argument.

Eugene 39:02 Exactly.

Cleo Abram 39:02 That's a separate, separate argument. The, I generally believe, like-

Eugene 39:04 Cleo, make up your mind. Whose side are you on?

Cleo Abram 39:06 Hold on. If you could-

Trevor Noah 39:07 She's not on anybody's side.

Eugene 39:08 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 39:08 That's what makes her good. She's encouraging discourse, Eugene. Boo.

Cleo Abram 39:13 Okay, one more interesting thing about voting-

Trevor Noah 39:15 Okay

Cleo Abram 39:15 ... is also, um, the ways that you would have these countries hack-

Eugene 39:21 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 39:21 ... voting.

Trevor Noah 39:21 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 39:22 I didn't really understand what I was talking about. I was, I was thinking like in like a cyberpunk movie where you like see, you know, then, then, then there would be a glitch-

Trevor Noah 39:29 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 39:29 ... and someone in the US would notice the glitch, and like there would be a hack, right?

Trevor Noah 39:32 Right.

Eugene 39:32 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 39:33 A lot of these encryption experts were like, "Listen, the way that they would do this is, like we already know that in districts if it rains, it marginally affects voting-

Trevor Noah 39:41 Yeah

Cleo Abram 39:42 ... for the outcome of older people. And those people-

Eugene 39:45 Hmm

Cleo Abram 39:45 ... are more likely to vote this way. And then all of a sudden because it rained, that one district, that affect this one state, that affects the Electoral College, that affects this all of a sudden." And so what they would do, th- this gave me the heebie-jeebies when they said it. He was like, "You could imagine a foreign power just digitally

Cleo Abram 40:00 making it rain in just the right places, and we would never notice."

Eugene 40:04 Cloud seeding?

Cleo Abram 40:04 And I was like, d- like making it like-

Eugene 40:07 This is not cloud seeding.

Trevor Noah 40:07 Wait, what do you mean?

Cleo Abram 40:07 Like digitally making it rain. Like, like, um, making it, um, the lag time on the screen, they could make it a little bit longer, and that would mean that fewer people would vote, and you'd never notice. Or the-

Trevor Noah 40:16 Wow

Cleo Abram 40:16 ... the login, maybe they would make it mess up a couple times.

Trevor Noah 40:18 Oh, wow.

Cleo Abram 40:18 And that would affect like older people in particular.

Eugene 40:20 It's like gen- yeah.

Cleo Abram 40:21 It would just, it just a little, little things on the edges, and then you'd have an outcome that you didn't expect because someone-

Eugene 40:26 The politicians would have very little to do with the outcome.

Trevor Noah 40:28 This is insane. That's, that's literally how I keep Eugene out of my house when I don't want him to visit me.

Eugene 40:31 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 40:32 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 40:32 I'll just like, I'll make the lock a little tighter.

Eugene 40:34 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 40:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 40:35 I'll jam the door a little bit more.

Cleo Abram 40:37 And he never, and he never, he hasn't noticed.

Trevor Noah 40:38 And then some days he just doesn't sh-

Cleo Abram 40:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 40:40 I'll be like, "Yeah, come over anytime."

Eugene 40:42 I was there.

Trevor Noah 40:42 And then he'll be there.

Eugene 40:43 I just didn't come in. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 40:44 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 40:44 [laughs]

Eugene 40:45 But, uh, but you know what? It makes so much sense.

Cleo Abram 40:47 So it's like, it's like that.

Trevor Noah 40:47 That is crazy to think about it like that, is like just like-

Cleo Abram 40:49 So you go down, the way that we did-

Trevor Noah 40:51 Yeah

Cleo Abram 40:51 ... this episode was you go down this rabbit hole, and you're like, okay, what are ... The, these are all brilliant people that I'm talking to that have thought about this their whole lives. This, these are all the reasons why you wouldn't want it. I'm like, okay, but, but you could, right? Like this isn't ... I've talked to people who are building rockets. Like, this isn't rocket science.

Trevor Noah 41:08 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 41:09 Like, you, you could do this, right? Like, there's ha- there has to be some. And so I'm, I'm pushing like-

Trevor Noah 41:13 Right, right, right

Cleo Abram 41:13 ... optimistically, like this could work, right? And so then you get into the, the area of science that's a little bit more boring, and I won't talk, tell you all about it. But like how would they do it? What are the encryption strategies? There are people that are working on this that could do it in a way that w- you would notice the, the digital rain.

Trevor Noah 41:28 Yeah.

Eugene 41:28 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 41:28 There are like, there's, there's real effort here, and there are experiments. As you said, there are countries that are experimenting with it. There are places where they're trying to make this easier. Um, and I think, I mean, the episode ends with like it's worth the effort to try.

Trevor Noah 41:41 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 41:41 Like, here are all of the reasons-

Eugene 41:42 I agree. Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 41:43 ... why it's way harder than you think.

Eugene 41:44 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 41:44 And it's not just like, "Oh, I bank online, I should vote online." But we believe that more people voting is a good thing.

Eugene 41:51 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 41:51 You could be part of a future that allows that to happen. Like, here are all the smart people working on this hard problem. And so you don't end the story with, "Oh, it's way harder than you think." You end the story with, "Oh, here are all the smart solutions. It's ongoing. If you want to participate, you absolutely should." [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 42:05 Don't go anywhere, 'cause we got more What Now? after this. This episode is brought to you by our friends at SurveyMonkey. You know, Eugene, I don't know if you've ever thought of starting a business, but every time I think about people who start businesses, I'm like, man, you need a specific kind of bravery. And by bravery, I mean terrifying uncertainty. Because think about it, right now everywhere in the world, there are people making massive life-altering decisions based entirely on a vibe. Just a feeling in their gut

Eugene 42:38 That was me when joining the podcast

Trevor Noah 42:39 You know what I mean?

Eugene 42:40 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 42:40 But what if you actually knew the truth when you started a business? What if you knew your direct reports weren't just nodding along, but actually had thoughts that they were too polite to tell you?

Eugene 42:48 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 42:49 Or what if you knew that your best customers were already halfway out the door to a competitor? Because let's face it, we like to say follow your heart, but in business, ignorance is a very expensive hobby. The good news, Eugene, is that SurveyMonkey takes the fear out of asking and the doubt out of deciding. It's the difference between walking into a meeting with a hunch and walking in with 500 validated opinions, which mathematically is better for your blood pressure. The truth might hurt for a second, but it's cheaper than being wrong. So let's get you a survey and some actual answers. Sign up for an annual plan at surveymonkey.com/whatnow, and use the code WHATNOW for two months free. That's two months free with code WHATNOW at surveymonkey.com/whatnow. You have any questions?

Eugene 43:34 Is it too late for me to run a survey about who doesn't like you in the podcast?

Trevor Noah 43:37 What do you mean who doesn't like y- you? Like, like me?

Eugene 43:41 Like you, yes. Specifically the person in front of me.

Trevor Noah 43:43 I think surveys are supposed to be anonymous so that people's feelings don't get hurt.

Eugene 43:46 But I did type anonymous there.

Trevor Noah 43:48 Well, I mean, now I'll know that you typed it because do, do you have a problem with the working conditions?

Eugene 43:52 I haven't sent it.

Trevor Noah 43:53 But you wanna make a survey about-

Eugene 43:54 I haven't sent it yet.

Trevor Noah 43:56 You can just use the code WHATNOW to get two months free when

Trevor Noah 44:00 you do it.

Eugene 44:00 Still have two months to complain about you.

Trevor Noah 44:03 I feel like this got personal. [upbeat music] You know what I just realized? You must be both the most fun and irritating person at a party.

Eugene 44:21 [laughs] That's why she comes in early and le- uh, comes in early-

Trevor Noah 44:24 Leaves

Eugene 44:25 ... and leaves early.

Trevor Noah 44:25 Leaves early.

Cleo Abram 44:25 That's exactly what it is. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:26 No, no. You know why? 'Cause this is what I-

Cleo Abram 44:28 Let's-

Trevor Noah 44:28 This is what I was thinking

Eugene 44:28 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 44:29 Go to a party. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:29 People love, people love speaking to other people who know things.

Eugene 44:34 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 44:35 They love it.

Eugene 44:35 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 44:36 Until those people actually know things.

Eugene 44:38 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 44:39 That's what I've learned.

Eugene 44:39 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 44:39 No, but I don't know anything.

Trevor Noah 44:40 No, no, no, but you do.

Eugene 44:41 No, no, no. You lie.

Trevor Noah 44:42 You do. 'Cause let's say we were at a party now. We're all standing around with our drinks, right? And we're all having this conversation.

Cleo Abram 44:46 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:46 We're all, "Oh, yeah, yeah. So, so how do you know Eugene? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah." Then I'm like, "You know, uh, the, the election, I think they should vote. You... Oh, you saw in Canada they're gonna, they're gonna do the digital voting." Then you go like, "Oh, yeah. Actually, they did, they did a thing on the..." Then we're like, "No, but the thing..." And then you, "Encryption, encryption, encryption, encryption, encryption. Facts, facts, facts, facts, facts, data, experts spoken to, et cetera."

Eugene 45:07 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:07 And then someone would be like, "I'm gonna go, um, I'm gonna go get a-

Eugene 45:11 Look for this next.

Cleo Abram 45:12 I, out of-

Eugene 45:12 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 45:13 Context matters.

Trevor Noah 45:14 I'm gonna go get another drink. I-

Cleo Abram 45:15 In a party, I promise I know-ish what's gonna happen

Trevor Noah 45:18 No, I wouldn't. If I were you, I'd keep doing it.

Eugene 45:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:20 I'm just saying because we live in a world where, let's be honest, we live in a world where y- what you said earlier really struck me. You said, "I'm not an expert. I don't know anything."

Eugene 45:29 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:30 And I go, that's a strange level of humility for you to approach this, this sphere with because-

Eugene 45:35 Hmm

Trevor Noah 45:36 ... you do know things-

Eugene 45:38 We're live on YouTube

Trevor Noah 45:38 ... because you've learned on it from the experts.

Eugene 45:40 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:40 And I always go, like, knowledge is, is from someone.

Eugene 45:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:43 You know what I mean? It, there's very few people who make original knowledge alone. Everyone takes from somewhere, takes from somewhere, takes from somewhere. The expert. And then when you read, even if you read those, like, textbooks, I love ... You know when you go down to the footnotes?

Cleo Abram 45:53 Yeah, that's fair.

Trevor Noah 45:53 And they're like, "Oh, yeah. This guy said that part, and that person said, and she said that, and that person-

Eugene 45:57 Is that guy related to the Annunaki?

Trevor Noah 45:57 And that person s-

Eugene 45:58 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:58 And the-

Eugene 45:58 Okay

Trevor Noah 45:58 ... from who? [laughs] You're always taking me into weird worlds.

Eugene 46:03 Highly, highly, highly intelligent extraterrestrial beings called the Annunaki.

Trevor Noah 46:06 Oh, I don't even know what that is.

Eugene 46:08 Yeah. Anyway.

Trevor Noah 46:09 Oh, wait. Let's talk about aliens, actually.

Eugene 46:10 [laughs] Okay.

Trevor Noah 46:10 Eugene is a huge fan of aliens.

Cleo Abram 46:13 I am also.

Eugene 46:14 Love alien.

Cleo Abram 46:14 Maybe-

Trevor Noah 46:14 Have you, have you-

Eugene 46:15 Love alien

Trevor Noah 46:15 ... discovered anything, like-

Eugene 46:17 Apparently we're close to making-

Cleo Abram 46:18 So-

Eugene 46:18 ... first contact in the next two years or so.

Trevor Noah 46:20 You see? I love it. Now we're at the party. He's just said that.

Cleo Abram 46:23 Tell me more.

Eugene 46:23 Yeah. So there's a guy called-

Trevor Noah 46:24 First, first, first have your drink and say it.

Eugene 46:26 So-

Trevor Noah 46:26 I think it, it sets the scene.

Cleo Abram 46:27 We're at a party.

Trevor Noah 46:28 [beatboxing]

Eugene 46:30 Hey, um-

Cleo Abram 46:31 So aliens.

Trevor Noah 46:32 [beatboxing]

Eugene 46:34 [laughs] So there's an extraterrestrial, uh, being that comes through a guy called Darryl Anka.

Trevor Noah 46:41 Brr. [laughs]

Eugene 46:42 [laughs] Don't you just hate it when your pessimistic friend is a DJ? [laughs]

Cleo Abram 46:54 We shouldn't have put him in charge of the music.

Trevor Noah 46:57 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 46:58 You were saying.

Cleo Abram 47:03 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 47:03 [laughs] Oh. Oh, wow. Oh, okay.

Eugene 47:05 I think I encouraged him to start mixing.

Trevor Noah 47:08 Oh, wow. [laughs] Now look at me. Oh, wow. [laughs]

Eugene 47:12 So there's this being that comes through him. It, it's been doing this for the last 20, 30 years. It's called Bashar. So Bashar, a couple of years ago, predicted-

Trevor Noah 47:19 Are you ready for a Eugene explainer by the way?

Cleo Abram 47:21 Wait, I'm sorry. Are we talking about, like-

Eugene 47:23 Darryl Anka

Cleo Abram 47:24 ... the real worlds or-

Eugene 47:24 He channels Bashar.

Cleo Abram 47:26 [laughs] Are we talking about-

Eugene 47:26 He's a feminist. [laughs] Guys, am I the only one who knows about Bashar and Spirit Box at the same time?

Trevor Noah 47:33 So explain there, Eugene, please.

Eugene 47:34 Okay. So-

Trevor Noah 47:34 This is, this is one of Eugene's favorite YouTube channels.

Eugene 47:37 Yes. So-

Cleo Abram 47:37 Is this like a, like-

Eugene 47:39 Spirit Box and Bashar are two different things.

Trevor Noah 47:41 [laughs]

Eugene 47:41 But we'll go into Spirit Box later.

Cleo Abram 47:42 And are they ... Is this like-

Trevor Noah 47:44 [laughs]

Eugene 47:46 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 47:46 I'll ask, I'll ask this the way that my five-year-old niece would ask this.

Eugene 47:48 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 47:48 Like, is this the pretend world, or is this the real world?

Eugene 47:51 Real, real world.

Cleo Abram 47:51 Okay.

Eugene 47:52 But with some level of pretending.

Trevor Noah 47:53 I'm, I'm gonna pull this up in the meantim- while he describes it, then I'm gonna play it for you.

Eugene 47:57 So Bashar has been ... I mean, I mean, Darryl Anka has been channeling this being from another planet psychically called Bashar, right? So Darryl does this. And then Bashar, five years ago, predicted that in the next coming years we're gonna start seeing things that we can't explain in the sky. So those are different levels of aliens that will start making contact. And then two years ago, a year ago, we started seeing drones that people couldn't explain, governments couldn't explain, um, phenomena that was happening globally at the same time that people couldn't explain. And then he said two years from now, we're gonna start seeing more contact, human contact with aliens. And I believe it.

Cleo Abram 48:33 I was gonna go a different route with this.

Eugene 48:35 Tell me.

Cleo Abram 48:36 But-

Trevor Noah 48:36 Wait, wait. Before you do, I'll, I'll play you, I'll play you a s- This is a, a guest, Jon Berni- Ramsey Spirit Box

Cleo Abram 48:42 I'm pretty sure when we were talking about-

Eugene 48:43 No, Spirit Box and, and, and Bashar. So start with Bashar. Spirit Box is something else.

Trevor Noah 48:48 Oh, I don't, I don't know.

Eugene 48:49 Okay. Start ... I-

Trevor Noah 48:49 I only remember-

Eugene 48:50 Say Bashar

Trevor Noah 48:50 ... Spirit Box 'cause it, like, made my life.

Eugene 48:52 Say Bashar.

Trevor Noah 48:53 Okay, hold on, hold on.

Eugene 48:54 But then you let-

Cleo Abram 48:54 Are we sure we should be giving this more [laughs] airtime, Trevor?

Trevor Noah 48:59 We can just-

Eugene 49:00 It's not up to you.

Trevor Noah 49:00 We can just, we can just bleep them all.

Eugene 49:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:02 Remember when you were worried about your-

Eugene 49:04 [beep]

Trevor Noah 49:04 [laughs] Your, your digital diet?

Eugene 49:05 But actually, wait, wait, no.

Cleo Abram 49:07 Yeah, yeah. That's [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:08 [laughs]

Eugene 49:08 So now let me-

Cleo Abram 49:08 Yeah, yeah

Eugene 49:08 ... let me ask you.

Cleo Abram 49:09 Yeah, yeah.

Eugene 49:09 As, as somebody who loves science, who explores, who go, how do you delve into a topic like this? This is a good moment.

Cleo Abram 49:15 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:15 Yes.

Eugene 49:15 So let's say we're in the office now.

Cleo Abram 49:17 Yeah.

Eugene 49:17 Eugene had just pitched you.

Cleo Abram 49:18 Well, we did this for, um-

Eugene 49:19 'Cause it's huge if it's true.

Trevor Noah 49:21 It is huge.

Cleo Abram 49:21 It is.

Eugene 49:21 If somebody can speak-

Cleo Abram 49:22 The show is called Huge If True.

Eugene 49:23 If somebody can speak across, like, dimensions-

Trevor Noah 49:26 Aliens

Eugene 49:26 ... to aliens and-

Cleo Abram 49:26 And also, I mean, I think the thing that I really like to do when I hear things that, with all due respect, may or may not be true-

Eugene 49:33 Yeah, yeah

Cleo Abram 49:34 ... is, uh, you take that and you say, "Okay. What are people interested in here, and how can I show you the way in which the science that I'm confident is, is at least going through the scientific process, is, um, more interesting for the reasons you are interested in this-

Eugene 49:52 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 49:52 ... than a sort of fictional world ever could be?" So for example, people are really interested in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Eugene 49:59 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 49:59 There are a lot of conspiracy theories about it.

Eugene 50:01 Yes.

Cleo Abram 50:02 The Real Large Hadron-

Eugene 50:02 Wait. What are the conspiracy theories?

Cleo Abram 50:04 Oh, they think it's, like, gonna tear a hole in the universe.

Eugene 50:06 Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 50:06 They think it's, there's a lot of, like-

Eugene 50:08 It'll create a black hole that then-

Cleo Abram 50:09 ... devil worship kind of thing

Eugene 50:10 ... sucks everything.

Cleo Abram 50:11 Yeah.

Eugene 50:11 Okay

Cleo Abram 50:11 ... the sort of pseudoscientific but also, like, much more spiritual as well-

Eugene 50:13 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 50:13 ... that this is wrong somehow, that we shouldn't be playing God. There's, like, a lot of, like-

Eugene 50:17 Oh, okay

Cleo Abram 50:17 ... centralizing.

Eugene 50:17 Stargate kind of stuff. Opening a portal for things to come in.

Cleo Abram 50:20 Yeah. And like-

Eugene 50:21 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 50:21 ... all, all that. Um, also, like, there have been a couple of instances [laughs] in which s- like, people have played into this. Like, there were a couple students who pulled a prank where they were, like, dressed up a certain way and, like, did a sort of chanting.

Trevor Noah 50:32 Oh, man.

Cleo Abram 50:33 [laughs] And that wasn't-

Trevor Noah 50:33 It never helps

Eugene 50:34 You see, whenever-

Cleo Abram 50:34 That wasn't ideal.

Eugene 50:35 When- whenever-

Cleo Abram 50:35 But it got a lot of headlines. [laughs]

Eugene 50:37 I'm deep into conspiracy, so whenever, whenever we're told something-

Cleo Abram 50:39 Those were a bunch of, like, PhD students or something

Eugene 50:40 ... and then, a, a bunch of PhD, PhD students play a prank, and that plan- prank becomes more famous than the original conspiracy, and then it rubs out that conspiracy.

Trevor Noah 50:49 Cover up.

Eugene 50:49 I think those are agent provocateurs.

Cleo Abram 50:51 Maybe. I don't know.

Eugene 50:52 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 50:52 I have no idea. But to-

Trevor Noah 50:53 You'd like this, actually. You, you might appreciate this. I r- I remember having a conversation with, uh, someone who was pretty high up and used to be at the CIA.

Eugene 51:01 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 51:01 And I said to him, I was like, "Yo, c- conspiracy theories, like, are these people real? Are they onto something?" And he said something that'll stick with me forever. He said, "At the CIA we, we laugh at conspiracy theorists and all that," but he said, "But we're also glad that they are as crazy as they are because of how many times they are right."

Cleo Abram 51:21 Ooh.

Trevor Noah 51:22 And can I tell you, that changed my perspective-

Cleo Abram 51:23 Yeah

Trevor Noah 51:23 ... 'cause I'm, he's a conspiracy theorist. I'm not. At, like, I'm genuinely not. But it changed my perspective-

Cleo Abram 51:29 Yeah

Trevor Noah 51:29 ... forever because I was like, oh, we assume a conspiracy theorist is always wrong.

Cleo Abram 51:35 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:35 We assume they're always wrong.

Eugene 51:37 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 51:37 And then what he basically said to me was, "No, no, no. Sometimes they're right, but the stuff that they're wrong on is so often and so crazy that it covers the things that they-

Eugene 51:48 Yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 51:48 ... did get, and then we just get to ... Th- that's why they'll never, like, confirm nor deny anything-

Eugene 51:54 Yeah

Trevor Noah 51:54 ... because it just, it stacks on itself.

Eugene 51:55 Yeah. And I think in the last couple of years they've tried to do, to dispel the myth that most CIA agents are white and also that, um, what they're doing is unethical 'cause you've seen there's a, there was a huge ins- there was this one guy who was famous with an Afro, um, who used to be on all podcasts. And he-

Trevor Noah 52:12 Hmm

Eugene 52:12 ... he'd be talking about-

Trevor Noah 52:13 I've seen that guy

Eugene 52:13 ... "Guys, really, do you think ... Do you r- really? I'm here. They hired me-

Trevor Noah 52:17 [laughs]

Eugene 52:17 ... with an Afro, and I'm Black. Do you really think they're that bad?" Then everyone was like, "Yo, are they that bad?" But people who've been affected by spies and CIA agents and people who've done things were like, they didn't look like you.

Cleo Abram 52:28 Mm.

Eugene 52:29 So there is always ... Like, I certainly believe when there's protests, when there's, um-

Trevor Noah 52:34 Oh, but that's been proved

Eugene 52:34 ... there's always been an agent provocateur who's just person credible enough to dispel what is really going on.

Trevor Noah 52:39 But that's been proved.

Cleo Abram 52:40 Yeah. I mean, I think there's, there's a lot to weed out in, like-

Eugene 52:43 You could be an agent provocateur

Cleo Abram 52:45 ... I-

Trevor Noah 52:46 This is how it starts

Cleo Abram 52:46 ... I'm not. I'm not. I'm, I'm not.

Eugene 52:47 Okay. Shut up, shut up.

Cleo Abram 52:47 [laughs]

Eugene 52:48 That's all I needed, eye contact and a denial.

Cleo Abram 52:50 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 52:50 I'm not.

Cleo Abram 52:51 I'm not.

Eugene 52:51 Eugene's easy, Eugene's easy to, to please.

Trevor Noah 52:54 [laughs]

Eugene 52:54 Are you a spy? No.

Cleo Abram 52:55 Well, it's interesting too, though-

Eugene 52:56 Okay, cool. We're good. We're good. We're good. We're good.

Cleo Abram 52:58 I try and think about it, like,

Cleo Abram 53:00 what is the core interest here? Like, so for example-

Eugene 53:03 Mm

Cleo Abram 53:03 ... I, um, I love the idea that I might be alive when we make first contact.

Eugene 53:10 Mm.

Cleo Abram 53:10 Like, the idea that there are aliens out there, especially intelligent aliens, is-

Eugene 53:14 I'm taking supplements for that reason.

Cleo Abram 53:16 [laughs] You wanna be alive for longer, to be-

Eugene 53:17 Not for my daughter to graduate university

Cleo Abram 53:19 ... to see, to see when we make ... Yeah. Totally. Or even, I mean, I would be-

Eugene 53:23 Lion's mane, I'm in

Cleo Abram 53:25 ... I would be excited about, like, bacteria-

Eugene 53:27 Trevor

Cleo Abram 53:27 ... on another planet.

Eugene 53:29 [laughs] I'm sorry. Just, sorry.

Trevor Noah 53:30 I'm, I'm so sorry.

Eugene 53:31 I'm so sorry.

Trevor Noah 53:32 Cleo, I'm, I'm really sorry.

Eugene 53:33 This guy just said ... [laughs] Wait, I'm sorry. This man just said, "That's what I'm taking," 'cause now I pictured the aliens coming down to Earth, making first contact with you specifically.

Cleo Abram 53:44 [laughs]

Eugene 53:45 Going back to the mothership. And then they go like, "Have you met them?" It's like, "Yes, I've made contact. Full of magnesium-

Trevor Noah 53:52 [laughs]

Eugene 53:53 ... high, high levels of lion's mane mushrooms."

Trevor Noah 53:57 "Is this all of?" "Yes, I think they are 50% mushroom-

Eugene 53:59 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 53:59 ... and 50% human." "Are you sure?" "I'm pretty sure. I, I scanned him. I'm pretty sure." [laughs]

Eugene 54:06 And why is his pee orange?

Trevor Noah 54:07 "He had-

Eugene 54:08 Leave that

Trevor Noah 54:08 ... ash, ashwagandha."

Eugene 54:09 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:10 "A lot of ashwagandha in these species." I'm sorry.

Eugene 54:13 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:14 S- sorry, so you were going-

Eugene 54:15 You thought I was bad. Look.

Trevor Noah 54:16 No, no, no. You were ... [laughs] He said, "I take supplements hoping for that day." [laughs]

Eugene 54:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 54:22 We never think of which ... Do you know how important it is?

Cleo Abram 54:25 I just, I just nodded and smiled. I was like, "Yeah, yeah."

Trevor Noah 54:26 Yes, but do you know how important it is to think about which human will be our first contact?

Eugene 54:30 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 54:30 We never think about that.

Eugene 54:31 Wow.

Trevor Noah 54:32 Because if the aliens do get here, and then they meet, who they meet first could-

Cleo Abram 54:36 Oh, but I think they're gonna be, like, looking at us from afar and-

Trevor Noah 54:39 Yeah

Cleo Abram 54:39 ... seeing that there's nitrogen in our atmosphere. Like, I don't think they're gonna-

Trevor Noah 54:42 You think they're gonna David Attenborough us?

Cleo Abram 54:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think they're gonna-

Eugene 54:44 Oh.

Trevor Noah 54:44 They have been.

Cleo Abram 54:44 I don't think they're gonna be-

Trevor Noah 54:44 What do you mean they are going to?

Cleo Abram 54:45 I think-

Trevor Noah 54:46 They have been

Cleo Abram 54:46 ... I think there's so many ... Well, okay, so to get back to conspiracy theories, I promise. Um, the thing that I am most interested in is what people are interested in.

Trevor Noah 54:56 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 54:56 So for example, the idea that people We, we as humans feel this kind of loneliness-

Trevor Noah 55:03 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 55:04 ... inter- like, with each other and also cosmically, that I think is really beautiful somehow. Like, we're, we're, we're so used to reaching out to each other that we, we understand that the world is big, the universe is-

Trevor Noah 55:15 Infinite

Cleo Abram 55:15 ... unthinkably enormous, and we, we, we reach out, and we really want that.

Trevor Noah 55:19 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 55:19 And so I think that is beautiful and interesting. And I, when I tell stories, I, I want to make a, a video. I just made an episode all about what would happen if an asteroid were about to hit Earth-

Trevor Noah 55:28 Yes

Cleo Abram 55:28 ... and how we would figure out how to solve that problem. There are real solutions to that which are fascinating.

Trevor Noah 55:34 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 55:34 But I want to do another version of that where I imagine, like, what is the most realistic case where we might encounter aliens? Is it that on the moons of Europa we're gonna, so the ... Is it that on Europa we're gonna find, you know, bacteria in an ocean somewhere? Is it that we're gonna look at a star system, you know, hundreds of light years away and see that there's a, an atmosphere there that we think looks like ours-

Trevor Noah 55:59 Mm

Cleo Abram 55:59 ... because it has life?

Cleo Abram 56:00 Like, what would the realistic scenarios be? And then you create a sort of ... I'm really in- into the idea right now of mixing science fiction with the explainer stories that we're doing.

Trevor Noah 56:08 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 56:08 Because I do think that science fiction, if you are very clear, again with the voicing with Mark Rober-

Trevor Noah 56:13 Yes

Cleo Abram 56:13 ... if you're very clear about what's fiction and what's fact, you can play out a situation. An asteroid is coming for Earth. Okay, now what are the real, what is the real science and technology that we would use in that situation?

Trevor Noah 56:24 Mm.

Cleo Abram 56:24 So in this case, okay, imagine the realistic scenarios in which we might actually encounter life in, off Earth. What would happen next? What would we do if we encountered some, you know, light? How would we verify that? Would we send a probe? It's gonna take 100 years to get there if it's 100 li- it's gonna take much, much more, more than that, actually.

Trevor Noah 56:43 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Cleo Abram 56:43 Um, how would we verify that? And so you, you play this out and you, you accept what people find interesting and what the seed is, and then you try and show them the science and the technology that you're convinced is real through the scientific method, but that gets at this, this thing that they are excited about. So another example is, um-

Trevor Noah 57:02 It's the same as the 1902 article.

Cleo Abram 57:04 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 57:05 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 57:05 Yeah, yeah. You try and, you try and do that in, in an optimistic way so people can see, like, okay, if the plane were to fly, what would that mean? Okay, if we were to find aliens, what would that, what would that look like? What is the real science and tech there? Same thing ... I guess what I'm doing is sort of sci-fi every time.

Trevor Noah 57:18 You are the 1902 first article.

Cleo Abram 57:20 Yeah. I'm, I'm-

Trevor Noah 57:21 It was 1903 or 1902?

Cleo Abram 57:22 1903 for the-

Trevor Noah 57:23 Oh, 1903

Cleo Abram 57:23 ... for the ... Yeah. For Mars was-

Trevor Noah 57:24 The Wright brothers was 1903?

Cleo Abram 57:26 Pretty sure, yeah.

Trevor Noah 57:26 Okay, 1903. Yeah.

Cleo Abram 57:27 December, December something.

Trevor Noah 57:27 No, no, I'm s- I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I, I j- I'm just, I'm just making sure I remember it correctly. Yeah, 1903 article about the-

Cleo Abram 57:31 And so you can do that over and over again with all of these different, these different interests. I don't even want to call them conspiracy theories. It's just like-

Trevor Noah 57:38 You know-

Cleo Abram 57:38 ... okay, you're interested in CERN. You're interested in the fact that we're smashing particles together.

Trevor Noah 57:43 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 57:43 Let me tell you the real science and tech.

Trevor Noah 57:45 Did you just say ... Oh. No, can I tell you, listen.

Cleo Abram 57:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're smashing protons.

Trevor Noah 57:48 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 57:48 The real thing that we're doing underground.

Trevor Noah 57:49 Particle smashing. Hey, Eugene. [laughs] Only Eugene could make science sexy. I am now. I am. You see those particles smashing? I was thinking more combative, but-

Cleo Abram 57:59 Now I get it.

Trevor Noah 57:59 What did the one hadron collider say to the other hadron collider? [laughs] "So, did you smash?" [laughs] Hey. There's a scientist out there who's loving that. He's like, "Yeah!" Yeah. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 58:11 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 58:11 Um, I, I just realized you- Mm-hmm ... that's a superpower that you have- Mm ... that is not just in short supply. I, I, I, I can't think of many people I've met who, who have this ability. You spend very little to no time focusing on the definitive place that people find their imaginations at. Mm. And instead, you encourage the possibilities of where that imagination could lead.

Cleo Abram 58:41 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 58:41 So, like, you, you just did it now, right? Eugene goes, "I believe that aliens," and they, they speak like this, and they're doing this, and they're ... Now, I'm going like, "I don't believe in this. I believe it's po- but I don't believe in this." And we roll like that. We're friends. And I always say what I love about that is, like, I don't think people have enough friendships where their friend has a thing ... Like, Eugene treats my views on soccer like I treat his views on aliens. Do you know what I mean?

Cleo Abram 59:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:03 So when I'm like, "Oh, that game," he's like, "What game? There was no ... This is all nu-

Cleo Abram 59:06 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:06 ... " Like, you know what I mean? But we have fun with it.

Cleo Abram 59:08 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 59:08 We genuinely do. But what you do is, is, is more interesting, is, like, you don't sit in the, "Is it right? Is it wrong?"

Cleo Abram 59:15 Mm.

Trevor Noah 59:15 "Is it real? Is it not? Is it ..." No. You go, "Huh, how would we?"

Cleo Abram 59:19 Mm.

Trevor Noah 59:20 "What would we? Where would we?" It, it, it, like, encourages this jour- it, it encourages a journey-

Cleo Abram 59:26 Yeah, and then you-

Trevor Noah 59:26 ... for everyone involved

Cleo Abram 59:27 ... and then you just direct people

Trevor Noah 59:28 ... do you know what I mean? I like the ... It kind of just then-

Cleo Abram 59:28 Well, the, the energy is there.

Trevor Noah 59:30 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 59:30 The desire to learn, the d- desire to-

Trevor Noah 59:32 Yeah, but I think most people don't-

Cleo Abram 59:33 ... the desire to do research, for God's sake, like

Trevor Noah 59:34 ... but I think most people don't treat people like that. Like-

Cleo Abram 59:36 Mm

Trevor Noah 59:37 ... I, I tried to explain this to somebody once. I, I genuinely did not have the eloquence nor the compassion that I think you have when, when engaging on the topics. But I remember saying this around, like, parents with vaccines.

Cleo Abram 59:48 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 59:49 You know? And I remember, I think on one of our episodes we talked to maybe Dr. Becky about it, and I was saying a lot of parents are anti-vaccine, right? And we, we live in a

Trevor Noah 1:00:00 world now for the most part where people go pro, anti, fight.

Cleo Abram 1:00:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:00:04 How can you not? How can you? And that's it, it's as simple as that. And there's very few people who, who will take a moment to go, "Well, somebody who is anti-vaccine has actually spent a lot of time on their own Googling and reading."

Cleo Abram 1:00:18 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:00:18 And that's almost why they've become anti-vaccine-

Cleo Abram 1:00:20 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:00:20 ... is because they've gone out of their way to consume copious amounts of information-

Cleo Abram 1:00:24 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:00:24 ... that have led them down a certain path. Now, whether the information is valid or not is a separate discussion, but it means that they have a hunger and they have an interest in the topic that has now brought them to that place.

Cleo Abram 1:00:34 Yeah. Can you, can you offer more research-

Trevor Noah 1:00:36 Yeah, can you offer anything? Oh, wow

Cleo Abram 1:00:37 ... that allows them to do that thing that they do-

Trevor Noah 1:00:39 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:00:39 ... in a, in a direction-

Trevor Noah 1:00:40 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:00:41 ... that i- that has more for them to do it too? There's more information over here.

Trevor Noah 1:00:45 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:00:45 You could, you could be more excited about all of the many different research papers that are coming out every day. Like, here's, here's a place to start. Like, here's, here's some interesting information. And I also think, like-

Trevor Noah 1:00:56 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:00:56 ... the, the thing that gets me really excited is that the world is Very strange and very exciting and ver- and full of things to learn and to get excited about.

Trevor Noah 1:01:12 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:01:13 And so I, I view my job as to create a, a menu of journalistically rigorous, genuinely beautiful, deep explainers that might excite someone to go down all of these different paths.

Trevor Noah 1:01:24 Have any of them been wrong in any way?

Cleo Abram 1:01:27 I mean, we issue corrections when we get things wrong.

Trevor Noah 1:01:29 Oh, you do?

Cleo Abram 1:01:29 There have been ... There haven't been any ma- major stories where the underlying point of the story has been wrong.

Trevor Noah 1:01:37 Right. Right.

Cleo Abram 1:01:37 And I, I ... We work really, really hard to make sure that that's not the case. If it ever is, we would do a big correction on that. So far, it hasn't happened. Um, but every once in a while, we'll d- we'll need to do a correction on a, on a fact. So you, you can ... Um, YouTube has a really great UX where you can put the time code and then a colon and put correction.

Trevor Noah 1:01:54 UX is user-

Cleo Abram 1:01:55 User experience

Trevor Noah 1:01:55 ... experience. Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:01:56 So there's a, a feature on YouTube where you can say the time code and then say correction and put whatever you want people to understand that is different than the fact that you said. So-

Trevor Noah 1:02:06 Oh, wow

Cleo Abram 1:02:06 ... I do this sometimes if I say, like, if I ... Um, an example would be, uh, I use the wrong ... Um, we do everything in, in metric, but I have a American audience as well.

Trevor Noah 1:02:16 Right.

Cleo Abram 1:02:17 So if a, if a, um, translation is incorrect-

Trevor Noah 1:02:20 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:02:20 ... I would put the correct one. Or some, like, things that are ... Sometimes they're, they're more deep than that. A, a, we had a cave that we said was in one country, but it's actually in another. You put the correction. And this is ... I mean, this is basic journalistic practice.

Trevor Noah 1:02:32 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:02:32 This is what you want, you know, if you're telling a story and-

Trevor Noah 1:02:35 You say that, but I mean ... You say that.

Cleo Abram 1:02:37 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:02:37 But we live in a world where that-

Cleo Abram 1:02:38 This is our journalistic practice

Trevor Noah 1:02:38 ... that isn't a th- ... Why, why journalism, by the way?

Cleo Abram 1:02:41 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:02:41 I mean, if, if both parents were in law, why, why did you pick journalism?

Cleo Abram 1:02:45 Well, I began working at Vox on the business side, actually.

Trevor Noah 1:02:49 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:02:49 I was really excited. I had no experience as a journalist, and I was really excited about the idea that I could help facilitate the storytelling that I was so excited about. Um-

Trevor Noah 1:02:59 Sorry to interrupt you there.

Cleo Abram 1:03:00 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:00 Like, are you ever not excited?

Cleo Abram 1:03:02 [laughs] Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:03 No. You, you-

Cleo Abram 1:03:04 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:03:04 Like, you strike me as a very positive, optimistic, excited ... Like-

Cleo Abram 1:03:08 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:03:08 ... I understand making videos about asteroids hitting the earth and, like, explaining the world.

Cleo Abram 1:03:12 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:12 Excited. I'm with you completely.

Cleo Abram 1:03:14 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:03:14 Law, death penalty, excited. You just said, "I was gonna go work in the business division, business affairs, and I was excited."

Cleo Abram 1:03:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:03:22 And your eyes told me that you were-

Eugene 1:03:24 You looked excited.

Cleo Abram 1:03:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:03:26 Is there anything where you go like, "Ugh," like boring? Like, is there anything or, or have you always had-

Cleo Abram 1:03:31 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:03:31 ... this as a, as a, as a filter on the world?

Cleo Abram 1:03:34 I think I was so incredibly lucky that somehow ... I, I, I don't think it's innate. I think I was taught this somehow along the way, that there's nothing ... I'm actually ... I'm doing an episode right now. I'll spoil it. When does, when does this come out?

Trevor Noah 1:03:48 Well, whenever it needs to come out.

Cleo Abram 1:03:49 Yeah. Um, I don't know. This is not the kind of thing that is, like, a big spoiler. We're working on an episode for the Olympics, that'll come out during the Olympics.

Trevor Noah 1:03:56 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:03:56 And we're focusing on curling, the-

Trevor Noah 1:03:59 The sport

Cleo Abram 1:03:59 ... the sport.

Trevor Noah 1:04:00 Ah.

Cleo Abram 1:04:00 Um-

Trevor Noah 1:04:01 Great sport.

Eugene 1:04:01 Big wheel of cheese.

Cleo Abram 1:04:02 I'm obsessed-

Trevor Noah 1:04:02 Greatest sport

Cleo Abram 1:04:03 ... with curling. I think curling is just the most fasc- From a physics perspective, the ice is amazing. There are all kinds of applications of the way that it's, the curling stone spins that might, in an interesting way, help us solve-

Trevor Noah 1:04:15 And when I talk about Bashar-

Cleo Abram 1:04:15 ... physics problems

Trevor Noah 1:04:16 ... you guys criticize me.

Cleo Abram 1:04:16 [laughs] No. I promise.

Trevor Noah 1:04:18 Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Eugene, let's-

Eugene 1:04:19 You're talking about a granite-

Trevor Noah 1:04:20 Eugene

Cleo Abram 1:04:21 ... yeah, yeah. It's, it's got-

Eugene 1:04:21 ... wheel of cheese.

Trevor Noah 1:04:23 E- Eugene.

Cleo Abram 1:04:24 It's ... Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:24 Let's be clear. I've never criticized you. I've only mocked you. There's a difference.

Eugene 1:04:28 Um, I ... Is, can ... Where in the ex- UX can I put this correction?

Trevor Noah 1:04:34 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:04:35 [laughs]

Eugene 1:04:37 Do you want some?

Cleo Abram 1:04:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:04:39 So yes, you're fascinated by curling, and you said how it might s- help us solve?

Cleo Abram 1:04:42 So the physics ... There's a, a physics mystery in curling, which is ... Oh, man. I g- I gotta explain this now. So-

Trevor Noah 1:04:49 [laughs]

Eugene 1:04:51 Are we that bad?

Trevor Noah 1:04:52 This is, this is your life.

Eugene 1:04:53 Is it that-

Cleo Abram 1:04:53 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Eugene 1:04:54 You're like, "Oh, man."

Cleo Abram 1:04:54 This is a thing that nobody would understand.

Trevor Noah 1:04:56 No. Throw it. Throw it. Throw it.

Cleo Abram 1:04:56 Wait, hold on, hold on. Let me ... I'll explain this one second.

Trevor Noah 1:04:57 Okay. Throw it.

Cleo Abram 1:04:58 I need a, I need a prop.

Eugene 1:04:59 You need a sip? Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:05:00 Okay.

Eugene 1:05:00 No, she needs a prop. She's gonna-

Trevor Noah 1:05:02 Oh, a prop. So you dom- Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:05:04 Okay.

Eugene 1:05:04 You're the life of the party.

Cleo Abram 1:05:05 That would be really fun if we were-

Eugene 1:05:06 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:05:07 Yeah. If that was, if we're at a party now-

Cleo Abram 1:05:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:05:08 ... you'd be like, "All right."

Cleo Abram 1:05:09 Okay. So the mys- the mystery in curling is, um, usually if I have this-

Trevor Noah 1:05:14 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:05:15 ... and I spin it-

Trevor Noah 1:05:18 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:05:18 ... um-

Trevor Noah 1:05:18 Goes down

Cleo Abram 1:05:18 ... I don't know if you saw that, but it-

Trevor Noah 1:05:19 Yes

Cleo Abram 1:05:20 ... I was spinning it in this direction.

Trevor Noah 1:05:21 Yeah.

Eugene 1:05:22 Yes.

Cleo Abram 1:05:22 And it moved that way.

Trevor Noah 1:05:23 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:05:23 Does that make sense?

Eugene 1:05:24 So it counter-spun.

Trevor Noah 1:05:25 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:05:25 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:05:25 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:05:26 Uh, in curling, that's not what happens. I can't demonstrate it with this right now, but, uh, if you're, if you're with a curling stone-

Trevor Noah 1:05:32 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:05:32 ... which has a very specific, like, bottom and you, you spin it on the ice, if you watch Olympic curling, it will spin this direction, right? That's the same-

Trevor Noah 1:05:41 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:05:41 ... as what I spin.

Trevor Noah 1:05:41 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:05:42 And it will t- move this way. And that has been confusing physicists for 100 years.

Trevor Noah 1:05:47 Why, why, why, why is the other one normally happening? Is it centrifugal force? What, what is happening?

Cleo Abram 1:05:52 Um, something about-

Trevor Noah 1:05:53 What's causing that-

Cleo Abram 1:05:53 So the reason why-

Trevor Noah 1:05:54 ... counter-spin?

Cleo Abram 1:05:55 The reason why that happens, so I spun that way, it moved that way. I think I did it a little bit. Let's see if I can do it going straight. I'm really trying to make it work. Yeah, so it moved that way. I spun it that way.

Trevor Noah 1:06:04 Yeah.

Eugene 1:06:04 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:06:05 The reason why that happens is something to do with friction on the front and it ... Like, I, I, I don't totally understand why it happens, but it basically-

Trevor Noah 1:06:13 Okay. Got it

Cleo Abram 1:06:13 ... happens with everything.

Trevor Noah 1:06:14 Got it. Got it.

Cleo Abram 1:06:14 So if you, um, the physics of this spin and the friction of forward motion means that it should move that way. But on ice with a curling stone, it goes, it, it goes the opposite direction than you would expect.

Trevor Noah 1:06:29 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:06:29 Because there's no friction?

Cleo Abram 1:06:30 So we don't u- totally understand why. So this has been confusing physicists. There are a lot of genuine research papers written about this. This has been confusing physicists for, like, 100 years, and there's a lot of very reasonable-

Trevor Noah 1:06:40 Wow

Cleo Abram 1:06:40 ... uh, uh, reas- If you, if you ask why and you look at the papers, there are a bunch of reasons that they give. Some, there's, there's one, uh, theory that has to do with the friction on the front, uh, of a curling stone is different than if it's on this because the ice is melting slightly as the friction moves across, so there's something to change about the friction. Um-

Trevor Noah 1:06:58 Like, is it that the, is it that the water-

Cleo Abram 1:07:00 I couldn't-

Trevor Noah 1:07:00 ... and the ice are, like, doing two opposite things and then there's like-

Cleo Abram 1:07:02 There are a couple different theories

Trevor Noah 1:07:03 ... a layer between them or?

Cleo Abram 1:07:04 It ... I, I couldn't repeat to you what the theories are.

Trevor Noah 1:07:06 You, you just tricked me into being interested in curling.

Cleo Abram 1:07:07 I know. I know. I know.

Trevor Noah 1:07:07 Look at me. So now I'm gonna be watching the Olympics, watching curling-

Cleo Abram 1:07:11 This is-

Trevor Noah 1:07:11 ... trying to figure out why the stone spins-

Cleo Abram 1:07:13 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:07:13 ... the way it does.

Cleo Abram 1:07:14 This is exactly my point.

Trevor Noah 1:07:15 And what material is the stone? Granite.

Cleo Abram 1:07:17 A s- really special granite. It comes from one island. Every single Olympic curling stone comes from the same island.

Trevor Noah 1:07:22 What island?

Cleo Abram 1:07:23 Uh, it's called ...

Trevor Noah 1:07:25 You can just say any island and we'll throw in a correction.

Cleo Abram 1:07:27 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:07:27 We should just do that for fun.

Cleo Abram 1:07:29 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:07:29 Just, just to show people how it works.

Cleo Abram 1:07:31 It's somewhere in Scotland.

Trevor Noah 1:07:31 So there's a specific island where the-

Cleo Abram 1:07:32 It's called ... I'm not gonna remember this. I'm not gonna magic this out.

Trevor Noah 1:07:36 Just say an island. Just say an island. The island of stones.

Cleo Abram 1:07:41 Thinking.

Eugene 1:07:42 Alysia Craig.

Cleo Abram 1:07:43 Alysia Craig, thank you so much.

Trevor Noah 1:07:44 Boo.

Eugene 1:07:45 Boo.

Cleo Abram 1:07:45 [laughs]

Eugene 1:07:46 Boo.

Trevor Noah 1:07:46 The, the sober guy at the party. Boo.

Eugene 1:07:48 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:07:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:07:49 I'm a facts man. Be, be, da, be, dum, ba, dop, bap.

Eugene 1:07:52 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:07:53 Boo.

Cleo Abram 1:07:53 But see, every single stone comes from that one island. Okay, here's my point with this curling stone.

Trevor Noah 1:07:57 And every single boring person comes from that island, too.

Eugene 1:07:59 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:08:00 Thanks for the facts, facts guy. We were having so much fun here guessing.

Eugene 1:08:06 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:08:07 [laughs] They were gonna make me make up an island, so thank you.

Trevor Noah 1:08:09 Oh, man. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:08:10 Um, here's my point with this.

Trevor Noah 1:08:11 The Island of Bashar, and then we would've put the correction. See?

Eugene 1:08:15 Too soon.

Trevor Noah 1:08:15 It would've been perfect.

Eugene 1:08:16 Too soon.

Trevor Noah 1:08:16 Sorry, Eugene. Sorry.

Eugene 1:08:17 Yeah, it's okay.

Cleo Abram 1:08:18 My point is that curling is a sport where if you read the YouTube comments in most videos about curling, or if you look at the way that people cover curling, especially on television during the Olympics, they make a lot of fun of it.

Trevor Noah 1:08:30 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:08:30 They, they, they talk a lot about, like, how did this become an Olympic sport? Like, oh, you know, w- why are we ... Like, it's, it's sort of a, a joke.

Trevor Noah 1:08:37 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:08:37 It becomes a, a joke. First, I think curling is amazing, and I think the curling athletes are amazing, so I, I think that shouldn't be the case in the first place.

Trevor Noah 1:08:44 You call them athletes?

Cleo Abram 1:08:45 Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, I tried curling. At the curling Olympic trials, I tried it. It's insanely hard.

Trevor Noah 1:08:50 Wait, what makes it hard?

Cleo Abram 1:08:50 It's so hard.

Trevor Noah 1:08:50 What's hard about it?

Cleo Abram 1:08:51 Um, the, the-

Trevor Noah 1:08:51 Knowing that your friends might see you doing it?

Cleo Abram 1:08:53 [laughs] No. The balance of doing it.

Eugene 1:08:55 Oh, that's so good.

Cleo Abram 1:08:56 And, like, chasing.

Trevor Noah 1:08:56 I mean, you know, you know which side of this we on, man.

Eugene 1:08:58 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:08:58 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:08:58 You know which side of this we on, man. Come on, baby.

Cleo Abram 1:09:01 That's my point.

Trevor Noah 1:09:01 Come on, baby.

Eugene 1:09:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:02 Man, you know, you know-

Eugene 1:09:04 I'm so jealous of that line. That was great.

Trevor Noah 1:09:05 Come on, Eugene, you know which side of this we on, baby.

Cleo Abram 1:09:07 I've never heard you use that voice before.

Eugene 1:09:10 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:11 Don't be out here acting like you don't know which side of curling we on.

Eugene 1:09:15 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:09:15 This is my point, you guys. Which is-

Trevor Noah 1:09:19 Cleo trying to trick us into acting like curling's not funny. Some people think it's funny. We are those people.

Eugene 1:09:24 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:24 You don't have to go far.

Cleo Abram 1:09:25 No.

Trevor Noah 1:09:25 There are some people who think it's funny. We are those people. You have found us.

Cleo Abram 1:09:30 [laughs] I am gonna make the case for this.

Trevor Noah 1:09:32 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:09:32 I am such a big curling fan. I am gonna make this case. My point-

Trevor Noah 1:09:38 Okay, sorry. Sorry.

Cleo Abram 1:09:40 My point is that it is lame to be the cynic-

Trevor Noah 1:09:45 Of-

Cleo Abram 1:09:45 ... who looks at curling and thinks, "Oh, it's funny. It's not interesting."

Trevor Noah 1:09:49 Wow.

Cleo Abram 1:09:49 Not that you guys-

Trevor Noah 1:09:50 Wow.

Cleo Abram 1:09:50 But-

Trevor Noah 1:09:50 Damn

Cleo Abram 1:09:51 ... it's lame.

Trevor Noah 1:09:52 Shots-

Cleo Abram 1:09:52 It is much-

Trevor Noah 1:09:53 ... fired

Cleo Abram 1:09:53 ... it is much more interesting, and it makes your life better-

Trevor Noah 1:09:57 Ah

Cleo Abram 1:09:57 ... to be the person that goes, "Why does it work that way?"

Trevor Noah 1:10:00 Got you.

Cleo Abram 1:10:00 Why is that? Turns out there's a crazy physics mystery, and, and a stone island, and a relationship to how we're gonna discover aliens, by the way, because we need to understand ... We don't need to understand physics of curling to ... But it relates to the way in which we're gonna explore islands where, or, um, it relates to the way that we're gonna explore planets-

Trevor Noah 1:10:21 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:10:22 ... with ice and oceans underneath.

Trevor Noah 1:10:23 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:10:23 So we need, there, there's a whole physics of the way that ice rubs against other things-

Trevor Noah 1:10:29 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:10:29 ... and you need to understand that if you're gonna drill into a planet. It's just, my point is that there's an endless-

Trevor Noah 1:10:34 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:10:34 ... amount of interesting things to know when you don't stop at, "Oh, that looks a little funny."

Trevor Noah 1:10:42 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:10:42 There's a, there, or it's boring.

Trevor Noah 1:10:43 You know, it's funny, you just made me-

Eugene 1:10:44 It includes of the universe

Trevor Noah 1:10:45 ... you just, but you also just made me realize that comedy does the exact opposite of what you're saying.

Cleo Abram 1:10:49 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:10:50 But it's all about assumption.

Cleo Abram 1:10:52 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:10:52 You know what I mean?

Cleo Abram 1:10:53 I would actually say that-

Trevor Noah 1:10:54 So, like, one of the, so-

Cleo Abram 1:10:54 ... your comedy makes me think more about the everyday things that I don't-

Trevor Noah 1:10:57 You very, you're very kind, but I think, like, when I think of, like, most ... If you, if you think of some of the crazier jokes that we'll tell as comedians-

Cleo Abram 1:11:03 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:11:04 ... fundamentally what we're doing is, uh, the seed is the same. It, it, it's all, it's all born in curiosity and being inquisitive. However, the conclusion is necessary. Like, the, the assumption of the conclusion is necessary. Otherwise, it isn't ... Um, one of the first ones where, where I knew this was, um, Jerry Seinfeld. One of his o- his most famous jokes was about, um, the expiration dates on milk.

Eugene 1:11:27 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:11:27 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:27 And he was like, "How do they know? How do they know when you milk the cow?" It's like, s- you know, they've got the date. And it's like, and he had this really amazing bit about, like, he's like, "Are they milking the cow in the f-", and then the, the farmer leans in, and then the cow's like, "Yo, yo, January 7th," or what. You know what I mean?

Eugene 1:11:39 That's funny.

Trevor Noah 1:11:39 Very funny bit. I never f- I never laughed at it, never found it funny-

Eugene 1:11:42 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:11:43 ... because I knew before I saw the joke how they have the expiry date, and it's just a number of days after it comes out of the cow.

Eugene 1:11:49 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:11:50 And so I learned in that moment that a lot of comedy relies on you not knowing.

Eugene 1:11:55 The facts.

Cleo Abram 1:11:56 Mm.

Eugene 1:11:56 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:11:56 Being curious, but don't pull out a phone. Don't-

Cleo Abram 1:11:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:11:59 ... don't do the research. Don't just be like, "How do they?" And then you've gotta go on your own journey and figure it out.

Eugene 1:12:05 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:06 And God forbid you figure out the truth. It's just be like, "Mm."

Eugene 1:12:09 Mm, the joke is finished.

Trevor Noah 1:12:09 Yeah, the joke just like, it, like-

Eugene 1:12:11 Such a CIA thing to say.

Cleo Abram 1:12:13 Yeah, I don't know. I think a lot of what you've been doing with your comedy is, like, you do explain. Like, you land, you land an explainer after a-

Trevor Noah 1:12:24 If-

Cleo Abram 1:12:25 ... a funny journey

Trevor Noah 1:12:26 ... if it's, if it's a real story.

Cleo Abram 1:12:27 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:27 I mean, you and I are similar in that way. If it's, like, a real thing, I'm not gonna try and make it not a ... But there are moments where you go-

Cleo Abram 1:12:33 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:12:34 ... what is the ... Like, one of my favorite jokes of myself, you know every comedian has their own favorites, is, one of mine was, like, the origins of the, the Ku Klux Klan. And I was like, where did they get the name, the KKK?

Eugene 1:12:45 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:45 Right? Because then I looked into it, then it's like, it was ... The joke was something about, like, how the origins were they, they got it from the Greek brotherhood. It was Ku Klux Alcyon was the original name.

Cleo Abram 1:12:55 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:56 Right? Ku Klux Alcyon. Ku Klux Klan is how they got the name. Ku Klux Klan.

Eugene 1:12:59 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:13:00 Right? But then I was like, but then it's, it's not, it's not Ku Klux Klan. It's not supposed to be KKK.

Eugene 1:13:05 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:13:05 It was supposed to be, like-

Eugene 1:13:07 KK.

Trevor Noah 1:13:07 Yeah, it was supposed to be, like, KKC, and then it was supposed to be a whole thing. And then I played with it, played, and I took you down the origins of it, but it was crazy stuff. And then I ended up on KFC And I was like, "That's the original. That's supposed to be the name of the, of the KKK, is the KFC." But then they, they were like, "We can't do that." Then I was like, "Because Black people would love them."

Cleo Abram 1:13:23 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:13:24 And then-

Cleo Abram 1:13:25 Who told you they couldn't do it?

Trevor Noah 1:13:27 I thought you were gonna say, "Who told them Black people would love them?"

Cleo Abram 1:13:29 [laughs]

Eugene 1:13:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:13:30 Cleo, you were so close. You were so close.

Cleo Abram 1:13:33 That's why I'm not a comic.

Eugene 1:13:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:13:39 And then I ended it by saying, "But I guess everyone wins because I'm sure the KFC has been responsible for the deaths of way more Black people than the KKK."

Eugene 1:13:47 Ah, ah, ah. My man, we're trying to get sponsors on this thing.

Trevor Noah 1:13:50 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:13:51 [laughs]

Eugene 1:13:51 Aren't you tired of struggling?

Trevor Noah 1:13:53 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:13:54 Oh, my God.

Eugene 1:13:57 Aren't you tired?

Trevor Noah 1:13:57 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:00 Oh, man.

Eugene 1:14:01 We're walking home after this thanks to you.

Trevor Noah 1:14:05 [laughs]

Eugene 1:14:06 Ooh. Ah.

Cleo Abram 1:14:07 Amazing. [clears throat]

Trevor Noah 1:14:10 I'm gonna go get another drink.

Eugene 1:14:11 Look, she doesn't even have water.

Cleo Abram 1:14:12 [laughs]

Eugene 1:14:12 You see what happens with no funding.

Trevor Noah 1:14:13 Actually, I need wa-

Cleo Abram 1:14:14 I chugged it

Trevor Noah 1:14:14 ... can we, can I get you water, Cleo?

Cleo Abram 1:14:16 I chugged it.

Eugene 1:14:16 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:16 She chugged it to-

Eugene 1:14:16 For the sake of science

Trevor Noah 1:14:17 ... she chugged it for the sake of science-

Eugene 1:14:19 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:19 ... to show us something. Oh, it's, it's right behind you-

Cleo Abram 1:14:22 Thank you

Trevor Noah 1:14:22 ... in the credenza.

Cleo Abram 1:14:23 Thank you. In the credenza.

Trevor Noah 1:14:24 It's in the credenza.

Eugene 1:14:25 It's called a credenza?

Trevor Noah 1:14:26 In the credenza.

Eugene 1:14:27 And a credenza is something else.

Trevor Noah 1:14:29 My uncle used to drive a-

Eugene 1:14:29 Credenza is a problem

Trevor Noah 1:14:30 ... a credenza. [laughs]

Eugene 1:14:31 Aw, thank you so... Thank you.

Trevor Noah 1:14:33 No, thank you. I'm fine, thank you. You need all of it.

Eugene 1:14:35 Yeah, you-

Trevor Noah 1:14:36 All of it. No, no, no, but, uh-

Eugene 1:14:38 Like how Cleo put the water on turbo. She was like, "Hey." [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:43 No, so I, like-

Eugene 1:14:43 Ee. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:44 But, but I think the, the... Look, the, the seed of it and the essence is fundamentally the same-

Eugene 1:14:48 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:14:48 ... and that is curiosity. Once we stop being curious, we stop growing. Like, we stagnate. We don't, we don't try and make the plane. We don't try and make the rocket ship. We don't try and make the Hadron Collider. We don't try and make the internet. We don't try and... All of that requires curiosity. You know what I mean?

Cleo Abram 1:15:05 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:15:05 And, and I've always... I'm, I know I've said this to you before, but I go, people forget that the only way you can invent something-

Cleo Abram 1:15:11 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:15:11 ... is to imagine it first.

Cleo Abram 1:15:13 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:15:13 But it can't exist.

Eugene 1:15:14 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15:15 You, you, you know what I mean?

Eugene 1:15:16 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15:16 You have to imagine it, and then it's-

Eugene 1:15:17 Everything that exists is someone's imagination.

Trevor Noah 1:15:18 Yeah. Someone just went, like, "Imagine if..."

Eugene 1:15:21 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15:21 And then now we treat that as n- like a helicopter. We just treat as a normal thing. Of course, a helicopter works. Yo, helicop-

Eugene 1:15:28 Does it? Have you explained helicopters? 'Cause those things are crazy.

Cleo Abram 1:15:30 It's actually incredibly difficult to explain.

Trevor Noah 1:15:32 Those things are, those things should not be flying.

Cleo Abram 1:15:32 Like, the physics of a helicopter is very, very hard, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15:34 Those things should not be in the air.

Eugene 1:15:35 Didn't Da Vinci-

Cleo Abram 1:15:36 Yeah

Eugene 1:15:36 ... draw the first helicopter?

Trevor Noah 1:15:37 Yeah, but even his was more normal.

Cleo Abram 1:15:38 Did he really? That's awesome.

Eugene 1:15:39 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:15:39 His one was better.

Eugene 1:15:40 I might be wrong, but didn't he draw that?

Cleo Abram 1:15:41 I didn't know that.

Trevor Noah 1:15:41 Yeah, it was that, it was that-

Eugene 1:15:42 Yeah, that spiral

Trevor Noah 1:15:42 ... it had that spi- spiraly thing.

Eugene 1:15:43 And they said it would never work.

Trevor Noah 1:15:43 His one was better than what they... Yeah, what they made today.

Cleo Abram 1:15:46 See, but this is so fun. Like, this is what we're trying to do-

Eugene 1:15:49 And that's because of aliens

Cleo Abram 1:15:49 ... with all the things that will come next.

Trevor Noah 1:15:52 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:15:53 That too. And, and that's the-

Trevor Noah 1:15:54 Have you... Wait, wait, have you explained... So are there any things you've tried to explain or gone into that has left you with more questions than answers?

Cleo Abram 1:16:02 Oh, most things, I think. Yeah, because, because imagine... So you start out with something, and you're like, um... Take the CERN episode, for example.

Trevor Noah 1:16:12 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:16:13 So you start out, and you are curious about why there is a 17-mile loop underground-

Trevor Noah 1:16:20 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:16:21 ... in Switzerland and France. And it runs underneath all of these farms and houses, and it's just this, like, massive tube with a vacuum in it. And down the tube they're firing protons in opposite directions. And then when the protons are going nearly at the speed of light, they smash them together in one of these massive detectors.

Trevor Noah 1:16:38 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:16:38 Like, why are they doing that? Why did they choose to build it-

Trevor Noah 1:16:41 Why are they doing it there?

Cleo Abram 1:16:42 Why are they doing it there? Why are they-

Trevor Noah 1:16:43 Pick up.

Cleo Abram 1:16:43 Why... I don't think... I don't know.

Trevor Noah 1:16:45 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:16:46 Maybe.

Trevor Noah 1:16:46 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:16:47 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:16:47 Okay. Until someone comes up with a-

Eugene 1:16:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:16:50 ... with a better catalyst.

Cleo Abram 1:16:52 I think-

Eugene 1:16:52 Oh, my goodness.

Cleo Abram 1:16:52 I think it was just international collaboration-

Eugene 1:16:54 Until someone-

Cleo Abram 1:16:54 ... I don't know. I genuinely don't know. And, and so you have all these questions. And, and so you begin to answer them. You, you ask, for example, why do we wanna smash protons together?

Trevor Noah 1:17:03 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:17:03 And it's like, well, the, the energies that you can get create different kinds of particles that we think were around at the beginning of the universe.

Trevor Noah 1:17:11 Right.

Cleo Abram 1:17:11 So it's teaching us things about the beginning of the universe. It is also proving the existence-

Trevor Noah 1:17:15 Is it, just to confirm, is it the beginning of, like, our universe-

Cleo Abram 1:17:19 The Big Bang

Trevor Noah 1:17:19 ... or all universes? Which, which I, I never... No, I've never known.

Cleo Abram 1:17:22 I don't know that much about-

Trevor Noah 1:17:24 'Cause it's our uni-

Cleo Abram 1:17:25 ... multi-

Trevor Noah 1:17:25 We, the, there's-

Cleo Abram 1:17:25 ... universe theory. There's-

Eugene 1:17:27 I think it's the universe in its totality, yeah

Cleo Abram 1:17:29 ... I think it's, I think it's-

Trevor Noah 1:17:29 But I'm saying are they... 'Cause I've, I, I don't know. I've, I only thought of this now-

Cleo Abram 1:17:32 I mean-

Trevor Noah 1:17:32 ... while you were saying it. I was like-

Eugene 1:17:34 'Cause, Tina, when universe-

Trevor Noah 1:17:35 There's more, there's more universe, right?

Cleo Abram 1:17:36 I think the question, I think the question you're asking is, is the theory about multiverses, do they all begin at the Big Bang?

Eugene 1:17:40 Don't get me started.

Trevor Noah 1:17:41 That's what I'm asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:17:42 Yeah. I don't know.

Trevor Noah 1:17:42 I'm saying, is it all universes or just the, our universe?

Eugene 1:17:45 All.

Trevor Noah 1:17:45 All universes.

Eugene 1:17:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:17:46 From one Big Bang?

Eugene 1:17:47 One Big Bang.

Trevor Noah 1:17:48 Huh.

Eugene 1:17:48 Or he said-

Cleo Abram 1:17:49 I mean, he said it with such confidence.

Trevor Noah 1:17:50 He really did. And this is how he wins all our arguments 'cause now I'm, I've, I, he beat me.

Cleo Abram 1:17:54 I, I genuinely don't know. Maybe.

Eugene 1:17:56 Yeah. I th- I think it's about all universe 'cause you must remember up until recently we thought the universe was our planet.

Trevor Noah 1:18:02 Yes, that's true.

Eugene 1:18:04 W- that's what we thought, right? But you can see in pop culture starting to pop up the theory of, of quantum jumping, um, the, the theory of the multiverse, and they're all interlinked. 'Cause you look at a popular movies that show Dr. Strange going from one port to the other.

Trevor Noah 1:18:17 Yeah, yeah.

Eugene 1:18:18 You're like, they're explaining that. But the theory of whatever you're going through now, there's another version of you that didn't choose to do the thing that you're doing now.

Cleo Abram 1:18:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:18:25 So it-

Cleo Abram 1:18:25 Oh, this is a really good episode idea.

Trevor Noah 1:18:26 Yeah, so-

Cleo Abram 1:18:27 I haven't done much on, like, multiverses. I, I'm gonna write this down after this.

Trevor Noah 1:18:29 I really think you should.

Eugene 1:18:30 Yeah, so-

Cleo Abram 1:18:30 Yeah, it's a really good story

Eugene 1:18:31 ... so I, I think when, when the Schro- the Schrodinger's cat theory as well-

Cleo Abram 1:18:35 There's a, there's a very serious physics... Yeah. I don't know

Eugene 1:18:36 ... so people like observing photons and atoms because there's this theory that if you're observing it, it changes-

Trevor Noah 1:18:43 Yeah, yeah

Eugene 1:18:43 ... but if you're not looking at it. But it's, like, mostly with anything. But you think of yourself in your apartment or your house. If you're in the living room, you don't know what's going on in the bedroom.

Trevor Noah 1:18:50 Yes.

Eugene 1:18:51 But somehow your curiosity, 'cause we always think of curiosity as grandiose. Something has to be invented, and h-

Trevor Noah 1:18:56 Yeah, yeah

Eugene 1:18:56 ... you have to have something to show for it. But it sometimes happens to you when you're sitting in your living room and you go, "I wonder what's going on in the bedroom." And you meander in there, and then you go, "Everything as I left it." Then you go back to where you're from. So I think m- answering those questions of why there's an, a loop underground smashing protons, there's a few guys who are really interested in finding out why, but the impact of it will reverberate towards everything that we're doing currently.

Cleo Abram 1:19:20 Absolutely.

Eugene 1:19:20 Right?

Cleo Abram 1:19:20 And when I-

Eugene 1:19:21 It's like a cell phone signal. We didn't care until we cared

Cleo Abram 1:19:23 ... and when I look into those stories and I, I wonder, why did a couple hundred scientists build something like this, what, what is the purpose? And then-

Eugene 1:19:31 No girlfriends

Cleo Abram 1:19:31 ... why do they [laughs] There's some clear, some people find this too [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:19:36 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:19:37 Um, and then why do they want to build a bigger one?

Trevor Noah 1:19:39 And girlfriend will stop you.

Eugene 1:19:39 Boyfriend will stop you.

Trevor Noah 1:19:41 [laughs]

Eugene 1:19:41 You're gonna wear white, a white coat and do what? No, we're going to Switzerland.

Trevor Noah 1:19:45 [laughs]

Eugene 1:19:46 There's a louvre.

Trevor Noah 1:19:47 [laughs]

Eugene 1:19:47 And then, then there's a torch.

Trevor Noah 1:19:49 [laughs]

Eugene 1:19:50 The other friend is gonna be firing the torch. So, and then?

Trevor Noah 1:19:53 A- and then?

Cleo Abram 1:19:55 But, like, here's a question.

Eugene 1:19:56 No science. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:19:57 Here's a question that I had when I was going into this story. How do they make them hit each other? Like, how-

Trevor Noah 1:20:02 Yeah, that one, that one blew my mind

Cleo Abram 1:20:03 ... how do they make them hit each other?

Trevor Noah 1:20:04 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:20:04 That's a, that's a good one. So then you, you keep going and every question begets, like, 10 more questions.

Eugene 1:20:09 Yes.

Cleo Abram 1:20:10 And everyone, it's like a fractal. Says, "Oh," out and out and out. So I think all good stories are like that.

Trevor Noah 1:20:13 But you know what's funny, is most people who do this become-

Eugene 1:20:15 That's amazing

Trevor Noah 1:20:15 ... pessimistic.

Cleo Abram 1:20:16 Really?

Trevor Noah 1:20:17 Yeah. I, I find most people, or many people-

Cleo Abram 1:20:20 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:20:21 ... who go, "What, what?" But, but, but then, but then the, then then they go into, like, a spiral of, "Uh, uh," but then, but then nothing. There's, there's a-

Eugene 1:20:28 No, they go pes- they, they start o- they, they start off curious-

Trevor Noah 1:20:31 Yes, yes

Eugene 1:20:32 ... and they can lean towards pessimism or helplessness.

Trevor Noah 1:20:34 Yeah, that's what I mean.

Eugene 1:20:35 Which comes back to-

Trevor Noah 1:20:35 That's what, that's exactly what I mean

Eugene 1:20:36 ... yeah, what you said.

Trevor Noah 1:20:37 Whereas-

Eugene 1:20:37 That you're trying to avoid

Trevor Noah 1:20:38 ... whereas you, you find-

Eugene 1:20:39 The helplessness

Trevor Noah 1:20:39 ... so maybe that would be a great thing to, to help, I mean, 'cause I think it would be great for everyone to have that feeling-

Eugene 1:20:45 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:20:46 ... and that, and that framework for life. What is it about the endless possibility of questions-

Cleo Abram 1:20:54 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:20:55 ... that leaves you feeling fulfilled as opposed to debilitatingly

Trevor Noah 1:21:00 unknowing?

Cleo Abram 1:21:01 Hmm. You know, there's this feeling of awe when you look at something that you already know is spectacular.

Trevor Noah 1:21:15 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:21:16 Like, you go and you look at, I've never seen this, but this is what I imagine the feeling of looking at, um, like the aurora, like the northern lights or, um-

Trevor Noah 1:21:27 Bucket list

Cleo Abram 1:21:27 ... yeah, or like, um-

Trevor Noah 1:21:29 Apparently better on your phone.

Cleo Abram 1:21:31 Is it really?

Trevor Noah 1:21:32 I, I just, I've just heard this.

Cleo Abram 1:21:33 Well, you sound like a Debbie Downer.

Trevor Noah 1:21:36 From the guides. No, I'm, I'm just ... From the guides they say-

Eugene 1:21:38 That's all they say

Trevor Noah 1:21:38 ... they say when you're there-

Eugene 1:21:39 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:21:40 Okay, what's something that fills you with a sense of awe?

Trevor Noah 1:21:41 No, no, no. I just wanted to let you guys know that, the, it's beautiful y- on your phone when you're there because you should do something on this.

Cleo Abram 1:21:47 About why it, like, fills you so-

Trevor Noah 1:21:48 Because, because apparently-

Eugene 1:21:48 The resolution is better

Trevor Noah 1:21:49 ... apparently your phone-

Eugene 1:21:50 Artificial

Trevor Noah 1:21:50 ... and again, I'm only working on what I've heard from people who've gone there.

Eugene 1:21:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:21:54 And they've said that your guide even is like ... 'Cause you know, some people are like, "No, don't, don't pull out-"

Eugene 1:21:57 Why is your voice so calm all of a sudden?

Trevor Noah 1:21:58 "... 'cause it's the nighttime sky, Eugene."

Eugene 1:22:00 Oh.

Trevor Noah 1:22:00 You want me to be shouting like a rural bananas?

Cleo Abram 1:22:02 We're feeling, we're feeling awe.

Eugene 1:22:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:22:03 Yeah, we're there.

Cleo Abram 1:22:04 So any, it could be anything, though.

Trevor Noah 1:22:04 And then they say, "Pull out your phone. It looks better on the phone. You should ch- you should look into that."

Cleo Abram 1:22:07 Think about that feeling that you have, though, when you look at something that you know is astonishing.

Trevor Noah 1:22:11 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:22:11 Actually, it's even better for this story when you're looking at something that humans built that's astonishing.

Trevor Noah 1:22:17 Yeah.

Eugene 1:22:17 Mm-hmm. Pyramids.

Cleo Abram 1:22:20 I have that feeling. Like, my show allows me to-

Eugene 1:22:22 Humans

Cleo Abram 1:22:22 ... have that feeling a lot.

Eugene 1:22:23 Humans.

Cleo Abram 1:22:24 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:22:25 Sorry, carry on.

Eugene 1:22:26 Pyramids.

Trevor Noah 1:22:27 Don't, don't, don't interrupt.

Cleo Abram 1:22:27 Yes. Yes. [laughs] Humans. [laughs] I feel like we should continue this con-

Eugene 1:22:33 Why is Lucas confusing the pyramids with the Burj Khalifa?

Cleo Abram 1:22:36 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:22:37 And you were saying?

Cleo Abram 1:22:38 I was saying?

Trevor Noah 1:22:39 Yeah.

Eugene 1:22:39 Sorry.

Cleo Abram 1:22:39 Um, I have that feeling a lot. I have that feeling a lot about-

Eugene 1:22:44 Why are you whispering now?

Cleo Abram 1:22:44 I've, I've, I-

Trevor Noah 1:22:45 'Cause we're in the nighttime sky, Eugene

Eugene 1:22:46 ... oh, sorry, sorry, sorry

Cleo Abram 1:22:46 ... feeling, feeling of awe. I think-

Eugene 1:22:48 I'm sorry. I ruined the mood

Trevor Noah 1:22:48 ... I put us in the mood.

Eugene 1:22:49 Yes, yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:22:51 Um, of, like, planes and-

Trevor Noah 1:22:55 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:22:55 ... vaccines and, you know, the fact that water comes out of a tap when you open it. Like, there are-

Trevor Noah 1:23:01 It is ridiculous

Cleo Abram 1:23:02 ... there are things that are ridiculous.

Trevor Noah 1:23:04 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:23:04 And I feel very lucky to be alive right now, and I feel like the next 100 years, I hope, will be even more interesting. And I have this incredibly rare opportunity that we all have to understand what that might look like. And there's so many things happening right now. The, the idea that I could get the opportunity to go understand quantum computers and s- s- bringing back-

Trevor Noah 1:23:29 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:23:29 ... supersonic planes and, um, the Large Hadron Collider and artificial wombs and, you know, uh, faster, more efficient cars and, you know, all of these things that I've had the chance to do. Theoretical physics by going in a zero-gravity plane. Like, how incredibly lucky, first of all, to be able to tell those stories.

Trevor Noah 1:23:48 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:23:48 But also just as a person, this is the show that I wanted to watch. This is the thing that I felt like I was missing.

Eugene 1:23:54 Your version of Popular Mechanics for Kids.

Cleo Abram 1:23:56 Yeah.

Eugene 1:23:56 Remember the show?

Cleo Abram 1:23:57 Yeah, exactly.

Eugene 1:23:58 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:23:58 Yeah.

Eugene 1:23:58 But I think what you're explaining now

Eugene 1:24:00 is, um ... I, I have a theory that the next 100 years we won't see any huge technologic- technological jumps.

Cleo Abram 1:24:06 Really?

Eugene 1:24:06 I think it will be, to explain it to people, will be the same as how we've been, as gamers, anticipating the release of Grand Theft Auto VI.

Trevor Noah 1:24:14 Yes. Preach, brother.

Eugene 1:24:15 But then it keeps being postponed.

Trevor Noah 1:24:17 It does indeed.

Eugene 1:24:17 And, in its postponement, we've realized that there's so much we haven't explored in Grand Theft Auto V.

Trevor Noah 1:24:23 Ooh, interesting.

Eugene 1:24:23 We keep discovering new universities.

Cleo Abram 1:24:25 No, that-

Eugene 1:24:25 There's upgrades. It gets better and better, and we, like ... Now we've come out and said, "But Grand Theft Auto VI can wait." But I think there's so much that we haven't explored about, 'cause we've been on this technological binge and gorge, as you were saying, that-

Trevor Noah 1:24:37 We're just going to the next thing-

Eugene 1:24:38 We've just move, move, move

Trevor Noah 1:24:39 ... before we-

Eugene 1:24:40 Devices

Cleo Abram 1:24:40 I think it probably means, what-

Eugene 1:24:41 Shows, information

Cleo Abram 1:24:42 ... what do you mean by, like, big shift? Like, I think that's-

Eugene 1:24:45 Like, there won't be any new technology that blows us out the water.

Trevor Noah 1:24:48 That's your bet?

Eugene 1:24:49 That's my 100% bet.

Trevor Noah 1:24:50 Wow.

Cleo Abram 1:24:51 I think that's-

Trevor Noah 1:24:51 We should save this.

Eugene 1:24:52 Please do.

Trevor Noah 1:24:53 No, no, no, I'm, I'm serious. Just as, like, a bet.

Eugene 1:24:54 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:24:54 I'm interested.

Cleo Abram 1:24:56 Yeah, but I think-

Trevor Noah 1:24:56 I don't think you're crazy, but I-

Cleo Abram 1:24:56 I think you could end up, I think you could end up right in a lot of different ways. So you could end up right where, like, we already have machine learning, so we already have, like, AI.

Trevor Noah 1:25:04 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:25:05 But there are lots of ways in which it isn't yet applied, right? We've just seen, you know, AlphaFold. We've just seen, like, some of the, the beginnings of things that are, are gonna be hopefully really interesting for our lives.

Trevor Noah 1:25:16 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:25:17 And, and so I, I think in that sense, like, you could call those new technologies or you could call them evolutions of what we're already seeing.

Eugene 1:25:25 Exactly. That's what-

Cleo Abram 1:25:26 But it's, it's, it happens over time. I think you're right that it's like a, it's, it's always one foot in front of the other.

Eugene 1:25:30 It's an improvement. It's an upgrade.

Cleo Abram 1:25:31 It's always like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 1:25:32 But there will never be anything new, because if you think about it, if we go-

Cleo Abram 1:25:34 Not in the sense of, like- Now we're back to aliens. Oh, no.

Trevor Noah 1:25:37 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:25:38 Not, not in the sense of like-

Trevor Noah 1:25:39 I like how you're coming back home

Cleo Abram 1:25:39 ... like something just, like, hits us, you know?

Trevor Noah 1:25:41 Come back home.

Cleo Abram 1:25:42 Yeah. I don't think anything's gonna hit us like a lightning bolt.

Trevor Noah 1:25:44 Oh, that's another version.

Cleo Abram 1:25:44 But I think, like, you get to be a part of, of the progress of technology, and I think that's a really exciting thing to lean into so that you get to say what you think it should do for us.

Trevor Noah 1:25:58 But the more we want something new, the more the underpinnings stay the same.

Cleo Abram 1:26:00 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:00 Because if you think about it, we need... Textile has been the same, just a little bit improvement here and there. Farming, engineering, and that is the underpinnings of engineering can fall under buildings, transportation, and medication and science, and then obviously textile can fall into other, what we use to design, how we dress and how our, our, our homes look like and agriculture, how we stay alive.

Cleo Abram 1:26:22 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:23 So I don't think anything new is gonna come. I think once people start doing i- hydroponics, we're like, "We've reached the end, guys."

Cleo Abram 1:26:29 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:26:29 "We don't need soil." This is, this, this is the end. [laughs] I was like-

Cleo Abram 1:26:32 Yeah. I mean, I think in a certain sense, like, everything is... And this is, this is something I, I love about-

Trevor Noah 1:26:37 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:26:38 ... humans. Um, everything stands on the shoulders of what came before it.

Trevor Noah 1:26:42 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:26:42 I com- I completely agree that, like, nothing is new out of thin air. Everything is, um, one step above what the people who came before you built.

Trevor Noah 1:26:50 Right.

Cleo Abram 1:26:50 And I think that's actually a big part of what I'm trying to, to do, is to explain-

Trevor Noah 1:26:55 Right

Cleo Abram 1:26:55 ... you know, for example, when I'm, um, when I'm trying to explain, um, new ways to communicate and, like, like, why, you know, everybody is trying to put, uh-

Trevor Noah 1:27:08 Satellites

Cleo Abram 1:27:08 ... satellites to have the internet.

Trevor Noah 1:27:09 [clears throat]

Cleo Abram 1:27:09 Wow, you really knew where I was going with this. You need to explain how the internet infrastructure works right now. You need to explain the cables on the bottom of the ocean.

Trevor Noah 1:27:17 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:27:17 Like, there's, the, i- in order to understand what's next, you need to understand what's now.

Trevor Noah 1:27:21 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:27:21 And we spend a lot of time doing that on the show, explaining like-

Trevor Noah 1:27:24 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:27:24 ... okay, if you are, you know, trying to understand, um, why we don't have supersonic planes, you need to understand the history of the Concorde. You need to understand how planes currently work. You need to understand what happens-

Trevor Noah 1:27:34 Sonic boom

Cleo Abram 1:27:34 ... when there's a sonic boom over everything.

Trevor Noah 1:27:36 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:27:36 Right? Um, that, that's a, I think there's so much that we can learn about the future from understanding what's happening right now. And I think, you know, one, one thing that we haven't touched on yet is-

Trevor Noah 1:27:49 How we use war to test out technologies?

Cleo Abram 1:27:51 We did touch on that.

Trevor Noah 1:27:52 Okay, sharp.

Cleo Abram 1:27:52 You brought that in. That was-

Trevor Noah 1:27:54 She always does.

Cleo Abram 1:27:54 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:27:56 [laughs] Continue.

Cleo Abram 1:27:58 Um, is the way in which you get the opportunity to go down these rabbit holes and choose whatever you want to make is by-

Trevor Noah 1:28:07 Say more

Cleo Abram 1:28:08 ... is by owning your own thing, by making your own thing.

Trevor Noah 1:28:10 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:28:10 Like, we haven't, we haven't talked about the fact that we're having this conversation on a show that you're publishing on-

Trevor Noah 1:28:16 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:28:16 ... YouTube.

Trevor Noah 1:28:16 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:28:16 And that you get to decide, like, how long this goes on for together.

Trevor Noah 1:28:19 Yes.

Cleo Abram 1:28:19 You guys are coming up with the ideas that are-

Trevor Noah 1:28:21 Well, you're part of it as well. You can just walk out of here. 100%. You could leave any time.

Cleo Abram 1:28:25 [laughs] I'm, I'm-

Trevor Noah 1:28:25 As you often do at parties, apparently ... you could just-

Cleo Abram 1:28:28 I'm here for hours

Trevor Noah 1:28:28 ... you could just bounce

Cleo Abram 1:28:29 ... I'm just, just gonna, yeah. We're gonna transition-

Trevor Noah 1:28:31 No, but you, you're right [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:28:32 ... move to nighttime.

Trevor Noah 1:28:32 And actually, you know what? I'm glad you brought that up because it's something that I've been fascinated about because I, I think you were, you were at the vanguard of a movement that wasn't particularly obvious at the time. Mm-hmm. There are many people who've started their own things because they were never part of something mainstream- Hmm ... which often makes more sense to me. Yeah. Right? If you're not part of something, you will oftentimes- Make your own thing ... create your own thing. You were definitely part of something, and you were part of something that was quite popular, quite powerful, and quite, um, you know, it was quite obvious, for lack of a better term. You then left when it wasn't obvious, and you went off to do the least obvious thing in many ways. Help, help me understand that thinking. Like-

Cleo Abram 1:29:17 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:29:17 ... what is it about the environment you were in, and what is it about you as a person that made you go, "I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna try create the world that I want to live in, even though it's a lot riskier than the world that I'm currently in"?

Cleo Abram 1:29:30 Thank you for putting it that way. That's a v- I mean, I first got obsessed with the idea of this show. I mean, we've spent a long time now talking about why I'm so obsessed with this-

Trevor Noah 1:29:41 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:29:41 ... idea. Like, I, I hope that you can see that it's like, it really comes from my desire to watch it, like, my desire to make it creatively. Like, there's just this itch that's just kind of unbearable at a certain point, and I wanted, I wanted to make it, and I wanted to know if other people wanted to watch it. I really, I mean-

Trevor Noah 1:29:59 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:29:59 ... one of the most incredibly

Cleo Abram 1:30:00 gratifying things about making Huge If True has been that all of a sudden there are other people who are along for the same ride you are, that feel the same itch that you do, that, that also felt like the journalism that they were getting-

Trevor Noah 1:30:16 Mm

Cleo Abram 1:30:16 ... was, was pessimistic and it wasn't a full media diet, and they wanted something like this. Like, to, to be, um, to see that other people have the same feeling that you do is really, really gratifying.

Trevor Noah 1:30:30 Mm.

Cleo Abram 1:30:31 And I knew that in order to make something that had this kind of, to be honest, like, sharp edge-

Trevor Noah 1:30:37 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:30:37 ... like, Huge is different than other media that I consume, and it, that's not to say that other media isn't great. Um, but I, there is, there are things that I'm saying I don't like about mainstream media. There are things that, like, I, the show has a, an incredible positivity and a joy. It also has an edge. It's saying, like, there is harm in being knee-jerk pessimistic.

Trevor Noah 1:30:58 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:30:58 There is a, there is a, a point to this show. Um, and we're doing things a different way, and that, that feeling, I just knew that I wouldn't be able to do that in the way that I really wanted to do it, and I wouldn't be able to test whether the actual thing that was in my brain was a thing that other people wanted if I was inside a big media company.

Trevor Noah 1:31:17 Right.

Cleo Abram 1:31:18 Like, I just, I, to be clear, I wasn't offered the opportunity to make this show inside a big media company, but I didn't even, I didn't pitch it. I didn't, I didn't want to have the incentives and the constraints and the lack of control inside a big media company.

Trevor Noah 1:31:32 Yeah. And we talk about this all the time. Media. Yeah. We literally talk about this all the time.

Cleo Abram 1:31:34 You did this.

Trevor Noah 1:31:35 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:31:35 And in fact, and, and so that was the, the main, the main point, was I really wanted to make this show the way that I wanted to make it.

Trevor Noah 1:31:41 Weren't you, w- were you ever afraid? Of meeting us?

Cleo Abram 1:31:45 Yeah. [laughs] No.

Trevor Noah 1:31:47 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:31:47 But-

Trevor Noah 1:31:47 Look at what it's done to you already.

Cleo Abram 1:31:48 [laughs] Um, yeah, all the time.

Trevor Noah 1:31:53 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:31:53 Yeah. I think there's still, when you're, when you're making anything that you really love, I think there's an underlying fear of it first not working, then when it is working, "Oh my God, it m- might, it might go away."

Trevor Noah 1:32:05 Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:32:05 Like, there's a... You live with a kind of... When you're really doing something that you love, you live with a kind of healthy fear, I think.

Trevor Noah 1:32:15 Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:32:15 I think that's good. I think that feels good, actually, to not always feel, first the fear of something not working means that I think you're pushing yourself creatively. Second, the fear of other people not liking it means that you are potentially making something that some people will dislike and some people will love.

Trevor Noah 1:32:33 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:32:33 And that's probably healthy. And third, there's just the fear of putting yourself out there.

Trevor Noah 1:32:39 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:32:39 Like, a fear of, like, doing what you want and it just, and it just not working, or o- once you have success of it going away. Um, and I wanna feel that. Like, I wanna feel that all the time.

Trevor Noah 1:32:51 How do you, how do you-

Cleo Abram 1:32:51 And so it felt much scarier to do, to do this.

Trevor Noah 1:32:54 Don't press anything. We've got more What Now? After this. [upbeat music] Now that you're in it, how do you insulate yourself from the hedonic adaptation of the success? How do you... It, it's something that's always fascinated me when I, when I watch people in life. Um, someone's an actor. They just dream of getting an acting gig, and then they get into a movie, and this is their dream. And then now they wanna be one of the leads. And then they are one of the leads.

Cleo Abram 1:33:30 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:33:30 And then they wanna be the lead, and then they are the lead. Then they wanna be a star. Then they are a star. Then they wanna be an A-list star. Then they're an A-list star. And then, and then all of a sudden, they spend all their days depressed that their box office numbers aren't what they used to be. I used to think that that was reserved, and maybe naively when I thought this, I, I thought it was reserved for, like, mainstream and industry, but you realize it applies to everything in life. And I see this with a lot of people on TikTok, on YouTube who create and make, and they hit a high, and man, getting back to that high or-

Cleo Abram 1:34:07 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:34:07 ... like, y- ha- have you ever... I've, I've, I've always enjoyed doing this. I'll go to somebody's... Like, let's say a TikTok goes viral, like mega viral. Everyone's watching it. And then I'll go down a rabbit hole of that person's page.

Cleo Abram 1:34:19 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:34:19 And it's amazing to see how they were just doing whatever they wanted to do, and then one video goes absolutely viral, and then watch how their whole page after that just becomes that video now. Alters their trajectory. Yeah, d- but more importantly, it alters how they see themselves and what they should be or shouldn't be doing. So you find they're singing karaoke, they're cooking food in front of the camera, they're hanging out with their friends, they're doing all these things. And then the karaoke video goes viral. Then they hang out with their friends. Nothing. Then they cook. Nothing. Then they do karaoke again, semi vi- And then you just see them make that their identity. How do you, how do you grapple with that and w- like, do you have any safeguards or do you have any ideas that you impose on yourself where you go, "Oh, this is how I always come back to me being me and not letting the clicks define who I become"?

Cleo Abram 1:35:07 It's not me. It's the show.

Trevor Noah 1:35:10 Oh.

Cleo Abram 1:35:10 Everything comes back to the mission of the show.

Trevor Noah 1:35:12 Oh, I like that.

Cleo Abram 1:35:12 And so for me, I didn't start with a lot of different ways in which I could be popular on YouTube. I started with, "I wanna make this one show. Will it or will it not work? Do you also want this show?"

Trevor Noah 1:35:25 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:35:25 And I-

Trevor Noah 1:35:25 How do you define work, though? Like, will it work? W- what's, what's your metric-

Cleo Abram 1:35:28 Um

Trevor Noah 1:35:28 ... for will it work?

Cleo Abram 1:35:29 Can I make things that I'm proud of that have this mission of showing people optimistic visions of the future-

Trevor Noah 1:35:37 The three pillars

Cleo Abram 1:35:37 ... so that they can help build them? The three pillars.

Trevor Noah 1:35:39 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:35:39 Can I successfully do that and get better and better at it? And by the way, experiment in lots of different ways, the science fiction in the f-

Trevor Noah 1:35:45 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:35:45 ... in the asteroid episode.

Trevor Noah 1:35:46 Right.

Cleo Abram 1:35:47 The, you know, going to, you know, Formula 1 behind the scenes. Like, there are lots of different ways in which we experiment with formats and topics. But can I do something that meets this mission that we set out to with Huge If True? And also,

Cleo Abram 1:36:01 do people want to watch that? Is that-

Trevor Noah 1:36:04 Hmm

Cleo Abram 1:36:04 ... because the, the reason why I am so ambitious with this show, I really want this show to be watched by many, many more people than it is now, is because I actually think it accomplishes something that I want to happen in the world. I, I really think that if more people had generally a media diet that allowed them to see these visions more often and allowed them part, to participate more in the conversation and allowed them to explore how they could contribute to the world in an optimistic way, we'd all be better for it.

Trevor Noah 1:36:34 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:36:34 And I wish more people were doing it, but right now, like, the way that I can accomplish that in the world is through making this show enormous. And so I, I have this incredibly strong ambition and motivation to make this show watched by millions and millions of people, which it already is, and it's, it's growing, and I'm so incredibly proud of that. Um, but at the same time, I'm not, I'm not trying to find the way in which they'll like me. I'm trying to see if they like this.

Trevor Noah 1:37:03 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:37:03 There's a world in which nobody wanted to watch this-

Trevor Noah 1:37:05 Okay

Cleo Abram 1:37:05 ... and then I just stopped.

Trevor Noah 1:37:07 Okay.

Cleo Abram 1:37:07 Because I wasn't, I wasn't experimenting. I didn't start out the channel by saying, you know, "Here I am. I'm gonna explore. Like, I'm just gonna make things. Like, come along with me for the, for the journey."

Trevor Noah 1:37:16 Right.

Cleo Abram 1:37:16 I said, "I'm gonna make this show." And that, I think, has been really protective.

Trevor Noah 1:37:20 Well, yeah. You've separated yourself from the project, from the work.

Cleo Abram 1:37:23 Yeah. And then the other thing that's happened-

Trevor Noah 1:37:25 That's, isn't, isn't that in-

Cleo Abram 1:37:27 ... along the way-

Trevor Noah 1:37:27 Sorry to interrupt you.

Cleo Abram 1:37:27 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:37:27 I feel like that's, that's in that book, I'm sure many people have said it, but in that book, um, The War of Art.

Cleo Abram 1:37:34 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:37:34 I think one of the... It's really amazing. I think you'd, you'd, you'd enjoy it. But it talks about the, the complicated nature of artistry and-

Cleo Abram 1:37:42 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:37:42 ... and the journey of making and what it means to create, right?

Cleo Abram 1:37:45 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:37:46 To take something from nothing, bring it out into the world, make it something, and then other people consume it.

Cleo Abram 1:37:51 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:37:51 And one of, one of the main things it speaks about is how The true mastery of being an artist requires you to know that you are not your work, and your work is not you, but you have deep pride in that work.

Eugene 1:38:02 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:38:02 Because if you're unable to separate yourself from it, then in its success or in its failure, you will always define yourself.

Eugene 1:38:08 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:38:08 But if you go, "This is a thing I made or did. Do you like it?" "Yes." "No." "All right. Well, I made it."

Eugene 1:38:15 But I guess you are experiencing ... Th- there's always ... What I find is an he- healthy amount of, uh, insecurity that comes with being an artist.

Trevor Noah 1:38:23 [laughs]

Eugene 1:38:23 And I think that's why even the greatest artists were either unhappy or they had to have paradigm shifts where they move elsewhere. You know, because I, I, I think when you catch onto a great idea, they always explained as you have an antenna, everyone has. Ideas are floating around-

Trevor Noah 1:38:37 Mm. Mm-hmm

Eugene 1:38:37 ... but one person will catch it. But they have to have the naivety and the confidence to think that what they're thinking is unique-

Trevor Noah 1:38:43 Oh, damn, I like that

Eugene 1:38:43 ... then go out there and do it. And then if they've done it enough, they start thinking, "Well, if I'm here ..." Like Einstein, he, he thinks, "If I'm here in Germany and everyone ... Maybe I must go somewhere else." Then he goes somewhere else, then he comes here.

Trevor Noah 1:38:54 Hm.

Eugene 1:38:54 Then here they're like, "Tell us more about that thing of yours." Because he goes, "Where I come from, me, it's like-

Trevor Noah 1:38:58 Everyone's thinking this

Eugene 1:38:59 ... yeah, Van Braun is here because he makes rockets. So clearly there's something there, so you go somewhere else. And that's where I think the analogy that I made about being in the living room and then going into the bedroom to see what's going on-

Trevor Noah 1:39:09 Yeah

Eugene 1:39:10 ... only to come back again to the living room, uh, comes into play. And I think if you don't move as an artist, and I think that's what you are, if you don't move, you've realized that you, you die. If you don't evolve, you perish.

Cleo Abram 1:39:21 Yeah.

Eugene 1:39:21 And then you try to create a show that makes us evolve forcefully at our pace and the comfort of our own homes and screens, right?

Cleo Abram 1:39:28 Thank you for saying that. Yeah.

Eugene 1:39:29 You want this?

Cleo Abram 1:39:30 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:39:31 That's beautiful, Eugene.

Cleo Abram 1:39:32 [laughs] I think-

Eugene 1:39:33 You too

Cleo Abram 1:39:33 ... I think that's exactly right.

Trevor Noah 1:39:34 That's really beautiful. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:39:36 Yeah. I ... So I, I wanted that creative opportunity.

Trevor Noah 1:39:41 Hm.

Cleo Abram 1:39:41 I wanted that for myself, I wanted it for the show, I wanted it for the audience. Now I have this incredible team that I work with.

Trevor Noah 1:39:47 Hm.

Cleo Abram 1:39:47 That you asked also how do I, how do I-

Trevor Noah 1:39:49 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:39:49 ... make sure that it stays the show. Like, they know what feels like Huge.

Trevor Noah 1:39:54 Oh, that's great.

Eugene 1:39:54 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:39:54 And they create-

Trevor Noah 1:39:55 That's great

Cleo Abram 1:39:55 ... a constraint.

Eugene 1:39:56 It equals.

Trevor Noah 1:39:56 That's great.

Cleo Abram 1:39:57 They ... It's like there's a, there's a team culture and a team mission, and we're all together making this thing. And so I am the, the vessel to make the thing better on screen, but we're all making it together. And that I think is really important to, to maintain the mission of what you're doing. And so, so all of those things I think help a lot. And then there's also the enormous wave. I mean, we haven't talked yet about ... I think Huge and what we're doing is part of at least three big trends in media right now.

Trevor Noah 1:40:32 Okay. And what are those three?

Cleo Abram 1:40:33 The first is that YouTube is eating television.

Trevor Noah 1:40:37 Yep.

Cleo Abram 1:40:37 I mean, YouTube has been the most watched streaming platform for at least two years. Um-

Eugene 1:40:41 It's eating it alive-

Cleo Abram 1:40:42 Yeah

Eugene 1:40:42 ... which is very sad.

Cleo Abram 1:40:43 It's, it's wild to watch.

Eugene 1:40:44 Yeah, don't wait for it to die first. It's-

Cleo Abram 1:40:46 Nope

Eugene 1:40:46 ... kicking it.

Cleo Abram 1:40:47 Nope.

Eugene 1:40:48 [growls]

Cleo Abram 1:40:48 And-

Trevor Noah 1:40:49 Ba da da

Eugene 1:40:49 Ba da da

Cleo Abram 1:40:49 ... by the way-

Trevor Noah 1:40:49 Ba da da. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:40:50 ... I mean, you guys are, you guys have been part of that. Um, and [laughs]

Eugene 1:40:56 [laughs] Oh, sorry, it's a deep cut.

Trevor Noah 1:40:59 Yeah, it's a ... Sorry.

Cleo Abram 1:41:00 And, um, and so you guys have been part of that. Uh, and the, the wave of YouTube allowing ... I mean, because the bet that YouTube made was incredible.

Trevor Noah 1:41:12 Hm.

Cleo Abram 1:41:12 Right? Like, every other streamer said, "If we have a small number of gatekeepers and they decide what gets made-

Trevor Noah 1:41:19 Yeah, yeah

Cleo Abram 1:41:19 ... then that is the best stuff that most people will wanna watch."

Trevor Noah 1:41:21 Yes.

Cleo Abram 1:41:21 "And that's the stuff that should get made." And there's a, a whole business model around giving upfront money. You make the thing, you put the thing, you have a subscription, you watch the thing. And that's the philosophy that has grown every other streaming platform.

Trevor Noah 1:41:34 Hm.

Cleo Abram 1:41:35 And YouTube had a fundamentally different bet, which was, "If we give a platform and split advertising revenue with-

Trevor Noah 1:41:41 Hm

Cleo Abram 1:41:41 ... anyone in the world who could make great things, then if we wait and we allow that work to kind of improve and percolate upward and have a system that recommends the right work to the right people, then that is actually the way that we will get the work that the most people want to watch."

Trevor Noah 1:41:59 100%.

Cleo Abram 1:41:59 That's a crazy bet.

Trevor Noah 1:42:01 It really is.

Cleo Abram 1:42:01 That is a fundamentally different bet than every other streamer.

Eugene 1:42:03 Support that.

Cleo Abram 1:42:03 And it turns out it's working. And how incredible-

Trevor Noah 1:42:06 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:42:06 ... is it that that works?

Trevor Noah 1:42:07 I'm torn though on it though.

Cleo Abram 1:42:08 Like, that's fundamentally ... Yes, there's a lot of-

Trevor Noah 1:42:10 I'll, I'll tell you why I'm torn.

Eugene 1:42:10 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:42:11 Only because t-

Cleo Abram 1:42:12 Yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:42:12 ... obviously on the one side, I think it's amazing. I think to live in a world-

Eugene 1:42:15 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:42:16 ... where people can create what they feel needs to be created-

Cleo Abram 1:42:19 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:42:19 ... if they don't see it.

Eugene 1:42:20 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:42:20 And people get to consume what they want to consume. Like, I have a friend who watches knife sharpening videos. That's pretty much all he does, is just like watch knife sharpening videos.

Cleo Abram 1:42:31 Is he-

Trevor Noah 1:42:31 Is he in this room? Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:42:32 Is, is he good?

Trevor Noah 1:42:33 He is in this room.

Eugene 1:42:33 He passed away.

Trevor Noah 1:42:35 [laughs]

Eugene 1:42:35 Uh, in this room, he means.

Trevor Noah 1:42:38 [laughs] Bashar. [laughs]

Eugene 1:42:40 He's not going.

Trevor Noah 1:42:42 Oh, he's here.

Eugene 1:42:44 He's here with us now.

Trevor Noah 1:42:45 He's here with us now. [laughs]

Eugene 1:42:46 He's here with us now.

Trevor Noah 1:42:46 It feels like I heard his voice [laughs] screaming from the great beyond.

Eugene 1:42:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:42:49 Um, no. So, like ... But, but, but what I mean by that is I do think that part of it is amazing.

Eugene 1:42:53 Hm.

Trevor Noah 1:42:55 Just like your show, what I like to try and do is also think about always the second system effect. What are we missing-

Cleo Abram 1:43:02 Hm

Trevor Noah 1:43:02 ... that we, we, we take for granted? Because with every gift comes a curse. And the other side of it is those institutions, while they were d- and while they still are definitely flawed, they're a lot easier to hold accountable-

Cleo Abram 1:43:15 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:43:15 ... 'cause you can find them. Do you know what I'm saying?

Cleo Abram 1:43:17 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:43:18 So when the BBC says something that's wrong or that people don't like, they can find the BBC, they can, like, go after the BBC in, in a, in a very definite way. When Netflix has a show that people are not angry about or ... You know what I mean?

Cleo Abram 1:43:29 Hm.

Trevor Noah 1:43:30 Like Diddy suing Netflix where he's like, "I'm gonna sue you for the documentary," but he can't sue Netflix. But if that thing was put out on YouTube, just y- it becomes a, a little more opaque. It becomes a little less tangible.

Cleo Abram 1:43:42 Hm.

Trevor Noah 1:43:42 It becomes ... And so it's like, that's why I say I'm torn because it's this world-

Cleo Abram 1:43:45 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:43:45 ... where it's like, ah, you want people to have as much freedom as possible to put out what they like, but we also don't wanna live in a world where the ultimate harms can be done because nobody can be held accountable. Do you know what I mean? Like, I, I'm sure you think-

Cleo Abram 1:43:59 And it's-

Trevor Noah 1:43:59 ... about that as well.

Cleo Abram 1:44:00 And it's made even more complicated by the second trend, which is-

Trevor Noah 1:44:03 Which is

Cleo Abram 1:44:04 Like all of us who m- might have been employees at large companies-

Trevor Noah 1:44:09 Yep

Cleo Abram 1:44:09 ... then go independent.

Trevor Noah 1:44:11 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:44:11 And so the, the trend-

Trevor Noah 1:44:12 Go rogue

Cleo Abram 1:44:12 ... I mean, I, I'm thinking... Yeah. [laughs] I'm thinking of the trend particularly in journalism of people going independent. Um, but it's-

Trevor Noah 1:44:19 Oh

Cleo Abram 1:44:19 ... true in, in many other places too.

Trevor Noah 1:44:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:44:21 It's obviously true in comedy.

Trevor Noah 1:44:22 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:44:22 It's, it's true in lots of different industries. And to that I would say I'm a part, and Huge is a part, and you're a part of this second trend of independence-

Trevor Noah 1:44:31 Hmm

Cleo Abram 1:44:32 ... that is created by the first trend of-

Trevor Noah 1:44:34 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:44:34 ... the success of YouTube. And then the third trend is, maybe, maybe it's a part of a story about pessimism itself.

Trevor Noah 1:44:43 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:44:43 It's, it's part of a story about the feeling that people have about news and the world getting worse, and the feeling that, that news has contributed to our understanding of the world getting worse.

Trevor Noah 1:44:56 Oh, definitely.

Cleo Abram 1:44:56 And Huge is something different.

Trevor Noah 1:44:57 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:44:57 And so those, I think are the three like, stories in the world that we are somehow in the middle of the Venn diagram on. And it's an interesting place to be because, to your point, there are all kinds of parts of those stories. There, there are the, the shadow sides of each of those things. There's the extreme upside of like, what if?

Trevor Noah 1:45:15 Yeah, yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:45:15 What if this, these trends continue and, you know... I mean, we're already at a place. It's so interesting to look at the difference between when I launched just three years ago and where we are now. I mean, the story when I launched was like, new media is coming.

Trevor Noah 1:45:32 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:45:32 This is something that is coming. Like, we're, we're long since here.

Trevor Noah 1:45:37 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:45:37 Like, that story makes no sense anymore.

Trevor Noah 1:45:39 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:45:39 Like, we are already running shows-

Trevor Noah 1:45:42 It is just media now

Cleo Abram 1:45:42 ... that are larger than any other media company-

Trevor Noah 1:45:44 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:45:44 ... on the largest streaming platform in the world.

Trevor Noah 1:45:46 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:45:46 Um, and so that's, that's really important and interesting. And to your point about accountability, like how do, how do people that have... are now independently running these shows that are bigger than the media operations-

Trevor Noah 1:45:59 They really are

Cleo Abram 1:45:59 ... on the biggest platform in the world-

Trevor Noah 1:46:01 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:46:01 ... how do they take responsibility, as you said, for the things that they publish?

Trevor Noah 1:46:04 Mm-hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:46:04 Um, and so it, it's, it's a, it's a really exciting time. I'm obviously, I mean, true to form, very optimistic about where this is all going [laughs] . But I, I think it's, um, it's interesting, uh, and complicated and thrilling. And I remember, um, I've been wanting to ask you this question because I remember when I left Vox and I got a lot of congratulations, but a lot of it was with this tone of like, "Oh, I wouldn't, I would never do that." Or like, "Oh," um, the, the phrase a lot of the time was, "That's so brave."

Trevor Noah 1:46:43 Oh, I love that phrase.

Cleo Abram 1:46:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:46:44 So brave.

Cleo Abram 1:46:45 And, uh, and I got a DM on Twitter from you and you said, "Congratulations," like, "Best of luck." And this was when you were on The Daily Show.

Trevor Noah 1:47:01 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:47:01 And I had been watching your stuff for a long time, and I had no idea that you were watching Vox and you were watching mine. And so I'd announced that I was going independent, and you said, "Best of luck." And you... I mean, I've, I've said this to you before, but like, it was a real moment for me to say like, oh. Like, I knew I was already making the bet-

Trevor Noah 1:47:24 Hmm

Cleo Abram 1:47:25 ... but it was incredibly helpful to hear from someone who had a show that was, let's be honest, like, the definition of mainstream success-

Trevor Noah 1:47:34 Mm-hmm

Cleo Abram 1:47:34 ... say like, "Best of luck." Basically like-

Trevor Noah 1:47:37 Hmm

Cleo Abram 1:47:37 ... "I think this is a good choice for you." So thank you.

Trevor Noah 1:47:41 No, you, you're welcome. But for me, it's, it's an obvious one, and Eugene and I have been on this journey for what? 20 years now.

Cleo Abram 1:47:48 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:47:51 I've... I think it's two things. One, I love appreciating the people who've made an impact in my life, even from afar. Do you know what I mean? So in my whole journey, whether it was on The Daily Show or not, uh, I remember like e- e- in my whole life, every comedian who like, put me on, on some stage or introduced me to another comedian or promoter in another country. I remember journalists who wrote great pieces, who helped me understand the world that I was trying to understand. I, I... authors who've literally changed my life. I try and have them on this podcast now. And some of them will say to me, they'll be like, "I wrote that book 10 years ago." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it, it's still with me now."

Cleo Abram 1:48:28 Hmm. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:48:28 You know? They're like, "Why did you call me now?" There's literally some people who come to the show and go, "I haven't done anything in 10 years." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it stayed with me for 10 years."

Cleo Abram 1:48:37 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:48:37 That's the first part. The second part is exactly what you said is, is the, the unsafe bets, and I think there's a misalignment oftentimes in how we act in society versus what we say. We will say we want to explore. We will say we want people to go out and try things.

Cleo Abram 1:48:59 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:48:59 We will say we want... What we often want is the reward from these things.

Cleo Abram 1:49:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:49:04 We want Huge If True, we want the show now that it's working.

Cleo Abram 1:49:08 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:49:09 But we don't really want people to go out and like, try it in that way. And, and I don't know what it does to people, but you, you and I have spoken a lot about it.

Cleo Abram 1:49:16 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:49:17 It makes people uncomfortable when people, as Eugene says, go rogue. It, it, it's interesting how it makes people around you uncomfortable.

Cleo Abram 1:49:25 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:49:27 The amount of people who said that to me... And by the way, this has been the story of my life. When I, when I first started doing stand-up comedy, I had been lucky enough to get a job on a radio station at 3:00 AM on the weekends in Johannesburg, in like, in Gauteng only, right?

Cleo Abram 1:49:43 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:49:44 So it's one state, one province.

Cleo Abram 1:49:45 Regional.

Trevor Noah 1:49:45 Regional. And that's where I was. N- no one listened. I knew all my listeners by name. Tiny little thing, but it, it paid my bills. I started comedy while doing that. Comedy grew, and I was lucky enough that comedy, it just got to the point where I had to choose which one I was gonna do.

Trevor Noah 1:50:00 I chose comedy. Everyone said-

Cleo Abram 1:50:02 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:50:03 ... "What are you doing? You have a great op- what are you doing? What are you-

Cleo Abram 1:50:06 You're a step away from being at Breakfast.

Trevor Noah 1:50:09 And the thing it made me- You're one slot away ... what it made me realize, even at that time, was not only did they not see the possibility that I was aiming for- Mm ... it made them uncomfortable. Hmm. Hmm. Because if you're on, if you're living on an island, someone gets on a boat and says, "I'm sailing somewhere else that we cannot see," you'll be shocked at how it makes the people on that island angry and uncomfortable. Hmm. Because they're like, "Are you saying this isn't it? Are you..." People start to internalize things. They go, "Are, are you saying I'm boring for staying on this island?" Or, "Are you saying there's a better island out there? Are, are you saying this island might not exist in a few years?" It highlights their insecurities. "Are you saying..." And all of a sudden, people get angry at you. Hmm. "How could you? Why would you leave? What are you doing, Fox? Are you kid-" And so whenever I see people who do that- Hmm ... you know what I mean? It, for some reason it, it sparks something in me. Hmm. We only wanna leave when everything's fallen apart. We only want to explore when we're forced to go. And I'll, I often think to myself, "Wouldn't it be beautiful if you could find those opportunities and those moments to do it in, like, a good leave with energy, you know?" Yeah. Don't escape. Embark. There's a different feeling in- Yeah ... in both of them. And so for me, it was one of those things where I was like, "What you're doing was crazy." It was genuinely crazy, and I was so impressed by it. I was like, "Ah. I mean, I've loved the stuff you've made. Good luck. You're gonna kill it out there. You've got the talent." Hmm. Those types of people, you're one of them as well. Those are the types of people who inspire me. 'Cause I go like, "What are you doing? Oh, boy." [laughs] "All right. Well, that's a crazy thought." Yeah. Like, with Eugene, it was like the opposite. Eugene, like, just took a break at some point, and I was like, "What are you doing?" And he's just like, "Yeah, I'm taking a break." I was like, "Whew. You're taking a break?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna pause for a while." Hmm. And I remember d- it's the craziest thing. S- I was so inspired by the fact that this human being showed me that there was the option to take a break, even though you don't know what's on the other side of that break. Hmm. So in all of these, I'm just like, "Yeah, man." And, and by the way, I didn't think you were making the right choice. Yeah. I just thought you were making a good choice. Good choice, yeah.

Cleo Abram 1:52:17 Oh, interesting.

Trevor Noah 1:52:18 Does that make sense?

Cleo Abram 1:52:18 Because the question I wanted to ask you, if I'm, if I'm honest about that message-

Trevor Noah 1:52:22 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:52:22 ... what you said was, "I've been wondering when you're gonna do that." And I thought to myself two things.

Trevor Noah 1:52:28 Sounds like him. [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:52:29 I th- I thought to myself two things. The first was, "You know who I am?" [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:52:35 [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:52:35 "When did you start wondering this?" And the second thing I thought was, "How did you know that that was even an option?" Like, because for me, going independent on YouTube, there was at least one person, Johnny Harris on Is Harris, who were building a journalistic independent media group from... That he had left Vox. And so there was at least one example that I could see of someone doing this well.

Trevor Noah 1:52:59 Hmm.

Cleo Abram 1:53:00 But until I actually began thinking about doing it, it didn't feel like one of the options that was available to me. And I thought it was gonna be the start of what, what has now become true, which is this wave of sort of people going independent-

Trevor Noah 1:53:15 Yeah

Cleo Abram 1:53:15 ... both in journalism and in comedy and in, and in all walks of life. Um, but at the time, like, how did you know that that was an option? Because my perception is I should have been more likely to know that that was true than you, who were at the kind of the, the pinnacle of mainstream media success.

Trevor Noah 1:53:38 So I, I, I didn't know that it was an option, but I think s- I sometimes have... I dunno if it's just an innate ability, but I, I can oftentimes spot somebody who is an outlier in the environment that they're in.

Cleo Abram 1:53:54 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:53:55 And it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't gel with their environment. I just go like, "Yeah, you, you're gonna leave." And not leave in a bad way. You're just, you're gonna leave. Does, does that make sense?

Cleo Abram 1:54:05 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:54:06 Because there's, there's, there's something about you that tells me you are going to do something that goes beyond the... So on your side, I mean, now I'd have to be, like, trying to go back and remember what it was, but maybe just having this conversation with you, I was probably thinking at the time, "You're creating these explainers. You're, you're, you're making this world really interesting, entertaining, positive, despite what the content is." It was all about, like, Congress and-

Cleo Abram 1:54:34 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:54:34 ... and the Senate, and this is not an, a positive world.

Cleo Abram 1:54:38 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:54:38 And it's not necessarily an interesting world.

Cleo Abram 1:54:39 An exciting... Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:54:41 But it is definitely a limited world. You know what I mean? And so maybe I saw in you something that maybe I hoped to see in myself, which was, "Oh, I'm not only this thing."

Cleo Abram 1:54:49 Hmm. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:54:50 Yeah, I love politics, but I'm not only that. You know what I mean? I've, I've literally met people who think that's all I am all the time.

Cleo Abram 1:54:57 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:54:58 I'll never forget in the str- like, in Miami, [laughs] at, like, midnight, some random guy came up to me in the street, and he was just like, "Donald Trump, 2024. Yeah!" And I was like, "And?" And he was like, "Yeah." [laughs]

Cleo Abram 1:55:14 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:55:15 I was like, "And what?" And I genuinely looked at him. I was like, "What do you, what do you think's gonna hap- Did you think you were gonna say that and I'll be like, 'No. No. Nelson Mandela.'"

Cleo Abram 1:55:25 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:55:25 Like, what, what did you think? I was like, "Oh, it's because your, your experience of me-

Cleo Abram 1:55:29 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:55:30 ... is one-dimensional, so you think that my world is contained in that one dimension." I-

Cleo Abram 1:55:36 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:55:36 ... oftentimes will latch onto people who don't operate in that one dimension-

Cleo Abram 1:55:41 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:55:41 ... 'cause they inspire me. So this guy here is like, comedy's one of his dimensions.

Cleo Abram 1:55:45 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:55:46 And then, I mean, history, you know, nature documentaries, guns, motorbikes, um, like-

Cleo Abram 1:55:53 Aliens

Trevor Noah 1:55:54 ... aliens. Like, but I mean, it's... No, but it's infinite really.

Cleo Abram 1:55:56 Infinite. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:55:56 It really is infinite with you. And w- I think when you, when you see that and you see somebody, especially somebody who's creating, you'll see that they're, they're forced to create in one sphere. Like, we had Derek Fordjour, uh, on, uh, on the podcast, and he's a friend of mine who's an artist. Phenomenal, phenomenal artist. But everyone knows him for, like, his paintings.

Cleo Abram 1:56:15 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:56:16 And then he started making sculptures And I remember asking him one day, I was like, "Hey, why the sculptures?" And he was like, "Well, 'cause I wanna make sculptures as well." And I remember going, "Oh, yeah."

Eugene 1:56:27 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:56:27 Just because you're famous for this thing doesn't mean you should limit-

Eugene 1:56:30 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:56:30 ... yourself. Just because you're successful in this thing doesn't mean you should limit yourself. And then he started making a whole interactive show. I'll tell this to anyone who can. If you ever see a Derek Fordjour show come up-

Eugene 1:56:39 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:56:39 ... they're always free. They're at an art gallery, but they're always free. Go. It is one of the most amazing experiences you'll ever have, because he makes the life live. Like you, you're not n- you're no longer just looking at a painting.

Eugene 1:56:51 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:56:51 You, you, you're transported to a time: music, videos, paintings, sculptures, installations that you have to walk through. And I always

Trevor Noah 1:57:00 tell him, I go like, "Oh, you remind me, to use your analogy-

Eugene 1:57:04 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:57:04 ... that being a human being, no matter who you are, you have your antenna up there.

Eugene 1:57:09 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:57:10 Certain things will make them vibrate more than others.

Eugene 1:57:11 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:57:11 You'll catch more frequencies than others.

Eugene 1:57:15 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:57:15 But it doesn't mean that you should only vibrate at the strongest frequencies.

Eugene 1:57:18 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:57:18 Explore the other ones.

Eugene 1:57:19 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:57:20 Do you know what I mean?

Eugene 1:57:20 The faint signal.

Trevor Noah 1:57:21 Yeah. There's-

Eugene 1:57:22 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:57:22 ... this, this faint signal that's also wonderful to have. And so, I don't know. I, I, I think it was something like that with you, where I was just like, when I would see you there, I'd go, "Well, this can't be the only thing that you find interesting." So-

Eugene 1:57:35 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:57:35 ... it's only a matter of time before I assume you're just gonna go and make your own thing somehow, somewhere. So when it happened, I wasn't-

Eugene 1:57:43 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:57:43 ... I wasn't particularly shocked. I was like, "Oh, yeah. All right." I was waiting to see when this would happen.

Eugene 1:57:48 I think, um, [sighs] sometimes when you revisit the past, you get to see what the present and the future will definitely look like. What you guys are explaining now and from hearing this is, is no different from how ancient civilizations always rewarded and found a way to crowdfund, well, they called it something else back then-

Trevor Noah 1:58:06 [laughs]

Eugene 1:58:07 ... to crowdfund philosophers. And those philosophers should have apprentices, and those apprentices m- will one day become the philosophers of their time. And the written word was the only way that those philosophers ... Was their, was their YouTube.

Trevor Noah 1:58:21 Interesting.

Eugene 1:58:22 So those people were paid to think of ideas-

Trevor Noah 1:58:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Eugene 1:58:24 ... to envision how politics should be, and how art and culture, and if you had a great idea, if you could think, if you could paint, if you could sculpt, pay this person to just do that thing, and that's how civilizations are born. And I think we might just not see this now, but 200 years from now, if someone looks at this portal that was opened, which is YouTube, which is equivalent to thousand years ago to written and spoken word, scrolls-

Trevor Noah 1:58:46 It's like a-

Eugene 1:58:47 ... rock painting

Trevor Noah 1:58:47 ... the press. Yeah

Eugene 1:58:48 It's the same thing.

Trevor Noah 1:58:49 Yeah.

Eugene 1:58:49 This footprint, these ideas, they will never be new again. Everything that you're speaking about now might be obvious in 100 years, but will never be new again. And I guess that's the whole thing. That's the whole synergy, and that's what you've been good at spotting. You know, you've, you've spoken a lot of people off their cliffs and given them their careers without even knowing, is the ability to see another philosopher-

Trevor Noah 1:59:10 Mm

Eugene 1:59:10 ... and go, "If you explore this idea further, you might hit the jackpot of your own independence, of your own freedom, and of your own autonomy," because that's the ultimate reward. And I think that's why super, uh, thoughtful people who are philosophers, financial reward is never their aim. It's autonomy. It's them feeling like, "I can do what I want when I want."

Trevor Noah 1:59:31 Yeah.

Eugene 1:59:31 And once you've reached that, that's the pinnacle, and I think-

Trevor Noah 1:59:34 And I think everyone-

Eugene 1:59:34 ... YouTube is exactly that, right?

Trevor Noah 1:59:35 I think everyone benefits.

Eugene 1:59:36 It's a portal.

Trevor Noah 1:59:36 That's, that's the most important thing as well-

Eugene 1:59:38 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:59:38 ... is the understanding that everyone can benefit from it.

Eugene 1:59:41 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:59:41 That's what, that's what I also find, selfishly, I'm going as a fan of yours, "Well, I hope I see more." Same with your comedy.

Eugene 1:59:48 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:59:48 You remember f- even from back in the day, I was like-

Eugene 1:59:50 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:59:50 ... "When, when, when, Eugene?"

Eugene 1:59:52 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:59:52 "I'm waiting for this. I'm waiting for that."

Eugene 1:59:53 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:59:53 "I'm wait..." You know what I mean?

Eugene 1:59:54 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:59:55 I, I'm, selfishly, I'm going, "This, this, this benefits me-

Eugene 1:59:59 So-

Trevor Noah 1:59:59 ... so I'm assuming it benefits

Trevor Noah 2:00:00 others."

Eugene 2:00:00 Basically what you're saying is Michelangelo didn't spend years upside down painting the ceiling of the [laughs] of the Basilica for him to look at it.

Trevor Noah 2:00:08 Oh, damn.

Eugene 2:00:08 He did it for other people.

Cleo Abram 2:00:09 Other people.

Eugene 2:00:10 Yeah.

Cleo Abram 2:00:10 That's beautiful.

Trevor Noah 2:00:10 That is.

Cleo Abram 2:00:11 And so what's it, what's it been like? What, what is, if the lesson is a, an ability to more fully experiment with or express who you are, what's it been like for you? What do you feel like you're able to express now? What are you trying to experiment with?

Eugene 2:00:26 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:00:26 Oh, that's an interesting question. Damn. Um, okay, so here's, here's, here's the analogy I would use. I think a lot of life is us trying to climb a mountain, and a lot of the times, that mountain is often introduced to us by others. They tell us, "Hey, that mountain over there, man, if you can climb that mountain, phew, you've done it."

Cleo Abram 2:00:56 Mm.

Trevor Noah 2:00:57 And so then we, we grow up our whole lives going, "Okay, mountain. All right, mountain. One day." And then at some point you start. You start climbing the mountain. You start climbing the mountain. You s- and while you're climbing the mountain, you might meet some people along the way who've either come down or have settled at certain parts of it.

Cleo Abram 2:01:11 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:01:12 And they'll, you know, they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, the mount- welcome to the mount- yeah, the mountain. Yeah, mount, mountain, mountain. Yeah, mount. We're gonna ... I will see you at the mountain." And you're climbing it, and if you ask yourself the question, "Why am I climbing it?" It's c- because I've, I've always wanted to climb. I've always, you know?

Cleo Abram 2:01:24 Mm.

Trevor Noah 2:01:25 It's only when you get to what you have to define as your peak that you stop and go, "Oh, this is lovely. This was hard. But what mountains do I wanna climb? Do I wanna go walk in valleys?"

Cleo Abram 2:01:40 [laughs]

Eugene 2:01:40 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:01:41 "Do I wanna stroll a- along rivers? Do I want to... Oh, I've, I've now climbed what mountains people hoped I would climb."

Cleo Abram 2:01:49 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:01:49 "So now what would I like to do?"

Cleo Abram 2:01:51 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:01:52 And in that exploration, it's terrifying because first of all, success or failure becomes like a, you know, everyone has the, " [laughs] When are you, uh, you gonna get back to mountain?" And you're like, "No."

Cleo Abram 2:02:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:02:05 You know?

Cleo Abram 2:02:06 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:02:06 Like, one of the number one things people ask me in general is like, "So what's, uh, what's next?" That's, that's why I named the podcast is, like, What Now? "So, what now?"

Cleo Abram 2:02:15 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:02:15 "What now?" And I was like, "What do you mean?" And they're like, "So, what, uh, what, what..." I'm like, "I'm gonna live life." And they go, "Yeah, but I mean [laughs] beyond that." I'm like, "What is beyond living life?" And now I get to enjoy all of that more. I wouldn't have had the time before to sit down with you like this and to sit down with one of my best friends and explore and learn and have a deeper understanding of how you create and, you know what I mean? Get into the mind of somebody who's gonna be shaping generations to come because of her work.

Cleo Abram 2:02:43 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:02:44 You, I wouldn't have the time. And so everything in life I find now is, there's a, there's a beautiful book that I, that I read. We should have the, we should have the author on if he'll join us. Uh, it was a book called Four Thousand Weeks, and it's a book that just breaks down that the average human has about 4,000 weeks on this planet.

Cleo Abram 2:03:00 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:03:00 How do you wanna spend those weeks? And when you understand the limited nature of those weeks, you also understand that you're always gonna be missing something because you're doing something else.

Cleo Abram 2:03:09 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:03:10 And so instead-

Cleo Abram 2:03:11 It's inevitable

Trevor Noah 2:03:11 ... instead of, instead of having FOMO, rather enjoy this thing that you're actually experiencing. So when you're at this party, don't think about the party you're missing, or don't-