Human-Kind or Human Evil with Rutger Bregman  | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast

Rutger Bregman 0:00 [upbeat music] So I've got a toddler of three years old, and if my toddler would compete with a pig with, with quite a few tasks where intelligence is being measured, you know, the toddler would actually lose. Um-

Trevor Noah 0:14 I would watch that, by the way.

Speaker 0:15 [laughs] Great TV show.

Trevor Noah 0:17 That's great. I'm just like, that's great TV. We need to make that a show.

Speaker 0:19 Sounds like a Japanese TV show-

Trevor Noah 0:21 Really

Speaker 0:21 ... like The Toddler and the Pig.

Trevor Noah 0:22 Toddler versus Pig.

Speaker 0:23 And the toddler, which one shops better or- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:24 I'm actually in for this show. Yeah, we're gonna make this show, Toddler versus Pig. [upbeat music]

Rutger Bregman 0:34 This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 0:46 Rutger, wel- welcome to the podcast. I, I was, I was thinking about, you know, having you on and I was like, do you, do you get invited back anywhere?

Speaker 0:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:54 This is the thing I found myself asking.

Speaker 0:55 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 0:56 Like I, I-

Rutger Bregman 0:56 Well, you invited me back, Trevor

Trevor Noah 0:58 Well, I mean, yeah, but I don't, I don't think you've ever said anything against me.

Speaker 1:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:02 And I was

Trevor Noah 1:03 just thinking, you're the guy who went to Davos and-

Rutger Bregman 1:05 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:05 ... told all the billionaires who were there, like literally everyone, you sat there and you basically said, "You guys are a bunch of hypocrites."

Speaker 1:10 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:11 I'm paraphrasing obviously, but what I think they heard was, "You guys are hypocrites. You are not paying your fair share, and you're, you're acting high and mighty when, you know, avoiding the elephant in the room." You went to TED and you told everyone there they should be giving away their money, and everyone in the room's like the 1% and like, you know, poor people are actually, uh, right, and, like, the rich people are wrong for the way they're doing it. So I really wonder, like, do you get invited back to places?

Rutger Bregman 1:36 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:36 Like, has, ha- has, how did, like did Davos ever invite you back? Did TED, like where, where do you find that you have the, the best, um, recidivism rates?

Rutger Bregman 1:45 Well, [laughs] uh, no, I didn't, I didn't get another invitation to go to Davos.

Trevor Noah 1:49 Oh.

Speaker 1:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:50 Damn.

Rutger Bregman 1:50 It, it wa-

Trevor Noah 1:51 Shocking

Rutger Bregman 1:51 ... it was something I said, I guess.

Trevor Noah 1:52 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:53 Uh, Tucker Carlson, I also never heard from him again when I was in his show.

Trevor Noah 1:56 Uh.

Rutger Bregman 1:57 But apart from that, you know, yeah, people invite me back.

Trevor Noah 1:59 Wait, but okay.

Rutger Bregman 2:00 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:00 Help me out with the Tucker one. I thought that you and him would've been on the same page for what he's been saying. Wh- where was the big divergence?

Rutger Bregman 2:07 Well, I mean, this was just after I had gone to Davos, and indeed, I had said some nasty things about billionaires-

Trevor Noah 2:13 Yeah

Rutger Bregman 2:13 ... and their massive tax avoidance-

Trevor Noah 2:15 Yeah

Rutger Bregman 2:15 ... and their massive tax evasion, and then, you know, how they keep whining about their philanthropy. Uh, well, maybe, you know, just start with paying your fair share in taxes.

Trevor Noah 2:24 Right.

Rutger Bregman 2:24 Um, so then Tucker Carlson invited me on his show because apparently he liked it that I had, you know, stuck it to the globalist elite-

Trevor Noah 2:31 Yeah, yeah

Rutger Bregman 2:31 ... or something like that.

Trevor Noah 2:32 Yes.

Rutger Bregman 2:33 And I was like, "Well, you know, you're also the elite. You know, you're part of-

Speaker 2:37 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 2:37 ... part of the problem. Like you're, what is it? A millionaire funded by billionaires, so."

Trevor Noah 2:42 Oh, man.

Rutger Bregman 2:42 And he didn't like that.

Speaker 2:43 Love it. Where, where's your cut off point? Like what's, what's the income where you won't throw shade? I'm, I'm very curious about that. What's the number?

Rutger Bregman 2:52 That's a good question. Depends on where you live, I guess. I mean-

Speaker 2:54 Okay

Rutger Bregman 2:54 ... I just moved to New York, and it feels like you need to be a multimillionaire even to raise kids here.

Speaker 3:00 Yes, you do. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 3:01 I guess, uh, that depends. But it's easy to forget how wealthy people are when, when they're, when they live in rich countries. So-

Trevor Noah 3:08 Yes

Rutger Bregman 3:09 ... where I'm from, the Netherlands, if you have just a median income, which is about, what is it? €35,000 annually. So what is that? $40,000 or something.

Trevor Noah 3:19 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 3:19 Um, you're part of the richest 3.5% in the world. So remember Occupy Wall Street where people were saying, "We are the 99% and they are the 1%"? Well, actually from a global perspective, very often the people, you know, who say that stuff on TikTok or Instagram, you know, they're actually part of the top 5% in terms of income.

Speaker 3:37 But you know, Rutger, I, I completely agree 'cause I, I'm from England-

Rutger Bregman 3:41 Mm

Speaker 3:42 ... and you know, when, well, whenever I go home I'm like, "This country is so poor." And I'm gonna say that because Americans, like, skew your perception of what money is, right?

Rutger Bregman 3:52 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:52 Because there's just so much money here. Everything is so expensive. There's some, there was a piece in the New York Times recently about how they are giving financial aid to families that make $800,000 a year to attend private school. 'Cause these, even though, even though they have 800,000-

Trevor Noah 4:07 $800,000 a year

Speaker 4:08 ... dollars a year, they cannot afford to send their kids to these private schools, which cost about $70,000 a year. And if you have two, three kids, do the numbers, and that's kind of the class that does pay taxes.

Trevor Noah 4:19 Mm.

Speaker 4:19 Um, and sometimes it's just you live in a place where even though in the abstract, you know, you're, like, among the wealthiest in the world, you're like, "How am I gonna pay for gas? How am I gonna pay for my accommodation? How am I gonna give my kids a better life?" So you can be rich here and feel really poor.

Trevor Noah 4:34 Well, you, well, actually, then maybe that's a, that's, that's a good place to sort of jump into. Like, when we talk about people being in a 1% and in a 99% and et cetera, et cetera, is it fair to do that to people when they're not living in the globe? And I, I, I, I mean this because I sometimes think about, like, how people see their lives. You know, politicians will always talk to people and say, "You, your lives are better than ever. The mortality rate is lower than the..." And someone's like, "Yeah, I'm broke."

Speaker 5:00 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 5:00 "I'm poor." You know-

Rutger Bregman 5:01 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 5:01 ... someone will be like, "Oh, white privilege," and then there's a, a white guy working in, like, the Appalachian Mountain somewhere vibes-

Speaker 5:07 Yeah

Trevor Noah 5:07 ... and he's going-

Speaker 5:08 Where? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 5:08 ... "Where's my white privilege?"

Rutger Bregman 5:09 Mm.

Trevor Noah 5:09 Like, "I want this white privilege you're telling me about." And then you have to get academic and explain it to him. If you were Black, your situation would be way worse. What are we actually trying to do when we tell people that they're in the 1%?

Speaker 5:20 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 5:21 Are we trying to get them to give more, or are we trying to get them to feel guilty about having more?

Rutger Bregman 5:29 So I do think it's valuable if people, you know, who are really privileged, who went to a fancy Ivy League university or something like that, that they really realize that they are very privileged. Uh, maybe you guys remember from 2016 when, when Trump was first elected, we had this big round of soul searching in the United States and elsewhere as well, all about how is this possible? And we were trying to get into the minds of the Trump voters-

Trevor Noah 5:54 Yeah

Rutger Bregman 5:54 ... or in Germany, into the minds of the AfD voters, or in the Netherlands, uh, into the minds of the Geert Wilders voters. Um, and you know what? Now that Trump has been elected again, I think Can we please not do that again? You know, so not another round of soul-searching and looking inward and like, oh, we, all these, these calls for more empathy and compassion. Well, maybe it starts with actually practicing what you preach. I think that the big betrayal of educated elites in this country and elsewhere has not been a lack of empathy, but a lack of actually contributing to making this world a better place, right? You've got so many of these Ivy League graduates, like Harvard, 45% of Harvard graduates go into consultancy and finance. What do they do for a living? Do they really [laughs] , you know, contribute to society? Well, you can ask them, um, and quite a few polls find out that they're often very likely to consider their own job socially useless. So I, I, I really consider that the big betrayal, uh, that, that kind of hypocrisy where people claim the moral high ground-

Trevor Noah 6:52 Yeah

Rutger Bregman 6:52 ... but don't actually live up to it. Anyway.

Trevor Noah 6:54 So l- but let's talk about, let's talk about this through the lens of different countries. I actually love the fact that all three of us come from a place where we're all experiencing the world slightly differently.

Speaker 7:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 7:03 And obviously we all now live in the US.

Speaker 7:05 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 7:05 But we've all seen the idea of poverty and the idea of suffering expressed and maybe even, uh, experienced differently, you know?

Speaker 7:15 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 7:15 So when I think of the Netherlands, I think of a place where things are going well. You know-

Rutger Bregman 7:19 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 7:19 ... every time I'm in the Netherlands, I'm just like, "Wow, your roads are great, and the, everything seems to be working, and things are good." But then I see people voting the same way that, let's say, what a quote, unquote, "typical Trump supporter" would vote, like in the US. And they-

Rutger Bregman 7:33 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 7:33 ... and they're saying the same things. "Oh, you know, our lives are getting worse."

Rutger Bregman 7:36 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 7:36 "Things are getting worse." I go to the UK. Now, the UK doesn't seem as up to date as, let's say, the Netherlands. You know-

Rutger Bregman 7:44 Mm

Trevor Noah 7:44 ... London might be great, but as soon as you get a little bit out-

Speaker 7:46 Yeah

Trevor Noah 7:46 ... even when I went to Brixton, I was like, okay, okay.

Speaker 7:48 Not too much now, Trevor.

Trevor Noah 7:49 No, no, no, it's true.

Speaker 7:50 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 7:50 It's true.

Speaker 7:51 I'm from Brixton. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 7:52 Yeah, but there's like a part of Brixton that's super nice.

Speaker 7:54 Oh, yeah, and then you cross, you go past the tube station-

Trevor Noah 7:57 Exactly

Speaker 7:57 ... you're like, "What's going on here?"

Trevor Noah 7:57 Exactly.

Speaker 7:58 I know.

Trevor Noah 7:58 There's always one station.

Speaker 7:59 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 8:00 But even then, when I'm in the UK, I'm like, oh, wow, this is ... I understand that for your country, you're having a tough time, but the people there are really like, "Well, this is the, the worst experience we're having. It's, it's all going down." And then in South Africa, it's the same thing at a different standard or quality of living. And so it almost, it almost makes me wonder, I go, what is more important, what's actually happening to people or how they feel about what is happening to them?

Speaker 8:23 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 8:23 Do, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 8:24 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 8:24 Like, I don't know what you think-

Rutger Bregman 8:25 Mm

Trevor Noah 8:25 ... in the UK, do you think how they feel matches up with their lives, or do you think they just notice their lives depending on how they feel?

Speaker 8:31 You know, it's interesting maybe, 'cause now I compare the US to the UK a lot more now. I've lived here for, like nearly 10 years.

Trevor Noah 8:38 Yeah.

Speaker 8:38 And you know, when I go back to the UK, everyone's like, "Oh my God, the guns." [laughs]

Trevor Noah 8:41 [laughs]

Speaker 8:42 That's the, that's one of the first things they say about Am-

Trevor Noah 8:43 [laughs]

Speaker 8:43 They're like, "Oh, the guns and healthcare," and obviously Trump and the other lady that was trying to be president.

Trevor Noah 8:50 Yeah.

Speaker 8:50 They're like, "You live in a crazy place." But the thing I have noticed is kind of like this, 'cause of austerity, I don't know how much you know about the Tory government.

Trevor Noah 8:57 Mm.

Speaker 8:57 It's kind of like this urban, suburban, rural blight. You can see the lack of investment-

Trevor Noah 9:03 Yeah, you can

Speaker 9:03 ... in people and the country. And it-

Trevor Noah 9:05 Stores are boarded up.

Speaker 9:06 Stores are boarded up.

Trevor Noah 9:07 They're dilapidated.

Speaker 9:08 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 9:08 Yeah.

Speaker 9:08 Like the, where I used to work, I used to work in this, um, department store called Aldis, which is now closed, in the Whitgift Center in Croydon. And if you go to the Whitgift Center now, it used to be this, like bustling kind of shopping mall.

Trevor Noah 9:18 Uh-huh.

Speaker 9:18 And now you're like, it's like a ghost town, right?

Trevor Noah 9:21 Yeah.

Speaker 9:21 Like this NHS, which is like brilliant, free healthcare, but people are like, "I'm on a list for two years to get a knee replacement."

Trevor Noah 9:28 Okay.

Speaker 9:28 And when I go into central London, a lot of the wealth I see is foreign wealth. I don't necessarily come across people who are like, "I was born and raised in London, and I'm, made my dream come true here." So, you know, I see the, I just see this have, the gap between the have and the have-not seems to be getting wider everywhere. But in America it's more acute because there's just so much money here. If that makes sense. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:49 That makes a lot of sense. Rutger, I, I, I wanna know, like, when I think of you, and I think maybe this is probably how most people see you in the world who are familiar with your work, you know. They, they see the historian, they see somebody who's a journalist, and I think in many ways they also see somebody who is really adept at looking at studies and the way the world actually works versus how we think it works. So when you look at three different places where people have the same feeling even though they're having a different experience, what do you think it tells us about how people are experiencing the world?

Rutger Bregman 10:20 So I think that there are two ways to travel. You can travel in time, obviously, or you can travel in space. And if you go to another country, then very often you realize, oh, wow, so it's not ... There are different ways to doing things, right? And that's just like history. I think the main lesson of studying history is that things can be different. There's nothing inevitable about the way we've structured our society and economy right now. I've personally also always been fascinated by, by this question of how radical ideas, seemingly crazy ideas, can, over the years and decades, become reality.

Trevor Noah 10:53 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 10:54 Both for, for better and for worse. Um, actually, I, I, I spent about a year studying the abolitionist movement, mainly the British abolitionist movement, because that was the most successful one. And what you realize, if you go back to, say, the year 1750, and you would've stood on a street corner in London or Pennsylvania or New York, and you would've said, "Abolish sl- the slave trade. Abolish slavery," most people would've said, "You're, you're utterly nuts, you know? That, that could never happen, and we really need this, you know? This is like the, fundamental to our economy." And then obviously it took many, many decades, and it started with a small group of really committed Black and white abolitionists. But it does happen. So I've always been fascinated by those processes, how the, how the crazy can become inevitable.

Trevor Noah 11:36 What did they do well? Like, what, what was it that made their movement as successful as it was?

Rutger Bregman 11:42 You know, you could [laughs] write a very long book about that. I think that actually-

Trevor Noah 11:45 I mean, that's what you do. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 11:46 Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

Speaker 11:46 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 11:47 That's exactly what you do.

Rutger Bregman 11:48 Yeah. So as I was studying, in particular the British abolitionist movement, I was like, this is a, almost like a self-help book for modern-day activists and revolutionaries, because there are so many lessons we can learn from it. One of the first big lessons is that- It takes a coalition. So very often these days, people are, I think, too purist about their ideals, right? They only wanna work together with people who are exactly on the same side. But then you study some of these great movements, and you re- you realize that they were actually coalitions of people who very often disagreed vehemently about, you know, pretty fundamental things. So-

Trevor Noah 12:22 Oh, damn.

Speaker 12:23 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 12:23 In thi- in this case, it all started with the Quakers, which was a very weird, radical Christian sect. They didn't get much done for a long time until they started working together with the Evangelicals, right? This was in the day when Evangelicals were not just on, uh, TV trying to make money.

Trevor Noah 12:38 [laughs]

Speaker 12:38 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 12:39 [laughs] So that, that's, that's one really important lesson. An- an- another one that is, I think, very relevant today is that in history, very often the right things happen for the wrong reasons. So I, I really had this epiphany a- as I was studying the life of Thomas Clarkson, who was one of the main British abolitionists, and he was trying to make the argument in, in Westminster, in the British Parliament, that, uh, the slave trade ought to be abolished. And from a modern-day perspective, you would say, well, obviously, your most powerful argument is that this is the most immoral system that ever existed, right? It is ... The historians of the future will, will judge us very harshly for this. Well, actually, that didn't work at all. What Thomas Clarkson did discover is that once he started advocating for the suffering of, of white sailors on these ships, who were all dying in droves, then all the politicians were suddenly paying attention, right? And that was a really powerful political argument.

Trevor Noah 13:29 Yeah, I mean, this is something I'll, I'll, I'll chat to friends about when I think about movements or ideas. I go, oftentimes, we think because we live in the age of the most morality.

Speaker 13:39 Mm.

Trevor Noah 13:40 We think that morality is what moves people. But most of the time, it's an incentive that's, you know, just attached to the other person. Oftentimes it's financial, but when it's not, it's literally directly attached to them. And so you think of, uh, like Martin Luther King.

Rutger Bregman 13:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 13:54 It's amazing how the boycott was really, like, you know, one of the biggest tools in his arsenal. It was like, okay, Black people are not gonna ride on your buses. We're not gonna, like, you know-

Speaker 14:04 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 14:04 ... support your businesses. And then people are like, "Ah, okay." Apartheid in South Africa, as much as it was like, yeah, shame and this and that, it was the world saying, "Yeah, we're not gonna buy your stuff, and w- we're not gonna sell you stuff." And then at some point, the apartheid government says, "This is not, this is not sustainable for us. We can't, we can't keep doing this."

Speaker 14:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 14:22 And so then it makes me wonder, like, with your work-

Rutger Bregman 14:26 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 14:26 ... you know, you talk about, like, humans being kind and being good, et cetera, but then the work that you study seems to suggest that kindness isn't necessarily the thing that moves us in the right direction. So how do you deal with the paradox-

Rutger Bregman 14:39 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 14:39 ... in your own work?

Rutger Bregman 14:41 Yeah. So my, my very first book was called Utopia for Realists, and it was about all these crazy ideas like, can't we just abolish poverty by giving everyone money, you know, which, called a universal basic income. Uh, can't we abolish all borders around the globe? Can't we move to a much more participatory form of democracy? And at some point, I started to think, you know, what do all these crazy ideas have in common? Well, it's a different way of looking at humans. It's a more hopeful and more optimistic view of human nature. There's this old theory which says that humans deep down are just fundamentally selfish, right? It's, it's often called veneer theory, you know, the idea that civilization is just a thin veneer, and that below that, right, lies raw human nature. And I think the problem with that theory, it's, it's not just that I think it's wrong. The, the biggest problem is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Trevor Noah 15:30 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 15:31 Because once you start assuming the worst in other people, that's how you're gonna design your whole society, right? You're gonna have a society with a lot of bureaucracies, with a lot of cameras, with a lot of police. Um, and you're gonna bring out the worst in people. You're, you're gonna create the kind of people that your theory presupposed.

Rutger Bregman 15:50 So obviously, [laughs] you know, humans are capable of the, of the most terrible atrocities. We do things that penguins would never think of doing, right? Um, concentration camps, genocides, apartheid, you name it. But then, on the other hand, we're also, um, capable of incredible altruism. And I think that, you know, shifting that perspective a little bit, assum- and assuming the best in people, and also designing our, our systems of government, of, of companies, you name it, around that, um, could be a great way of making this world a much better place.

Trevor Noah 16:21 I actually think animals are as capable as we are. I think maybe I'm in the minority here.

Rutger Bregman 16:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 16:26 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 16:26 I think animals are literally just like us.

Speaker 16:30 Oh, you know-

Trevor Noah 16:30 I just don't think they have, like, the systems.

Speaker 16:32 Oh, you know, I have a vendetta-

Rutger Bregman 16:33 Mm

Speaker 16:33 ... against dolphins.

Trevor Noah 16:34 Wait, tell me more.

Speaker 16:34 Dolphins are, like, rapists. They're, like, the most evil-

Trevor Noah 16:37 No, I don't, okay, I don't agree with this

Speaker 16:38 ... horrible-

Trevor Noah 16:39 Nope.

Speaker 16:39 Dolphins?

Trevor Noah 16:39 Tell your story, and then I'll-

Speaker 16:40 Dolphins, like, seduce people

Trevor Noah 16:41 ... tell your story and I'll respond. Tell, tell your story.

Speaker 16:43 Don't ... Just read up on-

Trevor Noah 16:44 You-

Speaker 16:44 ... the stuff that dolphins do.

Trevor Noah 16:45 You tell me what you've read up on, and then we will fight about this. I don't like this anti-dolph- Please go.

Speaker 16:50 I am very anti-dolphin.

Trevor Noah 16:52 Tell me the story. Tell me what you've read.

Speaker 16:53 I know that dolphins are capable of rape. They often do rape.

Trevor Noah 16:56 Okay.

Speaker 16:57 Just like male cats.

Trevor Noah 16:58 Okay.

Speaker 16:58 And pigs are inter- incredibly intelligent. We shouldn't be eating pigs.

Trevor Noah 17:02 Let's stick with dolphins.

Speaker 17:03 And it's-

Trevor Noah 17:03 Don't run away from dolphins, Khaya.

Speaker 17:04 No, but my point is ... No, 'cause, like, every- at The Daily Show, it's, like, a bit about how much I hate dolphins.

Trevor Noah 17:09 [laughs] Yes.

Speaker 17:09 And I seem like a weirdo [laughs] 'cause I hate dolphins.

Trevor Noah 17:12 Oh.

Speaker 17:13 But I'm just saying that there are some animals-

Trevor Noah 17:15 Okay

Speaker 17:16 ... that are capable of, like, being incredibly cruel.

Trevor Noah 17:19 Here's, here's the ... I agree with ... Look, I'm on the same page.

Speaker 17:22 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 17:22 Animals, I think, can be as cr- what we consider cruel-

Speaker 17:25 Yeah

Trevor Noah 17:25 ... as, as-

Speaker 17:26 For sport, just for pleasure

Trevor Noah 17:27 ... as we can.

Speaker 17:28 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 17:28 I will say this, however, uh, about dolphins. We take for granted how intelligent dolphins are, right? We take for granted that dolphins do things for pleasure. They, they, they have many of the aptitudes that humans have.

Speaker 17:39 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 17:39 Right? So they'll even, like, smoke pufferfish, right? L- like, a lot of people don't know that.

Speaker 17:44 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 17:44 They'll literally smoke pufferfish and get high, right? They poke it, it blows up, then they, they have the toxin.

Speaker 17:49 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 17:49 Okay? So if dolphins are as smart as we are, how do we know that they aren't engaging in S&M the way humans do, and we are watching it from the outside? If you watched Fifty Shades of Grey As an animal, you would be like, "This is, this is torture. This is a terrible story of torture." 'Cause you don't understand what they're saying, you don't understand. You're just watching somebody-

Speaker 18:11 Okay

Trevor Noah 18:11 ... tie another person up and whip them.

Speaker 18:12 Okay.

Trevor Noah 18:13 Right?

Speaker 18:13 But I'm j- I'm, I'm, but what I'm trying to say, I'm actually disagreeing with our friend Rutger's here, like, belief that things can be-

Trevor Noah 18:20 No, I a-

Speaker 18:20 ... eternally good-

Trevor Noah 18:21 Yeah, I-

Speaker 18:21 ... or bad

Trevor Noah 18:22 ... I agree with you. I think animals, we are. And what I mean by that is I go, I think every animal does the most terrible things, but because they don't have systems, they haven't figured out ways to, to, like, expand them outward. Do, do you know what I mean, Rutger? Like, I, like-

Rutger Bregman 18:38 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 18:39 Okay, for instance, I, I, I'm bad with, like, specific troops and what the names of the different chimps or monkeys are, so-

Rutger Bregman 18:45 Mm

Trevor Noah 18:45 ... don't correct me on this.

Speaker 18:46 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 18:47 Chimp Twitter, chimp TikTok monkey crew whatever. I know it's wrong, but I know they do it. There's a group of monkeys or whatever they are somewhere, and what they'll often do is they'll invade the territory of other chimpanzees or monkeys, and they'll slaughter all of them. No reason.

Speaker 19:05 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 19:05 They just, like, slaughter them, and they'll, like, play around with the entrails everywhere, and then they'll just leave.

Speaker 19:09 Okay.

Rutger Bregman 19:10 Well, here's an interesting story, Trevor. So there are two species of primates who are, like, 99% genetically similar to us.

Trevor Noah 19:18 Okay.

Rutger Bregman 19:18 On the one hand, you have the chimpanzees, who indeed behave pretty much like you just described. So, like, a tribe of chimpanzees meets another tribe of chimpanzees that they never met before, you know, and it can get pretty violent. Now on, we also have the bonobos, and they're pretty much the opposite. Um, so if, like, two groups of bonobos meet each other, what they'll have is an orgy, you know? That's their-

Trevor Noah 19:40 [laughs]

Speaker 19:40 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 19:40 ... basically their way of, of, of saying hi. So this has been a question that's, that's, that's been, uh, asked by primo- a primatologist for a long time. Like, are we the chimpanzees or the bonobos? Um-

Trevor Noah 19:52 Maybe we're both.

Speaker 19:53 I think men are the chimpanzees. You know, I want all the-

Trevor Noah 19:55 Wow

Speaker 19:55 ... restraints on men, and everyone else is fine.

Trevor Noah 19:57 Wow.

Speaker 19:57 You already know, like-

Trevor Noah 19:58 Really?

Speaker 19:58 ... I'm a misandrist in the making.

Trevor Noah 20:00 Wow.

Speaker 20:00 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 20:01 You're just gonna throw us all under the bus at the same time.

Speaker 20:03 Yeah, men are predators. Men are scary. I don't speak to men after 5:00 PM that aren't, like, my husband or Trevor.

Trevor Noah 20:07 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 20:08 [laughs]

Speaker 20:08 Or my dad.

Trevor Noah 20:09 I don't speak to men-

Speaker 20:10 That's my general rule

Trevor Noah 20:11 ... after 5:00 PM.

Speaker 20:12 [laughs] That aren't, like... They have to be vetted, like Trevor or, like, my husband and my son.

Trevor Noah 20:16 Wow.

Speaker 20:17 And my life has never been better. Never been better.

Trevor Noah 20:20 Actually, Rutger, le- le-

Rutger Bregman 20:21 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 20:21 How do you respond to this? So as the person who writes a book talking about how humans are kind, how do you-

Rutger Bregman 20:27 Mm

Trevor Noah 20:27 ... respond to people who say to you, "Well, then what about murderers? Well, then what about serial killers? Well, then, well, what about..." Like, there's many bad things that happen in the world. How do you respond to them, and what data do you use to support it?

Rutger Bregman 20:40 Yeah, well, that's the problem if you write a book about human decency, is that you have to go on for hundreds of pages about all the terrible things we do.

Trevor Noah 20:46 [laughs]

Speaker 20:47 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 20:47 Um, look, for me it all starts with this question: How have we conquered the globe, right? Why have humans been so successful compared to, to other species? And for a long time we liked to believe that it is because we are so smart, right? Because we have these huge brains, uh, that take up, what is it, 20, 25% of our energy. But then, you know, scientists started studying other animals and, again, as y- as you just said, they're, they're pretty similar to us in many respects. There, there's now a new group of scientists who think that what has made us special as a species is something called survival of the friendliest. Um, it's, it's really the case that throughout our history it was actually the friendliest among us who had the biggest chance of passing on their genes to the next generation. Uh, because that basically helped people to work together on a scale that no other animal has been able to do. Now, the technical term for this is self-domestication syndrome. We know this with animals that we have domesticated, right?

Trevor Noah 21:40 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 21:40 Sheep and dogs.

Speaker 21:41 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 21:41 They've turned very friendly. And what Charles Darwin already noted is that these domesticated animals have certain traits in common. You know, you can see the, it's in their genetic profile, but they also get, like, these, um, these floppy ears or white spots in their fur, and most importantly, they look a little bit more childlike, and they also become more playful. Now, what's so interesting, if you study the skeletons of humans over the past, you know, thousands of years-

Trevor Noah 22:08 Mm-hmm

Rutger Bregman 22:08 ... what you see is the puppyfication of humanity. Uh, so we, we literally look much, like, friendlier, more, more childish than we looked 50,000-

Trevor Noah 22:18 We humans have become cuter over time.

Rutger Bregman 22:20 Exactly. Exactly. So this is my grand theory of, of human nature. I call it Homo puppy.

Trevor Noah 22:25 [laughs]

Speaker 22:26 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 22:26 That's the term I hope to be remembered for in the annals of science.

Trevor Noah 22:29 Ooh. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 22:29 But it's very, very much contrary to the way people often think about, you know, how we have conquered the globe, right? That w- we, you know, we, we-

Trevor Noah 22:36 Yeah, yeah

Rutger Bregman 22:36 ... we murdered all the Neanderthals or something like that. Well, actually, modern scientists think pretty much the opposite.

Trevor Noah 22:41 So I believe that theory.

Speaker 22:43 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 22:43 And the reason I believe it is because I drive. I know a lot of people who are anti-humans, and they'll be like, "You can't trust humans, you can't..." Then I go, "But you drive." If you spend any time driving, you believe humankind is good.

Speaker 22:54 No, I drive perpetually terrified, Trevor.

Trevor Noah 22:55 Yes, but you drive.

Speaker 22:57 Because I, I live in Los Angeles.

Trevor Noah 22:58 No, but you drive. If you drive, you are inherently believing that every other person on the road who's driving is going to respect a painted white line. This is literally what separates you-

Speaker 23:10 Okay, that's not, that's not a g- that's not morality, that's just reason. I believe-

Trevor Noah 23:12 No, but-

Speaker 23:12 ... humans are rational.

Trevor Noah 23:13 Yes, but what I'm saying is that's what I believe, and I think we have made it all about, like, kindness-

Speaker 23:18 Yeah

Trevor Noah 23:18 ... when really most of humankind is rational. And so in our rationality-

Rutger Bregman 23:22 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 23:22 ... I believe we are rational enough to realize that it's not a zero-sum game. And so when you see somebody else's child fall, you'll pick them up most times.

Speaker 23:32 I don't think so.

Trevor Noah 23:33 No, but I-

Rutger Bregman 23:33 Mm

Trevor Noah 23:33 ... I think that's, that's why we exist as people.

Speaker 23:35 Have you been to a park recently, Trevor? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 23:37 Have I been to... Yeah, but now, now you modern parents, you're not even allowed to, like, look at another person's child or help them.

Speaker 23:42 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 23:42 When I grew up, when I grew up, even in South Africa now, people can still be, like, friendly and help you with your child. You're talking about a very specific, like, sad thing that's happened in America. I argue for the most part human beings, and i- I think it's demonstrated in our very nature, right? We get on a plane. We trust. We don't even know the pilot. We've never even seen this guy's certificate, right? We just, we just fly. It's this weird system where we-

Rutger Bregman 24:05 Mm

Trevor Noah 24:05 ... because the trust is so latent and the, the morality is so latent, we then notice the anomalies in society.

Speaker 24:12 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 24:12 And then we go, "Look how bad we are."

Speaker 24:14 Okay, so R- I understand what you're both saying, Rut- Rutger, Trevor

Trevor Noah 24:18 She's very pessimistic, Rutger

Speaker 24:19 I, like, Rutger, I, I mean, I objected to your work 'cause you don't like Hobbes, and I agree with Hobbes. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 24:25 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 24:25 [laughs]

Speaker 24:26 I have a very-

Rutger Bregman 24:27 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 24:27 ... like dismal view of human nature. Um-

Rutger Bregman 24:29 You- you've got a picture of him on- on-

Speaker 24:31 Of course

Rutger Bregman 24:31 ... near your bed or something

Speaker 24:32 Yes, yes, Leviathan

Rutger Bregman 24:33 ... the- the- the old British philosopher

Speaker 24:34 I have a, I have a Leviathan poster in my bedroom

Rutger Bregman 24:36 [laughs]

Speaker 24:37 No, but I, I think, and maybe it's, I think actually becoming a parent has probably deepened my, not pessimism, it's fear. That's where I'm speaking from.

Rutger Bregman 24:47 Mm.

Speaker 24:47 And a lot of people have this genuine fear of oth- other human beings-

Rutger Bregman 24:52 Uh-huh

Speaker 24:52 ... of systems, of institutions right now, and I think a pronounced version of that is, like, the Trump voter who's like, "I want the wall. I don't want immigrants."

Trevor Noah 25:02 Yeah.

Speaker 25:02 Or it's like a mother like myself who, like, doesn't believe in sleepovers 'cause I'm like, "I don't want my kid getting molested."

Trevor Noah 25:08 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 25:08 And everyone's like, everyone's like to me, "You're crazy." And I'm like, "Well, child molesters are everywhere." They're like, "Are they really?"

Trevor Noah 25:12 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 25:12 But, [laughs] but, like, I think for a lot of people who are afraid for valid reasons, or, you know, you'll read the newspaper and they'll say crime is down, but, like, people feel like crime is up. Like, women won't jog in a park at night, you know? So it's really hard for, I think for myself and for a lot of people to reconcile this idea of, like, a good world and people being kind with, like, what, your lived experience, I guess.

Trevor Noah 25:37 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 25:37 And I think as a parent I feel that acutely, 'cause I'm like, everywhere I go I, like-

Trevor Noah 25:40 Yeah

Speaker 25:40 ... grab my kids' hands.

Trevor Noah 25:41 Yeah, but Rutger, you recently became-

Rutger Bregman 25:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 25:43 ... you, you recently became a parent. I, I wanna know if your views have changed, because you were the person who was, a- and, and please correct me at any point, but I mean, like, you were very much the person who's willing to, like, experiment and say, "Let's have open borders."

Speaker 25:55 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 25:55 "Let's give everybody universal basic income."

Rutger Bregman 25:57 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 25:57 "This is the world we should be living in."

Speaker 25:59 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 25:59 It's, open it up a lot more than you think we should, because we will actually be good to each other.

Speaker 26:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 26:04 I wanna know if you noticed any changes in yourself once you became a parent. Did you become more or less conservative in your own eyes?

Rutger Bregman 26:11 Hmm. So often, uh, people say, "Oh, becoming a parent really made me more idealistic because, you know, that was the moment when I realized that we really ne- need to take care of future generations." Uh, you know, a- actually quite often I see the opposite, is that people, I don't know, maybe turn, uh, inward a little bit. So I've been [laughs] actually trying to fight that, uh, impulse.

Trevor Noah 26:33 Oh, but you feel it though. It's pulling you, then.

Rutger Bregman 26:35 Yeah. Um, I think it's fine. You know, this discussion really reminds me of, uh, th- this- this news story from, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, when a Danish woman was arrested in, in the West because she had parked her stroller with I think her baby in it, uh, next to a cafe while she was getting-

Speaker 26:53 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 26:53 ... takeaway coffee, and she was arrested for child neglect. While in Denmark where she's from, you know, that's, like, entirely normal to do.

Speaker 27:00 Yeah, pretty standard to-

Trevor Noah 27:01 Yeah, I mean, that's life.

Speaker 27:02 Yeah, I, I-

Rutger Bregman 27:02 Yeah

Speaker 27:02 ... I think, Rutger-

Rutger Bregman 27:03 So-

Speaker 27:03 ... what I'm struggling with is-

Rutger Bregman 27:05 Uh-huh

Speaker 27:05 ... I grew up in a very, like, communal culture. So there was a lot of trust with, like-

Trevor Noah 27:10 Leave your baby outside

Speaker 27:10 ... going to people's, uh, leaving your, leaving your baby at people's houses, and you're like-

Trevor Noah 27:13 Yeah

Speaker 27:13 ... "I have to work. I do the night shift. I'm gonna come pick up my kid [laughs] -"

Trevor Noah 27:17 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 27:17 ... "when I can." Like, it's that type of culture. And I think in, like, this, like, hypercapitalist weird world where, where there are no communal bonds, like, you don't even know the names of your neighbors.

Rutger Bregman 27:27 Hmm.

Speaker 27:28 It becomes really hard to be like, well, your neighbor is probably trustworthy and kind, and somebody that is as valuable as yourself. Do you know? Like, I, I think that, like, our atomization is contributing to, like, this very real fear of other people.

Trevor Noah 27:45 Yeah.

Speaker 27:45 And people just hoarding their res- like, so I, I, it kind of becomes, like, this self-fulfilling prophecy in a way.

Rutger Bregman 27:51 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 27:51 But the way we live our lives I think informs it a lot.

Rutger Bregman 27:54 Yeah. And, and important, uh, that it's in the interest of those in power for us to be cynical about human nature-

Speaker 28:00 Yeah, for sure

Rutger Bregman 28:00 ... right? Because that justifies the hierarchy, that justifies all these power differences. You know, I was, as I was, uh, going on a book tour making this argument that humans have evolved to work together and that we are the product of survival of the friendliest, what really struck me is that I got most pushback from journalists. Um, and I think it's logical. I mean, journalists spend most of their, their careers, their days, uh, writing about what goes wrong, right?

Speaker 28:26 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 28:26 So people who actually are more tuned into the news, who are addicted to the news, they're often much more cynical. And I got most praise, actually. I l- received a lot of emails from hitchhikers. There's this one, forgot his name, this guy who, like, is the professional hitchhiker. He's been really going everywhere.

Trevor Noah 28:43 I didn't know this still exists.

Rutger Bregman 28:44 And he's like, "Yeah, that's my experience."

Speaker 28:45 Mm.

Trevor Noah 28:45 Wow.

Rutger Bregman 28:45 You can go everywhere. You can go every country, and people are basically friendly to strangers pretty much everywhere. Um, and I was like, well, that is lived experience, right?

Speaker 28:55 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 28:55 That is very different from the journalist mindset, where you continuously are on the lookout for newsworthy things. It's the problem with the goodness, right? A- as Trevor said, uh, uh, it's- it's- it's the water we swim in. It's very easy to miss because you're just used to it.

Trevor Noah 29:12 Yes.

Rutger Bregman 29:12 And by the way, one final thing. I, I had a pretty different experience, actually, moving to New York. So [laughs] um, I mean, I like my neighbors in the Netherlands, but in the Netherlands, right, our social circle is much more closed off. But I, I, you know, I- I- I moved here to Brooklyn, and everyone's so friendly.

Speaker 29:26 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 29:27 Everyone's so kind. Everyone's like, "No, welcome you to the neighborhood." Like, like, like, my neighbor literally said, "Yeah, you can have sleepovers. You invite people, you know, in my apartment. It's all fine." So I don't know. Maybe that's just Brooklyn. But my experience was pretty different.

Speaker 29:41 Yeah, I, I think your experience is also, like, informed by the body you're in, you know?

Rutger Bregman 29:45 Hmm.

Speaker 29:45 So my experience as a Black woman when I go to Nigeria-

Rutger Bregman 29:48 Hmm

Speaker 29:48 ... and they kind of clock me as a Westerner means-

Rutger Bregman 29:51 Hmm

Speaker 29:51 ... they're like, "We can get money."

Rutger Bregman 29:53 You're a, you're a white woman.

Speaker 29:53 "I can get money out of this one."

Rutger Bregman 29:55 [laughs]

Speaker 29:56 You know, may vary in certain parts of Los Angeles, and then, you know, so maybe-

Rutger Bregman 30:00 Yeah

Speaker 30:00 ... lots of people in the world are like-

Rutger Bregman 30:01 Yeah

Speaker 30:01 ... "You know what?"

Rutger Bregman 30:02 Yeah.

Speaker 30:02 "When I come into a space, people aren't welcoming." And then then that reinforces this idea of like-

Trevor Noah 30:07 Oh, yeah. Then it makes you feel like, huh

Speaker 30:09 ... are, are humans really kind? Are groups really kind?

Trevor Noah 30:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rutger Bregman 30:13 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 30:13 And as you said-

Rutger Bregman 30:14 Yeah

Speaker 30:14 ... it benefits these billionaires.

Rutger Bregman 30:15 Sometimes I get this question. Maybe you get that as well, Trevor, but maybe it's particularly true for me. When p- so people ask me- Uh, so Rutger, do you get any abuse on Twitter or, you know, on socials?

Speaker 30:27 Mm.

Rutger Bregman 30:27 And I'm like, "Mm, not really. I mean, not really anything that hurts. I'm, I'm white. I'm heterosexual. I'm, I'm a man."

Speaker 30:36 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 30:37 Um, so that's my advice if you don't want to get abuse online, you know. [laughs]

Speaker 30:42 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 30:43 Be a man, be heterosexual. Um, it works incredibly well. So yeah, you're absolutely, you're absolutely right that, um, and pa- and part of me wonders this as well, as I think about this book I wrote, Humankind, um, is this just one big expression of privilege, you know? Is it a telling fact that I wrote that book?

Speaker 31:04 Probably. [laughs] But-

Trevor Noah 31:05 But I-

Speaker 31:06 You know

Trevor Noah 31:06 ... can, can I, can I interject with one-

Speaker 31:08 Yeah

Trevor Noah 31:08 ... thought here? Y- you actually are the person who made me realize this one day.

Speaker 31:12 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 31:14 You said to me, "Oh, Trevor, of course you think that that's possible because of, you know, how you see the world or how the world treats you."

Speaker 31:22 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 31:23 And it's funny, Rutger, Christiana and I always have this back and forth.

Rutger Bregman 31:27 Mm.

Trevor Noah 31:27 And I will say, "Yes, I am the way I am because of how the world treats me, but I'm also the way I am, or the world is the way it is to me because of how I treat it." And I don't know when the cycle begins, to be honest with you, right? I think it is easier to be optimistic when things have gone right or when you remember things going right, 'cause sometimes-

Speaker 31:46 Yeah

Trevor Noah 31:46 ... I think it's more about your perception than the reality, right? And so even when I think about jogging or not jogging, I, I don't have kids.

Rutger Bregman 31:54 Mm.

Trevor Noah 31:54 But the, the one thing I will say is I think of how many parents, let's say in America, are terrified at the idea of their child being kidnapped when the data does not support it. It just does not. And I think it's very difficult in life, but we are oftentimes at the mercy of the things that have happened to us, and so we, that becomes part of how we see the world. I think very exceptional in- individuals are able to see the world beyond how it happened to them.

Speaker 32:27 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 32:27 And rather how they wish it to be, but most of us, most of us, you get robbed on a certain street, you probably will never walk on that street ever again.

Speaker 32:36 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 32:37 The chances of you getting robbed there again are probably zero, depending on where you are, but you just go like, "You know what? I, I'm not gonna do that. That street is where people get robbed." And so I, I, I hear what you're saying, but I sometimes think if every law or if every idea we make is based on the worst instance of what happened, planes wouldn't fly, cars wouldn't drive, children wouldn't run and play outside.

Speaker 33:01 By the way, Tre, I wanna preface this. I'm actually an abolitionist. You know, I'm like-

Trevor Noah 33:04 No, I know you are

Speaker 33:04 ... I don't even believe in police. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that, like, the way my perception is shaped as a woman, is that, like, the violence that-

Trevor Noah 33:13 Completely

Speaker 33:13 ... it's not, I'm not, I'm afraid of straight, you know I don't like men in general.

Trevor Noah 33:17 No, no, complete-

Speaker 33:18 It's crazy that I married one.

Trevor Noah 33:18 That's why the table is like this size.

Speaker 33:19 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 33:19 I mean, we, just to keep you-

Speaker 33:20 But it's, it's, it's, it's often it's, it's not just strange men, it's familiar men, right?

Trevor Noah 33:25 Yes.

Speaker 33:25 And so it's just like, I think-

Trevor Noah 33:27 Mm

Speaker 33:27 ... for some groups it's really, I find tremendous safety in other women. Now, if it was a world where it's just, like, my community of women and my friends around me, they're who I lean on the most, and I'm like, oh-

Trevor Noah 33:38 Mm

Speaker 33:38 ... if the world was them I'd feel differently. And I say that as someone that's, like, generally very optimistic about myself. I wouldn't have moved to America if I wasn't an optimistic person.

Trevor Noah 33:47 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 33:48 But I've had these, like, core experiences that have shown me that, I guess it was a lot of racism. People are wicked. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 33:55 Mm. Mm.

Speaker 33:55 It was, it was just, it was the racism I received as, like, a child-

Trevor Noah 33:59 Mm

Speaker 33:59 ... in the classroom.

Trevor Noah 34:00 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:00 I'm raising my children to be like, it's a world out there, and I have a son, and I'm like, at a certain age, you're, your boyhood ends much earlier than a kid with blonde hair and blue eyes. Um-

Trevor Noah 34:10 Mm-hmm

Speaker 34:10 ... so there's certain things, you know, you can't do in public. Like, you can't throw a tantrum past 10, 'cause someone-

Trevor Noah 34:16 Mm

Speaker 34:16 ... may call law enforce- enforcement. So I think, like, the, the idealized world view often comes, can come when you're kind of like a person who is automatically given the benefit of the doubt. And I think for people like myself, and people that are, like, in far worse positions, that doesn't happen. And so you don't necessarily experience the kind world.

Trevor Noah 34:34 Mm.

Speaker 34:35 Even if you put kindness out there.

Trevor Noah 34:37 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 34:38 Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with all of that. Um-

Trevor Noah 34:41 Wait, with all of it?

Rutger Bregman 34:42 Yeah, absolutely.

Trevor Noah 34:43 Wait, what?

Rutger Bregman 34:43 Yeah, it's, it's, it's-

Trevor Noah 34:44 No.

Rutger Bregman 34:44 It's a, no, but it's, it's-

Trevor Noah 34:45 Don't, don't come here and-

Speaker 34:46 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 34:47 Don't, no, no, no, don't do that. No. No, no, no. No. All of it?

Speaker 34:50 But, you know, but this is what I do think.

Trevor Noah 34:52 Okay.

Speaker 34:52 Can I say something?

Trevor Noah 34:52 All of it.

Speaker 34:52 I think the light bearers like Rutger, the nice white people-

Trevor Noah 34:55 [laughs]

Speaker 34:56 ... should go out there and do this type of work.

Trevor Noah 34:59 [laughs]

Speaker 34:59 I think what he's doing is very important, because he's the type of person people listen to. Um, you can have the ear of an entrepreneur and an activist. Because of your position, you're listened to and respected, and you're using y- your white privilege, male privilege for good. I think it's like this is actually the ideal, this is what you should use it for.

Trevor Noah 35:18 Com- that I agree with.

Speaker 35:19 You know what I mean? And, like-

Trevor Noah 35:20 That I agree with

Speaker 35:20 ... you know.

Trevor Noah 35:21 But I, I don't, look, I, we, this is, Rutger, I forgive you. You've stepped into a-

Rutger Bregman 35:26 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 35:26 ... this is a, a, a, a-

Speaker 35:27 It's a-

Trevor Noah 35:28 ... a fundamental friend-

Speaker 35:29 ... nearly 10-year fucking history of disappointing

Trevor Noah 35:30 ... yes, this is, this is us

Speaker 35:31 ... it's like, don't even.

Trevor Noah 35:32 This is us.

Rutger Bregman 35:32 Mm, mm.

Trevor Noah 35:32 You know, and it's good we keep each other on, on each other's toes.

Speaker 35:34 I say Trevor's optimistic 'cause he's like, he's like the chosen one, like Obama of South Africa, and it's like-

Trevor Noah 35:39 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 35:39 [laughs]

Speaker 35:39 ... everything's gone right for him. You know?

Trevor Noah 35:41 Everything has gone [laughs]

Speaker 35:42 You were born right at the perfect, he's, like, mixed race.

Trevor Noah 35:44 Everything has gone-

Speaker 35:44 Apartheid falls. He's, you know-

Trevor Noah 35:46 Everything has gone right for me

Speaker 35:47 ... funny, good-looking. John Stewart quits, he's fall, like, I just feel like-

Trevor Noah 35:50 Yes

Speaker 35:50 ... he's, like, got this, like, good karma.

Trevor Noah 35:52 So, yes.

Speaker 35:53 You know what I mean?

Trevor Noah 35:53 But, but this is-

Speaker 35:54 So I'd be optimistic about Trevor.

Trevor Noah 35:55 Yes.

Speaker 35:55 You know, I'd love the world.

Trevor Noah 35:57 But this is the thing, this is the thing that I believe.

Speaker 35:59 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:00 Everything you are saying is true.

Speaker 36:02 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 36:02 However, every negative thing I've also experienced.

Speaker 36:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:05 Do you understand what I'm saying?

Speaker 36:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:07 So I grew up in a house with domestic abuse.

Speaker 36:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:09 I grew up in a country where my people couldn't work or do anything.

Speaker 36:12 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:12 My mother herself wasn't allowed to go, my grandmother m-

Speaker 36:15 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:15 So, like, my, you, you, do you know how you've, what kind of life you've lived when a flushing toilet was, like, a thing you were excited for?

Speaker 36:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 36:23 That's the kind of life I lived. And I'm not even saying this like a woe is me thing.

Speaker 36:26 Yeah, yeah, no, no.

Trevor Noah 36:26 I'm just, like, I remember being like, "Yeah, a-" Flushing toilet today. Ah, no flushing toilet this month. And then flushing toilet another time. And then, like you, you have your techniques. You start learning which newspapers you prefer to wipe your ass with.

Speaker 36:38 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 36:38 This is life, right? So I'm not ... I never say this to diminish another person's experience. I really don't.

Speaker 36:44 No, I don't think you do. You don't.

Trevor Noah 36:45 But I, but I, but I think, and you know, it's some of what you say in, in, in, in your book, Rutger, and when you speak. I think some of the time, it's so hard, but some of the time, the way we are perceiving something affects our ability to not live in that world because we are perceiving it as being that way.

Speaker 37:06 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 37:07 Right?

Speaker 37:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:08 And so, I mean, I've even learned this in therapy. I think we sometimes think, and maybe that's b- I wasn't raised this way. We sometimes think it's happening to us, and us alone, and we're the victims, and we're the only ones.

Speaker 37:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:20 And we ... That's why I genuinely have never worn it. I don't wear it as a cape of anything because I go, "My friends had parents, mothers who were abused."

Speaker 37:29 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:29 So in our community, this was a thing that was normal, and over time in South Africa, we fought against gender-based violence, and we continue to.

Speaker 37:36 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 37:36 But I, because I was never taught that, "No, Trevor, this is happening to you," I then didn't think that it's happening to the world, and I didn't think that I was, like, suffering because of it.

Speaker 37:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:45 Y- y- you know what I mean?

Speaker 37:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:46 So that's why I come back to the car analogy of it all. The reason I say I don't agree with you on all of it, but you know I agree with you on most of it.

Speaker 37:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 37:53 Is I go, there are still hundreds of thousands of women who do run at 5:00 AM. There are still hundreds of thousands of women who do run-

Speaker 38:02 Do you know what they have?

Trevor Noah 38:02 At 10:00 PM.

Speaker 38:03 I know I carry a box cut- cutter in my handbag.

Trevor Noah 38:05 Yes, yes, I-

Speaker 38:05 Because you run with like pepper spray. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 38:06 No, I understand this, but this, this is what I mean. This is, this is, like, one of the hardest things. In fact, you know what? Let's take it away from a personal injury in that way, and let's think of it through the lens of crime. 'Cause in, in South Africa we deal with this. South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, right? But it is not happening to most of the people most of the time.

Speaker 38:26 Yeah, for sure.

Trevor Noah 38:26 And most people have not been affected by that crime, but they do get affected by it, and if it does actually happen to you, it is the only thing that is true in your world.

Speaker 38:34 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 38:34 And I cannot say to anybody who has been affected, "Ah, no, it's not as bad as you think," because to them it is the full version of what they think.

Speaker 38:41 For sure.

Trevor Noah 38:41 D- do, do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 38:43 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 38:43 So what I'm always trying to do, and this is why I fight with my friend, because I go, "I don't ever want us to live in a world where we think..." L- like you said, you can only hold one thought. Some people will say, "My parents didn't love me. They were abusive." I'm like, or your parents grew up in a world where they beat you, and all kids were beaten.

Speaker 39:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 39:04 And yeah, now we don't believe that that's the right thing, and now they think it's, like, timeouts and conversations. But to Rutger's point, maybe in, like, 15 years, maybe in 20 years, they'll be like, "Hey, actually timeouts are worse for a child's mental health."

Speaker 39:17 Oh, it's a- it's al- it's already happening.

Trevor Noah 39:18 Oh, well, there you go.

Speaker 39:18 There's an anti-timeout movement. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 39:19 Well, there you go.

Speaker 39:20 Right now. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 39:21 D- do you know what I mean? So I, I think there's a, there's a, there's a difficulty in processing how kind humans are versus how bad human beings, individual, can be, and how much, how much harm they can do versus the ... You know what I mean?

Speaker 39:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 39:37 One person can kill many people, and now all of us feel like the world is full of killers, but we forget that, like, when one person was shooting in a crowd, everyone was running.

Speaker 39:45 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 39:46 So there's more runners than there are shooters.

Speaker 39:48 I know, I do believe s- listen. I, I wanna be clear so everyone doesn't think, like, I'm complete pessimist, right?

Trevor Noah 39:53 No, no, I don't think

Trevor Noah 39:54 you are.

Speaker 39:54 You know, I-

Trevor Noah 39:54 I think you're a secret optimist, in f- I think you challenge us.

Speaker 39:56 I'm optimistic about myself.

Trevor Noah 39:57 [laughs]

Speaker 39:57 I keep telling you guys, but everyone ... I just, um, I, um, 'cause, you know, I, I, uh, there's so many people in my life I love because of their kindness, right? So it'd be like-

Trevor Noah 40:08 Yes

Speaker 40:08 ... ridiculous for me to say. It's just I struggle with the idea of h- humanity as kind, um, 'cause of the way, where we are right now. But that can change.

Trevor Noah 40:18 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 40:18 I'm open to my mind being changed.

Trevor Noah 40:20 So Rutger, what, if you had to throw a Hail Mary-

Rutger Bregman 40:23 Hmm

Trevor Noah 40:23 ... what is one thing, one, like I know it's hard, but just like one example, story, study-

Speaker 40:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 40:31 ... data.

Rutger Bregman 40:31 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 40:32 Anything where you would go, "This is how you can believe that humankind is kind."

Rutger Bregman 40:38 My favorite story in the book is about this moment in 1965 when six boys shipwrecked on an island near Tonga. Um, I had asked myself the question if there, there had ever been a real Lord of the Flies, and it turns out there was. Six boys were at this boarding school in Nuku'alofa, the capital of Tonga. They were really frustrated.

Rutger Bregman 41:00 They thought s- school was boring, and they were like, "Let's go on an adventure." Um, they borrow a boat from a local fisherman, and then ended up in a storm on the very first night. They drifted for eight days, incredibly hungry, incredibly s- thirsty, but miraculously survived and then washed up on this island that was, you know, totally forgotten, uninhabited, and they survived there for 15 months. Um, and it's a real example of survival of the friendliest because if they were really, like, nasty and not working together, well, we wouldn't be here able to tell their story. Um, now what's happening there, I think it's really a combination of things. Obviously, it's Tongan culture, right, which is, um, a very cooperative culture w- with very essential skills, where t- kids learn to swim, you know, basically [laughs] in their first year already.

Speaker 41:50 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 41:50 So that's obviously essential. I also think, though, that it is a part of human nature what we see expressed there. Uh, as I said, survival of the friendliest. Um, it's kids working together and, um, exhibiting traits that are also very much a part of who we are as a species. So, you know, to Trevor's point again, this is one of the s- things where you can hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time. Yes, we're incredibly selfish, cruel. Uh, we're also one of the most cooper- cooperative and altruistic, uh, species in the animal kingdom.

Trevor Noah 42:22 I think I realized because of your work, the Lord of the Flies has had more impact on how we see humankind- ... than the real story, which it wasn't based on obviously.

Rutger Bregman 42:33 Mm.

Trevor Noah 42:33 But I'm saying, The Lord of the Flies is how people f- people think it's a real thing. They're like, "Well, I guess this is Lord of the Flies."

Rutger Bregman 42:38 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 42:38 And you're like, "That's a fiction." We have based our reality on a fiction, and yet-

Rutger Bregman 42:43 Mm

Trevor Noah 42:43 ... the realities never seem to be able to create the fictions that we want to live in or want to create.

Rutger Bregman 42:49 Yeah. And this is particularly the case when you look at natural disasters. So look at how disasters are portrayed in series and movies, and it's the same thing all the time. Civilization is a thin veneer, and people very quickly turn into animals, beasts, barbarians. They start raping, looting, plundering, and that's also how the press often behaves, you know? Uh, the, the most famous case here is Katrina 2-

Trevor Noah 43:10 Mm-hmm

Rutger Bregman 43:10 ... 2005, the terrible flooding, and the press was full of these horrible stories of people getting shot, of the looting and the plundering. Well, actually, we have got 60, 70 years of empirical evidence of anthropologists, sociologists going into these, um, places and actually interviewing people, doing the rigorous empirical research. And time and time again, they found that disasters actually bring out the best in people. So every single time, doesn't matter where it happens, if whether it's Japan or the US or South Africa, you get an explosion of altruism. Because o- once things really get serious like that, people are like, "Okay, we're gotta stick together. We gotta survive together." Sure, there are always some examples that then will get magnified in the press, but, like, the big headline story should be, "Oh, people are working together once again."

Trevor Noah 43:57 Yeah. And I think a lot of that becomes how we see

Trevor Noah 44:00 the world. If we are told the world is a way, then it does become that way.

Rutger Bregman 44:04 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 44:04 You know? So I, I, I, I ... That's why I appreciate ... Honestly, I, I, I love what you do. Like I say, you don't tell us the world is perfect, but you tell us that humankind is inherently kind. We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break. So actually, Rutger, may I, let me ask you this. As a historian, you look at the world differently because you have to. Are things better or worse?

Rutger Bregman 44:38 Huh.

Trevor Noah 44:39 'Cause, 'cause, 'cause I have people phoning me and texting me now.

Rutger Bregman 44:43 Uh-huh.

Trevor Noah 44:43 And they'll say to me, they'll lead every conversation with, "Hi, Trevor, hope you're well, all things considered."

Rutger Bregman 44:48 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:49 Or they'll be like, "Hi, Trevor. Hope everything's going good, considering the world we're in right now." And I understand where they're coming from, but then there's a part of me that goes, "But when, when was it not bad in some way?"

Rutger Bregman 45:00 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 45:01 Or ...

Rutger Bregman 45:01 I, I would say the answer's pretty simple. In the past, everything was worse, um, if you zoom out far enough at least. Um, you know, we've seen incredible progress in the fight against poverty, for example. It's just, just like in 1980, 50% of the world population lived in extreme poverty. Now that's less than 10%.

Trevor Noah 45:20 50%?

Rutger Bregman 45:21 Um. Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:22 Damn.

Rutger Bregman 45:22 It's really extraordinary. Child mortality has been declining massively. On the other hand, though, I also understand why people are really scared. Uh, in many respects, I'm pretty terrified. Do you guys know this website called Our World in Data? It's my favorite website on the internet.

Trevor Noah 45:34 Our World in Data?

Rutger Bregman 45:36 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:37 No, no, no.

Rutger Bregman 45:37 It's really-

Trevor Noah 45:38 Tell us about it. What, what is it?

Rutger Bregman 45:38 It's a, it's really a great website with the ... Like, has the best collection of data on what's going on in the world basically.

Trevor Noah 45:44 Okay.

Rutger Bregman 45:44 And the guy who, who founded that is a statistician called Max Roser, and he always says that there are three statements that are true at the same time. So the first statement is the world is bad. I mean, that is true. There are millions of kids dying from easily preventable diseases every single day. There are billions of animals being tortured in factory farms right now. Um, autocracy is on the rise. So there are lots of bad things. Um, the second statement is also true, that the world is much better. We have made extraordinary progress, and you won't see that if you just follow the news because the news is about what happens today instead about what happens every single day.

Trevor Noah 46:18 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 46:18 You know, it doesn't teach you all that much about the big structural trends. Um, and the third statement is also true, which is we could do so much better. You know, if y- if you take a look at the resources we have, how many talent we have, how much capital we have, we should already have abolished poverty around the globe. You know, we should already have, uh, abolished most, uh, terrible diseases. Like, the fact that malaria still exists, that tuberculosis still exists, I mean, that's, that's just an outrage. So yeah. As y- as you can see, I've got mixed feelings about this.

Trevor Noah 46:49 So when you, when you look at the world we're in now, how do you think the historian version of you in 200 years will look at you/us? This is something I always think about-

Rutger Bregman 47:00 Mm. Mm

Trevor Noah 47:00 ... when I, when I think of the time I'm living in.

Rutger Bregman 47:02 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 47:03 Or even everything that happens, right? An election comes, and then people are like, "Oh, it's, this is the worst result. I can't believe ... " But then literally half of the country, let's say in America, are like, "Oh, thank God."

Rutger Bregman 47:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 47:13 "Reprieve. We are now finally on the right track." And in moments where there's no chaos, I just sit there and I go, how do we know which one actually is?

Rutger Bregman 47:23 Hm. Hm.

Trevor Noah 47:24 And how do you know how the future will view us in this, are we the good guys of this time?

Rutger Bregman 47:30 I, I think it's one of the most fascinating questions, uh, you can basically [laughs] ask about history. Um, so if you look at all these civilizations we've seen, whether it's the Romans or the Aztecs or people in the Middle Ages, people throughout history have believed that they are the most civilized, right?

Trevor Noah 47:49 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 47:49 Uh, that they are on the right side of history. So the Romans, for example, thought that they were so civilized because they didn't sacrifice children, uh, for the gods.

Trevor Noah 47:57 That's a good move. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 47:58 Then, then, [laughs] then they did have the Colosseum, you know, and they did throw naked women for the lions, et cetera, but that was just good entertainment during lunchtime.

Trevor Noah 48:06 Yep. Not a good move.

Rutger Bregman 48:07 Um.

Trevor Noah 48:07 Okay.

Rutger Bregman 48:08 So today we like to see ourselves as really civilized because we've, you know, officially abolished slavery and the slave trade. We've got, you know, universal suffrage. Uh, in many countries now we now have gay marriage. So surely we gotta be the most civilized, right? Well, that would be very coincidental if- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 48:27 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 48:27 ... if we turn out to be that one civilization who got it all figured out. I think it's quite likely that the historians of the future will look back at us, and I'm not just saying, like, oh, the MAGA Republicans. No, I'm, I'm talking, like, about me, like- [laughs]

Trevor Noah 48:40 Yeah

Rutger Bregman 48:40 ... about you. Like, we're probably doing some things that are- ... terrible, like moral catastrophes. And today, you know, we have lots of progressives and liberals who care deeply about human rights and about all the injustices, but keep eating factory farmed meat of animals that have been horribly abused. So that for me, is one of those examples where the historians of the future could be like-

Trevor Noah 49:01 They're gonna look at us

Rutger Bregman 49:02 ... what the hell, yeah, what the hell were these people thinking? How could they unthinkingly keep participating in that cr- incredibly cruel system?

Trevor Noah 49:10 They're gonna be on the news with their co-host who's a cow.

Rutger Bregman 49:13 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:14 'Cause animals will be talking in the future. Let's be clear on this, everybody. And then-

Rutger Bregman 49:17 They are already talking

Trevor Noah 49:18 ... and then, yeah, literally, and they-

Rutger Bregman 49:19 It's just that we can't understand them yet.

Trevor Noah 49:20 Yeah, and then they're gonna ask the cow, they'll be like, "What do you think?" It'll be like, "Whoa, man-

Rutger Bregman 49:23 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 49:23 ... the things you people, you humans used to them." The human will be like, "I wasn't around back then. Those were my grandparents. You can't judge me for their actions."

Rutger Bregman 49:31 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 49:31 So are you a, are you a vegan?

Rutger Bregman 49:33 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 49:34 Oh, okay. Have you always been a vegan?

Rutger Bregman 49:36 No, no, no. [laughs] I, I was a quite fanatic carnivore.

Trevor Noah 49:40 Yeah. Well then what, then what changed?

Rutger Bregman 49:43 I guess reading. Um, so I think the, the, the final nudge came from Yuval Noah Harari. You had him on a show-

Trevor Noah 49:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Rutger Bregman 49:50 ... on the show as well, right? So he wrote this book called Sapiens about, you know, the big picture, right? The history of humanity of the last hundreds of thousands of years. And in that book he like doesn't make any moral judgment whatsoever. So he talks about the Nazis and he's like, I don't know, describing it as, you know-

Trevor Noah 50:11 Yeah, like he-

Rutger Bregman 50:11 ... just, just another culture.

Trevor Noah 50:12 Yes.

Rutger Bregman 50:12 Right?

Trevor Noah 50:12 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 50:12 Just another way of, of, you know, the way humans can behave. Um, and then at the end of the book, he talks about the way we treat animals and he has to, he has this offhand remark where he says, "Well, this is probably the biggest crime in all of human history." And, um, I thought that was very convincing just, just by looking at the numbers. Because it, like the total n- number of people who ever lived is estimated at 117 billion. The total number of animals that we slaughter every year is 80 billion. So it takes us just a year and a half to slaughter as many animals as the amount of people that ever lived. And then if you look at the latest science, like every other week there's a new paper coming out about how sentient, how sensitive, how intelligent chickens are, cows are. Um, and I also felt so ignorant once I started digging into it. Like for example, the fact that cows give milk. I was like, "Yeah, cows give milk. That's what they do."

Trevor Noah 51:05 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 51:06 Well, actually, um, y- they have to be pregnant, uh, every, every year. They have to be ma- pregnant basically, and then we take away all these calves, which is like a p- a product that we very often can't use. So we, um, we abuse those calves in a terrible way as well.

Trevor Noah 51:21 Yeah.

Speaker 51:22 I actually love veganism, like as a way of life.

Rutger Bregman 51:24 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 51:24 It's just like, I love leather.

Trevor Noah 51:25 I, I think it's, I think it's crazy.

Speaker 51:27 I like leather. I like Chanel bags.

Trevor Noah 51:27 I think it's crazy. I'll, I'll be on the record and say this.

Speaker 51:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 51:30 I think it's crazy. I think, I think, I have fights with my friends about this all the time.

Rutger Bregman 51:34 Uh-huh.

Trevor Noah 51:35 So actually, Rutger, let me, let me ask you this. For a few reasons, one, the, the way we inflict pain on them is unnecessary oftentimes.

Speaker 51:43 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 51:43 And we waste. We throw away so many of the animals that we've killed that I'm like, "People, what are we doing here?"

Speaker 51:49 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 51:49 Do you know what I mean? If you're going to inflict pain on somebody, at least like use it, eat it. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you're gonna kill me and my family, eat us-

Speaker 51:56 Mm

Trevor Noah 51:56 ... is how I think even as a human.

Speaker 51:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:57 And I'm not a pig or a cow, but I don't like, you know, that-

Speaker 52:00 The waste product.

Trevor Noah 52:01 Yeah. And I'm guilty of it too. Please don't get me wrong. I don't like the intelligence argument at all. I don't like that at all because I find myself going, if people are telling us that we should not be eating animals because they are sentient and they think, and they feel, I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So now we're making this a moral thing, so we should or shouldn't eat things that are closest to us as humans, and then the things that are not, we shouldn't treat accordingly."

Speaker 52:26 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 52:26 I don't wanna live in a world where we are making that type of judgment based on what we think or how close we think something is to us.

Speaker 52:33 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 52:33 Because that's also the, the argument we use to inflict pain and suffering on other people. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 52:38 Interesting.

Trevor Noah 52:39 So we'll be like-

Rutger Bregman 52:39 Hmm

Trevor Noah 52:39 ... "Oh, no, they're, they're not as intelligent as we, as therefore they can be slaves, therefore they can be punished and beaten and put in prison." And I, I think that's like the same argument, just the other way around.

Rutger Bregman 52:50 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 52:50 So I go, if you're gonna eat something, eat it with respect. Do you know what I mean? Be like, yeah, yeah. Like I don't think a lion looks down on a zebra. You know what I mean?

Rutger Bregman 52:57 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 52:57 I don't think a lion's like, "This stupid zebra, that's why I'm eating it." It's just like, "No, no, no, this is how I live, and I caught you-

Rutger Bregman 53:02 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 53:02 ... and I eat you." Some of the indigenous cultures I've bumped into traveling around the world, they have a very respectful thing. Even in South African culture-

Speaker 53:09 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 53:09 ... you know, a lot of it.

Speaker 53:10 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:11 When you slaughter a, a sheep or a cow, and it's meant to be an auspicious occasion, by the way.

Speaker 53:16 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 53:16 Because, you know, there's this, there's this, um, misconception people have about Africans and eating meat, and the truth is Africans didn't used to eat that much meat. You would only slaughter an animal for a big occasion. It was like you were giving away your daughter to another tribe. What a loss of life-

Speaker 53:33 Yeah

Trevor Noah 53:33 ... what a loss of a future. And so you would, you would have this moment, and in that they would teach you, when you're slaughtering the animal, you first go and speak to it. You'd say, "Thank you." You would have this acknowledgement.

Rutger Bregman 53:45 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 53:45 And so I genuinely, I don't mind like vegan or not, I think everyone should be able to do what they can, but I don't like it when we make it about intelligence or not. It's like-

Rutger Bregman 53:54 Yeah

Trevor Noah 53:54 ... no.

Rutger Bregman 53:55 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 53:55 So are we saying like dumb things deserve to be killed?

Rutger Bregman 53:58 So there's a famous philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, in the late 18th century, who already made the point. It's not about how smart animals are. It's not about can they talk, can they reason? It's about can they suffer? That's-

Trevor Noah 54:09 Ah, I like that

Speaker 54:10 Mm-hmm

Rutger Bregman 54:10 ... that's the essential point. There was a recent, um, uh, scientific committee who, um, published this big report about when you cook, uh, crabs alive, well, uh, they suffer immensely, right?

Trevor Noah 54:25 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 54:25 I think that matters. Look, I'm not fundamentally against eating meat, not at all. What I'm against is factory farming.

Trevor Noah 54:31 I agree.

Speaker 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 54:31 And I think it's really important-

Speaker 54:32 Mm-hmm. Yeah

Rutger Bregman 54:33 ... to acknowledge as a, as a consumer, um, in the world today, is that, what is it, 95, 98% of all meat comes from factory farms. So if you say, "Well, I'm radically kinda- ... gonna cut down the, the amount of meat I eat. You know, I'm just gonna eat meat that was hunted or something like that, or that was really raised in an ethical way. I mean, that, that's fine. But then please also acknowledge that you will have to eat 5% as much or something [laughs] as you're currently eating

Trevor Noah 55:00 Yeah, which I, which I, which I think is necessary. I think we have too much of it. I wanna know what you think about it through the lens of, let's say, um, capitalism.

Rutger Bregman 55:07 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 55:08 When I told some of my friends you were coming on the podcast, the fir- the first thing some of them said was, "Oh, it's the guy who hates capitalism. I love him." You know? They were like, "He hates, he hates business and he hates capital- I love him." Then I was like, I don't know, does he think of himself that way?

Rutger Bregman 55:21 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 55:22 And I wondered, and I still do, do you think there's such a thing as good capitalism? Do you think companies can do good? You know, you talk about humans being kind, but in-

Rutger Bregman 55:32 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 55:32 ... your research and in your work, do you think that can be extended to companies?

Rutger Bregman 55:37 Oh, absolutely. You know, I'm a pretty old-fashioned European social democrat, so I think that sometimes some tasks are best done by the government, sometimes by civil society, and sometimes by markets, right? I wouldn't want the government to try and invent an iPhone and to market it to customers, you know? They're probably gonna be really bad at it.

Trevor Noah 55:55 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 55:56 Just look at the Soviet Union.

Trevor Noah 55:57 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 55:57 So actually, one thing I like about having moved to the United States is that, yeah, some cliches are really true. There's a much more entrepreneurial culture here. So, um, a couple of my friends launched this journalism platform in Amsterdam, uh, a decade ago, and they had this night where they presented the plan, right? We wanna revolutionize journalism. We wanna really change it, not focus on all the bad news, but focus on the structurally important things. And what happens in the Netherlands, if you pitch something new like that, you know, like 90% of the people there will say, "Ah, it's not gonna work. Ah, probably don't bother." Uh, and then if it doesn't work, then they're like, "You see? Told you so." I recently had a dinner like that here in New York, um, where, um, someone invited me to talk to a bunch of journalists and entrepreneurs and blah, blah, blah. And I say, "Well, I've this idea for starting an organization that helps as many talented people as possible to work on the most pressing issues of our time." And everyone's like, "Yeah, absolutely. That's gonna work. Yeah."

Trevor Noah 56:52 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 56:52 "You're gonna build this huge global movement of ambitious idealists, and I can't see why it's not gonna work. Go, you." And actually, if you're building something new, if you're trying something new, that is really what you want. So, um-

Trevor Noah 57:03 Yeah, you want, you want, you want that push in the back. That's what you want.

Rutger Bregman 57:06 Exactly. So no, I'm, I'm, I'm not like ... This whole debate about socialism versus capitalism, it's like a dicto- dichotomy that doesn't exist. Sweden is a capitalist country, right? Denmark is capitalist. It's like, uh, you can be a pluralist. Um, you can have rules. You can have a flourishing economy where billionaires actually pay their taxes. And the fact that we think we have to choose between either/or, that it's either, you know, Elon Musk paying very little in taxes, taking over the government or, you know, the Netherlands or Denmark, where you can fall asleep on the street and it's very hard to be an entrepreneur, well, there's something in the middle probably.

Trevor Noah 57:45 Yeah, I think we are living in a world where everything's being distilled. You and I talk about this a lot.

Speaker 57:48 Mm.

Trevor Noah 57:49 It's like, it feels like the world is becoming less and less tolerant of people holding multiple ideas, even if those ideas aren't in conflict.

Speaker 57:59 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 57:59 Mm.

Trevor Noah 58:00 Like, people will say to you, "No, you can't think that." And you're like, "But why can I not think that?" "That's 'cause you think something else." And I'm like, yes, but these two things are not separate.

Speaker 58:08 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 58:08 They, they're not even in conflict with, with one another, and I think if we lose that as people, we then become one-dimensional in our thinking, in our problem-solving, and then we, w- I think we experience fractures in society that aren't necessarily real. Does, does that make sense?

Speaker 58:24 Yeah, but I guess my thing is, on the billionaire front-

Trevor Noah 58:28 Mm

Speaker 58:28 ... I think the fact that these billionaires exist seems like a profound failure-

Trevor Noah 58:33 I agree

Speaker 58:34 ... of any system

Trevor Noah 58:34 No, but I, I, but I agree.

Speaker 58:35 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 58:35 No, no, no, I agree with that.

Speaker 58:36 You know?

Trevor Noah 58:36 I-

Speaker 58:36 I'm just like, to accu- a billion of a thing is a lot. [laughs] Just like, just like one billion.

Trevor Noah 58:41 I think a billion-

Speaker 58:42 Like, how did we get here?

Trevor Noah 58:43 But I-

Speaker 58:43 That is my question-

Trevor Noah 58:44 I w-

Speaker 58:44 ... in any system, 'cause we know that there, you know, under socialism, there are people that hoard and steal-

Trevor Noah 58:49 Yeah

Speaker 58:49 ... and also have a billion. So I'm like, shouldn't we be in a world where we're like, do we want billionaires? Like, forget them paying more taxes.

Trevor Noah 58:56 Mm.

Speaker 58:56 Like, I'm, Rutger, I'm even like to the left of you. I'm like, I just don't think-

Rutger Bregman 58:59 [laughs]

Speaker 58:59 ... they should exist.

Trevor Noah 59:01 But you don't mean the people. We are going to state that for the record.

Speaker 59:03 No, no.

Trevor Noah 59:04 She just means that-

Speaker 59:05 Not the people

Trevor Noah 59:05 ... the financial-

Speaker 59:06 I love the-

Trevor Noah 59:06 ... thing

Speaker 59:06 ... I love all the founders.

Trevor Noah 59:07 F- yes.

Speaker 59:08 Yeah, especially the one that just came

Trevor Noah 59:08 She doesn't mean, she just means the people.

Speaker 59:10 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 59:10 Um-

Speaker 59:11 No, but, no, I just honestly believe that, like, that's an expression. Like-

Trevor Noah 59:14 Mm.

Speaker 59:15 To you and I say-

Trevor Noah 59:15 Uh-

Speaker 59:15 ... intensive farming-

Rutger Bregman 59:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 59:17 Okay, so, so then-

Speaker 59:17 ... is a, is a failure of imagination. I'm, I believe, like, the fact-

Rutger Bregman 59:19 Yeah

Speaker 59:19 ... that we're like, "Let me have this."

Trevor Noah 59:20 Yeah, but let me throw this at you. What, what if I told you you can live in a world where there's billionaires, and the issue isn't that there are or aren't billionaires, the issue is where the water level is at the bottom? I think that it's more important to think about where a person who is never going to be a billionaire sits. So if somebody has a good education, and Rutger, you, you speak about this with, like, let's say just income and basic income and a gu- a guaranteed income. Like, I think if we lived in a world where we're focusing on making sure that everyone at the bottom has a good time, the top doesn't really bother, bother us that much. Then it's like, all right, there's always gonna be somebody at the top, but the question is, where are you in relation to them? Does, does that make sense?

Speaker 1:00:00 Yeah, I, I just c- think with, to be a billionaire, you have to hoard, and I don't believe in wealth hoarding. I think it's because, like, to you speaking about Occupy Wall Street, the thing that bothered people is that, like, the gap between the have and the have-nots has widened so much, and it's been at the benefit of this billionaire class. So I can't, I can't just imagine any world where we're like, we're okay with having that if somebody makes 5 or $7,000 more a year.

Trevor Noah 1:00:26 Mm.

Speaker 1:00:26 Like, so I'm basically telling you, next time you go to Davos-

Trevor Noah 1:00:29 [laughs]

Speaker 1:00:29 ... you should be like-

Trevor Noah 1:00:30 He's never going back

Speaker 1:00:31 ... forget, forget paying more taxes.

Rutger Bregman 1:00:33 [laughs] Men's is never-

Speaker 1:00:33 You guys need to give all your money away

Rutger Bregman 1:00:34 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:00:35 Men's is never going back

Speaker 1:00:36 ... completely. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:00:36 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:00:37 Unless you got a billion-

Rutger Bregman 1:00:38 Okay

Trevor Noah 1:00:38 ... you're not going anywhere.

Rutger Bregman 1:00:39 Okay, let me try and, and, and find a way to get back to Davos, because I'm actually gonna say something nice about billionaires.

Trevor Noah 1:00:45 Oh, here we go.

Speaker 1:00:46 Oh, my gosh.

Trevor Noah 1:00:47 Here we go.

Rutger Bregman 1:00:47 [laughs] I don't think I've ever done that on a podcast, but here I go. So- I was studying the history of malaria. As you may have know, uh, may know, we, we recently developed these amazing vaccines. Like-

Speaker 1:00:58 Mm-hmm

Rutger Bregman 1:00:58 ... for the first time in history, we've got them. This has been one of the most deadliest diseases in all of world history, and it took us decades and decades to finally get the vaccine. And I was wondering, like, why did it take so long? Turns out that actually in the early '80s, scientists already understood that we could very, yeah, we could develop a vaccine. The problem was that it was mostly poor people in poor countries who were dying from it, and a lot. So between 1980 and 2020, uh, around 40 million people died from malaria-

Speaker 1:01:27 Of course

Rutger Bregman 1:01:27 ... which is about as much as, uh, how many people died in Europe during the Second World War. Um, and for HIV AIDS, there was a massive movement in wealthy countries because also wealthy people were dying from HIV AIDS, so we, uh, developed amazing medicines against that, but not for malaria. The, the tragic thing, uh, and the embarrassing thing is that it took a tech billionaire, in this case Bill Gates, in the year 2000 to say, "Okay, well, let's actually finance the research that is necessary," that governments are not doing it. And, and, and also not like the liberal governments, like socialist government, Denmark wasn't doing it. The Netherlands wasn't doing it. And, um, I think that is, that is, uh, something where sometimes philanthropy can play a role, to do that stuff that is so neglected because it's so unpopular to do. And yeah, I think like someone like Bill Gates deserves an enormous amount of credit for it. He really changed the course of history in that respect. So, okay, that's it. That's the-

Speaker 1:02:22 Wow. We got a-

Rutger Bregman 1:02:22 ... one nice thing I've ... [laughs]

Speaker 1:02:24 We got a pro-billionaire statement out of Rutger.

Rutger Bregman 1:02:26 [laughs]

Speaker 1:02:26 I mean, this is, um, this is, this is massive. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:02:30 Don't go anywhere, 'cause we got more What Now? after this. [upbeat music]

Speaker 1:02:41 Rutger, I'm, I'm really curious. For, for people at home who have some sort of moral ambition-

Rutger Bregman 1:02:46 Mm

Speaker 1:02:46 ... but don't know how to channel it, and they don't necessarily wanna go vegan-

Rutger Bregman 1:02:51 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:02:51 ... what can you do in your little patch of the world to make-

Rutger Bregman 1:02:54 Mm-hmm

Speaker 1:02:55 ... it better?

Rutger Bregman 1:02:57 So I guess one of the problems with progressive these days is that they have all these rules of life that are about, um, basically about how you live your own personal life. So you're not supposed to fly. You're not supposed to eat meat. You're not supposed to have kids. You're not supposed to use plastic straws, um, and yeah, to really limit your environmental footprint. I think the problem with that kind of reasoning is that in the best possible scenario, if you've done everything right, then you have a environmental footprint of zero, and you might as well not have ex- have existed, right?

Speaker 1:03:31 Mm.

Rutger Bregman 1:03:31 So then death is the highest ideal. You might just, might as well just kill yourself. Um, I think we gotta talk much more about the actual positive things we can do to make this world a much better place. A- and what history teaches me is that that always starts with groups coming together. There's this beautiful quote from Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, who said that we should never doubt the power of small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world. In fact, that's the only thing that ever has. So I guess we need, like, safe spaces for, for do-gooders who come together, uh, places where you don't have to be embarrassed that you actually believe that some things could be radically improved. So that's, that's, I guess, my most important advice. Find those bubbles, those cults maybe [laughs] of, of people who are actually like, "Yeah, we're not cynical. We're actually gonna do something. We're actually gonna build something."

Trevor Noah 1:04:20 Tell us a little bit about, about your, you know, it's, it sounds like you're assembling like a, a suicide squad of, of experts to change the world, which I, I, I love this idea.

Rutger Bregman 1:04:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:04:31 And I think I've, I've loved it because I think of it through a different lens. So-

Rutger Bregman 1:04:35 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:04:35 ... I've, I've felt, I think for most of my adult life, that it's sad that we funnel people into parts of life where they will have the most income but not the most impact.

Speaker 1:04:49 Mm-hmm.

Rutger Bregman 1:04:49 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:04:49 You know? Or the impact that they'll have won't affect or impact the most people positively, right? And it's not even because of them. It's just what we do.

Speaker 1:04:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:04:58 Rutger, you're going for, like, everyone, just like the math geniuses, the statisticians, the-

Rutger Bregman 1:05:04 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:05:04 ... all these people. Like, what are you aiming for, and, and what do you hope to achieve?

Rutger Bregman 1:05:09 Well, take a look at all these Ivy League universities. Read the college essays of the students when they come in, and it's all about the big problems they wanna solve. You know, they wanna work at the UN, solving world hunger. They wanna fight the next pandemic. They wanna fight the tobacco industry, create beautiful new innovations that make this world a much better place. And then the years go by, and McKinsey knocks on their door, and they end up, you know, being a strategy consultant or a, a corporate lawyer or a banker, and something is lost along the way. And I think that waste of talent is really one of the greatest wastes of our time. I would love to live in a society where the most ambitious, talented, driven people who've been given a lot also work on the most pressing and important issues. So, um, that's why, that's actually why I've moved to New York. We were kickstarting the US chapter of the School for Moral Ambition. That's what my next book is called. So moral ambition is the combination of the idealism of an activist plus the ambition of an entrepreneur.

Trevor Noah 1:06:09 Moral ambition.

Rutger Bregman 1:06:10 And we, we-

Trevor Noah 1:06:11 Okay

Rutger Bregman 1:06:11 ... we, we basically wanna help as many people as possible to quit those soul-crunching, not super socially useful jobs and to work on something that a- actually matters. I think we gotta redefine what it means to be successful. Successful is not about having that corner office or having that fancy LinkedIn resume. It's about making an actual difference and make future historians proud. That's what being successful really should be about.

Trevor Noah 1:06:39 Hmm. Make future historians proud. That seems like a hat for some reason.

Speaker 1:06:44 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:06:44 Seems like a hat, and I don't know what color it would be, but it's, but it, but it seems like one. I know this is gonna sound like a weird question, but- Should we care about what the future would think of us? And, and what I mean by that is-

Rutger Bregman 1:06:56 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:06:56 ... we don't know how we will be perceived by the future.

Rutger Bregman 1:07:00 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:07:01 We look back on many great people now, and we're like, "Nope. They are terrible."

Speaker 1:07:05 Gandhi.

Trevor Noah 1:07:06 Yeah, yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:07:06 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:07:07 And for many different reasons, for m- eh, you know what I mean, but we do it. We, we just do it, right? Rightly or wrongly, we do it.

Speaker 1:07:13 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:07:13 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:07:13 And so I sometimes wonder, I go, "Should we even care about the historians of the future, or should we just be like, we're just trying to do what's good for now, and then amen. You future people will judge us all you want, but we're not here."

Rutger Bregman 1:07:25 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:07:26 What do you think?

Rutger Bregman 1:07:27 Well, I think that meaning is created by humans. And I guess m- one of our messages to all these, you know, privileged and wealthy people, some of them, you know, who get so rich that they can buy a building on, on Harvard and have it named after them.

Trevor Noah 1:07:42 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:07:42 The message is, like, "No one's gonna remember you for that. No one's gonna give a shit 100 years from now that your name on is on it." They'll have to ask ChatGPT, [laughs] if that still exists.

Trevor Noah 1:07:52 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:07:52 Like, who the fuck is this guy? Um, and, uh, you know, we talked earlier about the, the British abolitionists. One thing that struck me is that the British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded by 12 individuals. One of them was a writer, so there is a place for someone like me. One of them was a lawyer, so they, they can be useful as well, but 10 out of 12 were entrepreneurs.

Trevor Noah 1:08:14 Oh, wow.

Rutger Bregman 1:08:14 People who had built their own companies, people who had scaled their own companies, uh, who may have been in the Forbes 400, if that would have existed at the time. But at some point, they thought, "You know what? Um, I'm gonna build a legacy that actually matters." If they w- you know, would just have been rich or, like, successful entrepreneurs, no one would have remembered them. Um, it's, it's because they took up the fight against the greatest moral atrocity of their time. That's why we remember them today.

Trevor Noah 1:08:38 So essentially, you're appealing to the ego.

Rutger Bregman 1:08:42 It's a, it's a mixture.

Trevor Noah 1:08:43 It's a, it-

Rutger Bregman 1:08:43 I think it's fine that-

Trevor Noah 1:08:44 Yeah

Rutger Bregman 1:08:44 ... people are m- are mo- motivated by, again, uh, multiple things.

Trevor Noah 1:08:49 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:08:49 It, it can be a little bit of vanity. I mean, if you, if you look back, you know, one of your shows on Netflix, some part of you must think like, "Oh, this is pretty cool," right?

Trevor Noah 1:08:57 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:08:58 Um, when I have, you know, my new book in my hands, I'm like, "Oh, this is awesome."

Trevor Noah 1:09:02 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:09:02 That's fine. That's a completely natural motivation. At the same time, yeah, I do also generally care about the suffering of those who are oppressed, uh, of, of the animals, all the things that we've spoken about. I think it's fine to be motivated by multiple things at the same time.

Trevor Noah 1:09:18 I wanna have a conversation with you after you've lived in New York for a year or two.

Rutger Bregman 1:09:23 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:25 I, I don't wish this on you. Please let me be clear.

Rutger Bregman 1:09:27 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:09:27 I really don't. But I think, like, the amateur scientist in me does, and I would love to see how much your worldview is going to be shifted, or how, I know it will be, but I'd love to know how it will be shifted by you existing in a place that is going to push every theory that you have.

Rutger Bregman 1:09:44 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:09:44 You come from a place where people are looked after. You know, you come from a place where healthcare and, and, you know, people think about how much time you work and how much maternity leave-

Speaker 1:09:54 Great schools

Trevor Noah 1:09:54 ... paternity leave, schools.

Speaker 1:09:55 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:09:55 What's in your food.

Speaker 1:09:56 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:09:57 And I would love to speak to you in, like, a year or two and just see, like, have you become-

Rutger Bregman 1:10:04 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:10:04 ... more hopeful, more curmudgeony?

Speaker 1:10:06 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:10:06 Have you lost hope, or, or are you just, like, now Rutger Bregman the billionaire?

Rutger Bregman 1:10:11 Mm.

Speaker 1:10:11 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:10:11 Just being like, "Let me just get a billion, and then we'll continue this journey." I, uh-

Rutger Bregman 1:10:15 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:10:16 Do you, do you, do you, do you think, how resilient do you think you are to the press that comes from living in a place that sort of hasn't fostered your ideas?

Rutger Bregman 1:10:27 So I think the way to be morally resilient is to make commitments in public. I mean-

Trevor Noah 1:10:33 [laughs]

Speaker 1:10:33 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:10:33 ... that's the point of things like, like marriage, for example, right? You say in public, you know, "I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm marrying this person." Um, and the same is true for things like, I don't know, sticking to veganism. I just said it on this podcast, right? Yeah, I'm a vegan. Um, so I guess that makes it much more difficult now for me-

Trevor Noah 1:10:51 Okay, okay

Rutger Bregman 1:10:52 ... to not be a vegan in public.

Trevor Noah 1:10:53 So shame.

Rutger Bregman 1:10:53 I think we could do the same for similar things. Um, also with our wealth, for example. One thing I've experienced is that it's much easier to give money away if you don't have it. So for this new book, I actually thought, "Okay, that's, that's, like, a great resource that we can use to build this movement. You know what? I'm, I'm giving all of it away in advance," because it's so much more difficult once you have the actual money in your bank account.

Trevor Noah 1:11:13 Oh, man, I like that.

Rutger Bregman 1:11:14 So that's, that's-

Trevor Noah 1:11:15 So you, you're pre, so you're pre-giving the money away.

Rutger Bregman 1:11:18 Yes, yes, yes. And it's, um, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:11:20 You know what this, this actually makes me think of. Um, we, we have a friend, a mutual friend in common we've worked with, but, you know, from South Africa. His da- name's David Kibuka, and David-

Speaker 1:11:28 Oh, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:11:28 ... would always say the same thing to us. He'd always go, he'd always be like, "I don't understand why America gives you your money and then asks you for it back."

Speaker 1:11:36 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:11:36 He's like, "That's why people hate taxes."

Speaker 1:11:38 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:11:38 He's like, "It's not, they don't hate taxes because they're paying taxes. They're paying taxes because they, just take the money from me."

Speaker 1:11:43 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:11:43 "You know what the tax is supposed to be. Just don't make me give it to you twice."

Speaker 1:11:47 Yeah. He's also a guy that gives away tons of money-

Trevor Noah 1:11:49 He does. He does

Speaker 1:11:49 ... all the time without even thinking about it.

Trevor Noah 1:11:50 Yeah, yeah. No, no, he does.

Speaker 1:11:51 He gives everyone money.

Trevor Noah 1:11:52 Maybe that's, do you think this would work in, in our society? Like, so David's side of it I actually agree with. I think sometimes people just are reticent to the idea of giving the money, but if it was taken before they knew-

Speaker 1:12:04 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:12:04 ... they'd be like, "Whatever." Even the idea of tax. I know that you say taxes, taxes, taxes, and people must pay more taxes and, but a lot of people will say, "Yeah, you know what, Rutger? I pay my taxes, and then the government doesn't use the tax correctly."

Speaker 1:12:19 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:12:19 "And I don't see the roads improving, and I don't see the schools improving."

Rutger Bregman 1:12:22 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:22 "Oh, but I, you know what I see improving? I see bombs."

Speaker 1:12:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:12:25 "I see more bombs."

Rutger Bregman 1:12:25 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:25 "I see more fighter jets. Wow, Rutger, you're telling me to pay more tax, and the more tax I pay, the more missiles are made." And I think a lot of people are struggling with, now obviously, some people just wanna keep their money. Don't get me wrong.

Rutger Bregman 1:12:36 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:36 But there are many people who feel like they're funding the worst but not the best.

Rutger Bregman 1:12:41 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:12:41 And this is moving, by the way, across political lines. This is not like a Republican or Democrat thing.

Speaker 1:12:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:12:46 This is just people across the lines saying, "Why do we have money for a bomb, but we don't have money for a road or a school?" How do you, like, how do you respond to that? 'Cause it, it seems like you're sort of telling people to do something that has-

Rutger Bregman 1:12:57 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:12:57 ... caused a lot of the problems, as opposed to the solutions.

Rutger Bregman 1:13:00 Yeah. It's another good example where you can believe two things at the same time. So on the one hand, it's important to emphasize that I'm talking about taxing the rich. And in the US, for the first time in history, billionaires now have a lower effective tax rate than working class people. So that's if you look at all taxes combined, it's actually lower than working class people. Seems pretty unfair to me. At the same time, Republicans are r- correct in their assessment that government is just not delivering, and especially so in blue states and in blue cities. I think one of the most embarrassing things for Democrats right now is that, I mean, Texas, it, it takes a day in Texas to, uh, deploy as much solar energy as it would take a year in, in California.

Trevor Noah 1:13:44 Yeah, there's a lot of NIMBYism-

Rutger Bregman 1:13:44 Because in California, there-

Trevor Noah 1:13:45 ... in the blue states.

Rutger Bregman 1:13:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:13:46 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:13:46 So many, and like the not in my backyard attitude-

Trevor Noah 1:13:49 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Rutger Bregman 1:13:49 ... is everywhere there. So this is another example of, you know, what we talked about at the beginning of the show, this, this progressive hypocrisy, where you occupy the moral high ground, but you don't actually deliver. So I, I totally understand that. Um, uh, when a government doesn't deliver, it does make people more skeptical-

Trevor Noah 1:14:07 Yeah, yeah

Rutger Bregman 1:14:07 ... of paying their taxes. On the other hand, why has government been, you know, uh, not been as effective as it used to be? Well, also because it's funding constrained. So it's like this, you get into this-

Trevor Noah 1:14:17 It's this, it's a cycle that goes around

Rutger Bregman 1:14:19 ... vicious cycle, right?

Trevor Noah 1:14:20 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:14:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:14:21 I think, I think we, we should use what you spoke about with universities. This might be a solution. Okay. Moral ambition, right? Somebody's hunger, whether it's ego-based or whether it's, you know, it- eternity, whatever it might be. We, what, what I think we should do is we take people's taxes. Mm-hmm. And the more tax you pay, the more things get named after you. [laughs] 'Cause nobody likes-

Rutger Bregman 1:14:46 I love that.

Trevor Noah 1:14:47 Yeah. Nobody likes-

Rutger Bregman 1:14:48 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:14:48 ... things being ... Like, everybody loves it. So you get a bench in the park. No, no, no, no.

Rutger Bregman 1:14:51 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:14:51 Benches is nothing. Okay. Benches, like that's like- What do you get? That's like if you paid a little bit of tax. Roads? I'm talking like, I'm talking like highways. Oh.

Rutger Bregman 1:14:57 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:14:57 Like, you paid the most tax this year? We're now driving on the Jeff Bezos Highway. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:15:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:15:01 But, but, but it must be-

Rutger Bregman 1:15:03 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:15:03 ... it must be, it's not about, like, the money, 'cause that's where the trick comes in. It must be about the percentage of your income that you paid.

Rutger Bregman 1:15:08 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:15:08 Mm-hmm. 'Cause that's where the trick is, right? Yeah. And so you go, an average working person, and they, you find their tax rate's whatever, 20-something percent. That person, we go, "Okay. Jonathan Maids-

Rutger Bregman 1:15:19 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:15:19 ... th- there's your road." And then we just get, like, digital billboards. We switch the things up. I think it could work.

Rutger Bregman 1:15:25 I, I really like the idea. One, one other thing that might be easier to implement and to actually do-

Trevor Noah 1:15:29 I don't do easy.

Rutger Bregman 1:15:29 It's ca-

Trevor Noah 1:15:30 I just do good. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:15:31 [laughs] M- maybe, maybe some magazine could have, like, the Forbes 400 version of doing good, right? Where, like, the, the entrepreneurs who, yeah, really improved the most people's lives that year. Um, because we know that many of these billionaires and entrepreneurs, they are ego-driven. You know? They're driven by that vanity. So can't we use that, that energy and that fact of human nature, uh, for good? Uh, I would really love to see that, because I think it would really drive some of those billionaires out there, it would really drive them nuts if they would be very low on the list. And they'd be like, "Oh, next year I want to get higher up."

Trevor Noah 1:16:07 [laughs] The secret is the club. I secretly believe that most of the world is just governed by how well people are treated in club environments. [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:16:15 Hmm. Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:16:16 And if you just go like, "This way, Mr. Bezos." Then he's like, "Oh, I'm doing something right." [laughs] But if you were like-

Rutger Bregman 1:16:20 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:16:20 ... "Sorry, Jeff, you're not getting in." "Why?" "Yeah, your tax rate, buddy." [laughs] You know? And then just be like, "Oh, Mrs. Kowalski." [laughs] "Come on in." I think, I think we could, we could switch something up. We could, we could make it really interesting.

Rutger Bregman 1:16:33 Absolutely. Yeah. It i- it, this is, like, the most fundamental currency of society. It's not money, but it is status. It's like, how do you earn respect in a, in a society? One thing that I found out when so- once I was studying these British abolitionists, is that they were actually part of a broader cultural shift. So the main British abolitionist was a guy called William Wilberforce, one of those evangelicals. And he actually said that it was his life's mission to make doing good

Rutger Bregman 1:17:00 more fashionable. On his deathbed, when he was being asked, like, "What are you most proud of?" He didn't talk about his leading role in abolishing the slave trade. He said, he talked about his missionary activities in India. For him, abolitionism was just a part of something bigger, you know?

Trevor Noah 1:17:15 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:17:15 And I think, honestly, that's what we need today. We gotta redefine what it means to be successful, and it's fine if people then do it for, yeah, uh, a yearning for a certain kind of status. But yeah, the, the way we define success today, uh, I think is ruining us.

Trevor Noah 1:17:32 I like this. So, um, you, you're starting a new journey. Um, we know what you're gonna be doing. We know, we know what your What Now? is. I, I would love to issue out a challenge to you, just for you to yourself. What do you think we should check back in on with you in a year to see if it's changed or shifted? What do you, what's the most shaky thing in your life right now, where you're like, "Oh, man, this, this might, this might shift"?

Rutger Bregman 1:17:54 In my personal life?

Trevor Noah 1:17:55 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:17:56 Uh, well, apart from just becoming a father again, yeah. So I spent 10 years in what I like to call the awareness business. Now, you know, you write books, you write articles, you stand on stages in Davos or in Vancouver at a tech conference, and then you just hope that some other people will do the actual work of making the world a, a better place. And after 10 years of doing that, I became quite fed up with myself. I experienced this emot- emotion, you could call it moral envy. You know, you study some of those pioneers doing their great work today, or some of them in the past.

Trevor Noah 1:18:26 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:18:26 And you're like, "God, I wish I was like them," right? I wish I was also actually having some skin in the game, and actually taking a risk, and not just being on the sidelines-

Trevor Noah 1:18:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Rutger Bregman 1:18:35 ... giving my opinion. There's this beautiful quote from Theodore Roosevelt, um, about, you know, that it's, it's, it's, it's really about the people who are in the arena, you know? Not about the people who stand on the sidelines and just share their opinions. Um, so yeah, that's, that's the journey I'm on right now. I've basically quit my career as a writer, I guess. It will take a long time to write another book, and I'm now, you know, trying to kickstart this organization, and to

Rutger Bregman 1:19:00 really turn it into a global movement, and to help as many people as possible to, to join the fight against the next pandemic, against the breakdown of democracy, against the tobacco industry, you name it.

Trevor Noah 1:19:10 Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:19:10 Um, so, uh, a year from now, I hope to have actually achieved something there, that is not just about spreading awareness and being on a podcast-

Trevor Noah 1:19:17 [laughs]

Rutger Bregman 1:19:17 ... that a lot of listen pe- people listen to. But, you know, maybe actually, yeah, improving people's lives in a tangible way. That'd be great.

Trevor Noah 1:19:25 Oh, I like that for you. Amazing. Well, w- you know what? I will still hopefully be in the business of bringing awareness to people who are bringing awareness, I hope. Um, yeah, and-

Rutger Bregman 1:19:34 And a good laugh. I mean, life is about many things. It's not just about doing good, right?

Trevor Noah 1:19:37 Definitely.

Rutger Bregman 1:19:38 It's about-

Trevor Noah 1:19:38 Yeah, man, I, I agree with that

Rutger Bregman 1:19:39 ... yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:19:39 But thank you, Rutger. Thanks, thanks for joining us, and, uh, good luck. I, um, I think one of the things I've always loved about talking to you is you present, like, a ... It's a very sober view of what we're actually trying to do. You know? So some people have an idea of you that's based on clips, which is the world we live in. Yeah.

Rutger Bregman 1:19:55 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:19:55 So they think you are the guy who hates billionaires, or they think you are the guy who hates capitalism, or they think you are the guy who thinks everything is fixable tomorrow. But what I like about sitting down with you, reading your books, whatever it is, is that it's a, it's a, it's a really sober look at what we could and should do in the world, you know, to try and make it a, a better place for everyone. So thank you again. Good luck with the, uh, with the baby life. We appreciate you.

Rutger Bregman 1:20:16 Thanks, man.

Trevor Noah 1:20:16 Thank you. Thank you.

Rutger Bregman 1:20:17 Thanks for having me. [upbeat music]