What Now? with Trevor Noah
Eliza Filby: Hard Work Is a Lie, This Is What Rich People Never Tell You
11 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the great wealth transfer and its impact on millennials?
millennials are struggling to make as much money as their baby boomer parents they face greater wealth inequality than previous generations it's called the great wealth transfer more than 100 trillion dollars expected to go from baby boomers to gen xers millennials and gen z by 2048 one of the best things that you can do to save money in 2025 is to live at home with your parents the only reason that i was able to save my first hundred thousand dollars was because i lived at home you don't pay your rent
I'm like one of those spoiled rich kids that doesn't pay rent. Historian, author, and generational expert, Dr. Eliza Philby. Eliza's writing has been published in The Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times, and she's recently published her latest book, Inheritocracy. It's time to talk about the bank of mom and dad.
This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less.
What tea?
I'll tell you why. It's herbal tea.
Ginger and lemon. That always feels like medicine to me. No. It doesn't have that medicinal taste.
Are you sure? Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It's lemon and ginger. Lemon and ginger to me are medicines.
It is medicine.
I enjoy them, but they're medicines.
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Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Eliza Filby and what is her expertise?
Stimulant.
I prefer, so I usually have, if I haven't eaten anything, I'll have the coffee, the matcha. I mean the mocha. But if I've eaten like I have now, this does me good. Because it helps me from feeling.
It settles your stomach.
Medicine. Everything you've said is medicine here.
But don't you think actually as a sort of human beings are getting better at relearning all that we've forgotten in the age of mass consumption about food. We're relearning it all and slapping a fat price on it and charging the earth through it. And discovering herbal tea.
I always say the greatest trick corporations ever pulled was getting poor people to... be ashamed of all the things that they do and consume.
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Chapter 3: What is the bank of mom and dad?
And then once they've gone off of it, the corporations jump in and they claim it and then they sell it for a fortune. And then when you try to come back, it's gone now. Do you know what I mean? Like everything, everything, everything.
All of that learning, all of that knowledge throughout the family. The culture of the cooking down the generations is gone. You've infused, you know, the sort of idea of eating from a KFC bucket as part of like family time. And yeah, slapped a fat price on something that was originally basically.
I was always amazed when we were growing up. One of the things moms used to get shamed for all the time, especially African mothers, was tying their children to their back with like a blanket or with a, you know, whatever fabric you'd use. And they'd be like, oh, the ergonomics are terrible. There's no support. This is not how you should hold a baby.
Your child's legs.
Your child's legs are being.
You're suffocating your child.
The whole thing, the whole thing. And then like you'd see over time people like, oh, you've got to get better. You've got to buy a pram. You've got to buy a stroller. It became this whole world. And then when that was done, and maybe that market was saturated, all of a sudden they went, you know, there's a more organic way to hold your child.
And they're like, let me introduce you to the baby sling.
This is how you reconnect with your child.
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Chapter 4: How does inheritance shape opportunities in life?
It's a passport that takes you through your life, like just from the get-go in what you're saying.
But it's a natural human instinct, let's be clear here, to create that safety net and that springboard for your kids. I have two kids. When my first son literally came out of me, I was like, right, life's purpose has arrived.
Wow, and your doctor was like, slow down. Excuse me, ma'am.
Hold on.
I haven't been, I'm not done with the umbilical cord, lady. Excuse me, ma'am.
Ma'am, please, just wait a second. We're still busy. Get me out of this bed. We're still busy with the umbilical cord. Ma'am, please, ma'am. Please. Please hold her down. We'll talk about intergenerational health in a second. Let me just finish with it.
No, seriously, I was literally not one of those mothers who was like, let me just bask in the glory of creating life. I was like, I've got to create wealth because I have to create some sort of financial stability here.
You immediately felt that thing.
Yeah, 100%. And I think in America, when I think about how... my cultural reference point for this, by the way, is love is blind. How you guys talk about generational wealth is the aspiration. There is so much more openness about I am aiming to create generational wealth. In the UK, no, no, no, no. That is not stated. No, no, no, no.
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Chapter 5: What personal anecdotes illustrate the impact of inheritance on family dynamics?
Like your cousin would just live with you and never leave. And then you'd find out now he's part of your family.
Those moments were the worst when you found out oftentimes because they had the biscuits that were apportioned for you previously.
But why was there so much guilt in giving him all the things that were yours?
What do you mean?
Exactly the biscuit story.
Yeah.
Like there would be this, oh man, you know, he's going.
They would do that. Yeah. They would do that. And then now that would build resentment because now you'd see your inheritance slipping through your fingers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're like, yo, you remember your grandmother's tin of biscuits. That was your inheritance.
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Chapter 6: How do modern family structures complicate inheritance issues?
And then now all of a sudden you got to share this with somebody else.
The will has been changed. Let me tell you something, man. I still have scars. I share, but I still have scars.
But that's a really important point to sort of like refer to how families look now. We're talking about the rise of multi-generational households, but also rising divorce and remarriage and blended families really complicates inheritance. Tell us more. Well, I interviewed one girl in the book and she came from a... She was a product of a divorce. That was how she phrased it.
And her father had remarried and had married a woman who had two children. So they became his stepchildren. And there was so much... in her sort of expression and voice and tone that was resentful, that she knew that because essentially her relationship with her dad had become distant and his relationship with his stepchildren had become close, the money... And she wasn't being materialistic.
She was really careful to caveat that, but she was kind of like...
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Chapter 7: What are the societal pressures surrounding the concept of success and failure?
You know, they'll get what is essentially mine.
Damn.
Yeah. And that's, you know, one example. I interviewed another guy who was saying, you know, the problem I have is that my first marriage, my children are now entering their 30s and wanting help with a house. My second marriage, my kids are going through school. So I've got like these competing priorities just in the age gap of my two families.
Yeah.
Still help that's needed though.
Yeah.
And then society will tell you that one group is a failure because of that. So they'll go, well, the ones in school, you should be helping them because they need to get through school. And the ones at the house, I mean, they've got to get out there and they've just got to work. And society basically tells people that they're failing and their families are failing.
When in fact, it's just a lack of inheritance that's basically making you make these decisions.
Yeah, you put that so well and I think you're right because in a capitalist economy, there is a right way of doing things and becoming a success, particularly in a capitalist economy that is driven by social media and comparison culture in which we have these images thrust into our eyes every second. I got a message after I published the book, actually, from a man in his mid-30s.
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Chapter 8: How does the conversation address generational wealth and its implications?
Bristled.
He's pulling out the fine china tonight. Bristol away, my friend. Bristol away. That's a great word.
Yeah, like a little hedgehog or a porcupine. When I would hear people say the phrase self-made, I don't know why it got me. It still gets me till this day. So when I heard it, it was the one that stuck out to me was Kylie Jenner, right? She had done an amazing job with her beauty brand and this whole thing. And they went, the youngest self-made billionaire
And I went, I'm not discrediting anything that she's done, but she's not self-made. And they're like, what do you mean? They're self-made. Then I was like, no, no, she inherited everything from her family. And I'm not, again, I'm not saying she's not good at business and I'm not saying that she didn't do well and didn't fit. No, no, no. But you cannot tell me that she didn't inherit
what Kim Kardashian had worked to build by building her piece of the empire, you get in the door a lot easier and a lot quicker when you're Kim Kardashian. And then Kim Kardashian inherited from her parents. Yes. Do you know what I mean? So if you're coming from a world where you're of the Jenners and you're of the Kardashians, you've inherited something.
And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but there's an inheritance. Jeff Bezos, self-made in his garage. What they don't tell you is like hundreds of thousands came from family members that enabled him to start these businesses in a garage. And fail, and start, and fail. Yes, Mark Zuckerberg, same thing. People go, he just dropped out and he started.
Guys, you can't just drop out of school and start these companies. You can try and maybe you will succeed and be an anomaly. But then his story also involves a bank of mom and dad injecting cash.
It actually makes me laugh because in venture capital, there's a phrase, friends and family round.
Oh, they love that.
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