What Now? with Trevor Noah
If I Ruled the World: Tressie McMillan Cottom Throws Down [VIDEO]
Thu, 05 Jun 2025
For this round of If I Ruled the World, Trevor and Christiana and joined by friend-of-the-show Tressie McMillan Cottom. They’re trying to find ways to connect people and limit societal rot; one quarterly report, character count, and service job at a time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
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I think he's going to run for office in South Africa.
Can I tell you, I told him that the first time I met him. Trevor's going to be the president of South Africa. Trevor, you won't remember this, but I said, so what, you're going to go home and run for office? And you went, what?
He's going to be president of South Africa.
Zelensky used to be a comedian.
Yes, and look at his life now.
Maybe not a good example.
This is What Now? with Trevor Noah.
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Chapter 2: How does the 'If I Ruled the World' game work?
Yeah, it's weighted to how much you... Okay, okay. All right, okay. Another question I have is... Oh, man.
It doesn't compel you to contribute to the public discourse.
No, I understand. And it's cumulative. It's like life course. Like, I start out with a bucket of words.
No, every month, say in your month, you get like 800 words or whatever. Okay, so it is weighted to like your lifespan, but it's not cumulative.
So it doesn't accumulate over time.
No, it resets. I can't say it all. It resets at the beginning of every month.
So there's no books.
Huh? No, I'm talking about the public discourse. I'm talking about online.
Oh, okay. You're saying only online.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of limiting public discourse?
I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I think when young people go into these lines of work, they process it differently. It's almost like a hobby jobby thing. So like I've seen college kids slash high school kids working at like a place where something doesn't work. You like, even if someone's berating them, These kids are just like, whatever.
They're like, because they get shouted at by teachers and parents and whatnot. Okay, this is a good point. They don't even think of this as being part of their lives is what I think a lot of the time. Now, I'm not saying it's good to treat them that way. But I've noticed a lot of them have a very like water off my back-ish vibe versus an adult who is being berated as if they are a child.
Because I think there's an overlap between how people treat young people. Okay, so this is an interesting status distinction. You got me on this one. I like this. I have a pitch.
Make it like Teach for America. You know, Teach for America is the thing where they get these kids that are probably going to work at McKinsey at some point. And you go and work in a public school. But you have to have a degree first to get the job to be a teacher. If it's like Teach for America, when you finish college or you finish, make it a bit older. So you do it around.
You can pitch yours. I'm telling you my one. I'm just asking if you would be willing to consider a re-up.
I'll tell you why a re-up. It could be a conditioned re-up. If you do the re-up, you may lose me. This is democracy now. You've got Christiana.
Let me tell you why, Christiana, because I think. I do think it's invaluable for a young person to go into a space where they work in a front-facing service job, whether it's waiting tables, whether it's picking up calls, whatever it is. I do think that's good for them to interact with people and to understand this from that side.
However, when you are young, I mean, you're so predisposed to sort of doing that because that's where society puts you anyway. Hey, can you grab me something from the thing? Hey, pick up that thing for me. Hey, so you're almost already in a service job forever. For the most part, culturally.
But Trevor, I'll counter. Gen Z are the generation that haven't had to do that thing that we did.
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