If You Ruled the World: A Listener Grab Bag
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What is the purpose of this Thanksgiving episode?
You're listening to What Now? with Trevor Noah. So it's Thanksgiving week here in the United States, and guess what? We have a little bonus episode just for you. Perfect to help spark a conversation at your Thanksgiving table. Yeah, and hopefully, hopefully, a conversation that won't lead to someone storming out of the room. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that one of our favorite games is If I Ruled the World. And you probably know how it works. Everyone comes up with one suggestion. If you were in charge of the world, you could do anything, anything you want. What would it be? What would you change? You make your case, and then everyone votes on it. And if you get enough votes, that change would happen in your hypothetical world. Well, today, it's If I Ruled the World, listener edition. We got a bunch of suggestions for ideas from you, the What Now? listeners, and Christiana Mbakwe-Medina, Josh Johnson, and I. Well, we run through them, and we decide if we would in fact want to live in your world. It's a fun one, so let's get into it.
This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. So before we get into today's If I Ruled the World chats, since it's Thanksgiving week, I've been thinking a lot about the kinds of conversations we have when we gather with friends and loved ones around the table. And a lot of people ask me this question. They'll say, oh, Trevor, what do you do with your family? Like, how do you keep it light? And look, I don't have a perfect answer for this, but I noticed there was a distinct difference between in how some people started having their Thanksgiving conversations, especially over the past decade, let's say, and how we would gather with family members back in the day in South Africa. And the biggest one was we started all our conversations speaking about
Things that we all experienced, just taking people down memory lane, you know, connecting around like crazy stories, like, you know, grandparents would talk about the grandkids and how much they'd grown and like embarrassing stories from their lives. And, you know, and then the parents would talk about their first time having a Christmas dinner, because obviously we didn't have Thanksgiving in South Africa, but we had family gatherings and family dinners where everyone came together at a certain time of year. And what I noticed is if you start conversations with the fond memories that connect people, you spend less time in the politics of now that divides people. And it doesn't mean you can't talk about politics. I'm not saying that. But just remember what you're trying to do. You're trying to connect with other human beings around a table, sharing a meal. It doesn't matter what the holiday is.
That's fundamentally the purpose. And so if that's the purpose, think about the best way to go about that. It's finding a way to connect with another human being's heart. And a lot of the times, our memories are where our heart lives. So, I don't know, try it. Ask your parents about a funny story from when you were young that maybe you've forgotten about. Tell them to share something embarrassing about you that maybe you didn't know about. And then you can tell them a story from your childhood, something that you got away with, that you always hoped they would never find out. And I don't know. Let's connect and see if we can make this one a little less about politics and a little bit more about the human beings connecting around this time of year.
And maybe this will give you some inspiration. Play a round of If I Ruled the World with your friends and family and see if things stay a little more fun and insightful, right? And remember to think big. Think about crazy. Think just completely out of the box. In fact, if you want inspiration, take a listen to me, Christiana, and Josh right after this short break. Well, look at that. We're in the real world now. Here are a few that came in. I'm going to read them to you. I mean, we're still judges.
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