My mom would spend a week in jail. She would spend a day in jail here - a week again, a week and a half, two weeks. My grandmother tells me stories of how because I would be at the house, I wouldn't notice that my mom was gone because she would be at work sometimes. So it was just like time when my mom would be gone and my grandma would tell me she'll be back. And nobody knew where anybody was.
I was lucky to come along for the ride. [My mother] really is an amazing woman. And the world we lived in in South Africa at the time was a very matriarchal society because so many black men had been removed from the home.
I think it does because if you think of where "The Daily Show" was when I inherited it from Jon Stewart, I was in a space where, essentially, everything seemed like it was on track, you know, in terms of - from a progressive point of view, you know, you're looking at Republicans who, yes, were in control of many facets of government.
It's the reason the United States fell into the Patriot Act - because they were reacting.
I learned to use language like my mother did. I would simulcast, give you the program in your own tongue.
I just had - we had instances - like, for instance, when I turned 13, she threw me a bar mitzvah. But nobody came.But nobody came because nobody knew what the hell that was. I only had black friends. No one knows what the hell you're doing.
It's very rare to find a place where news itself has a political bent. Normally, let's say in the U.K. for instance, newspapers might explicitly support one party or the other, but television is just straight-up facts that are not influenced by any party from either side. In South Africa we try to maintain the same thing. Unfortunately, the government sometimes intervenes, but for the most part, the facts are the facts.
If you can't trust your president to get the right information on a Googleable fact, then can you really trust him with the harder stuff? Which, by the way, is everything else the president of the United States has to deal with.
One of the people from my online team said he didn't notice - almost immediately after the [Donald] Trump victory within the following days, he noticed that there was a severe spike in hateful messages that were coming towards me.
I hate using this term [miracle]. I'm a man of science. I'm a doctor. I don't use this word. But he said, it's a miracle your mom's alive.
In America, to have news that has explicitly taken a position is a very strange place to be in, and it's a very dangerous place to be in. And that's happening on Facebook, as you saw, and that's happening online. People are just being given their news and not the news, which is really, really scary.
In America, there is no racial segregation. I'm not sure I'm quite familiar with this phrase.
I had some people who disagreed with me here or there - but nothing as strong as I've received, you know, coming to America. That is the irony of life, so I guess - I always tell people - I go I feel like in a strange way, I'm home. You know, this doesn't shock me. This is just - I've come a long way to be in a place that is extremely familiar to me.
America is dealing with the effects of an underreaction to Donald Trump when he was running and when he was Mr. Saying-Racist-Things-on-the-News.
I hope America manages to steer itself away from partisanship and back to patriotism; we are all Americans. And as long as I can make people laugh and feel better, I'm happy.
I lived my life as a - as a part-white, part-black but then sometimes-Jewish kid.
At the same time, you had Barack Obama as a president. You had Hillary Clinton on track, all the Democrats looking good. And, you know, Donald Trump was just an entertaining buffoon to watch. And, over time, you came to realize that Donald Trump was appealing to a lot of people with his populist message. And, slowly, I think, even as a show, we started shifting in tone as the election started shifting.
I existed in a space where my mother was a black woman and my father was a white man. And that's how I saw the world. I was just like, some dads are whites and some moms are black. And that's how it is.
People were encouraged to snitch. [South Africa] was a police state, so there were police everywhere. There were undercover police. There were uniformed police. The state was being surveilled the entire time.
If the police believed that they were planning any form of resistance against the state, then you were just gone. Nobody knew where you were, and you just hoped to see that family member again.
I think when you look at religion, you look at where Christianity came from. You know, my mom delved deeper into that. And she felt a deep connection.
[My mother] wanted to go as deep as possible into the world of religion. And that took her into Judaism.
[ My mother] went, OK, I've read the Bible. I've read the Bible again. I'm reading the Bible again. OK, let me - where does this Bible come from? What does this Old Testament speak - who are the Israelites? Who - what is Judaism? And then she went, and I'm going to study that. And, you know, she wanted to almost get to the core.
My mother converted, my mom converted to Judaism.
Whatever it was, my mom said, I'm going to seek out more. And so I was constantly confused, which is sometimes a little bit, you know, disorienting. But I feel like it leads to a way more colorful life.
