Steve Dyer

Alex Moore notices that caffeine withdrawal is listed as a mental disorder in the new DSM-5:

Withdrawal “conditions are considered mental disorders when they impair a person’s ability to function in daily life,” writes the Wall Street Journal. It’s not exactly clear to me why this is being classified as mental disorder rather than just a physiological reaction. But if you’ve ever felt caffeine withdrawal, “impairing a person’s ability to function in daily life” is not hyperbole.

Caffeine withdrawal was upgraded from its previous status as pending in the last DSM. Researchers have concluded that in order to have full-on caffeine withdrawal a person needs to experience at least “three of five symptoms within 24 hours of stopping or reducing caffeine intake: headache, fatigue or drowsiness, depressed mood or irritability, difficulty concentrating, and flulike symptoms such as nausea or muscle pain.”

I have to say that the single most important lesson I learned in 25 years talking every single day to people was that there is a common denominator in our human experience. Most of us, I tell ya, we don’t want to be divided. What we want—the common denominator that I found in every single interview—is that we want to be validated. We want to be understood.

I’ve done over 35,000 interviews in my career, and as soon as that camera shuts off everyone always turns to me and inevitably in their own way ask this question: “was that ok?”

I heard it from President Bush. I heard it from President Obama. I’ve heard it from heroes and from housewives. I’ve heard it from victims and perpetrators of crime. I even heard it from BE-YON-CÉ in all of her Beyoncé-ness. She finishes performing, hands me the microphone, and says “was that ok?” [x]

If you want to understand just how vastly different this Pope is from his predecessor, read the full and best translation of his recent impromptu remarks to the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious Men and Women. They blew me away. Can you ever imagine the anal-retentive doctrine cop, Ratzinger, ever saying this about the body that dictates doctrine that he once headed, the Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith:

They will make mistakes, they will make a blunder [meter la pata], this will pass! Perhaps even a letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine (of the Faith) will arrive for you, telling you that you said such or such thing… But do not worry. Explain whatever you have to explain, but move forward… Open the doors, do something there where life calls for it. I would rather have a Church that makes mistakes for doing something than one that gets sick for being closed up…

The heart swells as the voice of Jesus replaces the voice of the Pharisee. Rocco tartly observes that Pope Francis’ “penchant for veering off-text in open company just reached a whole new planet”. You can say that again. I loved this aside in observing how we are often more obsessed with tiny shifts in stock prices than the human being dying of hypothermia down the street:

Computers are not made in the image and likeness of God; they are an instrument, yes, but nothing more. Money is not image and likeness of God. Only the person is image and likeness of God. It is necessary to flip it over. This is the gospel.

And I loved this dismissal both of the uptight traditionalists who cannot see the forest for the rosaries and of those seeking to substitute the core teaching of the incarnation in favor of a vague spirituality:

There are some restorationist groups. I know some, it fell upon me to receive them in Buenos Aires. And one feels as if one goes back 60 years! Before the Council… One feels in 1940… An anecdote, just to illustrate this, it is not to laugh at it, I took it with respect, but it concerns me; when I was elected, I received a letter from one of these groups, and they said: “Your Holiness, we offer you this spiritual treasure: 3,525 rosaries.” Why don’t they say, ‘we pray for you, we ask…’, but this thing of counting… The second [concern] is for a Gnostic current. Those Pantheisms… Both are elite currents, but this one is of a more educated elite… I heard of a superior general that prompted the sisters of her congregation to not pray in the morning, but to spiritually bathe in the cosmos, things like that …

And then a possible clue as to why Benedict XVI decided to break with centuries of tradition and run into hiding after he read a dossier on abuses in the church:

In the Curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people. But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true… The “gay lobby” is mentioned, and it is true, it is there… We need to see what we can do…

Was the former Pope subject to blackmail? Were other Cardinals?

If the Vatican’s screwed-up doctrines about gay people have led to genuine threats of blackmail from within the hierarchy, if a faction of benign or malign homosexuals has really been using that leverage for whatever purposes, then we do indeed have a problem, to which the answer must be more transparency – of the kind Francis seems to endorse. The Vatican is refusing to comment on the content of the “private meeting.” But Mary Elizabeth Williams recognizes an emerging pattern:

The pope’s cryptic statement about a “gay lobby” doesn’t do anything to explain what a “gay lobby” actually is, how it’s gay lobbying and what it’s gay lobbying for — or what the Vatican intends to do about what Francis calls the “difficult” work of reforming the genuinely corrupt aspects of the huge worldwide organization he recently became the leader of. But already his actions have revealed a Hillary-like determination to do it his way, protocol be damned. …

Like his institution itself, Francis still got a long, long, lonnnnnng way to go in terms of broadening the definition of love, humility and tolerance. But a guy who’s been tweeting about “the unemployed, often as a result of a self-centered mindset bent on profit at any cost,” is a guy who’s having a good time shaking things up and making splitting headaches for the big shots around him. A guy who remembers that Jesus was a loudmouth and a troublemaker. [Vatican spokesman] Father Lombardi, I hope you’ve got plenty of Advil. Because I have a feeling your boss is just getting warmed up.

Previous Dish on the rumors of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican here and here.

(Photo: Pope Francis smiles after his weekly general audience in St Peter’s square at the Vatican on June 12, 2013. By Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images.)

snapchatting:

this is very important

A reader pushes back against another:

Your reader claims that the FISA Court must be a “kangaroo court” because it never denies applications. I, too, do not like the appearance of a court that grants almost every warrant application.  But this is much more complicated than it looks.

First, the warrant process can be back-and-forth.  I have heard FISA Court judges explain that in reviewing applications they sometimes find some aspect deficient, and tell the DOJ of their concern.  The DOJ then, if possible, tries to improve the application (say, with additional facts) to satisfy the court’s concern.  If they know they cannot, the DOJ may simply withdraw the application.  This means the “granted versus denied” number is much less informative than it first appears.

Second, FISA applications are complex and often lengthy.  The government does not bother with one unless they really want one, and then they put the time in to make the application thorough.

Third, it’s worth looking more carefully at who some of these judges are (and have been).  In many ways the court is secretive, but one thing we do know is the members.  They are all sitting federal judges.  Here are a few who served recently:  Judge James Roberston, of the D.C. district court, was on the FISA court for a number of years until he resigned in 2005 to protest the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.  He was appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton, and early in his career worked for the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights under Law.  His public judicial work shows that he is anything but a rubber stamp for government police powers.  Yet he (apparently) rejected almost no applications, as there were only 11 rejections out of almost 34,000 from 1979-2012.  Or consider Judge James G. Carr, who served on the FISA Court from 2002-2008.  He was appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton, and is a former law professor who wrote an extensive treatise on wiretapping law.  I have practiced in front of Judge Carr; he, too, is no rubber stamp.

It is definitely worth scrutinizing the FISA Court, but it is not a kangaroo court.

I’m grateful to have this expert perspective; and relieved.

Researchers examined (pdf) whether martial arts fighters who smile prior to a fight, which is an unconscious expression of submission, are more likely to lose:

As expected, smile intensity predicted both the outcomes of fights as well as the more detailed measures of in-fight hostility. Interestingly, the smiles predicted both reduced hostility from the smiler as well as increased hostility from his opponent. In other words, it seemed both fighters were attuned to the information being communicated in the pre-fight smile. These results held even when controlling for existing differences in skill (i.e. the betting odds of the fight) and strength (height and weight). Though don’t go drastically altering your gambling strategy just yet -the betting line still did a better job overall in predicting fights compared to just smile intensity. …

You might interpret this as a kind of “nice guys finish last” effect. But that’s not quite right.

The authors also looked at whether smile intensity in the pre-fight photos predicted dominance and outcomes in other future fights. If the smiles are just helping us separate the gentle from the aggressive, then the nice guys should be performing consistently worse than their more hostile counterparts. This was not the case. These smiles are context-specific; they reveal something about the power dynamics between only these two fighters, not something enduring about the kinds of people that these fighters are. A fighter, smiling against opponent A because he knows he is outmatched, might be stone-faced when up against the weaker opponent B (who, by extension, would in that circumstance be reduced to a grinning fool).

(Photo: Justin Levens of the Southern California Condors (L) and Brian Foster of the San Jose Razorclaws (R) face off during the International Fight League weigh-in for the fights between the Condors versus the Razorclaws and the Red Bears versus Silverbacks at Buffalo Wild Wings on May 18, 2007 in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. By Brian Bahr/Getty Images for IFL)

This past month we learned about a pair of viral Craigslist ads that some nice young men had (successfully) used to find wedding dates. This was old news to me.

In 2008, I was named a bridesmaid against my will, and I prepared to suffer through all the standard requirements that come with the duty. Usually, you simply grin and bear these life necessities, but when the bride vehemently insisted that we all have dates despite the fact that several of us were single, I decided to respond to her myopia with outright insolence, with the support of and in the shared name of my bridal party cohorts.

On July 8, 2008, I posted the following ad to Craigslist:

“seeking awful date for awful wedding (w4m)”

i’m a bridesmaid in a terrible wedding. i need a date to ruin it with, preferably one that is either ridiculously unkempt or too hot to be able to enjoy with a straight face. i’ll buy you however many shots you might need to make it through this endeavor. you send me 25 words or less on why it should be you and a picture. 

I got 57 responses. Read the rest at The Hairpin.

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Joe My God passes along the trailer for Call Me Kuchu, opening in NYC on June 14th and LA the following week. A synopsis:

In an unmarked office at the end of a dirt track, veteran activist David Kato labors to repeal Uganda’s homophobic laws and liberate his fellow lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women, or “kuchus.”  … But one year into filming Call Me Kuchu and just three weeks after a landmark legal victory, the unthinkable happens: David is brutally murdered in his home. His death sends shock waves around the world, and leaves the Bishop and Kampala’s kuchus traumatized and seeking answers for a way forward. With unprecedented access, Call Me Kuchu depicts the last year in the life of a courageous, quick-witted and steadfast man whose wisdom and achievements were not fully recognized until after his death, and whose memory has inspired a new generation of human rights advocates.

Elsewhere, Stephen Fry shares a shocking quote from his upcoming documentary Out There, which looks at the experience of being gay around the world:

I actually got a Ugandan minister to say on camera — he’s the Minister for Ethics and Integrity; it’s the only such ministry in the world — and I said to him, ‘Look, even if these… utterly false supports on which you base your homophobia were true, which they aren’t, there’s so much more to worry about in your country than the odd gay person going to bed with the other gay person. For example, you have almost an epidemic of child rape in this country, which is just frightening.’ And he said, ‘Ah, but it is the right kind of child rape.’ …

I said ‘That was on camera. Do you know that that was on camera?’ He said yes. I said, ‘Can you just explain what you mean? He said, ‘Well, it is men raping girls, which is natural.’

In 1939:

The Dish recently posted a color film of London from 1927.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

Last week, Joanna Rohrback achieved national fame after a five-minute video of her demonstrating her exercise program Prancercise—“a springy, rhythmic way of moving forward, similar to a horse’s gait and ideally induced by elation”—went viral. I talked to the 61-year-old Florida resident about living free and Prancing hard.

Joanna, I’m a big fan of your work. I tried to do Prancercise this morning as interview prep and it was a lot of fun and I also felt very self-conscious for the first few minutes. Any tips for people who have a hard time letting go?

They might want to try to do it in their houses first if they have enough space to travel between rooms. Or maybe they could do it with other people so they won’t be as self-conscious. I don’t know! I never was like that.

I actually started Prancercise on the Hollywood boardwalk where all these addict athletes were just strutting their stuff, running and Rollerblading. This was back in ’89, and the heads did turn, but I didn’t care. And if I really wanted privacy, or if it was raining or something, I could still do it pretty much anywhere, even in a parking garage!

Have you always lived your life the way you Prancercise?

Oh yeah. I’m not like a crazy person, I wouldn’t go skydiving or do anything unsafe, but I’ve always just lived and acted how I want. I know I’m not in style all the time, and my lingo might not be up to date, and right now I wear ankle weights all day long—but I always try to have fun and help people and do what I love.

What sort of music do you like to listen to during your workouts?

I’m a Motown girl, believe it or not. I do branch out to other types of songs, like “Notorious,” and even the BeeGees. But it’s a lot of Motown. If you’ll notice, even in the video that’s online, the music I used was as close to Motown as I could get from what was available in the public domain.

What’s the best place you’ve ever Prancercised?

In a cornfield in Iowa. It was just unbelievable—the smell, the scenery. It was so private and beautiful and nature was all around me.

What’s the longest that you’ve ever Prancercised for?

I try to do at least 45 minutes a day, and I don’t take days off. Why would I take days off? It lifts my spirits.

Do you think about any specific things when you work out or do you try to just zone out and get into the music?

I let go. Of course it’s very hard to avoid pressing matters, so they might come into play early on in your workout, but you’ll always get into it (as long as the phone’s off).

Prancercise came about organically—you were working out and just started to move a certain way and liked it. How long did it take for you to formulate the different steps, like the trot and the gallop and the box?

The walk was the one that came to me first, when I was power-walking to a really great song on the radio and started to sashay. Then I wanted some upper body toning and developed the box, and then the trot was just fun—why do you think I was a little late for this interview? I was trotting, of course!—and it’s just nice to have the gallop for when a song changes and you want to get some increased cardio.

You conceive of Prancercise as an alternative to a more rigid, numbers-based gym culture. Had you ever been part of that? How did you work out before Prancercise?

I’ve never done gyms, never. I abhor regimentation and imitation. I did some yoga before—I actually still do a little yoga, because it’s important to stretch and warm up before exercising. But yes, I do see Prancercise as an alternative. There are benefits in doing this workout over running, because you’re not pounding the pavement in one fixed position—you’re displacing your weight for an easier impact.

There are a couple of very famous doctors who have endorsed the program, actually. And I should clarify something else—some naysayers think that people will get knee injuries if they wear ankle weights, but I say you can modify the program for any need! If you have weak knees, don’t wear ankle weights. In general, don’t ever do something that’s going to hurt you. And anyway, the ankle weights I wear are only one pound each.

Tell me more about the video that’s made you famous. Did you really make it in 1989?

No, that’s a common misconception. There are two videos. I did film a video in 1989—it was called Funky Punky’s Prancercise Program, and I used it to copyright my idea at the Library of Congress and show people what I was working on. But I couldn’t market with it because of copyright issues with the music.

It’s too bad, because you know those little bits in the new video where I rhyme, there’s lots more of that in the old video—the script is pretty funny. But the video that’s online, I put it together in the fall, and it went up for the public in December as I was getting my website and book together.

Who filmed the video?

My video guy was in a golf cart facing backwards while another guy drove. It was actually raining intermittently that day and he wanted to stop, but I said, “No! We have to finish!”

Let’s talk about horses. What’s the horse connection? What about horses do you love so much?

I started to dwell on the concept of horses when I came up with the name Prancercise.

Oh yeah—how did you come up with the name?

It came pretty fast. I knew about Jazzercise and other –cises, so I knew that that formula worked well, and of course I was prancing. Put them together and what do you get!

Cool. And back to the horses?

Yes. Well, I was putting everything together for the book, and I thought—what a great way to illustrate this program, through the beauty and strength of a horse. Horses certainly partake in a vegetarian diet, so they fit with the whole model, and as animals they are so graceful and so strong. I’ve always loved watching them. Equestrian horses, parade horses—Tennessee Walkers have that particular gait that’s very close to what I do, they bob their heads rhythmically and all that.

Have you ever done Prancercise alongside a horse?

I’m so glad you asked that question. This is my dream! I haven’t done it yet, but I have been invited by several ranches to come and do a video with some of their horses, and I can’t wait.

You conceive of Prancercise as a holistic program. How important is the diet component? Can a person love pizza and beer and Prancercise all at once?

Absolutely. Just moving is so important, and I’m realistic, I know the whole world’s not going to change their diet. Optimal health, in my opinion, comes from a vegetarian diet—but anyone can benefit from this movement. I would never discourage anyone from becoming a part of it.

How do you see Prancercise growing over, say, the next five years? What are your goals?

I haven’t really had time to look into what all the people who’ve contacted me want to do with Prancercise—a lot of people are talking about a lot of different things, but I’ll get to it in time. I know that I definitely want a few specific messages to come out from this.

Number one, I want people to benefit from expressing themselves as individuals. I don’t want them to worry about what they look like and their exercise schedule and how it measures up to other people’s workout regimens. Prancercise can be customized to everyone’s own particular style, and it’s a form of self-expression that people could really gain from. Through self-expression I believe that we can diffuse pain and violence.

Number two, I want to support and promote vegetarianism, which is better for environmental conservation and better for people’s health.

Have you been surprised by anyone who has emerged as a fan over the last week? Is your fan base old, young, male, female?

It’s such a cross-section! For example, I’ve already had an email from Army men who are Prancercising as part of their exercise routine. But I get emails from women in their late 70’s who thank me for giving them a form of exercise that they can actually keep up with without a problem—there was a twentysomething girl on my flight back from New York who wanted to Prancercise with me in the aisle—and I get emails from families and kids saying that everyone’s doing this together and having a lot of fun.

Do you see yourself teaching classes, making DVDs, opening studios?

I’ve taught people before—I actually did a 5k Turkey Trot last year on Thanksgiving morning, where I had external music and everyone was able to do Prancercise along with me, and that was really cool. Lots of smiles on everyone’s faces.

But I think it’s more important for me to do lectures and convey the concept rather than inundate myself with physical classes. I don’t want to get any thinner, you know!

Is that a concern for you? Do you find yourself Prancercising too much?

In the beginning, yes. I did it way too much when I first discovered it, and it took a physical toll. In fact, anyone who starts to do this might find themselves using a lot of new muscles, maybe even getting a blister or two! I got over all that eventually, and I’m what I call “fortified for Prancercise” now.

How would you describe yourself to a stranger?

I’m an individual free-thinker—that’s the way I’ve always been and probably the way I always will be. I try to have decent integrity, I’m a little kooky, I do different things from the mainstream, and I’m not overly concerned with my appearance and what’s in style.

Would you call yourself a feminist?

A little bit, maybe!

Aside from Prancercise, what makes you happy? What inspires you?

I really like helping people. I’ve done wellness coaching for the elderly and disabled, helped them psychologically deal with life a little bit better. Yeah, that’s what gives me pleasure. I also love my animals, I’ve got my three feral cats—I took a few interviews off my schedule in New York because I was rushing back to take care of them. Their names are Farley, Sadie and Olive. They’re beautiful—one Siamese, one with a splash of orange on black, one all black.

You’ve always been interested in helping people—you were a social worker for some years and you have a public health background. Did you ever expect that Prancercise is the way you would make your big impact?

Oh no. This is an aberration, it’s a real fluke. I’m very happy about everything that’s happened, but it probably would not have been my first choice to get famous from a video that so many people think is risqué.

Risqué how?

My pants!

But I love those pants. They struck me as very coherent with the spirit of Prancercise.

Well, thank you. It sounds like you get it. And that’s really nice! I hope a lot more people are able to go past the video and understand the message of Prancercise.

Previously: Interview With an International Adoptee

Jia Tolentino is a writer in Michigan. 

herspanic:

oh no….

Last week, my old friend Dan Savage and I sat down for an extremely ill-advised public chat about, well, a lot of things. We were at the New York Public Library at a sold-out event, promoting Dan’s typically funny, moving, enraging, provoking, uplifting series of essays, now collected as “American Savage”. Here’s the full program. Enjoy:

It is summer. It is hot. Tomorrow is the first day of June, which means that you’re contractually obligated to consume only cold beverages. Can I get you something to drink?

ICED COFFEE
While the subject of iced coffee preparation is somewhat controversial, I am unafraid to come down squarely on the side of the cold brew preparation. Living in New Orleans made this my jam. Cold-brewed coffee (and tea) is less acidic, smoother, hella strong, and you don’t heat up your kitchen to make it. I also use way less sugar in cold-brewed iced coffee.

Now, you can buy a Toddy coffee maker or whatever, but that is not actually necessary. I once made a cold-brew concentrate in a Ziploc bag and brought it along on a road trip in a cooler. That was rad. It can be kind of messy, what with all the grounds, but if you have a French press, you do not have a problem.

You will need:

- A French press, if you have one. If not, you need some sort of glass, plastic, or stainless steel jar or pitcher or bowl with a lid. You will also need a fine-mesh strainer (or even a colander lined with paper towels).

- Coffee, coarsely ground (like a French press grind, if you use one at home)

- Water

- This Times recipe uses a ratio of one ounce of coffee : five ounces of water, so if you have a four-cup French press, you’d use 6.5 oz of coffee, or 3/4 cup + a skosh. (This is an inexact science, obviously.) Scale up or down accordingly. If you want to use an entire pound of coffee (and end up with eight cups of coffee concentrate, which will keep for two weeks in your refrigerator), use 10 cups of water.

Put the ground coffee and the water in your container. Don’t push the French press’s plunger down, if you’re using one. Refrigerate 8-12 hours, then strain, either with your French press or with your strainer. Now you have a concentrate that you can dilute with water and/or milk.

To serve, use 1/4 cup concentrate to 3/4 cup milk or water. (Extra milk makes it creamy-delicious, but also compounds the coffee poos, if you’re the sort who is susceptible to them.)

ICED TEA

Listen up, America. Nostalgia kills. Stop with the “sun tea.” Get rid of your sun tea. It is revolting. That shit is crawling with bacteria because the temperature of water heated au naturel (about 130 degrees) does not get high enough to actually kill bacteria (195 degrees). I mean, you’re into whatever you’re into, but Alcaligenes viscolactis causes “gastric upset, diarrhea, and other flu-like symptoms.” Not a good look for summer. Cold-brew that shit instead, sister.

You will need:

- Some sort of tea-brewing vessel that has a lid to keep fridge smells out of your beverage (a jar or a pitcher, or even a bowl with a plate over it, will do).

- 1-2 tea bags (or 1-2 teaspoons of loose tea) per eight ounces of water

Put the tea bags in the water, obviously. Refrigerate anywhere from 4-12 hours! Green and white teas need less time than black teas.

What might you add to your tea? Ideas: sliced ginger, fruit (citrus peels, berries, anything sliced, lychee), cucumbers, herbs (muddled or chiffonaded lavender or mint, maybe even ROSEMARY?), spices (think chai: cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, cloves, lightly crushed cardamom pods, black peppercorns). After brewing, you can add sweetener or juice (or make an Arnold Palmer).

SIMPLE SYRUP

Use simple syrup and you won’t end up with gritty sugar at the bottom of your cup (unless you’re into that sort of thing).

You will need:

- A small-to-medium saucepan

- 1 cup sugar

- 1 cup water

Combine sugar and water. Boil, stirring frequently, until sugar dissolves. Let cool and bottle for storage.

This will last two weeks in your refrigerator, unless you add a skosh of vodka as a preservative, in which case it will last a little longer.

That was delicious. And yes, I’d be thrilled if you washed the glasses.

Photo via ks_marks/flickr.

Simone Eastman is a cat lady. She thinks you are perfect and beautiful.

mochisquish:

satan-tier:

oh my god

Yes.

South African comedian Trevor Noah's life story doesn't immediately scream comedy. His standup explores his complicated relationship with racial identity, having grown up mixed race in apartheid-era South Africa, where neither his black mother nor white father were allowed to acknowledge their relationship with him in public.

He was a major hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last summer, and now his first American solo show, Born a Crime, has just extended its run in New York through the end of June. It's not his first time in the States — he appeared on The Tonight Show last year, and toured the country with Gabriel Iglesias. I recently sat down with him in New York to talk about African comedy and why he doesn't set goals.

How long have you been doing this show?

Well, this is a different version of it, but technically I've been doing it for the last six months. Let me think. Not really. I did six weeks at the Soho [Theatre] in London, and then four weeks in Australia, and now I'm doing it here.

So the show you did in Edinburgh last year was a totally different show?

That's when I was just working on a show. I had no show. I had no idea what I was doing, so that was just the beginning. It was an hour of me working through a show, which still worked well.

How much has the show changed since you started doing it in the UK?

It changes everywhere I go. In the UK, for instance, I was doing an hour show, so at least the first 25 minutes was just UK stuff. And the same goes for Australia, the first 25 was Australian stuff. And then in New York, I'm slowly finding it. There's things I'm doing here that are only US.

A lot of the show is about how you perceived race in the US. I didn’t know if you did that all over the world.

The core story is the same, but then everything around it can change, which I enjoy because then I don't get bored of the show. I get to change everything everywhere I go. But really, it's an introductory show. So if you're watching it for the first time, you get to know who I am and where I'm from and a bit of my story. But then everything around it is constantly evolving. I never believe a show is perfect, so there's always work to be done within that.

You’ve been sort of taken under Eddie Izzard’s wing.

Yeah. Eddie was kind enough to present me in London and in Edinburgh. It was fantastic, it just gave me just a little leg up. He's always been a fan of global comedy, comedy traveling the world, so I guess this is a natural relationship. I helped him come to South Africa and then he's helped me go into the UK.

Are you interested in following in his footsteps, doing mega tours around the world?

I'm not so much a fan of the grand scale of comedy. I don't like big comedy. I love intimate comedy, so I don't see myself performing in arenas. I don't like arenas. I made the mistake in South Africa, after doing a long run, to try and accommodate demand, we did arenas at the end, and I didn't enjoy it. There's just too many people. It's just not what I like. I don't think comedy out of a theater should ever be where I need to be. I always want to keep it in a theater, and that's probably where I'll stay and I enjoy it.

What was it like coming up in South Africa? I think most people here really don’t know anything about the comedy scene there.

Well, it's a very weird scene. It legitimately started about 13 years ago. There were a few guys doing it, really a few, and they did really well. They got the thing up in the country, they got it started, and slowly but surely more people started getting into it. I was sort of in the second wave of comedians that did it, and we were lucky. When I started doing it, we were able to take it more into the mainstream and make it more of an everyman's thing, a popular entertainment destination, and so it's really been growing at a great rate. It's still a very young industry. We have one club in Johannesburg, and I think they're gonna try and open a few more, but for now, it's really just rooms everywhere.

Was there ever an underground comedy scene in South Africa?

No, there never was. It literally came about after democracy. It's hard to make a rebellious scene when your audience can't come out. You can try and do your little hipster thing in the corner, but if people can't come out or they'll get arrested, then you're wasting your time. So until democracy started, there couldn't really be any sort of movements towards comedy.

You also talk in your show about doing comedy around Africa, which is fascinating. There must be even less of a scene in other parts of Africa.

Yeah, it's insane. In most places, there is no scene. There's literally no scene. Africa's very conservative, as a whole, so the idea of guys getting up and just speaking about everything is really not embraced fully in many places. You will come up against many obstacles. I would dare to say South Africa has the most liberal comedy scene on the continent. We have comedians talking about anything and everything – sex, religion, government, whatever it is. Whereas you go to Nigeria, you can't talk about sex, you can't really talk about the government. They have one the biggest scenes, but you still have to be very conservative. And then in some places the conservative levels just skyrocket to the point where people are just making very basic jokes, almost internet jokes, on stage. But comedy has to have a natural evolution, and I think that's just the beginning. It will grow as time goes.

Do you think there’s a big future for comedy in Africa?

There is. There's a big future for that. I think South Africa would probably be the first place. We used to have the largest comedy festival in the southern hemisphere. It was bigger than Australia's. Unfortunately because of mismanagement, the festival didn't do so well, but we've done it before so we can do it again. It just needs somebody to stand behind it and support it and it will come up again easily. It's something that's very achievable.

How have people at home reacted to your success globally?

They've been amazing. I mean, if it wasn't for South Africans loving me first—I'm very happy that I was successful in my country first before I travelled. I know lots of people that have success out of their country, but I'm very lucky that home is my number one base. Home is still where my number one fans are, that's where I really focus my efforts, and so when they see me travelling, I think they really enjoy it because I'm still their guy. I don't live in LA, I don't live in New York. I live in South Africa. Sometimes I go to another place for long, but I'm always in South Africa. That's my home, so they get to see me on Leno or Letterman and then see me on the streets, which is really cool for them. So I think they enjoy it, and they've really been great to me.

A lot of your current show is about race, which is a subject that’s played a big part in comedy in the US. Where you influenced at all by the American comedy about race?

In South Africa, we have a very unique history with race. We have a very current situation with race. It's part of our fiber; it's part of what made the country. It really is our most prominent piece of history, so it's something that many South African comedians talk about, which is really great. It's definitely at the fore of what we do. So when watching American comedians, there were some things that did translate, because as a culture, black people share certain things everywhere. But then there were many things that are very different, so we still had to forge our own path when it came to this.

And you’re also incredibly good at accents. How did that come about?

Well, I grew up with that. My family's very mixed—my father's Swiss, my mother's a Xhosa woman from South Africa—so you've got such a diverse range in the family, and then in the country. So I always learned how to mimic people. I found it was the easiest way for me to connect with them. If you sound like somebody, they're less likely to judge you. You look different, and South Africa was all about how people looked—I guess everywhere in the world to a certain extent—and so when you speak like somebody, they immediately accept you, as opposed to somebody who sounds totally different to you.

What are your goals as far as doing standup in the US?

Oh no. I'm one of the worst person to ask when it comes to goals. I have no time for goals. I don't know where the idea of goals came from. I don't believe in goals. I'd rather believe in enjoying micro-successes in things that I do. I don't plan something like that. I don't go, “Oh in America, I hope this will happen.” No, I just hope people will come to my shows. No matter where I am in the world, if people come and laugh and have a good time, it really doesn't matter to me if it’s a hundred seats or a thousand seats. If I can pay my bills and buy food and be able to live a normal life, then I'm happy. That's all I want. Everything else is a bonus in life, it truly is. I think you set yourself up for just unnecessary pressure and depression when you work in the entertainment industry and try and set goals. This is not Wall Street. You can't plan your promotions. It doesn't work like that. The entertainment industry's fickle. Some people struggle for forty years and then they're a superstar. Other people are 13, they're discovered on YouTube and the next thing they're earning 250 million dollars. So, don't worry about goals. Just enjoy what you're doing, and then hopefully the money will come to you and then you'll be able to enjoy your life while doing that.

That’s a really good attitude.

Yeah, I don't stress about those things. I find it ridiculous. “Oh, and then in three years, I want to have a TV show.” No, I have no time for that. Because everything I've done up until this point, I haven't planned. I never planned to come to New York, I never planned to do shows in the UK, I never planned to be a standup, so everything I have planned didn't go according to plan. I planned to be a traffic officer when I was a kid, and that didn't work. I planned to go to university, and I never did. I planned so many things. I planned to buy a Ferrari, that didn't happen. If you go with the flow—live life like a river. Just follow the path of least of resistance, and you'll find that'll be the most enjoyable life.

Trevor Noah's Born a Crime runs through June 29 at 45 Bleecker in New York City. His first US TV special, Trevor Noah: African American, premieres on July 6 on Showtime.

Elise Czajkowski is a Contributing Editor at Splitsider. She tweets.

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