Name: Simon Sinek & Trevor Noah on Friendship, Loneliness, Vulnerability, and More | Full Conversation
Uploaded: 2025-08-16T14:53:57.000Z
Duration: 24 min
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Modal verbs - A2

As you can see, there's nothing up here because there was nothing here.

So first of all, thank you and I hate you Anastasia.

But we were having a conversation in the little courtyard yesterday and I bumped into Simon, I've seen him around a bunch, I love him.

I always tell you I have like the biggest brain crush on you.

But we were having the discussion and then Sarah came up from the team and was like are you guys speaking?

I said I'll speak if he does something, I just want to listen to him.

And then Anastasia was like I heard you and now here we are.

So I'm not going to waste anybody's time because I'm sure many of you will agree with me but if you don't know, this man right here is honestly one of the greatest thinkers of our generation.

I love how his mind works, I love how he challenges us, how he thinks about thinking and really all I wanted to know and the genesis was yesterday is what are you fascinated by right now?

Because I know you're always working on something or you're always drilling into something.

Well it's interesting because the common theme that we've been hearing from all the talks today which is the passion isn't some manufactured thing.

Where you sort of find the passion and do what you're passionate about.

And what we hear is somebody finds an obsession for something and that then becomes their passion.

And the same is definitely true I'm sure for you and definitely true for me.

So the thing that I'm sort of obsessing about right now is friendship.

There's an entire industry to help us be better leaders.

There's an entire industry to help us be better parents.

There's an entire industry to help us eat better, exercise better, sleep better.

And yet there's barely anything on how to be a friend.

And if you think about all the mental health challenges that so many of us are facing today whether it's coping with stress, depression, anxiety, addiction, even obsession with longevity.

Friendship is the ultimate biohack that literally fixes all those things.

I've always felt like I'm not a very superstitious person, grew up very religious.

But I do believe in some sort of magic in the universe.

And every time I bump into you I feel like we're thinking about the same thing but on a slightly different path.

And usually other people are forced to listen to us just talk about that slightly different path.

But the reason this fascinated me is because I've been thinking a lot about friendship and what it means.

And a friend of mine actually said to me on a trip recently she said in successful spaces often times people will use the word sacrifice.

We heard Martin, we heard so many people up on the stage saying sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

And she said one of the most powerful things ever to me.

She said when we say we've sacrificed something for our career we shouldn't be afraid to put a name to who that sacrifice was because often time it was the people in our lives that we call friends.

And I wanted to know have you been thinking about that?

Like how do you think of friendship and then the sacrifice that brings you here to sit with people where you may make new friends or not?

Well I think definitely for me and I can't speak for anybody else but definitely for me I think the sacrifice was lopsided.

And I think especially for high performers who I think later on in life you start to realise that that network of friends sometimes isn't there because you've sacrificed.

You know the number of us who have cancelled on friends because a meeting comes up.

That we'll say to somebody for a meeting can we meet on Friday instead of Thursday?

Because in my calendar, we wouldn't say it, but in my calendar is a friend.

And definitely for me the times where I have tripped, slipped, fell, hit rock bottom, felt alone, any of those spaces, my work wasn't going to rescue me.

And it was by the grace of some higher power that there was always a friend who saw it and recognised it in me who picked me up.

And so I realised that we talk about investing, we talk about, you know, this is a different kind of investment.

You and I were talking about it the other day, you know, which is people are moving to, in the United States, you know, people are moving from California and New York to Texas and Florida to avoid paying taxes because they want to save time.

And yet where else, I want it to be the reverse.

Like I want to like, I'm not worried about like saving the money, you know, to be in a place I don't want to live.

I want to live with the people I love and if it costs more.

And by the way, by cost, I mean that maybe I won't achieve that thing or maybe I'll miss that deadline or maybe I'll miss that quarter, you know.

We think of sacrifice as always against people.

But I can make a sacrifice for my career, for my friends.

And it's about striking that right balance.

Because your friends will be there for you, your work won't.

Your friends will be there for you, your work won't.

I was talking to a friend about this conversation.

And my friend was like, what do you like, what do you love about Simon so much?

And I said, what I love about Simon is this, is I feel like you're a truffle pig of like ideas that will shape the world.

And what I mean by that is, what I mean by that is like.

Whatever you choose to take from it, take from it.

I love seeing what you're sniffing around in.

Because I believe it's connected to something far greater.

It's not the truffle, but it's the meal that is now going to influence and the restaurant that it's now going to shape.

Friendship is like, yeah, go out with your friends, hang out with your friends.

Why would you care about friendship on like a global scale?

So let me take one step back and try and get to an answer.

Our understanding of addiction largely comes from an experiment that was done I think in like the 50s or 60s where they put a rat in a cage.

There was one thing of water where it was plain water and one thing that was laced with drugs.

And in short order, the rat discovered the drug-laced beverage and loved it, drank more and more until it killed itself.

And our understanding of addiction largely comes from this study.

There was a guy named, I think his name was Bruce Alexander, who said, hold on, it's flawed.

The whole study is flawed because rats like us are social animals.

But that's not what you're supposed to do with social animals.

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Simon Sinek & Trevor Noah on Friendship, Loneliness, Vulnerability, and More | Full Conversation

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