Trevor Noah Explains How Kintsugi, the Japanese Art of Repairing Pottery, Helped Him Overcome Life’s Tragedies
Trevor Noah ended his stint as the host of The Daily Show a little over three years ago, but he’s made himself into another kind of pop-cultural presence since then. In evidence, we have his appearance above on the popular podcast and YouTube show Diary of a CEO. For more than two and a half hours, Noah discusses with host Steven Bartlett (who, like Noah, also happens to be African-born with mixed parentage) his reasons for quitting that political-news-comedy TV institution, his struggles with depression, and the time his stepfather shot his mother in the head. She lived, owing to the miraculously unlikely trajectory of the bullet, but that didn’t stop the experience from becoming what Noah describes as the worst of his life. Discussing all this brings to his mind the Japanese art of kintsugi (previously featured here on Open Culture). “It’s a practice of repairing pottery and ceramics that have broken,” Noah explains. “What happens is, you break a plate, or you break a vase or something,” and “they put it back together, these artisans who do …
