012 Emblem of Dignity Transcript (Nelson Mandela)

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Michael: Hi there. Michael Osborne here. Before we begin today, I have a favor to ask. We are really wanting to build up our Twitter followers and bring more people to our weekly newsletter. You can follow us on Twitter at famous and gravy, and you can sign up for our newsletter on our website, famous and gravy.com. And of course, please tell your friends about our show. All right. That's it. Thanks so much. Let's go.

This person died in 2013 at age 95.

Friend: Oh my god. For some reason, I thought of a Aretha Franklin, but I'm pretty sure she died later than 2013. And I don't know if she was 95.

Michael: He was tall and slim. He was also somewhat vain. He wore impeccable suits.

Friend: Oh, god. Okay. So it's making me think. It's someone who rich I'm really blanking, Mike

Michael: His given name translates colloquially as troublemaker.

Friend: His given name, like I should know, from a baby book, like if I looked at his name and a baby book, his troublemaker would be next to it.

Michael: The question most often asked about him was how after all he'd been through, he could be so evidently free of spite.

Friend: It can't be like the Dalai Lama or anything because they wouldn't be vain. They've forsaken all physical things.

Michael: He shared a Nobel peace prize with his predecessor.

Friend: Oh, okay. So it might, is it a Scion or a writer? Maybe I'm trying to think of like glamorous kids now and coming up very blank.

Michael: There was so much activity at his vigil that President Obama paid homage, but decided not to intrude on the privacy of a dying man that he considered to be his hero.

Friend: And that Obama considered his shell. Now I feel like it's like a monk-like old glamorous. Cool. And like, I don't know, politics. I don't know. I'm like so confused.

Michael: What's so great is how close you are but also how bad, the way, like, there's just, you're just a few degrees off, but he was a symbol of the opposition to apartheid.

Friend: Oh, Nelson Mandela.

Amit: Today's dead. Celebrity is Nelson Mandela.

Nelson: I have Johnny here idea, offer Derma property and free society in which all vessels live together. horrible through live phone box. If me stay on my gym for which.

Michael: welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories, examining a famous person's life. We want to figure out the things in life that we would actually design. And ultimately answer a big question. What I want that life today, Nelson Mandela died 2013 age 95 category one grading the first line of their obituary.

I can just say how nervous I am about doing Nelson fucking Mandela. This is going to be a hard one. Yeah. Nelson Mandela who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country's first black president becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance died Thursday night.

He was 95

Amit. I like emblem a lot. I like forbearance a lot and I mean, dignity, we knew that would be in there, but implement forbearance.

Those are great words. I didn't know what forbearance meant. I had to go to the dictionary with that one. Uh, and it says restraint and tolerance. Okay. It's ground, you know, it's like plucked from deep in the dictionary and it's.

Very very sparingly and very deliberately here. And it's a legacy kind of words.

Amit: Good. It's also one more than three barons.

Michael: Oh my God. That's true. Anyway, emblem.

Amit: Yeah, Emblem's good because we use symbol a lot. Uh, and I like emblem because you can only bestow that upon a few, very, very few people. So for somebody to be an emblem, you are saying that they are a Juul in a sort of way, but at the same way, the bald Eagle or whatever is an emblem it's bigger than a symbol.

It's actually the symbol. Why would I ask something or bring up something about the obituary? Most of the people we've done so far have been like entertainers, Mandela obviously was not known like as an entertainer and that his reputation, but the New York times obituaries have also like thrown in some witticisms.

And this one they didn't, is that a gap?

Michael: Should there have been something kind of claim?

Amit: I'm just wondering if we picked up on something, what do you mean entertainers? They throw in the little quirky words and jabs, but the emblems straight to the

Michael: point. So that by having. Quip or like a little witticism as you called it.

You're actually nodding to the nature of the fame of that person. If they're in the entertainment industry broadly, but this guy's too big to have the equip. Well, obviously, I mean, you can't make snide jokes about Mandela. Well, that was my question, I guess not. I mean, Mandela is revered, right? So I think you'd have to find.

Uh, a kind of ambiguous international head of state and see how they treat it. They're

Amit: well, an imprisoned head of state also is difficult. Wait a sec,

Michael: imprisoned. That was like my main, actually the only thing I could find wrong with this obituary, they didn't mention the imprison. Didn't mention the imprisonment.

He was in prison for 27 years. That's such an enormous part of his story and that's kind of how we knew about them. And part of the reason you and I struggled about whether or not we should even think about doing Nelson Mandela on this show. Shouldn't

Amit: it have been in there, I would think so, but maybe there wasn't room, maybe it was a space issue.

Michael: I don't feel like there's a clause in there where you can get that in and they chose not to, which I don't know what to make of that. I think you have to know enough about the nature of his imprisonment. For that to be okay in the first line of his obituary. Cause it's a virtuous imprisonment, you know, he's a political prisoner.

So, you know, maybe that's the part that takes too much work because you have to explain why he's in prison in the first place, in the first line of his obituary, but that's supposed

Amit: to be the magician ship of these obituary writers. They can write an autobiography in

one

Michael: sentence. Exactly. So I, I would give this.

Not quite a 10. This is a nine to me. There's so much. I love, I love emblem. I love forbearance, love dignity. First black president emancipation. The word emancipation in here is what his life stood for. Right freedom. The one thing that takes it away from me is I kind of feel like I should have gotten this.

27 years, which is about a quarter of his life. I mean, more than that. Yeah. And that, that feels like it's missing.

Amit: Yeah. Interesting. I was prepared to give it a nine until you brought up that point. So I'm going down one. You're going to go, I'm going to go with an eight. Okay.

Michael: Should we go on? Let's go on.

Alright. Category two, five things I love about you. This is where I'm at. And I work together to come up with five reasons why we ought to be talking about this person and what we love about them. If you would like to lead off you can, but I have. I don't, you've just got a guilt

Amit: trapped trapped me. You go first.

No, I don't know I'm to, I'm going to pass the potatoes. I have some forbearance here. Uh, okay. I went number one, gift for words. He was a member of royalty of a certain class, you know, the words, gentlemen, aristocrat and all that, but he really was incredibly articulate and had like a writers. For words when he spoke, if, if it was, you know, a line or an entire speech, it was just so poetic.

It made you want to listen, but it also stirred something, no matter what he was saying, if he was trying to instill peace in some small way or make a proclamation, he could just do it so wonderfully. Clip that I watched just in the last couple of days, it was some of the effect of put down in your knives, put down your guns and throw them in the ocean or something like that.

And it was just

Michael: beautiful. Take your guns, your knives and your. And throw them into the, yeah, I mean, he describes himself as not being a particularly strong or Raider, like speech giver, which I don't think is totally true. He does have a kind of dignity in a restaurant, chronic quality to him. But I also think that it's his writing literally like pen to paper writing as well as his spoken word writing.

Amit: That's great. Uh, number two. Okay.

Michael: Let me say this. I want. Couch this, I found myself going to a lot of different character traits, some of what you've already talked about, dignity open-mindedness principle. And I was trying to come up with like a catch all phrase for all of it. And I wrote down pragmatic, ideal.

Okay.

Amit: And you made that up or

Michael: you read that somewhere. I know I wrote that down. Okay. I, I think he is pragmatic. I think he is a political beast, and I think that there are choice moments throughout his life and his career where he chooses to compromise with people, but he also retains idealism. He's also hopeful when he went to prison, he says in his autobiography, I never thought I was going to be in prison.

The rest of my life. I just never believed that. I think he also had a gift for looking at the humanity and people who disagreed with, and even his oppressors, whites and apartheid, South Africa. I also think he's a lifelong learner. You know, he reads a lot and he's a lawyer. He's a really like curious guy.

And all of that to me is sort of captured in this term, pragmatic idealist. I really liked the idea that you believe the world can be. But you also can chart a pathway to a better world because I meet a lot of naive idealists and meet a lot of cynical pragmatists. I'm not sure I meet enough pragmatic idealists.

Amit: That's good. Thanks. Yeah. So he was a lawyer, he said that's part of the pragmatic part. So as Gandhi. Yeah. Right.

Michael: What, what to up. Laws powerful. I had a buddy, you know, this friend who is a lawyer, he has a very high opinion of himself and it's very misguided. You know what I'm talking about, that he was one of these nerds who got super into being in law school.

He said, you know, what's so great about law school is that I'm going to work

Amit: for a fortune 1000 company one day.

Michael: Yeah. That guy, uh, so he said, you know, what's great about law school is that you. All the rules that everybody's living by, that you had no idea existed. All these little rules that are written down somewhere that have the weight of government behind them.

Like they exist out there and you don't even realize that you live underneath and around those rules. So I think there's a reason lawyers go on to be politicians, but

Amit: to be the most or one of the most transforming the most influential political activists of. The 20th century. So you're saying that they have such an understanding of the constrictions, that law and history place upon

Michael: people who else goes on that list besides Gandhi and Mandela and the 21st century.

I think you'd probably play MLK. So with there it's God, it's a religious understanding, but I think that to me seems like the pathway to. Societal transformation if you're going to be that kind of leader. God. Yeah.

Amit: Okay. Yeah. So is this the way you're saying to our youth, these days, if they're making that decision their senior year in

Michael: college?

Yeah. I don't know that that's bad advice. I mean, if you really want to change the world, you've got to have some training and some language and you're carrying, you know, the weight of those institutions into. Your passion for reform.

Amit: Yeah. I think some of my closest friends, if I look at like my five closest friends, maybe three of them are lawyers.

Yeah. And I think they all went in with that first

Michael: and they, and they lose the idealism. I mean, that's the thing about 98% of lawyers, if not more. I just

Amit: substitute the word lawyers for people. Idealism fades, idealism fades. Yeah. And that's why we're talking about Nelson Mandela today. Idealism did not fade.

Michael: Yeah. So I, if my number two is pragmatic idealist, then part of, I think what's in there for me is. Which I think you just put words to, it was the fact that his idealism retained through his 95 years on

planet

Amit: earth, which is remarkable. So I'm going to build on pragmatic for number three, and this is that he lived modestly.

So even when he's present and post-presidency and all he lived very modestly and what was more or less than neighborhood house. And this is guy who is for a period in the nineties, possibly the most renowned person in. Planet earth. Yeah, he is going to meeting every single heads of state. He has Michael Jackson traveling all the way to South Africa just to meet him for a few moments, but he lived not in playful quarters.

Michael: So what do you love about. Contrast that he represented something more, but also like the house doesn't need to be too big. The lawn doesn't need to be too manicured. It's not only

Amit: that, but it's the absence of the physical moat when you are that big and that powerful and that renowned, I mean, you also need your space.

Like there's a reason people live in guarded in gated palaces, and he was just a little more out there. So not only was it in contrast, but. I don't know of the people with the people. Yeah.

Michael: Number four. All right. I wrote flirtations with acting because I wanted to get two things in here. One, I learned that he played in a play in college, John Wilkes booth, and a play about Abraham Lincoln's life.

And I love the irony of that. He also had a cameo in spike. Lee's Malcolm. At the very end. There's a, you know, all these school children standing up saying, I am Malcolm X, I am Malcolm X. And, uh, it's very powerful. And then it cuts to Nelson Mandela playing a school teacher in 1992, which is when this movie came out.

So this before he's president, but after he's been released, From prison. I think he kind of wanted to be on the silver screen. And, uh, so four rotations with acting was how I shoehorned in these two little bits

Amit: of trivial. And you're talking about like 50 years apart, flirtations with

Michael: acting indeed. Yeah.

Can I take the last one? Yeah. All right. This is the one that I most want to talk about. I think his charisma he's described as a charismatic leader. The reason I wanted to talk about this with you is it's a nature nurture question from. Have you been in the room with like incredibly charismatic people who seem to have a magnetic quality, like the lion in the room type?

Yes, my hunch is that often that quality is God-given, but there's also a part of me that wants to believe you can kind of Zen master your way to being a charismatic individual Nelson Mandela, obtains, charisma, and maybe he's born with charisma. He certainly seems to be kind of born with charisma. But I guess the question I got for you is, do you.

Charisma can be taught or obtained if you're not necessarily born with it. Have you ever seen

Amit: that in anybody? I don't think I've seen the entire arc of somebody to be able to answer that properly, but no, I don't think it can be a hundred percent taught. Yeah, it can be developed more, but it can't come from out of

Michael: nowhere.

Do you think leadership can be. Yeah. So what's the difference because charismatic leader is somebody who has that magnetic quality and uses it to be the lion in the room to guide conversations a certain direction or group decisions in a certain way. Most politicians have some element of

Amit: leadership. Be taught.

Excellent leadership cannot. If excellent leadership requires leadership plus charisma plus X. No, it can't all be taught, but you can still be an effective leader. Maybe not an excellent one. When I was in grad school, you know, there was leadership classes or whatnot, but there was one that stuck with me and.

It was like two indelible characteristics of leaders. And they're talking about business leaders and this particular study, what they found to be the two most important ones were humility and fierce resolve, which both combined kind of have charisma to it. Right. Humility is definitely that's something that goes with being charismatic.

It's knowing what you don't have and being okay with it and knowing what you don't know and fierce resolve is what, that's, what you said. That's knowing in Mandela's case that I won't be in prison the rest of my life, even though I've been handed a life sentence, you are going to March in that direction, no matter how heavy the winds are in your face or in your side or

Michael: your side, those things do seem to sum up to charisma.

Category to Malcovich Malcovich this category is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which a person takes a portal into John Malcovich his mind where they can have a front row seat to John Malcovich his experiences. The point is to imagine what it might be like to be this person, Amit, your Malcovich Malcovich moment for Nelson Mandela.

Well, I

Amit: struggled with this one because there are one there's a lot. So the one that I went with is, you know, in this period of the fifties, when he's a bit like on the road, Yeah, the black Pimpernel period. So he goes, he goes to Ethiopia, I think, for a conference instincts out of the

Michael: country. And he also goes to get military training at that point.

Well,

Amit: correct. So that's what he does is he's going around north Africa and other parts of Africa and he's meeting these leaders of Egypt and Tunisia and stuff like that. And I think it was the president of Tunisia gave him 5,000 pounds for weaponry. Yes. That does not seem like real life. Like it doesn't, I can't imagine anyone outside of a bond, a would, would experience that.

Michael: Like here's a whole bunch of money for the guns.

Amit: Yeah, yeah. Go

Michael: fight for freedom. Yeah. Well, and up to that point, I mean, he had. Advocating nonviolence as a tactic. This is right when he breaks from that and says we have no other choice. Wow. I don't want to live that way.

Amit: And you can see the future of the earth possibly changing before your eyes for what this kind of means.

Michael: That's a good one on it. That's a good one. I want to hear my mug. Yeah. Like you, I struggled because there are so many. In his autobiography, which by the way, I read 650 pages. Cause like, what else am I going to read this? And I kind of need to read this, but it's actually a page Turner. I'd recommend the book.

It's great. Got it. At half price books. All right. So I gotta set this up a little bit. He's in prison for 27 years, but there's a point in time where he decides to make a move and say, I'm going to initiate negotiations with the apartheid regime and he sort of begins to make overtures. There's a sort of phase where.

Things are proceeding and it becomes clear at some stage that his release from prison is going to be inevitable, but he's still imprisoned. And he doesn't even want to be out of present until certain concessions are met as part of these negotiations. So they're moving them around and they move him to.

Uh, present called Victor , but it's nicer. It has accommodations, ease describes there being a swimming pool, there a modest bed. He says in the autobiography, I never forgot I was in a gilded cage, but it's, it's nicer. And the prison also assigns to him a cook. And occasionally this cook will leave him dinner to be reheated in the microwave.

This is 1988 and he has this line in his autobiography where he said, this is the first time I ever saw that device. It's 1988 and he sees a microwave for the first time. And he's reheating his own dinner. I don't know if you remember when Mike and what waves came about. It was like, I remember when we got one that's like star Trek, you know, it was amazing that this device would reheat your dinner like that.

Here's why I chose it as a Malcovich moment. One. There is this sort of my God society has advanced so far that this transformative technology there's microwave's here now. And he's been in prison since. Sixties, right. I mean, this has been near the end of his 27 years. The other piece of it, though, for me, that's what makes it a Malcovich moment is that his home life, which we'll get into in a minute.

Wasn't great. He was never at home as a father and as a husband. And he's very forthcoming about all of that. The microwave somehow symbolizes. A change in home life. You know, the modern individual who just needs to press a couple buttons to have a hot dinner. Interesting.

Amit: It's very Encino, man, but I like, I get your, I get the different importance you're placing on it.

Holy shores and see no man polishers, since you don't man. The Encino, man. I think Brendan Frazier was, yes, that's right.

Michael: Yeah. I never actually sat down and watched that movie. I shouldn't right.

Amit: Oh, absolutely. You should really? Yeah. He gets unearth, I think from like Pauly Shore's backyard,

Michael: like frozen, this is like frozen caveman lawyer thing.

Amit: I mean, it's exactly that, but he gets out, but he has to learn how to use like all these devices, but wouldn't it be

Michael: weird to be Nelson, Mandela and standing in front of a microwave in the late eighties and just kind of thinking about it all. Absolutely. I want to have the moment of technological law, but also.

I dunno, also be thinking about what else I missed. Yeah. Should we move on? Yes. Category four marriages. How many also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? Holy

Amit: holy, this is a big one

Michael: for him. It is it's complicated. So first marriage, uh, I'm just going to go with first name because I'm.

Mess up the African last names. If I even give it a shot, first marriage, Evelyn Nelson Mandela was aged 26. She's four years younger than him. They were divorced in 1958. So he is 30. When he was divorced?

Amit: Yes. And she accused him of infidelity, correct. Okay.

Michael: Second wife, Winnie. Who's very prominent. They get married in 1958 and Alison is 40 years old.

They're together during the entirety of his prison sentence, they are divorced when he's 78 and 1996. And there's an 18 year difference in

Amit: age. She was only 26. Yes, she is very young. Interesting. And I think it's notable that I think he married Winnie only six months after the divorce from Evelyn.

Michael: That's correct.

And then I think you say Grassa G R a C with little curly cute thing on the C is that. I don't know how to pronounce it. It's good. Assa. They got married when Nelson was 80 and 1998 and they were together until his death

Amit: from the day he turned 80.

Michael: I believe, I think that's correct. And she, a bit of trivia had been the former first lady of Mozambique.

So this was the second head of state. She had married her previous husband and passed away. Another thing worth mentioning here is that before he married, He was supposed to be part of an arranged marriage. And he ran away from his wasn't his father, his father died at a young age, but he what's the term I'm looking for benefactor, maybe.

So he actually, uh, skipped out of a marriage at a very young age because he didn't want that. He made a banner big decision early on. Yeah. A lot of kids, a lot

Amit: of them died. Young one died while he was in prison. I believe one

Michael: died while he was in prison. He had a nine month old die was born. So there was four children with Evelyn.

One died at nine months. One died of age, 2005 at age 55. There's only one living child from the first marriage. And then she say she died of aids or age.

Amit: He died of aids.

Michael: He died of aids. Yeah. 2005. It was his second son and his older son died at age 24 in a car accident while he's in prison. He had two daughters with Winnie.

One of whom was alive, another who died in 2020 at age 60. And then he had a step daughter who's still with us.

Amit: So what to make of all this,

Michael: he is very clear. That he made a decision and he didn't even realize he made a decision, but it became clear as time went on that he could not do both things that he could not be a freedom fighter and the head of a resistance to apartheid and be a father and a husband.

It does sound like the third marriage was maybe the happiest.

Amit: He's 80 and he's out of prison.

Michael: Well,

Amit: what's your point? You've made peace with a lot of things and you're pretty certain you're not going

Michael: back to prison. Yeah. I mean, what to make of all this, that there's a choice or there maybe for a man like him, there never was a choice.

It's a troubled home life, but it's also a troubled fucking country and he was the man of the moment eventually. I don't know what to make of it. I don't think I don't, honestly, this doesn't seem to hold up to the usual kind of famous and gravy criteria of let's talk about their marriages and weigh this shit out.

Yeah. More than anything, it highlights what his life was all about. And especially the fact that he had. Self-awareness around the fact that like I went through a lot of marriages and he, he talks about falling in love with a lot of different women at a young age. I mean, I think he had charisma, he

Amit: was attractive.

He was very attractive. If you look at like the younger pictures of him, he's bulky

Michael: too. Right? It's like he was Jack. He was a boxer. It looked good. I actually was like, when I saw the younger pictures of him, I'm like, do I have the right guy? I mean, prison made him skin here an age, I guess,

Amit: but you are right.

This doesn't, it's not the usual famous and gravy question about what is your love life continuous or is it, I mean,

Michael: you know, the people we have on this show that dead celebrities we talk about, we look at their life decisions and some of them are famous because they threw themselves into their career.

Some of them are singers. Some of them are authors. Some of them are politicians. I mean, he's a freedom fighter. Right. And so I can, I have more peace with his decision to focus on career, but is it so different?

Amit: I don't know. So are you insinuating at all? That if you are somebody who is so important of an activist and so involved that this is beyond a job, right?

You're on the run for good.

Michael: When he goes on the run as the moment, he makes that he's clear on that, but that.

Amit: Clear on what? Well, so leaving behind his children

Michael: when he goes on the run and when he says we need to back away from this non-violence stance, that's the moment in his autobiography where he realizes that this comes at the cost of me being a family man.

And I should say he enjoys being a family man, or at least says, he's like, I like the pleasures of domesticity. Look, you have to have men and women like this to change the world. We need them. If what we're after here is desirability. This is a tough one. Here's what I want to do. I want to pause on all this cause I got something I want to read you in a later category that I think will speak to this and I think we'll come back to it.

Okay. Is that

Amit: okay? That's okay. So what what's, what's the conclusion

Michael: on the, I don't think there is a conclusion. I think the only thing I want to say at this point, I do want to return to this question later is that you cannot have the life he had without having sacrifices at home. And that's

Amit: clear.

Michael: Alright, category five net worth. You got

Amit: this? Yeah, it was just one of the 4 million. Is that what you saw?

Michael: Oh, interesting. I found 1 million, uh, I believe 4 million, I think

Amit: 4 million with the entire state. And that, that was being disputed over.

Michael: Yes, much of it earned after he's out of prison. His book is the best.

It was autobiography. And, and then I think speaking engagements was the other sorts of, and a lot of

Amit: the gifts that he's given, you know, like the Nobel peace prize and various metals of freedom and all which I know we have a category for. Right. Some of those, I think, do come with cash. It's funny because you look at how big of a role he played.

In this country and in that, sorry, not in this country, but yes,

Michael: obviously he transformed South Africa, but I think South Africa in so many ways, part of the reason it captures the American imagination is the similarities, especially black and white racial tension and racial relations. That's not unique to South Africa, but it's on display there in a way that resembles America at times.

Amit: I think the funny thing is just, is kind of the monetization of it. 4 million is pretty small, right? And two. Yeah,

Michael: what the fuck are we supposed to make of this number? This is just what you're

Amit: getting at. Yeah. So we've used words like Hiro and we've used emblem emblem, you know, top three civil rights figures of the entire 20th

Michael: century.

And he only walks away with 4 million. It's obviously not what got him out of bed in the morning. I, I I'm actually really at peace with that number. I think any more than that, I mean, the thing is if he has too much money, there is such a thing as too much money and too big a house. For Nelson Mandela

Amit: isn't there?

No, but it can all go into his foundation, I guess that doesn't count in, in his net worth. Right.

Michael: And I think that's where it went. I mean, I do think that he was charitable

Amit: to say the least, I don't know. I guess some part of me wants like ed McMahon to show up and be like, you ended a Partha here's a hundred million dollars.

Michael: Yeah. I agree with that. But I also think that. Especially in the post-presidency year. She's not, I don't want to say taking care of, but you know, like he doesn't want. For material for chandelier's.

Amit: He does like those shirts. He doesn't like very well-crafted churn and tidy, man. Yeah. So I guess, I guess 4 million fine I'll I'm pointing out is that you are a pivotal figure in changing the world.

One of the most important things. In a century and 4 million is what you show for it. You found a software company and you're in the billion.

Michael: Well, fair enough. But you use the word humble earlier and I feel like it is important. Given the emblem, the symbol that he is, that he has to remain humble. That's what I mean, like the house could be too much ed McMahon showing up with a hundred million.

I'm sorry, I can't take that because I can't take away. How important, what my legacy and symbolism means to so many people. Thanks, ed. I'm going to put it all on the foundation.

Amit: Yeah. But you're

Michael: still getting it. Yeah. I think we just don't have the measure of what that was in the net worth question and easily obtainable information.

Category six. Yep. Simpsons Saturday night live or hall of fame. I'm amending this to be hall of fame. We've

Amit: changed it. It was previously walk of fame. Yeah, that's right. But now we've broadened it to include all halls evolve beams to measure of a

Michael: person's fame. We include both guest appearances on Saturday night live or the Simpsons as well as impersonations or even references.

Where do you want to start?

Amit: There was quite a few SNLs. There are quite a few SNLs in Meadows. Did

Michael: one saw that I couldn't find the video of it, but did you? Yeah. All right. I'm guessing I'm using the wrong browser. We'll watch it later. Okay. Is it the one that had Kermit the frog? I think so what is the context of the skit?

I think it's Nelson Mandela standing next to Kermit the frog or Tim Meadows as Nelson Mandela standing next to criminal to see, I don't even

Amit: remember. I think we just have to talk about the fact that there was

There was also like a subtle reference at his funeral. They did a skit. About. Oh, what was it? It was like, Obama's doing it, but like Nelson Mandela is yes. I saw this impersonating or sorry is

Michael: hence the Obama impersonator who makes a nod to Nelson

Amit: Mandela. Correct. So Obama is given like a eulogy or something like that.

Michael: But yeah, I think there's no question he's famous enough to show up on Saturday night live. Yes. And substance, the assumptions reference lots of mentions again. Uh, he never did do a voice on the Simpsons. Unfortunately,

Amit: that's one of the mentions that as a context, I couldn't

Michael: not any of the episodes I recognized there was one.

I'm not even sure if this is an episode. I think there's a Simpsons comic book. So I find all of this on the Simpsons Wiki, and there's a Simpsons comic book where Nelson. The boy and third grade, uh, goes to plays Nelson Mandela in a costume party. Ah, I get it.

Amit: That was all I found. So this is what I was looking up earlier today when we were talking.

So I really wanted this to be Saturday night live, but it wasn't. So actually I think this is one of my first memories of hearing Nelson Mandela. the rapper. Do you know? He has of boogie down productions. So I remember seeing him perform on a show, which I thought was Saturday night live. This must've been the year Nelson Mandela was freed.

And the refrain in the song that he was singing was Mandela is not free. He can't even vote in his own country. And to me, like my memory of it was that was happening like on Saturday night live. But I think it actually was the Arsenio hall show. I really wanted it to be Saturday night live, or we changed this category to be him since SNL hall of fame.

We did say all halls, Simpsons, SNL, all

Michael: halls, all halls,

Amit: including Arsenio and the show. Absolutely. But I think, I mean, I don't know if we talk about halls of fame. Seemingly no award from any country that he did not receive the presidential medal of freedom, presidential medal freedom. I mean, he got from India, from Pakistan, from everywhere.

You could imagine.

Michael: Okay. Category seven over, under, in this category, we look at the life expectancy for when someone is born and whether or not they beat the house odds. As a measure of grace, how gracefully I found something interesting on this. So I thought, well, okay. I'm not sure if life expectancy in South Africa, I wanted it to be specific to South Africa.

So I looked up life expectancy for a male in South Africa, and it took me to a link where there's a chart that shows that in 1915 34.7. 19 20, 30 point 18. There's a huge dip because of the pandemic, the Spanish flu in 1918. So never heard of it.

Amit: What's a pandemic thing

Michael: because it's this thing where everybody gets second.

Uh, everybody works from home. So anyway, it didn't have 1918. That's the year he's born somewhere between 34.7 and 30 point 18.

Amit: And our guy lived to 95.

Michael: Yes. I think this is a new record for crushing the house odds. Oh yeah.

Amit: Tripled it more than tripled and near 30 years in prison now and escaped death. God knows how many times in the pre prison years looked

Michael: good.

Like he looks good in his seventies to carry that charisma. Yeah. I'm just, you know, a great smile, like good shirts

Amit: tall. Yeah. I mean, he's marrying a 50 year old at age 80. I mean he's uh, no am, but he's going out the agent appropriateness or not, I'm not, I think I missed making the wrong point. I was insinuating.

He was still like physically desirable, I think, because he held himself. Well, this is what charisma gives you. Yeah. 95 years. Yeah. Remarkable for anybody. Yeah. For somebody born in 1918 in South Africa, it is multiple standard deviations away. Yeah. But I think what we're also talking about here is, I mean, there's, there's just something built genetically into this man to have the resolve.

That we talked about the charisma, but even just the physical body endurance to endure 27 years of prison and then live to 95, like just physically.

Michael: It's pretty incredible.

Amit: Yeah. This is not just a feat of luck. Yeah. Like this is, you have to believe in chosen ones to some extent, given just these things.

Well, I think that's

Michael: certainly the mythology of the man, which I think he's quick to dispute, but I think it is kind of there. So.

Amit: Michael. I've got a question for you. Yeah. If you could take today's dead celebrity to any retail store,

Michael: what would it be? Ooh, I think I would take them to half price books on half price. Right.

Amit: Absolutely. Explain yourself, sir. Well, I

Michael: love shopping for books with people shopping for books. It always stimulates interest in conversation, right?

You browse the different aisles and you see different topics come to mind. Have you ever read this author? I've ever read that book. It's just a good place to talk and wander and discover. So yeah, absolutely half price books is an awesome venue to connect with people, to discover. Books that you've long forgotten about or that you haven't read.

And it's all a great

Amit: price. And you know what? Half price books is celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music. There are over 120 stores and you can find out more@hpb.com.

Michael: Here's where we get to the part where we really are trying to do a little bit more to imagine what it would be like to be this person category eight, man, and the mirror. Did he like his reflection? Given the conversation we just had? I think this is a quick, yes,

Amit: I disagree. So he did not expect that did not expect he, he did like.

I think the way he looked, he was known for changing clothes, changing shirts many times a day, but because he was presenting for the world here, tear me out. Maybe he was an optimizer. Like he always wants to look his best. He's never fully satisfied. With this particular outfit and how it looks on him.

Are you an optimizer? Are you

Michael: an

Amit: optimizer? I wa no, not in that sense, but I think I do look in the mirror and hold on just a little too long. Yeah,

Michael: I'm an optimizer. I mean, I, I definitely will put on a shirt and be like this. One's not doing

Amit: it for me right now, but here that much of an optimized drop, you never look in the mirror.

Perfect. But isn't it also a little

Michael: bit about, because I, I I'm presenting for the world here and I need to look a certain way because there comes a point in Nelson Mandela's life, where he's conscious of his symbolism. So I'm going to give him a little bit more room to change his shirt every 10 minutes, you know,

Amit: for 10 minutes.

So here's what, here's my argument is he, he lived modestly and modest accommodations. He did not amass a giant fortune. His look and his presence is what he had. And he loved his shirts. He changed them constantly. So he could never just look in the mirror, give a thumbs up, say I'm good, turn around and go address the UN or whatever he was doing.

So I'm saying he had to hold on a little long. So I am sticking of the rail. I am sticking with my, no, just because it was so important to him. And when it's so important to you, you're never fully satisfied.

Michael: That's a good case. I'm sticking with my guests. We can agree to disagree. We absolutely agree to disagree.

All right. Outgoing message. I said, yes. Cause I think he's a strong order. Were you afraid that I was going to have

Amit: we talked about it and things I love about you, but just tremendous voice and choice of words.

Michael: Yeah. Really thought you were going to say no. And here's why, and I wouldn't, I just wasn't ready for it. I'm not sure how much I can do. Alright category done, Rugrats, public, or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night?

This is where I had wanted to return to this conversation about a choice between home life or not. Okay. This is public, but can, I'm going to read you something from the autobiography? Okay. Bear with me. This is towards the end where he's really wrestling with the fact that he's had. Make choices about the home life.

And he says in life, every man has twin obligations, obligations to his family, to his parents, to his wife and children. And he has an obligation to his people, his community, his country in a civil and humane society. Each man is able to fulfill these obligations according to his own inclinations and abilities, but in a country like South Africa, it was almost impossible for a man of my birth and color to fulfill both of those obligations.

South Africa, a man of color who attempted to live as a human being was punished and isolated. And man was tried to fulfill his duty to his people was inevitably ripped from his family and his home and was forced to live a life apart, a Twilight existence of secrecy and rebellion. I did not in the beginning, choose to place my people above my family, but in attempting to serve my people, I found that I was prevented from fulfilling my obligations as a son, a brother, a father, and a husband in that way, my commitment to my people into the millions of south Africans, I would never know or meet was at the expense of the people I knew best and loved most.

It was as simple and yet, as incomprehensible as the moment, a small child asks her father, why can you not be with. And the father must utter the terrible words. There are other children like you, a great many of them, and then one's voice trails off. Wow, good. Isn't that? Yeah, he

Amit: didn't have a choice. He didn't have a choice.

So it's still eight of them. I don't

Michael: even know if it's a regret. I think it's. I think he wishes it could have been different, but I don't think he

Amit: would. What we're talking about is possibly sheer impossibility. I think that's right. Yeah.

Michael: I think it's not a regret. Similarly. I think he would have the same attitude around non-viral.

I know he had no choice. He had no choice that, that the violence of the apartheid regime and that what was the experience of oppression was, and he knew innocence would die. Civilians would die.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, and unfortunately, factually shit did not change until this excessive violence. So I'm

Michael: actually not sure if he has any public regrets.

Why don't you think.

Amit: It's really tough on both of those things. If there's one subtle one, I think is that he was aligned with some other world leaders that proved to be very

Michael: troublesome. The heart though is one, I think

Amit: Castro. Yeah.

Michael: Dolphy yes. I wonder if that's not a little just real politic though.

Like he, you know, was aligned with them because he needed to fund it the army somewhere. I don't know. I didn't dig into it enough. And I don't doubt that there's a whole like level down of micro policy decisions that as the president and as the leader of the movement, he's like, well, I made this compromise here.

Was that definitely a good call? I don't know. And some of these are certainly miserable. If you do a deep enough biography, we're not historians or biography. So we're, I think we're really talking about the big ones. Do you think you late at night awake thinking I shouldn't have partnered up with gastro or anybody

Amit: else now?

I don't think so. I don't

Michael: either. I don't think that there's room for regret. At least not public ones. Yeah.

Amit: But I got to wonder if you're in the middle of your prison sentence, you actually don't know when the prison sentence ends, but let's say you're 20 years in. Yeah. How much do you regret the whole thing?

The whole life you chose? 'cause you're like goddamn. I've been in prison 20 years. You know, he had this resolve inside of him that he knew it

Michael: was going to turn. Oh, that's what he says in his autobiography. Maybe in his super private moments. You're wondering if maybe there's like a, what if this doesn't work out the way I want it to, how do you not have that?

Is that what you're talking about? What if I was just

Amit: a lawyer? I wouldn't be in prison. You know, cause you know, you, he doesn't know how it's going to end. Of course at that point, like it sounds very justified now to serve a 30 year prison sentence

Michael: sounds inevitable. It sounds pretty ordain

Amit: and all that, but I'm saying at the lowest of the lows, is there a.

Michael: You know, he talks about in prison, how the world shrunk down, but that even in prison, he's still fighting the fight. He's arguing for better meals. Like one of the things about segregation and south African prisons. And when he first goes in is that if you're black, if you're African, you have to wear shorts and all the other prisoners are wearing trousers.

He said, that's bullshit. And he fought against that. And eventually everybody's wearing trousers and he fights for better meals. He continues to kind of fight, even if his oppressors are just the prison guards instead of the south African government. I think that plays into the regret question because I don't think he ever gives anything up.

And he says, oh, well, if this is the fight I have to fight, this is the fight I fight here. I don't know that he's thinking about the bigger, broader

Amit: context. And then you lose your mother. You lose a child, all this stuff while you're in prison. And it's, I mean, this goes back to your entire point of you have no choice.

You can't fully do both. Right?

Michael: I don't think there's a regret in that men and women are built without that gene and we need them. And that's how society changes and trends. And I think luck and circumstance in history put certain people in certain places who carry that gene and it expresses themselves in the, so

Amit: going back to my leadership point of fierce resolve, that's what he had.

It's it's that gene or that absence of the regret gene.

Michael: That's what. Even if he can be aware of what he's not experiencing as a result of his choices. I mean, I guess a lot of this is really about choice and it's a question of whether he ever, would he say he had those choices? I mean, in some sense, yes, but I don't see.

I don't know, but maybe that's just the way we mythologize people. Maybe that's all bullshit. Maybe he thought about all of this, or maybe he had a lot more agency than we give him credit for. And this is just a narrative he writes, even in an autobiography what's really going on in there. I don't know. I don't know.

But from the outside, looking in as much as I try to get inside, I don't see him as seeing that he had choice, you know? Yeah. Fair enough. Next category. Good dreams, bedrooms.

Amit: I, I, I thought about this one a lot, but I eventually went through good dreams and I think I'm tall. I'm giving the same. Logic that you just gave.

So you see an immense amount of injustice and violence. You sleep in prison for 27 years, but you in gear. So you have the ability to compartmentalize and to visualize roses and singing birds at some point, and that allows you to sleep. So the sheer ability. To sleep, given all he lived through it and all he saw and all he was experiencing.

I just have to believe either good dreams or no dreams.

Michael: I want good dreams too, for those reasons I couldn't have put it any better. Yeah. Second to last category, cocktail, coffee or cannabis, which one would you want to do with Nelson? He

Amit: wasn't, he didn't drink at all. You know, that doesn't matter for this

Michael: category.

What this is about. What did you go with? I'm dying to hear what you

Amit: went with. Are you? Oh yeah. I went with the cocktail.

Michael: You want to have a drink? What kind of did

Amit: you get more specific than that? Martini stiff. Okay. A very stiff one. I want the Lucy. Yeah. I want to know how his mind works. But in a slightly uninhibited

Michael: way, like you want to be the observer or you want him to let you in.

Amit: I want him to let me in, but I don't want him to let me like so much like cannabis in. I just want the, this is how I envision each minute in front of me or each year in front of me. And. Another martini, sir. I just think that that's the vehicle to get it from because you know, he's an orator right coffee.

He's going to ornate and give to me. So I need, I need the loose lips a little bit, and I think I'm feeding off it a lot. I don't think I'm giving much. To the conversation, but yeah, that's what

Michael: I went with. Oh, that's how, I mean, that's how I felt exactly. I went to coffee for basically the same reasons more I'm I want to be the observer.

I always seem to go coffee because if I'm excited to be with somebody and I just kind of want it, especially if there's intelligence and charisma, I'm so fascinated by that person that I want my brain to work faster so that I can take it off. I don't want to get jacked up with Nelson Mandela. I want to be taking as much in from Nelson Mandela.

You know, his ability to see humanity, his ability to look at somebody who's pushing him down and to look at a whole class of people, pushing him down and still see the world. In that.

Amit: So

Michael: you go with that, don't you look at the injustices of the world and put people in a certain category and say, I'm not sure we can all be saved.

He had an ability to believe, have a faith in humanity that I wish I had. That's the single most desirable thing about it. And I, and I don't know how to get there other than learning by example. And I, I can't think of a much better example. I mean, we talked about Gandhi and Martin Luther king. There's something about his experience that I also relate to the idealism is a little bit more real for me with him.

So yeah. I, the way he sees hope, I want to know how you get there, you know, and, and yeah. I feel like a cup of coffee with them. Maybe a joint is a

better,

Amit: I don't know. I think I hear what you're saying and you're saying no weed because wait, I don't want to be distressed. Well, you don't want him to be distracted either, because like you said, you use the youth, you feel like he sees a light, he sees a certain light and you don't want to add any cloudiness

Michael: to that.

I think that's right. Coffee is the most sober of the three drugs in this category. Yeah,

I think we're there. Okay. The VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues. I don't want your life. Oh,

Amit: am I going first?

Michael: I don't know where to begin.

Amit: I can go first. Thank you. Yeah. And I, I always feel like sameness is that we don't know until this moment, what we're going to say.

Michael: Yeah. I need to ask the question though. Do you want Nelson Mandela's life? Yeah.

Amit: And I need to tell you that I didn't expect to say what I'm about to say.

I do not want Nelson Mandela's life. It is a, it was a world changing life. It was a life saving life for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, possibly. We have no idea what the implication of the future is for that. You know, you talked about making a choice between home life and this kind of hero.

You served 27 years in prison. That's that's one thing that's not the case I'm making. I do not want to be that important. I just do not want to bear that much responsibility. And it's embarrassing to say that. Yeah, it is. Yeah, but it's true. I don't want to be at the very top of the important spearmint.

I'd like to be in the upper echelon of it, but I don't want to be that important to where I have no choices, Andrew, where it's perceived that I have no agency. Um, God, the eyes

Michael: I am freedom, right?

Amit: Yeah. I admire the, the fuck out of the ability to be so laser-focused and in your prison, but I. I think it's that simple.

I don't want to be that important. I've got to have a little bit of a radar to be under and to be private and to emote.

Michael: So, so you're no, I'm

Amit: a know you,

Michael: I don't have an answer. Talk it out. Yeah. It's hard for me to not begin by saying I don't think it's possible anymore. You know, to be important. I, life circumstances, we're not given a lot of agents and a lot of choice in my life, but I don't think I have a cause as obviously virtuous available to me.

And even if I did, it's hard to see me. Throwing myself into it with that kind of dedication. I feel like I've already gone too far at age 43. You know, to have this life. Right. But, but maybe that's not the question.

Amit: Yeah. That is not the question. And then also let me say, that's not true. Let's say we were invaded by some foreign force of some sort.

So I'm not talking about a country. I'm not talking about a planet. I'm just talking about something comes the enemy that does not exist. And we don't know who it is, comes away and takes away our freedom. And the very first thing they do is take away your kids and you do not see them again. And you are then given you are fighting for something you would dedicate your life.

To fight for that. Well, so tell

Michael: me, let me tell you this part. Then in a previous life, I was a climate scientist. That is that enemy for me, sometimes global warming. And you talk about it taking away. My kids. Fucking a, I feel like that's happening. And instead of, I don't know how, what to do with that though.

I don't know where the protest is. I don't know where the fight is. So instead I'm here talking with, you, looked at celebrities. There's, there's a part of me that absolutely wants to be important, but also you're you're right. I don't want the responsibility of it either. And you can't have it both ways.

His life demonstrates that this comes with consequences. Right? You want it. You want to save the world. You want to save a country. You got to set aside this family thing and you, you might have some great friends along the way. I think Nelson Mandela did. We didn't talk about it, but he was close with people.

Do I want to be that important? Yeah, part of me does, man. Part of me does. And, and if you're, if you're arguing that that's still available to me, that I could be that impact. I don't want to be a chicken ship. I don't want to be afraid. I don't know that I have the forage. I don't definitely don't have the fortitude to go to jail for 27 years and lose a third of my 95 year or more.

I don't see how I can say no here though. I, if I am given, if I am given the choice to say yes to this life or not,

I'll go. Yeah.

Amit: That's good. And you know, the future is not written, right? Whatever your, whatever that cause is. And. You're on a pretty damn good start of a family life, right? Yeah. Uh, there's nothing to say that in the future, I can't both be done. It could be in some version of,

Michael: I mean, that passage that I read earlier, you know, where he's talking about, like this, the choices before me, they didn't exist.

I feel like that's kind of where that's where it goes. If you want to change the world, right. At some point at some point. This comes at a

Amit: cost. So who is, who is Michael? The climate scientist hero. What does that look like? What would that life have looked like?

Michael: That's a good question. I, I don't, I'm not even sure that's the right cause.

Right. Um, but let's pretend for a second. It is. I think it's one of sacrifice. It's one where your behavior and all your actions symbolize and are consistent with a certain moral value that if you are afraid of fighter on the outside, then you go to prison and you're free of fighter in there. And that the, that responsibility that you bear, you informs every decision you make.

There's no choice around that. And that's not where I'm at. With climate or with any other cause, uh, you know, I, I rationalize my way to a fair amount of laziness. I don't think I have what it takes to be Nelson Mandela, which, you know, I can make peace with that, you know, after this conversation. But if I, if there's a deathbed moment where you're looking back and say, what does it all mean?

Did I do right? I want to have full self-awareness of all the sacrifices that were made along the way and stuff. And Landon. I, I I'm, I'm sorry for how many people I heard. I think it was the right thing to do, because I think that there's a spiritual enrichment somewhere in the middle of all of that, that, that is maybe what the whole fucking point is.

I guess, I don't know. It's not a

Amit: confident. Yes, no, but it's a yes. Listen, I don't like that. I'm not a yes. I mean, I still wondering how honest I'm being with my, I want to live for a cause or a purpose and I want to know, so absolutely resolutely what that is. I do not know. I don't want to be as important as Nelson Mandela was to that particular cause

Michael: I don't want that either for my ego.

I mean, you know, yeah. I

Amit: worry about that. I just, I'm not that unshakeable. I am not capable of being that unshakeable. Any version of my soul, I don't think is capable of being that unshakeable.

Michael: That's fine. But don't you wish you

Amit: were? Yes.

Michael: So at the end that desirable,

Amit: now

Michael: I have to sit with that.

I think we've arrived. I think we're at the pearly. Oh, we've gone up. It feels like this can be pretty quick.

Amit: Are we? Yeah. Michael? Yeah, you do the pearly gates.

Michael: I really don't feel like I have a lot to say here St. Peter feel like what I did speaks for itself. I'm Nelson Mandela. And if we're going to have a long conversation about this, then I misjudged the situation.

Let man

thanks so much for listening to this episode of famous. If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcast to rate and review us. It really does help new listeners to find the show. We would love to see you on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at famous and gravy. We've got lots of fun stuff there on our Twitter feed.

Also, please sign up for our newsletter on our website, famous and gravy.com. Famous and gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob. Original theme music by Kevin Strang. And thanks also to our sponsor half price books. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.