Trimane Lee (2:00)

Plus, almost every generation, our family being touched by some sort of gun violence, whether it's the Jim Crow sort, whether it's at the hand of the state, state troopers. Later on my grandfather's murder. Time and again we've been touched by it.

Christiane Amanpour (2:14)

The true cost of violence on black life in America. Michelle Martin speaks to award winning journalist Trimane Lee about gun violence, mortality and the toll of reporting on the black experience. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane in London. We begin in China where President Xi Jinping is steadily strengthening his global influence as America retreats from its leadership role in the for years, Washington and Beijing have gone head to head for economic, military and technological superiority. But in the age of Trump 2.0, the stakes are higher than ever before. At the United Nations General Assembly. Last week, China sent a clear message that it's ready to step in as the world's responsible superpower, making pledges on everything from trade to climate. It may just be for show, but it's notable. As President Trump continues to lash out and distance himself from once staunch allies, our next guest is sounding the alarm about what he sees as a dangerous trajectory that needs immediate course correction. As US Ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns witnessed China's push for power close up, from its cyber attacks on America to its designs on Taiwan. And he says he left the country even more hawkish than when he arrived. And joining us now from New York, former Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns. Welcome to the program.

Nicholas Burns (3:57)

Thank you, Christiane. Nice to be with you.

Christiane Amanpour (3:58)

So I'm really intrigued that you, you know, you were already hardline and hawkish, and you went and came back even more hawkish after being ambassador. What on earth happened?

Nicholas Burns (4:10)

Well, there are a thousand things that happened. I think a lot of us who served as foreign ambassadors in China leave with a very different view than maybe when we arrived. And I did arrive, I think, quite skeptical of Chinese power and Chinese attentions. But, Chris, John, let me just list a couple of them. The People's Liberation army pushing out in the South China Sea against the Philippines and Vietnam. The People's Liberation army pushing out against the Japanese in the East China Sea. The unconstrained, opaque buildup of the pla, particularly its nuclear weapons, force the degree of aggressiveness of the Chinese state towards the United States, Japan, Europe via cyber means, which our former FBI Director Chris Wray talked about publicly here in the United States for the last few years. And the fact that there's no level playing field for the thousands of American companies trying to do business, intellectual property theft. And so this is the Chinese government that, you know, it says it wants a stable relationship with the United States and other countries, but its aggressiveness is something to see. And so that's part of why I came back feeling the way I do.

Christiane Amanpour (5:20)

So the question is why and what you attribute it to. You wrote, I saw up close the true nature of its authoritarian government and its ambition to undermine, undercut the United States at nearly every turn. Look, the United States is the world's only superpower. How is China undercutting and what do you think its actual aim is?

Nicholas Burns (5:42)

Well, I think the actual aim and frankly, the stated aim of the government of China, the Communist Party of China, is they want to become the dominant, if you will, strongest power in the Indo Pacific. And that's a direct challenge to the US But I guess I'd answer it in a different way, too. You remember, I think we all remember this now, iconic photograph of Tiananmen Square, September 3rd of this year, the 80th anniversary celebration of the end of World War II. And who was there? It was Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, the Iranian president, an axis of authoritarian leaders. And it wasn't just a photograph. The Iranians mass producing drones for the Russian war effort, the North Koreans contributing troops for that effort, China contributing what we believe is 90% of the microelectronics to the Russian defense industrial base. I mean, they are actually working together in a way that's quite injurious to Europe, given the existential nature of the crisis in Ukraine and to the United States. So I think my statement that they're trying to undercut the power of the US and its allies, I think that statement has been confirmed.

Christiane Amanpour (6:49)

And just in addition to your list of what they're up to, Russia, according to recently released reports, is helping China with its aerial and its air force, you know, formations and strategies and things like that. So it's quite big. But again, so do you think, because the Chinese apparently think, and they've said it, that the US Is a fading power, essentially, you know, he started saying that Xi in 2020. And maybe they're seeing an opportunity to jump in that whole Sparta, Athens thing, which we all thought they didn't want to do, but now they're really doing it, challenging the existing power in the world.

Nicholas Burns (7:33)

They're certainly doing it. And, you know, when I arrived in China four years ago, the mantra from Xi Jinping personally was, the east is rising and the west is falling. He meant by the West, Europe, and the democracies of East Asia and the United States. And I don't believe that the west is falling. I certainly don't believe, despite all of our problems, and we have many here at home in a very divisive moment in American politics and American society. I mean, look at still the strength of our private sector, our tech companies, as they compete with China on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, still the strength of our research universities. So I wouldn't count the United States out. And frankly, Christiane, what was really interesting to see and powerful to see when I was in the job in China was the degree to which Japan is strengthening itself militarily and the Philippines opening up bases to both the Japanese and the United States for Taiwan contingencies and the degree to which. And this very much surprised me as someone who's lived in Europe. As you know, the degree to which Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union and Mark Rutte and NATO have now seen that Europe has strategic interests in the Indo Pacific that are quite close to those of Japan and the United States. I think the Chinese were very surprised that the Europeans turned against them when China supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine. China claims to be neutral. It's not at all neutral. It's supporting the Russian defense machine. So I don't think everything is going the way exactly the way that Xi Jinping intended.

Christiane Amanpour (9:13)

Okay. But you also heard them at the UN and you heard President Trump at the UN and you basically heard them saying and have been written about as the adults in the room on various issues, including climate. In other words, they see it as, and some analysts see it as an own goal by the United States because even though President Trump identified in his first term this competition and you know, went after addressing appears that President Trump is also retreating from traditional American global leadership. And they see an opportunity. So in their minds, yeah, the west is falling.

Nicholas Burns (9:52)

Well, the Chinese certainly see an opportunity. We dismantled the usaid, the Trump administration did. I thought it was a catastrophic mistake. And you see the Chinese moving into countries where prior to this year the United States Agency for International Development had been very effective. We dismantled Trump administration, dismantled the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which was another major mistake because it leads CCTV and CGTN basically to be a mouthpiece for Chinese propaganda around the world. And I think, Chris Chan, what has been most destructive on the part of President Trump is that he's disavowed our allies. He's questioning Canadian sovereignty, questioning Danish sovereignty in Greenland and in the Far east, putting these extraordinary and I think ill advised tariffs on Japan and South Korea and India, three countries that the United States really needs in its corner to limit China's expansion. So I think it's been President Trump's disavowal, if you will, of many of our alliance relationships that has been the most serious mistake he's made. And the Chinese are clearly trying to take advantage of that.

Christiane Amanpour (11:04)

And, and it said that the United States could challenge China or whatever the right word is, you know, fend it off with allies, but not alone. So again, do you think this, that you've just outlined the, you know, distancing allies and the tariffs and arresting South Korean workers in the United States and all of that? That's also, I mean, tell me what you think about that.

Nicholas Burns (11:29)

I'm very much opposed to it. I mean, the United States, obviously, is still an extremely powerful country. We're proud of that. But one of the major lessons of my entire diplomatic career going back to 1980, but also my time in China over the last four years, is we really do need those allies, and they reinforce the power and the purpose of the U.S. you know, the allies were with us, the European allies, the Asian allies, on the issue of Tibet and Xinjiang and religious freedom, but also on the issue of Taiwan and also challenging China to be more transparent about the extraordinary growth of the People's Liberation Army. And without the allies, the United States is going to be less effective in the world. And so to me, that was the primary lesson that I learned in competing and living in China and trying to compete with its government.

Christiane Amanpour (12:20)

A bipartisan group of congressional leaders just recently went to China. It's the first time for many years, about six years. And it was aimed at improving at least communications. So what do you think the US should be doing now to address the worries that you're expressing?

Nicholas Burns (12:39)

Well, it was very worrisome to me and to many of us in the Biden administration that during that. You remember the balloon crisis?

Christiane Amanpour (12:45)

Yeah.

Nicholas Burns (12:46)

When China effectively shut down communications with us for several months following it. Believe it or not, I really worried at the time we didn't have sufficient connectivity among our senior military officers should there be an accident by mistake in the south or East China Sea. And so it's very important. And the problem's not on our end. The United States is willing to have its senior military officers be in contact with the pla. The problem is on the Chinese end. The PLA is an opaque institution, highly secretive, not accustomed to dealing with other countries. That's a real problem for China's neighbors like Japan and the Philippines, and certainly a problem for the United States. And so President Biden pressed Xi Jinping, and I certainly did, on his behalf on multiple occasions in discussions with Chinese officials. It's in our common interest to have channels of communication that we can use in the event of a crisis, particularly, as I said before, a crisis that is spawned by some accident. And we've had them happen before, unfortunately, in the U. S. China relationship. So that, I think is a very important step, Christian, that the government should take.

Christiane Amanpour (13:55)

And there are parts of the military that are apparently doing better and are stronger than the United States, for instance, their navy. I don't know what you thought about the message that was sent by the current Defence Secretary Hegseth, essentially rounding up and bringing together in a command performance hundreds of American commanders from all over the world to essentially tell them off for being woke overweight and lecturing them on a warrior ethos. And then President Trump got involved as well. The pictures honestly look like something that you might see in the, you know, in the PLA or North Korea. And there have been, you know, satirical reports thereof. But what do you think Xi Jinping thinks when he sees that going on in the Pentagon?

Nicholas Burns (14:42)

Well, I hope, I think that the Chinese do perceive an opportunity, as we've been discussing, as they see the United States withdraw from some of these very important traditional partnerships and alliances and they see an opportunity to separate us and to divide us from our allies. I mean, the Chinese charm offensive right now towards Japan and South Korea and India, we all saw that when Prime Minister Modi went to the Shanghai Cooperation meeting in China just before September 3rd. And so it's something that we need to be very mindful of. And you know, I don't know all the specifics about what happened when Secretary Hegseth spoke to our generals and admirals, but I do know this. We have a first rate officer corps. I work with them very closely throughout my career, particularly in China, and, you know, lectures on physical fitness to 50 year old Admirals. Probably not the best thing to do because, you know, we rely on them, their analytical ability. They're soldier statesmen and we rely on modern technology more than anything else to try to make sure that the world is peaceful. So I thought the message was really inappropriate by the secretary of defense to the generals and admirals.

Christiane Amanpour (15:56)

And one last question. Do you think there's an inevitability to all of this, given President Trump's tendencies in he's already outlined or articulated the idea of certain big powers being in charge of certain regions otherwise known as spheres of influence. Do you think that this administration is okay to leave China ruling its part of the world, Russia ruling its part of the world, even if it threatens Europe and the US Hunkering down behind Fortress America and fortress Western Hemisphere?

Nicholas Burns (16:28)

I'd be very surprised, Chris John, if that's where this administration, the Trump administration, came out in its internal debates. And it would be a disaster for American global interests if that was the case. And you know, I think it's interesting to see, look at the shift that President Trump has made just in the last several weeks in being now much more supportive of Zelensky and Ukraine because he, Trump, has been disappointed by his own admission by Putin's refusal to be at all cooperative. And I anticipate he'll have the same disappointment with President Xi Jinping, because the Chinese are going to offer lots of bouquets for the coming meeting this month between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. But in reality, they are very reluctant really to give way and to compromise on issues that we care about, whether it's human rights or the cyber offensive of the Chinese government or what they're doing in the Indo Pacific to press all of our allies and partners. And so I anticipate there'll come a time in this administration when the Trump team will kind of revert back, I think, to where the Biden administration was. And that is we need to compete with China. We also need to work with it when our interests align. Of course, we want a peaceful relationship, but toughness on these issues is the order of the day. And I think that's where they'll end up.

Christiane Amanpour (17:50)

All right. Former Ambassador Nick Burns, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

Nicholas Burns (17:55)

Thank you, Christian. Pleasure.

Christiane Amanpour (17:57)

Stay with cnn because we'll be right back after the break.

Claire Duffy (18:08)

I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, what options do everyday Americans have to lower their bills? Could more smart technology in your home be the solution? I have Rachel Saracola here with me. She's been on the smart home beat for 25 years, and she explains which tech gadgets could lower your living expenses.

Michelle Martin (18:31)

When you're talking about energy. Smart thermostats and smart plugs are probably my two favorites.

Claire Duffy (18:37)

Listen to CNN's Terms of Service with me, Claire Duffy, wherever you get your podcast.

Christiane Amanpour (18:47)

Next to one of the year's buzziest movies. In the Smashing Machine, real life wrestler Dwayne Johnson, also known as the Rock, takes on the role of a mixed martial artist, Mark Kerr. The film tells the story of Kerr's struggles with wins, losses and addiction. Here's a clip from the trailer.

Dwayne Johnson (19:05)

Sacrificing everything. What do you have for me that's strong adventure, a day without pain. And it's like a day without sunshine.

Christiane Amanpour (19:15)

This is getting bad.

Claire Duffy (19:16)

This is getting insane.

Benny Safdie (19:17)

You know what I'm doing.

Trimane Lee (19:18)

All right. This is it.

Nicholas Burns (19:20)

That's it.

Christiane Amanpour (19:21)

And the mind behind the movie is Benny Safdie. He's written and starred in acclaimed shows like the Curse alongside Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone. And he's also one half of the Safdie Brothers, filmmaking duo behind hits like Uncut Gems. But he joined me to talk about going it alone this time. Benny Safdie, welcome to the program.

Benny Safdie (19:42)

Hello. Thank you for having me.

Christiane Amanpour (19:43)

I'm so the Smashing Machine. Already. It's a pretty aggressive name. I know you Got it from the documentary and we'll talk. But you said it's about radical empathy and that you had to make this. Why?

Benny Safdie (19:56)

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Cause, like, I think that there's. There's certain things in life that just kind of strike you. And Mark Kerr was one of those people, you know, where. When I saw him and I saw a. What he was doing, which was so kind of violent and aggressive, but at the same time, he was very soft spoken and very beautiful in front of everybody else. And I realized that here I was watching a man who was struggling very deeply in his life, and a. He didn't let it define him. And he also kind of put that to the wayside for the benefit of the other people. And for better or worse, I felt that I've had that feeling in my life. And when I saw somebody who was as strong as he was physically and I could relate to him, I thought, you know, it would be amazing if everybody in the world, you know, could get inside of his brain and have the same feeling where they can relate to going through something intense and kind of wild, but then realizing that maybe it's okay. Life is gonna be okay. Don't let your struggles and sadness define who you are. And I feel like, yeah, that's just been an important thing for me, but it does.

Christiane Amanpour (21:16)

I'm gonna drill down a little bit more onto that. But, you know, when you say people can identify, maybe et cetera, as, you know, mma, ufc, it's pretty divisive. It's been politicized in this current political environment. But Even back in 1996, when John McCain was, I think he was for president or something, he called it human cockfighting. And he sent letters to the governors of all 50 states asking them to ban the sport. How did you contend with that? And as a companion, how did you. You said you went through that same feeling of, you know, this, you know, being, being aggressed, and how to get. Get over it.

Benny Safdie (21:56)

Well, it's. It's interesting because I went to a UFC fight with my stepfather in 2002, and at that moment in time, it was very experimental. You know, you had these people comparing different styles and seeing which one would be the greatest. And I think it's. The thing that I always found interesting is because it is so outwardly violent, that kind of initially rubs people the wrong way. But, like, if you look at something like boxing, which has been around for much longer and is much more accepted, there's an invisible injury that happens, which I think is Very sad. You know, when you see some boxers really go through kind of. They call it punch drunk, but it's really. Their brains are getting hurt. And maybe just because you don't see that, the world accepts that a little bit more. And I love boxing, you know, and it's interesting. I would go. I was part of a boxing gym here in the city, Mendez Boxing. And when I started learning, I. I started doing it for 10 years until it closed in 2019. You'd walk into this environment which is seemingly very aggressive. There's lots of sounds, noise, testosterone, but when you get in there. And I really wanted to learn this craft, and I found it to be one of the most loving and supportive places that I could be on the planet. And I thought that contradiction is unbelievable. So somebody saying to me, hey, I want to spar with you, and I want to beat you up. And I look at them and think, really, me? You know, it's like. It's a really interesting thing to feel. And that's kind of what I wanted to get across in the movie, that you have this kind of. You can exist in two places at the same time. You know, you can have this intensely violent fight, which in the movie, I wanted to really show it and experience it with the sound in a movie theater, where you feel these fights, as real as they are ringside, you know, the best seat in the house. But then you realize that these are people who have feelings. They care about each other, they want each other to succeed. And when somebody loses, they say it's okay. You know, That, I think, is a really interesting thing. And I don't think that strength and vulnerability have to cancel each other out. And that was a very important thing for me in this movie, is I wanted it to be that they can actually be part of the same thing. That vulnerability can be a strength, you know?

Christiane Amanpour (24:20)

Well, you really do make that happen in the, you know, use of Dwayne Johnson as the star, because he just physically is massive. So that's the strength part. And frankly, he stands out bigger, larger, taller than anybody else in the film. But he's also unrecognizable. I mean, I swear to God, I kept thinking, is this. Is this. Is this AI. Is this cgi? Where is he? Where is the guy? You know? But it's all prosthetics and et cetera. Um, so I just wanna. I find it weird that they like each other. I don't understand. I don't. I don't get that part of this. And it was clearly, you Know, you made that clear in the film that he and the others, they felt sorry for the people they defeated.

Benny Safdie (25:05)

Yes, very much so. And it's like. I think it's like I was doing a rehearsal with one of the fighters, and I did these intense processes where I would. I would become a part of the scene, and I would work with them for, like, an hour, hour and a half, and we would improvise and we would talk through things. And as I was talking to one of these fighters, I said, well, you seem to really love the people you train. So what happens when one of them gets knocked out? And he said, do you want to see? I said, please show it to me. And it's what you see in the beginning of the movie when he gets down on the ground and he's like, do you know where you are? And he says, yes. Do you know what happened to you? He says, I lost. And he goes, you did, and it's okay. And I think that that level of compassion amongst the people that are a. On the same team. But when I would watch early fights with Mark, I would see that he wouldn't. He wouldn't initially raise his hands in the air and run around the ring excited. He wanted to see if the other person was okay. And there's something really interesting in MMA specifically. And it's like, it doesn't really get talked about, but as I was, like, really getting into it, I thought, oh, this is great. You know, talking to Baz Rutten, who's in the film and is a MMA legend in his own right, the idea of the tap out, you know, you're basically getting somebody in a position where you could really hurt them. Yeah, but you're not. And you say, I'm putting this pressure to let you know I could do it, but just tell me, I win, you lose, it's okay. And then they tap out, because the point isn't not to hurt the other person, it's to win in that match. And so I find that really interesting, you know, so I want to.

Christiane Amanpour (26:45)

I found. We've got one clip, which I'm gonna play in a moment, but I want to ask you about the phenomenon around the Rock, Dwayne the Rock Johnson. So here he's being Dwayne Johnson and not the Rock. That was his nom de guerre or whatever when he was wrestling and throughout his career up until now. Um, I found it really interest that there was a scene in which he was having a, you know, a real existential moment with a journalist who was asking him, so. And what if you lose? He couldn't even entertain the thought of losing. He just said, well, I can't even answer that. It's never happened. And then, I don't know about spoilers or whatever. You can tell me what he wants to do. But I've also heard that he's had in his contracts in the past that he cannot lose a fight on screen because he's the winner. So tell me about that whole concept.

Benny Safdie (27:33)

Yeah, well, I can't answer the second part, but what I can answer is in that moment, you know, we're dealing with somebody who's undefeated. And I wanted to tell a movie. I wanted to make a movie where. Cause normally in these kind of. In these fight movies, the thrill comes in the win. And I wanted to see if I could do something a little different where sometimes maybe the thrill can come in the loss and that journey, you know, and experiencing their life. Because one of the best things that I've ever happened was I witnessed a fight between a friend of mine who happened to be my trainer. He happened to win the fight. But what I found so exciting was my emotional connection to him when he was fighting. And so I wanted to create that for the audience where you know and love this person and then you watch them fight and that. What's that experience like? And to touch on the point of how he doesn't know to lose, here's somebody whose entire identity is caught up in being undefeated, the greatest. And I said to Dwayne, in that moment, really try. Really try to think about it, but it's not there. You don't have the actual reference point to look at to answer this person's question. And you're not being arrogant, you're being truthful. And I think that's what's so interesting in that moment. Isand that was the person who was interviewing. I did a lot of work with him, too, where I said, you really need to try your hardest as a journalist to get this information from him. And so he comes out and he really pushes. And my favorite moment is when Dwayne looks off and you could really see him, like, cycling through the Rolodex in his head. And this is where his acting, I think, is just so incredibly subtle. And you said something earlier that he's not the Rock. And I think it's. We're seeing a different side of who that is. And who Dwayne is, is he's this magnetic, incredible personality who people really love. And I think what makes it so special about this movie is you're seeing that he struggled with a lot of pain. And it's truthful, because I personally don't think you could give a performance like this if you didn't feel these things. And so now you're seeing that he was this person with this pain. And how much more incredible does that make somebody? They're not letting that, like, define who they are, you know?

Christiane Amanpour (29:53)

Let me play the clip. It's Dwayne Johnson as Mark, obviously, and Emily Blunt as his girlfriend Dawn. And they're at a fun fair here. Mark is kind of scared to get on. But this sort of goes to your point about this great big, hulking, massive figure who also has some, you know, is soft on the inside to an extent. Here we go.

Dwayne Johnson (30:15)

There's no way I can do that.

Benny Safdie (30:17)

Why? Why?

Dwayne Johnson (30:18)

Because my tummy. You know what that would do to my tummy?

Benny Safdie (30:20)

I would get sick everywhere.

Christiane Amanpour (30:21)

You're not sick.

Benny Safdie (30:23)

No. It's about perspective. Okay.

Christiane Amanpour (30:27)

On the inside, you don't feel it. It's like you're not moving. You're, like, pinned against the wall, and you're gonna love it.

Benny Safdie (30:34)

You're gonna love. It.

Dwayne Johnson (30:37)

Doesn'T move on the inside.

Claire Duffy (30:39)

It moves, but it's moving so f.

Christiane Amanpour (30:42)

I can't even feel it.

Dwayne Johnson (30:45)

I really don't want to go on a ride with her, but I have a sensitive stomach. Is there the center part in there? That's the thing that stays still, Right? Can I stand in there in the middle part?

Trimane Lee (30:55)

In the center part?

Dwayne Johnson (30:56)

Yes.

Nicholas Burns (30:57)

No.

Dwayne Johnson (30:57)

That'd be a serious liability issue. Well, where would you recommend I stand, then? Because I don't want to get sick on the ride, but I do want.

Benny Safdie (31:04)

To ride with it.

Nicholas Burns (31:05)

You don't want to get sick on the ride? I would suggest you don't go on the ride if you can't handle it.

Dwayne Johnson (31:09)

Well, it's not that I can't handle it, since I'm choosing not to go on.

Christiane Amanpour (31:12)

Okay, I'm going to go on the ride. I mean, it's hilarious. And it goes to the point that you've just been making. Um, he. I. I want you talk about that a little bit. But also Emily Blunt, I understand that because she knew him already and had starred with him in a different movie, she was also instrumental in getting your message to him about wanting him in this film. Right?

Benny Safdie (31:34)

Yes. Um, so. So it's. What I found really amazing about Emily was when I acted with her in Oppenheimer, I could see her. It was a very small scene, but in that scene, I remember Saying, like, I had read that my character, when she. In real life, Katie Oppenheimer rejected his handshake. It was so effective to him that he went home to his hotel and he cried. And that was very interesting to me. And when she looked at me, I felt the same thing. And I thought that was an unbelievable performance in a half a second, you know? So then when it came time to try and figure out who dawn was gonna be, I realized I was showing a relationship that's a different kind of love story. You know, it's a very toxic relationship where two people maybe don't necessarily get. They don't get along all the time, but there's this intense attraction and affection for one another, but it's like magnets. When you push them together and they're the same pole, they're never going to connect. And I wanted to show that. But in order to show that I felt in a realistic way, you had to have a base of true. Kind of a foundation of care. And because Emily and Dwayne have this really interesting friendship with one another that they developed on a movie that's much different. But I think it was helpful to have that kind of. That play because, as you saw in that clip, there's such a shorthand amongst them. And my favorite thing in that is she's. She is going. She has the cake powder on her face. He holds the napkin while she eats, and then he hands it back to her, and she then takes it back. It's such a subtle performance thing that only could happen with two people who are friends. He's looking out for her, and it's very subtle and beautiful. And I think a really telling thing here is also when he's. The guy stands up to Dwayne as Mark, and he says, well, if you don't want to go on the ride, I suggest you don't go on the ride. And I remember talking with Dwayne in that moment, said, you're a big guy. You don't want him to say that to you. And he's like, you're right. But he doesn't want to be offensive, and he doesn't want to be aggressive. And so he came up with, it's not that I don't want to ride on it, it's that I'm choosing not to. And so it's like, again, there's this idea of control that he has, but even in the way that he's speaking to him, he's really trying his hardest to not be what he represents, because he knows What? That he knows what his outward appearance says to other people. And all he wants to be is desperately seen on the inside, you know, And I know I've walked outside and I have certain things that have hurt me in my life that. That nobody knows about, and yet when you walk outside, people don't see that, you know, and so that's part of.

Christiane Amanpour (34:14)

What this movie is, you know, talking about Oppenheimer. And you played Edward Teller, as you just said. So that's. As you said. Christopher Nolan, one of the biggest directors working today. You've also worked under Paul Thomas Anderson in Licorice, of course, Licorice Pizza. He's just come out with an amazing new film.

Benny Safdie (34:34)

Great. I love it.

Christiane Amanpour (34:35)

Another battle, et cetera. It's brilliant. Now, he's also cast you in the Odyssey, which is coming out next year. Nobody knows anything about it except some tickets have been released and they're sold out. Can you tell us anything about it?

Benny Safdie (34:51)

Well, it's interesting because if I told.

Christiane Amanpour (34:55)

You the scale, you'd have to kill me.

Benny Safdie (34:57)

At which. No, no, not even that. I was saying you wouldn't even believe me. The scale of which was created. And I guess the one thing I could say is it really felt like I was in that period of time, which was a very long time ago. And that's an incredible achievement in its own right, you know, so it really was. I had. I love. I love working with Chris and I love working with Paul, and it was. It was an amazing experience to kind of stretch different muscles. And I think for me, when I go and I act in somebody else's movie, you know, it's nice to have to listen to somebody else, because I find it's important, you know, when I then go to be a director, I know what that feels like. You know, there's a certain level of vulnerability of you have to make decisions and they could be wrong and you feel nervous. And so maybe it makes me a little bit more empathetic when I have to ask people to do that, too, so.

Christiane Amanpour (35:51)

Well, talking about working, I'm sure a million people have asked you this, and maybe you're tired of it, but you have worked with your brother, Josh Safdie, many, many times. You've had amazing films together, Good time, Uncut gems. You impacted the careers of people who went on to become massive, massive stars. Robert Patterson, Adam Sandler, et cetera. Now you're not working together, and he's got another film out, Marty supreme, and both of you are generating a huge amount of buzz. Are you Competitive now? Well, yes. Tell me what that's like. Is it like. I don't know. What is it like?

Benny Safdie (36:28)

Yeah, you know, it's. It's interesting. Cause, like, we were on a path to working on movies together because the first movie we made was about our childhood, and it made sense to make that together. And then the next movie we wanted to make was Uncut Gems, and that just kept getting pushed further along the line. And when we got there, there was a kind of reckoning inside of me of like, well, what? What do we do now? And it just became clear, like, okay, well, I would like to explore this and he would like to explore that. And so it was just a natural progression of things. And I think it's kind of. I think it's kind of exciting that, you know, the two of us get to go out there and do what we love, you know?

Christiane Amanpour (37:08)

I'm gonna ask you a cheeky question. So let's say he wins an Oscar and you don't. Are you gonna be like, dwayne, it's okay. I love you. It's okay. It doesn't mind. I don't mind losing.

Benny Safdie (37:20)

The truth is, I made this movie to explore certain things about myself. I made it to explore certain aspects of Dwayne, and I wanted Dwayne to go through this process of discovery. I made it because I love combat sports, and I wanted people to go into the ring, to see the ring from the best point of view. And I wanted them to experience that and see the things that I saw in there. And it's a very personal movie for me. So in that sense, I'm just proud and happy to have made it. So I can't really attach it to a specific outcome, you know. I know, and I'm just really excited to be with it and get it out there and if it connects with people, that's awesome, you know.

Christiane Amanpour (38:03)

Well, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for talking to us.

Benny Safdie (38:07)

Well, this was great. Thank you so much for all the great questions.

Christiane Amanpour (38:10)

And the Smashing Machine is out today in theaters worldwide. We'll be right back after this short break. Now to a deeply personal examination of the African American experience. Our next guest is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Trimane Lee has dedicated his life and career to exploring the intersection between black life and politics. He was one of the first national reporters to cover the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin back in 2012 and the Social justice movement that it sparked. His new book, A Thousand Ways to Die, covers gun violence and systemic racism to discovering his own mortality through a near death experience. But as he tells Michelle Martin, reporting on such traumatic topics does take its toll.

Michelle Martin (39:10)

Thanks. Christiane Tremayle, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Trimane Lee (39:13)

It's really a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Michelle Martin (39:16)

It's a really. Gosh, I don't even know what to say. It's a powerful, surprising book that you've written. Surprising in some ways, very revealing and very vulnerable for people who only know your work through your journalism. I think it might come as a surprise that you share so much of your own story. So I guess I wanted to start by saying that this isn't the book you started out to write. Tell us about that.

Trimane Lee (39:47)

Not at all, Michelle. I didn't set out to open my entire self up and pour myself onto the page the way I did originally. The book that I was writing was about the literal cost of gun violence in this country. The cost in a dollar amount as a way to speak to the cost that we pay as, as communities and families every single day. But as I was writing this book and I almost met my own death, it forced me to really look at widening the aperture on violence and how we experience violence within our community, certainly, but also the silent kind of violence that we carry within us in terms of the trauma that we carry. Much of it tied to the gun and gun violence, but also the, the long trail of systemic violence that's almost required before triggers ever pulled.

Michelle Martin (40:32)

We should just tell people what happened is you had a heart attack. I mean, you're only 38 years old, former college athlete, people can see that. Former college football player, didn't have a history of high cholesterol, didn't have any of those other kind of markers. And you had what is commonly called a widowmaker. I mean, you had a blockage in your artery that was so profound that it could have, could have killed you. And the way you describe that, I don't want to take you through that again because I'm sure it was traumatic to experience. But you didn't even go to the hospital right away.

Trimane Lee (41:07)

It was a curious decision as I look back now. But two years into writing this book, I suffered this widowmaker heart attack. A 98 plus percent blockage in my left anterior descending artery, the big one that supplies most of the blood to your heart. And with none of those markers, I had to wrestle with what it was that literally almost broke my heart. And at that time, my daughter, who is 13 now, a big girl, hard to believe at 13, was five going on six years old and she was asking me, daddy, how and why? And to answer her, as I promised her when she was still in the womb, that I'd never lie to her. I had to be really honest with myself about what I was carrying. And that was a career of chronicling black death and survival on the front lines of it. As a young police reporter on the streets, often finding a young man shot dead, that looks just like me. Seeing the pain in his family's eyes, it was almost always a him. And seeing my own family's pain, but then also carrying a family history going back to the Jim Crow south of almost every generation, our family being touched by some sort of gun violence, whether it's the Jim Crow sort, whether it's at the hand of the state troopers later on, my grandfather's murder, time and again, we've been touched by it.

Michelle Martin (42:21)

Why do you think you made that connection? Because it isn't obvious. As you point out, you know, a bullet and a blocked artery are very different things.

Trimane Lee (42:32)

Yeah, it was all those things, Michelle, in my physical healing and my emotional and spiritual healing, which took a couple years, there wasn't a day that went by for a number of years where I didn't think about dying. And I was concerned whether I'm going to make it through the night. It was that kind of emotional weight that I was carrying. But as I got healthier, I took a journey of mindfulness and meditation and really a clarity set in and examining, like, how did I, of all people, end up here? And then I had to think no further than all of the sleepless nights that I had for years. For a very long time. It was hard for me to sleep because I'd be wrestling and mulling over the stories I was telling, the literal physical damage on bodies that I was seeing, and understanding what it was, what it means, I should say, to carry that and never fully unpack it and to cope with that, especially as a young man and a young journalist, what I did was throw myself even further into the work or drink or take over the counter sleep medication. I was doing all this stuff to calm my subconscious. And so it all kind of just made sense to me. And it also. It certainly shifted me as a person, as a journalist, as a man. But without question, it shifted the trajectory of the book I was writing.

Michelle Martin (43:45)

One of the things that you do in the book is you trace. You start out with a lot of the stories you've told as a journalist, which is a person was shot. This was the impact on that person. This is what we know about why it happened. This is where the gun came from. But what you also do in this book is you trace the people in your life and your family tree who have been affected by gun violence and then you put them against sort of the backdrop of all the violence that had been taking place around them in their community. Did you know before you started this book that so many members of your family had been touched by gun violence?

Trimane Lee (44:22)

I did not. Michelle. I grew up always knowing about my grandfather's murder in 1976, two years before I was born. And so I knew intimately, or as intimately as I could possibly know the space that his absence created and the pain and hurt that it sent through my family, my aunts, my uncles, and certainly my mother. But it took some investigating and reporting to discover the first murder in our family back in 1922 in the Jim Crow south, when my grandmother's 12 year old brother was shot and killed in a neighboring sundown town.

Michelle Martin (44:54)

What's a sundown town? Explain that. For what people? For people who don't know that term.

Trimane Lee (44:58)

Yeah. So for many of us, we thought sundown towns were colloquial, meaning these places where black folks couldn't be after dark. But in this situation, this particular sundown town, Fitzgerald, the white men of the community actually came together to vote to make sure black folks didn't have a proper place in the community and couldn't be there at certain times. And the newspapers, contemporaneous accounts of what happened in this town, they said that Fitzgerald handled the Negro problem the way no other city in America could. And so this is where my grandmother's 12 year old brother Cornelius was shot and killed. And then my family joins the great migration, joining millions of other black folks fleeing the south for better opportunities in the north, in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, all across the north, landing in Philadelphia first and then South Jersey. And in 1951, another of my grandmother's brothers was shot and killed by a state trooper under mysterious circumstances. And so to think that in the course of just a couple decades, my great grandparents lost two sons, one in the Jim Crow south, one in the North. But then still 20 years after that, in 1976, as I mentioned, my grandfather was murdered. So my grandparents had an apartment in Camden, New Jersey, and a man came to rent the apartment and left a deposit for $160. He disappeared for many weeks. When he came back wanting his money back, my grandfather told him that it was non refundable and that he could see him in court. And they had a court date set and Instead of going to court, that man came back and shot and killed my grandfather. And so that violence, that murder, cascaded through my family. As my mother described it, it's almost as if you have a limb shorn off your body and for the rest of your life you're trying to adapt and cope. And I think about my own grandmother, who lost two brothers and a husband to murder. And then to think that we think about these connections to the violence that we carry within us, the stuff that we inherit, the fact that I exist because of an act of gun violence, because my grandparents met in New Jersey, and so it was the killing of my great uncle Cornelius that sent us into the migration and that my grandparents eventually met. It's just all these ties that bind me to the violence, but also the pushing forward through the trial.

Michelle Martin (47:11)

I'm trying to relive with you how it felt when you learned all this and you had to take all this in. Can you even describe that?

Trimane Lee (47:26)

There have been many moments where I had to sit back and just exhale. But there was a moment when I discovered the death certificate for Cornelius.

Michelle Martin (47:34)

Cornelius the 12 year old. I was going to ask you about that. So tell us about that. Tell us about the death certificate. You have a copy of it in the book.

Trimane Lee (47:40)

That's right. It was so striking in the mundanity of it all. It said, age 12, cause of death, gunshot wounds. And I couldn't help but think about young Tamir rice, who was 12 year old, shot in Cleveland, Ohio, and his chubby face, and thinking about Cornelius face and how Those words, age 12, cause of death, gunshot wounds, should never be in proximity to each other. And what that is like where my own daughter is 13 years old now and imagine your child being gunned down. And there was no law enforcement response, no investigation, There was just nothing. Because it wasn't shocking for a black boy at that time to be shot, killed, shot and killed. So it was one of many moments where I had to reckon with what my people have had to harbor all these years.

Michelle Martin (48:27)

One of the interesting historical facts that you talk about is how firearms were literally traded for African slaves, for people who were about to be enslaved. I had never thought about that. Just. Could you say more about that?

Trimane Lee (48:48)

Discovering that that was another one of those discoveries that brought so much to bear. This idea that there is what I've described as this psychic connection, this ethereal connection to guns and black folks. And so in my exploration, I really wanted to go back, not just to the beginning of my family's exposure to gun violence, but really examine the dynamic between black people, period, before we even got here in guns. And so for many of us, we were educated to understand that black folks were either simply just kidnapped or they were some natural byproduct of wars that were already occurring on the continent of Africa. And then Europeans, eager to take advantage of a labor force to supply labor needs for the western world, came over and made some deals. When in reality, what we see, and the abolitionists of the time, where we're noting this, is that European powers, especially as gun technology is rising in the early 18th century, were applying regional African powers, different warring factions with guns, to create instability, to create war, to create more enslaved people. And so the idea that our bodies were literally bartered for guns, and that we were forced out of Africa with the muzzle of a gun at our backs, and then introduced to the western world, which would have been hellish for these enslaved Africans, and greeted by more white men with more guns to maintain what would be a hundreds year system of servitude and violence, I think that can't be lost on us. And our literal bodies were traded for guns. And we continue on to experience a specific kind of gun violence.

Michelle Martin (50:18)

One of the things that you point out in the book is that African Americans disproportionately experience gun violence, particularly police violence. But I do have to say a lot of white people in America get killed with guns.

Trimane Lee (50:35)

That's right.

Michelle Martin (50:36)

So I just wondered if you thought about that, if you kind of reflected on that.

Trimane Lee (50:41)

Well, certainly. And in the book, I say that, you know, gun violence in America isn't a black American problem alone, it's an American problem. And even though we are disproportionately killed by police and face disproportionate gun violence, period, about 40 plus percent of the gun deaths in this country are white. And so in some ways, not to counter the notion in the book, because I wanted to use a specific lens here. As long as gun violence in this country is considered a black American issue, then we don't have to to address any of the other broad issues like the nature of gun death in white communities or the pipeline from legal to illegal in this country of guns. And so certainly it's an American problem. We think about the issue around school shootings and these mass shootings which disproportionately impact white folks. And so clearly this is just one slice, one lens to view a very, very American issue. And part of our issue with guns is that so connected to this sense of patriotism and I dare I say manhood. So much of our manhood is attached to violence in this country. And so no wonder white folks as well as black are being killed so frequently.

Michelle Martin (51:49)

One of the points that you make in the book is because gun violence is so often associated with blackness, often in very dehumanizing ways. I have to ask you about that. Doesn't that in some way kind of reinforce the problem that this is a black problem and therefore it doesn't command the attention and the urgency that it.

Trimane Lee (52:11)

Would.

Michelle Martin (52:13)

If it were seen as the national problem that it is?

Trimane Lee (52:17)

Well, I think there are a couple issues here. I think because it happens so frequently and it's so disproportionately in our communities that it's also ignored. It's treated as garden variety. It's treated as routine, it's treated as normal. And so they're in our trauma and our hurt and pain and loss, financial and otherwise, goes ignored. And so until we can point to the problem and speak to the specificity in which race has played a role in how we've experienced this gun violence, because white folks aren't dying by the gun because they're black, but we are because we've been conditioned and cordoned off in certain communities that have been disinvested in and deprived it. So we're experiencing. That's why it's a thousand ways to die long before you get to the trigger being pulled. There's a host of other issues that need to be addressed that manifest and culminate in disproportionate gun violence. And so it's almost like policing. We're both under policed and over policed. It's also like media coverage. Our communities are also undercovered and sensationalized. But we can't continue to ignore the problem. And especially for black folks, and this is a bigger question for black and white, actually, we have to understand that we are not the violence that we've experienced. Right. There's nothing inherent or innate in us. Lest we forget in recent weeks the president's own words when he talked about the threat of occupying major cities in this country, and he said it's not a matter of five years, 10 years or two years, these people are born to be criminal. And so what I want to do in this book, and I want to make it clear for black and white, but especially black folks to understand this, that there's nothing inherently violent or wrong with us if we want to truly understand the violence we've experienced, let's look at the machinery around us and the long continuum that got us here. And so we've experienced it a certain way. And so it requires a certain research, reporting, analyzation and recording of it.

Michelle Martin (53:59)

Jermaine Lee, thank you so much for speaking with us.

Trimane Lee (54:03)

Thank you, Michelle.

Christiane Amanpour (54:04)

And that is it for now. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.

Claire Duffy (54:18)

I'm criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward. And on season seven of Mind of a Monster, we're bringing you the story of Kristen Gilbert.

Benny Safdie (54:26)

We think that Kristen Gilbert is the most prolific mass murderer on the east.

Claire Duffy (54:31)

Coast, the very person responsible for keeping you alive. Your nurse is secretly killing you.

Benny Safdie (54:38)

She said to the nurse manager, if.

Christiane Amanpour (54:41)

This guy dies, can I go home?

Claire Duffy (54:43)

Listen to Mind of a Monster, the killer nurse. Wherever you get your podcasts.