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- [00:02]
A
The holidays have arrived at the Home Depot and we're here to help bring the excitement with decor for every part of your home. Check out our wide assortment of easy to assemble pre lit trees so you can spend less time setting up and more time celebrating. And bring your holiday spirit outdoors with unique decor like one of our Santa inflatables. Whatever your style, find the right pieces at the right prices this holiday season at the Home Depot.
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B
Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up. The Gaza ceasefire, tested but holding, will have an update from the region. After a deadly weekend in which Israel bombed the enclave and Israeli soldiers were killed by Hamas, plus a tense White House meeting and a critical moment for Ukraine, the US President suggests carving up the Donbas region to end the war. I'll ask Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, what happens next. Then art, activism and an African icon celebrating Fela Kuti, a pioneer of Afrobeat who risked his life to better his country. And 1929 Inside the Greatest crash in Wall street history lessons for today from the Great Depression. Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Bianna Godrigo, New York sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. More lives lost in Gaza despite the ceasefire. It was another deadly weekend in the shattered enclave. Israel accused Hamas of violating the truce and killing two of its soldiers. The IDF unleashed major airstrikes in response which killed dozens of Palestinians. President Trump, though, insists that the ceasefire is still in place. He dispatched his special envoy, Steve Witkoff and son in law Jared Kushner back to Israel to keep the deal on track. They met with the Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday behind closed doors. Meanwhile, the UN Warns that the aid supplies getting into Gaza are still way below what's needed. Israel is refusing to open the Rafah crossing while awaiting the return of more deceased hostages from Hamas. The decision to allow some aid in though, indicates Israel is maintaining key components of Trump's cease fire deal for now. So what happens next in terms of implementing the next phase of the agreement? Let's bring in veteran diplomat and former peace negotiator Dennis Ross, who joins me from Washington, D.C. dennis, it is good to see you and we heard President Trump asked about the state of affairs and the increased violence that we saw over the weekend. As noted, the two IDF soldiers killed by Hamas. Is Israel responding and killing dozens of Palestinians, both sides blaming the other for violating the cease fire. President Trump, as he was meeting with the prime minister of Australia, was asked about the situation, saying the ceasefire remains in place and once again threatened to eradicate Hamas if it doesn't abide by the agreement with Israel. From your experience in the past, what's the likelihood of such a fragile truce holding, given the history, Israel's longest war, deadly war in Gaza for the foreseeable future?
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C
I do see it holding for the foreseeable future, mostly because President Trump wants to preserve it. Turkey, Qatar and Egypt, who have the main leverage on Hamas, want to preserve it. Prime Minister Netanyahu is not in a position to say no to President Trump, and I think he probably also wants the war to be over at this point. So I think for the time being, this holds. I think Hamas will continue to test the limits of depends on the nature of those tests. They're testing it in one way because there are still 16 bodies they have not yet turned over. I have no doubt that some are really hard to get to, but that's probably not the case for all 16. And they have been sort of meting them out almost individually and mostly under pressure. So that will be one test. The other is what we just saw. You had a couple of Hamas emerge with an anti tank missile and fired at Israelis on bulldozers, and that's what led to the killing of two soldiers and the severe wounding of another. The real issue, I think at this point will be how much pressure Turkey, Egypt and Qatar put on Hamas. And also we're seeing examples of the pressure the US Is putting on because Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are there. Apparently the Vice President is going to go there as well. That's very much, I think, focused on keeping Israel sticking to the agreement, even as when the President says Hamas will pay a terrible price if they don't fulfill it. That's a kind of public posture of threatening. But at the same time, he accepted the explanation that these were rebel Hamas elements who acted yesterday and they weren't, in fact, following orders. I think that gives them the benefit of the doubt. It reminds us that everybody seems to have a stake in wanting to preserve this, at least for the time being.
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B
These actions, though, continue. I mean, I heard you say earlier this morning on our air that Hamas is playing games, especially as it relates to the return of the deceased hostages. It has been reported that it was Israeli intelligence that was presented to both Turkish officials and Qatari officials to let them know that Israel believes that Hamas does know the whereabouts of more of the remains that they're just not turning over. If you have that factor, in addition to what you just noted and the President seeming to accept that these are fringe elements of Hamas who Hamas leadership doesn't necessarily have control over at this point in terms of killing the IDF soldiers. If we see more and more of this, how does a ceasefire like this hold? I mean, does it really speak to the strength and involvement of President Trump alone?
- [06:32]
C
If you keep having killings, it will not hold, because then the pressures will build up to the point where Netanyahu will tell the president, look, we can't endure a case where we're there. They're not fulfilling their part of the deal, and we're losing soldiers. So that actually would break it down. But I'd make one other point that sort of validates, I think, the idea that Hamas has been playing games, at least with regard to the remains. They had no difficulty finding all of the 20 who were alive, and they were held by different groups within Hamas, even in some cases, groups outside of Hamas, like Islamic Jihad, that they were able to determine very quickly. As I said, are there some of the bodies and remains that are probably buried and difficult to get to? I'm sure that's true, but does that account for all 16? I highly doubt that.
- [07:22]
B
Oh, and of course, the psychological toll that this continues to play on those families, we continue to highlight as well. We saw an interview over the weekend with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff on CBS's 60 Minutes, and an interesting moment was when Jared Kushner said this about immigration implementing Phase two. I mean, it was a huge accomplishment to get phase one done, and we see how fragile that remains. Here's what he said about phase two. He said, the biggest message that we've tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle east, you have to find a way to help the Palestinians thrive and do better. Leslie Stahl asked, how are you going to do that? And Kushner responded, we're just getting started. So let me ask you, if you were mediating this deal right now and getting to phase two effectively, how do you get that started without a replacement for Hamas and with Hamas still clearly showing that they still weigh some wield some power in the enclave?
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C
Look, the critical issue right now is to begin to put in place the alternative administration that starts with the Board of Peace. It is reinforced by having this technocratic Palestinian administration, and it is further strengthened by having the international stabilization force also deploy, at least to the places where the Israelis have withdrawn from. So all that has to be implemented sooner rather than later. That creates some momentum on its own. It also puts Hamas in a position where it doesn't want to look like it's now trying to block what could be the whole rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction effort within Gaza. Under the circumstances that that takes place, and where the Palestinian population in Gaza feels it's protected, they will be much more prepared to stand up and put pressure on Hamas. And Hamas will find it increasingly less tenable to be resisting its own public, as opposed to looking like they're still opposing the Israelis in some fashion.
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B
What you don't want to see happen is Israel continue to remain the occupying force in Gaza, and thus you have this Council of Peace and the signatories from other Arab and Muslim countries who, at least on paper, are saying they're willing to deploy their own forces. You know this region better than most. What's the realistic likelihood that you could see other Arab soldiers patrolling the streets of Gaza while even some elements of Hamas remain in leadership?
- [10:11]
C
It's a really good question, because certainly historically we would not have seen that kind of readiness. But I do feel like something is changing. All the key Arab states right now want this to be over. It isn't just the mediators, meaning Qatar and Egypt, plus Turkey. It's not just them. The Saudis, the Emiratis, they want this over. And also they want to do reconstruction, but they won't do reconstruction. They won't invest in reconstruction if Hamas is still in control or if Hamas isn't disarming. So there's an enormous stake that they collectively have in beginning to implement all 20 points, but starting specifically with being able to create an alternative administration in Gaza. So long as you don't do that, you leave a vacuum and the vacuum gets filled. And unfortunately, it gets filled most likely by violence. So the key here, if you're really going to move quickly, if you're really going to give a greater chance to sustaining the ceasefire and ending the war, is to get that Council of Peace that the technical administration up and running and to have at least some presence from the outside that has also a military capability, if for nothing else than just to reestablish law and order, if for nothing else, and to ensure that the distribution of humanitarian assistance is going to the people who most need it, which is still not the case even today.
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B
There's so much said about what Israeli officials, what all officials, I guess, say publicly and then to their own domestic audiences as well. And it should all be taken with a grain of salt, because there's politics, there's theater involved as well, and at the end of the day, though, what's most important is that there are human lives at stake. At its surface, President or Prime Minister Netanyahu says that he will never accept Palestinian Authority leadership over Gaza. But we know that in reality that they do actually work pretty closely, the Israelis, with the pa, especially as it involves the West Bank. Do you see at least a situation where in the interim you do see a larger Palestinian Authority present, Maybe not Mahmoud Abbas led, but just from a technocratic standpoint, do you see a situation where we could envision more of a PA Authority in Gaza in the months to come?
- [12:41]
C
Look, I see it in two phases. In this initial phase, whatever is said, when you take a look at this technocratic government administration, it will include people from the pa, even if they're sort of purely technical, functional types, not necessarily political types, it will include them. You will have Palestinian participation in the Board of Peace, maybe even someone from the Palestinian Authority on the Board of Peace. That'll be in this first phase. To really have the PA play a more prominent role, you really have to see genuine reform in the Palestinian Authority, which we have not seen until we see some genuine reform. And I measure that in terms of appointing a highly credible, independent, empowered prime minister. We've seen it done before. From 2007 to 2012, Salam Fayyad was appointed over the opposition, the acquiescence of Mahmoud Abbas. I think in the second phase we will see that. So there'll be some PA involvement even in the early first phase. Over time, if there's real reform, we'll see much more. Ultimately, you can't get to 19 of the 20 points unless you have a.
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B
Reform PA. And sometime in that period, we're likely to see Israeli elections again. I mean, at the very least this time next year, if not sooner. Dennis Ross, really good to see you. Thank you so much.
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C
My pleasure.
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B
Do you stay with cnn? We'll be right back after the break.
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D
I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy.
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B
This week on the podcast Terms of.
- [14:25]
D
Service, billionaire investor and entrepreneur Frank McCourt. These big tech platforms are scraping and accumulating our data, hyper micro profiling us. And now they're not just selling us ads, but they're manipulating us.
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B
Listen to CNN's terms of service with me, Claire Duffy, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, there are mixed reports coming out of the White House about what went on behind the scenes of Friday's White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky is spinning the talks as a success, calling President Trump's Call to freeze the current battle lines, a positive development. But both the Financial Times and Reuters report that off camera the meeting descended into a shouting match with Trump turning down Kyiv's critical request for long range Tomahawk missiles. The White House meeting came a day after Trump spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin and agreed to meet with him in Budapest sometime soon. Kurt Volker was America's ambassador to NATO and former special envoy to Ukraine. He joins me now to help us sort through the conflicting reports. Without reading the reports word for word here for you and for our viewers, I think that was a pretty good summation, Curt, from the Financial Times, in the AP about what happened on Friday behind closed doors. Nothing nearly as shocking as what we saw in terms of a bottoming out of the relationship between Trump and Zelenskyy the first time they met in the Oval Office. But this was not the meeting that President Zelensky was hoping he would have this time around either. And it does seem that that phone call with Vladimir Putin sort of spoiled the momentum going into this meeting. How did you interpret A, the phone call with Putin and B, the outcome of the meeting Friday?
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E
Right, well, thank you very much for having me. I think that first off, the outcome, let's start with that. The outcome is not what President Zelenskyy was looking for, but it's also fine. We basically are where we have been for a long time. President Trump was dangling the idea of sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine to try to get Putin to re engage and to negotiate, strike a deal and so forth. That seems to be the way President Trump played this. President Zelenskyy really wanted the Tomahawks and I think the way to play it would have been provide the Tomahawks with a commitment from Ukraine not to use them if Putin agrees, a ceasefire. But President Trump wanted to hold back for now and see if he can engage with Putin. So this is about where we've been, where it goes from here. You're going to have Rubio teeing up a meeting of Trump and Putin. He's going to meet with Lavrov at some point in the coming week or so. And I have a feeling that we're going to discover is that Putin is not changing his position at all. He still has maximalist demands. And this does not set the stage for a productive meeting with President Trump. And then I think we're going to be faced with the same situation we've been in time and again, where we actually need to put more pressure on Putin to get him to do a deal.
- [17:42]
B
It did seem like coming out of the meeting a few months ago. I think it was a three and a half or four hour meeting, which is typical at times with Vladimir Putin, with Steve Witkoff, that there was a miscommunication or misinterpretation, literally. I think Witkoff came without his own translator and relied on Vladimir Putin's, but essentially was, if we give up the regions, the Donbas region, freeze the fighting there, both sides will accept the situation. Sort of the territorial swap that he explained in a subsequent interview that that led to the Alaska meeting. But President Trump walked out pretty discouraged from that meeting with Vladimir Putin, seeing that he wasn't giving as much latitude as had been projected. I'd like to play sound from the president over the weekend on this issue of territorial swaps.
- [18:36]
A
Let it be cut the way it is. It's cut up right now. I think 78% of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now, they can. They can negotiate something later on down the line. But I said cut and stop at the battle. I go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.
- [18:55]
B
So that's freezing the fighting on the battlefield where it is right now. What Vladimir Putin essentially wants is land he doesn't even control at this point. Do you think from everything you know about where Vladimir Putin is right now, over three years into this war, that he would be willing to just stop and accept the current dynamics on the battlefield as they are?
- [19:21]
E
Not yet, no. He thinks he can still get more. And so he wants to keep fighting to get more. And he wants to see if, through these bluffing tactics in negotiations, whether he can convince Trump or others to put pressure on Ukraine to give him more. It was interesting the way President Trump phrased that. He said he's got 78%. He's referring to Putin having 78% of the territory that Russia claims to have annexed, meaning that they haven't been able to take everything they want. And he's saying stop now and then negotiate for more later. That is, in my view, upside down. This is not the way to look at it. Putin has taken about 20% of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine wants to get it back, but Ukraine is willing to settle for a ceasefire, as is, which is a major concession from Ukraine if they were to do that.
- [20:13]
B
Okay, so looking ahead, you mentioned that before there would be any meeting between President Trump and President Putin, that you would have their representatives, this being Secretary of State Rubio and his counterpart Sergei Lavrov, meeting before them. Many are viewing this as a positive in the sense that Secretary Rubio has long been more of a hawk on Russia and has favored Ukraine's position more than even some of the other members of President Trump's team and his Cabinet. Do you envision a scenario where something could be worked out or agreed upon between Rubiot and Lavrov that could turn a potential meeting in Budapest into a more effective one than we saw in Alaska?
- [21:04]
C
Yeah.
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E
Well, the honest answer is no, I don't expect that. I expect the Russians to maintain their maximalist position, which will probably mean there's no basis for a Trump Putin meeting, and therefore that gets postponed. I wouldn't agree that Rubio is going to be tougher and that will yield a better result. Ultimately, whether it's Witkoff or Rubio, the decision maker is Trump. He's the one who's going to decide where to go is the next step. The problem with the Alaska meeting is that Witkoff didn't get it right. He didn't understand what he heard from Putin. Reported it as though there was a trade territory in the works. Russia gets all of Donbas, but pulls out of two other provinces. That's not what Vladimir Putin came to the table with. He says he keeps everything he's got and he gets the Ukrainians to give him more. That's clearly what went wrong. That's clearly what got President Trump upset at that meeting and why they called it short. Rubio won't make that mistake. Rubio will get it right in terms of what the Russians are saying. But unfortunately, there's no reason to think that Putin wants anything other than all of the Donbas, including territory he's not been able to conquer, as well as the laundry list of other demands that he has, such as the change in the Ukrainian government, demilitarization of Ukraine, permanent neutrality of Ukraine, and recognition as Russians, all of the land that Russia has taken.
- [22:36]
B
And that's just, you know, that's a non starter for Ukraine. I would imagine that's a nonstarter, even if you ask President Trump. Today, it was reported as well.
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E
No European leader can live without precedent of that. You conquer by force, you get to keep it, and it's legitimized. That sets the stage for war all over Europe.
- [22:56]
B
Well, that brings me to the Europe question, because the president likes to compare his success in Gaza to potential success in Ukraine. And these are completely different situations, completely different dynamics and players. What could perhaps, though, be a commonality is if President Trump decides to lead that effort in Ukraine the way he has led and as you heard from the previous segment, only he could have achieved the way the United States did, showing its power there and telling both sides, all sides in that war, that they need to compromise to get to some sort of ceasefire. We aren't seeing President Trump play that driving role here, and he's relinquishing a lot of that to the Europeans. He said from the beginning, this isn't my war. This is Europe's war. He's agreed to sell arms and weapons to Europeans that would then be transferred to Ukraine. And the Financial Times writes that European leaders out of Friday's meetings were not optimistic, but with planning next steps. And on the heels of that, the EU foreign policy chief, Kaia Kallis, said this. She said, we see President Trump's efforts to bring peace to Ukraine. Of course, all of these efforts are welcomed, but we don't see Russia really wanting peace. Russia only understands strengths and only negotiates when it's really put to negotiate. So right now, we don't see that. Essentially, she's saying, you know, America is not doing everything it can. So what can the Europeans do without that role? From the U.S.
- [24:34]
E
Well, there are things that all of us can do, including the U.S. but from just from the European side, they could finish the job in seizing the frozen Russian assets and converting that into funds available to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons, for sustaining their finances, and do this over a couple of years. They could go ahead and deploy a coalition of the willing to Ukrainian territory for training, equipping, and assistance with air defense. Right now, jokingly, some people refer to this as a coalition of the waiting. They're still not doing it. They're just talking about it. It could be done. Now, a third thing is to work at NATO to integrate Ukrainian and NATO air defenses and extend NATO's air defense zone by 150 kilometers or so over western Ukraine. Together with Ukraine, this would make airspace safer for NATO countries because Russia's been violating them regularly. And it would also provide some assistance to Ukraine in protecting its civilian population.
- [25:36]
B
In terms of what the US has left on the table, it's rare that you see bipartisanship. I mean, we're in week three and a half now of a government shutdown, but you do, I believe, have 85 signatories to a tough sanctions package that's just awaiting the president's signature against Russia. Now, there's question as to the effectiveness of that, but just the message alone that that sends to Russia would be a change, especially from President Trump. Why do you think he hasn't as of yet.
- [26:07]
F
Right.
- [26:08]
E
Well, President Trump has still got his eyes focused on the deal. He doesn't want to be in the mode of confrontation. He wants to be in the mode of getting a deal. And so adding on more pressure, sanctions, tomahawks, et cetera, he thinks will make it harder to get a deal. And partly he thinks that because that's what Vladimir Putin tells him. But I think the reality is that he needs to actually pull the trigger on these measures, put secondary sanctions in place, give Ukraine the Tomahawks with the promise not to fire if the Russians agree to a ceasefire in order to raise the stakes to get Putin to actually agree. But President Trump is thinking about it differently right now. He's really trying to get the deal. And Putin is using that desire. He's using President Trump's desire to get a deal to get him to back off of tougher measures and to buy.
- [27:00]
B
Himself more time, too, which he's been successful in thus doing. Kurt Volker, always good to see you. Thank you so much for joining the show. We appreciate it. And next to a new podcast that asks some provocative questions. Can music become a weapon of political resistance? And can music actually change the world? The podcast is called Fela Fear no man. And over 12 highly danceable episodes, host Jad Abumra tells the story of Fela Kuti, the pioneer, the Afrobeat music whose music challenged Nigeria's government and transformed African culture. Abumra created the addictive public radio series Radiolab. He also made the award winning podcast about another legendary musician, Dolly Parton's America. So, Jad, welcome to the program. This was one of these stories where I had never been familiar with this subject. And, you know, my co host for my other show is of Nigerian heritage. And as soon as I told her about this, she was so excited. She's like, oh my gosh, do you understand what an impact he had in Nigeria? I sent her your podcast, so you got another listener right then and there. But I really enjoyed spending time over the weekend getting to know a bit more about Fela Kuti. If you could tell our viewers about who he was and what drew you to his story, especially now.
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C
Yeah.
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F
Bianna, thank you so much for having me on. I mean, Fela is one of the most consequential, controversial figures that we have in music. I mean, on the most basic level, he is a Nigerian or was a Nigerian musician who made music from the 1960s to the late 90s. He invented a style of music called Afrobeat that was not just great Dance music. It was not just the kind of music you put on at a party and got the party started, but it really became the catalyst for a political movement that almost toppled a dictatorship. And so what drew me to the story of Fela, but not just his story, the story of his family, the story of Nigeria writ large, is because I'm somebody who, I mean, I got into podcasting through music, so I love music. I think it's so special and important. But I look around the world right now and I see madness in all directions. And as somebody who loves music, I find myself asking, what is the point of music now? Feels like the music that we make shouldn't just be aesthetics, it should really do something. And Fela is really a case study in a musician who made music that mattered. His music was, as you said in the introduction, a weapon that challenged authority. And that, for me, is the kind of story I just really need to hear right now.
- [29:59]
B
Okay, so I think we've piqued our listeners and viewers interest enough to play some of Fela's music for them. And let's listen to one of his most famous songs, zombie from 1976. For rights reasons, this is just a short clip for a much longer song. Okay. It's hard to actually hear the words, but Fela is singing in pidgin English, the idea that a zombie will do whatever you tell it to do. That was a metaphor, really, for Nigeria's armed forces. Just talk about the power and impact of that song alone.
- [30:43]
F
Yeah, that song is really pretty extraordinary. I mean, basically the lyrics say that, you know, as you alluded to the armed forces in Nigeria, if you tell them to go left, they'll go left. If you tell them to go right, they'll go right. If you tell them to kill, they will kill. If you tell them to die, they will die. So it's basically calling the Nigerian military brainless zombies. What's interesting about that song is that when he came out with that in 1976, he would play it at his club, the Shrine. And there was an army barracks just down the street from the Shrine. And so a lot of soldiers would come to that club. He would sing it to the soldiers in the crowd, basically saying that you're a bunch of droids and you have no mind of your own. And he would do this sort of dance on stage where he would sort of goose step around and he would take his sax and put it under his shoulder and like, as if he's sort of holding a rifle. And so it was sort of, like, poking fun at the military. But as you can imagine, in a country where the military really is the law, they did not take kindly to this. And some people will make the argument that it was that song that directly led to the military raiding his compound. Apparently a thousand soldiers encircling the compound, pouring gasoline on the thing and burning it. It to the ground. Because of a song? Because of, you know, because of music. And that is like, I don't want to romanticize that kind of violence, but it's amazing to me that a song could enrage. I mean, what would it take to enrage the Trump administration to the extent that they would want to burn the house down of the singer who sang it? It's kind of a fascinating question. And so that's like, that song, for me, holds a lot of energy about what music can do in a completely.
- [32:36]
B
Different environment and turn him into an even more powerful voice and figure of resistance in the country, essentially by doing that. Let's play a sot from the clip from the podcast describing that raid that also, we should note, killed his mother. Ultimately, these forces threw her literally out of the window. So let's play that sound over and over.
- [33:01]
F
The Nigerian police and army broke his arms, his legs, his face.
- [33:04]
A
You know, they threw his mother from the roof of her house, and she died. Threw my mother out of window. He went and took his mother's coffin and put it on the doorstep of the government building, the Capitol building.
- [33:17]
F
No matter what they did, he never backed down.
- [33:20]
D
If they think I'm going to change or compromise, they're making me stronger.
- [33:25]
B
I mean, I think it's that last line that really makes him stand out. It didn't change him. It didn't make him stand down. It only empowered him and enraged him even more.
- [33:37]
F
Absolutely. And it fueled his creativity. I mean, piano. One of the things that I find most interesting about Fela is that he would do things to deliberately provoke the government. Often the government would then raid his house. He would then release a song about that raid virtually the next day, which would create another raid, which then he would capture in a song. And so it was. I don't want to say that he provoked the violence in order to create music out of it, but it was some kind of infinity loop that was happening there that the more they came after him, literally, the more music he made, which created more confrontation. So it's a really interesting cycle that he became a part of that in many ways still continues to this day, 26, 27 years after his death, actually, that number is wrong, but he is still creating that kind of energy.
- [34:32]
B
Well, and the fact that his music and his lyrics spoke so much about his own humanity, the suffering to the people, to about government abuse and overreach. What's so interesting about thatand you document this brilliantly in this podcast series is that he didn't start out that way. He started out not as somebody who was going to change the world or change the country, but as someone who was a classically trained musician who, one of his influencers early on in his life when he visited the United States, was so moved by his performance of one song. She went up to him and asked him that. That must have been about something so, so powerful. Tell me about that. What drove you? What were you singing about? And he said, soup. And she's like, what does that mean? And he said, no, like the soup that you eat, the edible soup. So to go from soup to what his lyrics and songs really represented towards the end of his life is quite stunning. And so that leads me to, again, we're going to invite everyone to listen the. To this podcast to get a real sense of the man and his influence. But if someone were to ask you, like, who is he similar to describe him. You're asked that or you ask that question in the podcast. Let's play a clip of that.
- [35:49]
A
Fela is like Bob Marley and Mandela combined.
- [35:56]
D
Well, he was kind of like Mick Jagger and James Brown, definitely with some.
- [36:00]
A
Ahmed Ali thrown in.
- [36:01]
D
And then with the protest element of Dylan.
- [36:04]
A
Don't forget Malcolm X. You wanted to be Malcolm X.
- [36:07]
B
Brothers and sisters, the secret of life.
- [36:11]
D
Is to have no fear.
- [36:16]
B
So is that how you came to know him as well? Sort of Bob Dylan meets Mandela meets Muhammad Ali meets James Brown.
- [36:23]
F
I mean, that's what happens when you try to describe him to people, because we really have no figure like him in the West. I came to know him just going to parties and someone would play his record and be like, damn, what is this? Then you get to try to know the guy behind the music. And that's when you, when you run into the word salad of trying to describe somebody who really is just unsummarizable, except in this kind of pastiche of other figures. But he was kind of. I mean, you know, you mentioned that I did the Dolly Parton series before this. I love musicians who defy all the categories. You cannot put them in any one place. And there are very few musicians, I think, who fit that. I mean, Dali is certainly one, and Philla absolutely is definitely a guy that simply can't put him in any one place. He is sort of everything.
- [37:17]
B
Well, again, I am about four or five episodes deep into this podcast. I told my kids, I said, give me a few hours, I need to go for a walk. And I'm listening. And it was one of the greatest things I did this weekend. And I promise our viewers, they will really enjoy getting to know more about who this man was, his influence, and just listening to the great sound as well. Jad Abumrad, thank you. Really appreciate.
- [37:39]
F
Thank you so much for having me on.
- [37:41]
B
We'll be right back after this short break. Now, it was the moment that sent the US and the world really into a panic and drew the Roaring Twenties to a close. The 1929 Wall Street Crash was the most devastating in history, and it eventually brought about the Great Depression. That's the focus of Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book, and he speaks to Walter Isaacson about and what we can learn from it nearly a century later.
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A
Andrew Rossorkin, welcome back to the show.
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D
Thanks for having me.
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A
Walter, you write about the 1929 crash in this book and you say it's one of the most largely misunderstood significant events. Why was it misunderstood?
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D
Well, I think there's two things. One is I think most Americans unfortunately have only a vague conception that something bad happened in 1929 and that whatever happened in 1929 led to the Great Depression. I think that's the sort of prevailing view. And by the way, was my view before I invested the last eight years of my life in the archives writing this book, really, the crash of 1929 was so much more because, yes, it led to the Great Depression, but the number of dominoes that did begin in 1929 and what those dominoes were, I think will surprise a lot of Americans and a lot of readers.
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A
Does that mean that we could have had the 1929 crash but not the Great Depression of 1930?
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D
Oh, absolutely. So the crash in 1929, which is really only part of this book, was the first domino, and it took the next domino and the domino after that to ultimately get us to the Great Depression. But there were so many mistakes and, frankly, bad decisions along the way that led us to the Great Depression. And in fact, I argue that you could look at what happened even in 2008 in the financial crisis. And one of the reasons that we didn't go into a Great Depression is I like to believe that we learned at least some of, but clearly not all of the lessons.
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A
One of the common threads, though, is the Fed, the Federal Reserve bank that had been around for 15 years, I think by the time the 1929 crash happened. And one of your great characters, Charles Mitchell, sunshine Charlie Mitchell runs National City Bank. He gets put the Fed and there's this political push back and forth on the Fed that reminds me of today. Tell me how that was relevant.
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D
Well, you're right. And I should say when I began writing this book, I didn't necessarily go into it thinking there were going to be so many eerie parallels to today. But one of them is this issue of the Fed. We talk oftentimes about the independence of the Fed and what the Fed should be doing. Back in 1929, they knew the market was out of control. They knew there was too much speculation and they talked about trying to tamp it down. But there was a big question about how you do that and they were very, almost overly concerned. I would argue with the politics of the moment. As you mentioned, the Fed was new back then. It was created in 1913. And there was a view that if they tried to stamp out the speculation by raising interest rates too high. And in fact, back then, the same debate we're having now about lowering interest rates versus raising interest rates and what that's going to do to the economy, the view is if you did what, for example, Paul Volcker did In the late 70s, not only would these people lose their jobs, they thought politically and get hauled in front of Congress, they thought the Federal Reserve might be eliminated.
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A
You're a great triple threat in media. You have wonderful book writer. You have the CNBC squawk box. You have the New York Times and Dealbook. If you were doing Dealbook or doing squawk box in 1929, let's say in what type of questions do you think you would be asking and should we be asking those questions now?
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D
So I think the question you'd want to be asking in 1929, and I don't know if it would have been asked, but I wish it would be, is how much leverage really is there in the system every financial crisis. And I think I learned this writing this book. I think I learned this covering the financial crisis in 2008. And too big to fail is a function really of only one thing. It really is leverage. It's too much credit in the system. And that is what leads to some form of speculation. 1929, it was margin loans on stock. People were literally going to brokerage houses that had sprung up on the corners of streets the way they're like Starbucks on the corner Streets, and you could put a dollar down and the brokerage would lend you $10. In 2008, it was subprime mortgages, right? And so the question for today would be, where is the leverage? And so hopefully we would have asked, is there too much leverage in 29? And today you might say to yourself, is there too much leverage? And where is it?
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A
When you talk about leverage, you're pretty much talking fundamentally about debt, right? People taking on too much debt, too much debt, too much taken on, the government taking on. Where is there too much debt being taken on now? And how does that compare to back in 29?
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D
Well, it's very interesting that you say that, because when you think about today, the debt, and this is something that concerns me, is a little bit out of reach. We don't know where the debt is the way we used to know where the debt is. It used to live on the balance sheet of banks. Today, most of the borrowing, especially among corporate America, is not actually from banks anymore. It's from what's called private credit vehicles. These are things that private equity firms have set up that live very much in the shadows. And so we don't really know how much debt there really is today. And there is a lot of debt that's being embedded in this whole artificial intelligence revolution that's taking place. So hundreds of billions of dollars being spent to build data centers, but a lot of that is being paid for with credit, with debt. And I think we need to watch that and try to better understand what's really happening now.
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A
I'm reading your book, and there's so many similarities between back then 100 years ago and now. Certainly an age of great technology with electricity and cars and everything being transformed likewise. It's a roaring jazz age and roaring twenties comes along. Tell me about that cultural exuberance that's happening then and how that led to the crash.
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D
Well, look, I don't know if people fully appreciate it, but prior to 1919, in America, nobody actually took on credit. Nobody took a loan, because it was almost considered a moral sin to take a loan. People started doing that in 1919 because General Motors wanted to sell more cars and they started to loan people money. And then Sears, Roebuck clocked what was happening and said, well, we'll do the same now for appliances. And then Charlie Mitchell, the CEO you referred to, who runs National City, which becomes Citigroup, he says, okay, well, we can lend money to people so they can buy stocks. And the exuberance of it was a decade long, and all of These people on Wall street and CEOs are now on the COVID of magazines. Time magazine, Forbes magazine. They become almost cultural superstars, the way you might think of an Elon Musk or a Sam Altman or a Jamie Dimon today. And so you had this sort of remarkable period where the stock market kept going up and up and up. In 1928, the stock market was up 48%. And if you had gotten a loan from the bank to buy stock, it was like free money.
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A
One of the things that really struck me was, I guess, disparities of wealth, if that's the way you want to put it.
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D
Yes.
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A
Or just high quality.
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D
Yeah.
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A
So tell me how that compares to today.
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D
Very, very similar. I mean, the truth is that the inequality of the late twenties is very reminiscent of where we are today. The social unrest, interestingly. And the questions about the inequality were not as pronounced in the late 20s. And I don't know if that's a function of the way the media was at that time. And, you know, interestingly, it really was until 31, 32 and 33, where you really saw the Depression really move into full force. And Hoovervilles, which are, you know, tented camps, started to emerge, including, by the way, in Central park, literally just blocks away from where Charlie Mitchell lived on 5th and 74th Street.
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A
You know, Henry Ford, right after the crash happens, he's there in Detroit, of course, and he gives his workers a wage increase. He tries to make sure that what happens on Wall street doesn't infect what happens in regular business. And he laments the fact that so much brain power is moving to Wall street that there are all these smart people going there instead of making real things. To what extent was that a problem that helped exacerbate the 1929 crash? Because it's certainly reminiscent of what we have today.
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D
I think it's reminiscent of what we had today. I think it's reminiscent of really what happened in 2008. Just how much Wall street became not the backroom engine, but the front room engine of the economy. And when that happens, what the true implications of that are. Interestingly, Henry Ford in 1929 was described as the nation's second billionaire. So Rockefeller was the first billionaire. This is not inflation adjusted, by the way, Walter, this is for real. And Henry Ford was the second billionaire in America. But you're right, he did not only try to raise the wages of his workers, he almost did it to embarrass Hoover and to embarrass the other CEOs to try to get them to raise wages. One of the things that Hoover was trying to do at the time was almost trying to jawbone his way out of this, calling this sort of a psychological problem that if people could just sort of get over it and if companies could pay people more, he also wanted to tax people more. And by the way, Andrew Mellon, who was our Treasury Secretary, was whispering in his ear the whole time. He was a real capitalist saying, you know, let them eat, it's fine. Let them all fail. If they made poor decisions, they should fail. And so you had this sort of fascinating dynamic taking place inside Washington. And by the way, very much like today's White House, you know, Hoover was on the phone with and constantly in contact with all of these CEOs. They were literally making these pilgrimages to the White House the way they do today.
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A
President Hoover felt that the collapse of the stock market would not necessarily affect business in America. Why was he wrong?
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D
Well, this is. You know, oftentimes we say, look at the stock market, look at the real economy. And we think that they're somehow not connected to each other at all. The reason why it was connected is connected today. But I would argue it was perhaps even more connected then was because so many ordinary investors, so many ordinary Americans, had taken on so much debt in the stock market. So that when the stock market fell, it wasn't just that they lost money and that they. That the stocks they had bought at $10 were now worth $1. It was that they had taken on so much debt that they now owed so much money. And because they owed so much money, they couldn't buy basic goods. That's why they had Hoovervilles. And so it really did, did spiral out of control to the point in which 1933, 9,000 banks faltered. They failed in 1933. And that is really, I think, a direct domino, if you will, from what happened in fall of 1929.
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A
The last third or so of your book is actually after October 1929. It's about the Depression, why all of this happens, why it affects business. And then, of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes in. What does he do?
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D
Well, he does a whole bunch of things, some of which actually Hoover wanted to do, but for whatever reason decided not to or felt he couldn't. And one of the things that he does is he has what's called a national bank holiday. So he actually shutters all of the banks in the United States and then tries to prop up the ones that actually he believes are strong enough and then enacts A series of legislation, including the Glass Steagall piece of legislation separating the gambling piece from the banking piece, but also creating the FDIC so that your money that goes inside a bank is insured and then later in 1934 creates the SEC, which really oversees and regulates the stock market. The idea of insider trading and manipulation, which will either, by the way, which is a huge component of what was happening in 1929. So much of the stock market was being manipulated oftentimes by the elites.
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A
I must say that when I finished your book, I was like, all right, I got to sell stocks and I'm not a big stocks fake. It was like, oh my God, this could happen again. It's such a frightening book. To what extent do you think it could happen again and to what extent do you think you might provoke it slightly if people read this book?
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D
Well, I'm hoping not to provoke it. I'm actually hoping that to the extent that people read this book, they take away some lessons. I hope policymakers better understand what happened in 1929 so that we can take away lessons so this doesn't happen again. It does not have to happen again. We are not destined to have this happen again. It is true. I do think that the train, if you will, is careening towards some form of a crisis at some point. The problem is you'll never know. We're always living in a bubble of some sort and it will pop at some point too. What we want to do though is prevent it from popping in such a way that it creates the next Great Depression. And I think that can be avoided. The truth is we've actually managed to avoid that ever since then. Yes, we've had crises. 1999.com bubble was a crisis. 2008 was a crisis. But here we are, Walter, and we're better for it. And in many ways I think we've had more and more innovation. AI I think is very exciting and will be here for as long as I can imagine. Will we have a hiccup along the way? I imagine we will, but let's hope that's all it is.
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A
Andrew Ross Sorkin, thank you so much for joining us.
- [52:42]
D
Thank you, Walter. So appreciate it.
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B
And finally, Happy Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Fantastic fireworks displays kicked off the five day celebration in the Indian temple city of Ayodhya as a record breaking 2.6 million lamps were lit along the Suruja riverbank last night in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Devotees are seen offering their prayers at temples decorated with traditional rangoli art. Meanwhile, these police dogs in Nepal are also being honored as part of the festivities, dressed up in garlands and vermilion as dogs are seen as messengers of Yamaraj, the Hindu God of death. All right, happy Diwali to everyone. That is it for now. Thank you so much for watching and goodbye from New York.
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D
Tab I Got News for your Ears, the podcast.
- [53:42]
E
I am your host, Michael Ian Black.
- [53:45]
D
He's never saying, no, he didn't take the $50,000. He's just calling it, he didn't take.
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A
A bribe because he has the audacity.
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D
To want to enforce the country's immigration laws.
- [53:54]
A
You said he didn't take a bribe, but I'm not sure you answered the question.
- [53:56]
B
Are you saying that he did not accept the $50,000?
- [53:59]
D
Thank you, George. JD's take is basically, you're jealous because he's so pretty. Have I Got News for your Ears.
- [54:06]
E
Releases new episodes every Wednesday.
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D
Don't miss an episode. Follow us wherever you get your podcast.