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- [00:00]
Michael Roth
CNN's Comedy Quiz show is back. Have I got news for you returns. Tackling the week's top stories, making sense of the mayhem and definitely adding to it. Get ready for a brand new season premiering Saturday, September 6th on CNN.
- [00:15]
Claire Duffy
This episode is brought to you by ebay. We all have that piece, the one that's so you. You've basically become known for it. And if you don't yet fashionistas, you'll find it on ebay. That Miu Miu red leather bomber, the Cousteau Barcelona cowboy top. Or that Patagonia fleece in the 2017 colorway. All these finds are all on ebay, along with millions of more main character pieces backed by authenticity guarantee. Ebay is the place for pre loved and vintage fashion. Ebay things people love.
- [00:46]
Ryan Calais Cameron
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
- [00:49]
Christiane Amanpour
Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians.
- [00:55]
Ryan Calais Cameron
These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive.
- [00:58]
Christiane Amanpour
And save hundreds of. Visit progressive.com to see if you could.
- [01:02]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.
- [01:21]
Christiane Amanpour
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Amanpour Hour. Here's where we're headed this week.
- [01:26]
Maura Healey
What we're seeing is something we've never seen before in this country.
- [01:30]
Christiane Amanpour
Defying courts and testing constitutional limits. Is Trump making common cause with international autocrats? I ask Massachusetts governor Maura Healey, who's on the front lines of American politics.
- [01:42]
Michael Roth
And they're punishing schools for not being.
- [01:46]
Christiane Amanpour
Loyal in their view, as the White House targets education. The president of Wesleyan University tells me how these institutions must refuse the loyalty challenge.
- [01:56]
Claire Duffy
Plus, there were lots of terrible images and then my face edited onto them.
- [02:02]
Christiane Amanpour
A report from South Korea. It's AI deep fake crisis and the women fighting back then.
- [02:08]
Ryan Calais Cameron
For me as an artist, you know, one point is like, wow, my play is really relevant. And also this is really scary.
- [02:13]
Christiane Amanpour
The new play on London's West End chronicling Sidney poitier's fight against McCarthyism. Playwright Ryan Calais Cameron talks retrograde. Also ahead, two into a brutal war. And Sudan faces the world's worst humanitarian crisis. History is repeating itself. We look into my archive and finally.
- [02:36]
Michael Roth
Well, it was a way of.
- [02:40]
Christiane Amanpour
Using.
- [02:40]
Michael Roth
Literature to seduce people, you know, remembering.
- [02:45]
Christiane Amanpour
Nobel laureate the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a giant of Latin America literature. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in Lond. People with no criminal records plucked from the streets and deported to foreign prisons. Protesters tasered at a town hall. Some of the world's leading Universities being threatened with funding cuts, law firms under attack, and the highest courts are defied. Across the world, people are asking, is this what America has become? And is it ushering in an age of authoritarianism? In the United States, long the bastion of democracy and the rule of law, many are trying to figure out how to get the ship of state back on an even. My first guest today, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, is an influential voice in her party, and her state is more and more of a target of the current administration. She told me there's a simple answer. Stand up for your constitutional rights or risk losing them. Governor Healy, welcome to the program.
- [03:50]
Maura Healey
It's good to be with you.
- [03:51]
Christiane Amanpour
Overseas, we are feeling that this is not the America that has always projected itself as a shining light.
- [03:59]
Maura Healey
No, it's not. And, you know, I can tell you that every day we see things that the Trump administration is doing that are just really counter to a true America first agenda, true American values and freedoms and the reasons why so many people come to America and study here and research here and start companies here. I mean, there's a reason that America, since Post World War II, has led the world in scientific discovery, in innovation, in knowledge, right? And with that, tremendous economic growth. But what Donald Trump has done from day one, two states like Massachusetts and this country and world markets, is do everything to dismantle that.
- [04:43]
Christiane Amanpour
So let me ask you, because not only are there the tariffs, which no doubt you have to deal with as a state, but there's also the financial crackdown on not just universities, but research centers. What is the impact of that tariffs?
- [04:59]
Maura Healey
Remember, Donald Trump ran on an agenda to lower costs. And every day he has done things that are more inflationary, that are raising costs. As governor here, I have been focused on, number one, I cut taxes. Number two, I passed the largest housing bill in history to build more housing. Where do we get our lumber from Canada? Where do we get other products from Mexico? So he's raising housing costs, he's raising energy costs, he's raising the price on everything. That hurts our economy. It hurts the American economy. When you talk about colleges and universities, remember that a place like Massachusetts, we have 100,000 foreign students who come to Massachusetts colleges and universities to study, to do research, to engage in efforts to right now do clinical trials and develop the cures and treatments to cure cancer and Alzheimer's and all these things. We have a number who've won Nobel Prizes from here. And also importantly, these are our entrepreneurs. These are people who are starting AI companies, robotics companies, Life science companies, companies that are so important to cybersecurity and defense. So what he's done is, in some instances, try to disappear people from our streets. I mean, literally grabbing a graduate student with no cause, with no due process. And I say that, Christiane, as somebody who is a former prosecutor and twice attorney general, that's happening. And then he's cutting off funding and he's threatening, and, you know, it just, it doesn't make any sense. And this is what the public needs to understand what Donald Trump is doing. He is giving away America's intellectual assets. Because right now, because of what he's doing, China, countries from the Middle east and elsewhere are on our campuses in our state. And by the way, they're not just recruiting here, they're recruiting in states around the country because this is impacting all states.
- [07:05]
Christiane Amanpour
So when you see Senator Van Hollen going over to El Salvador to try to get one of his constituents out of their, you know, gang jail there, he was exported or deported with no due process. This administration says, you know, yeah, it was an administrative error, but we're not getting him back. This constitutional crisis that we were told would happen when the administration, if it did challenge or refuse the Supreme Court or higher court order, it's here now, right?
- [07:37]
Maura Healey
It's a, it's really quite unbelievable where we find ourselves. And just so folks understand my background, I was attorney general. In fact, I served alongside Pam Bonney for a time as the Attorney General here in Massachuset. What we're seeing is something we've never seen before in this country. The weaponization of the Department of Justice, the launching of completely false, false investigations under false pretenses, the refusal to comply with the rule of law, the refusal now to comply with orders from the United States Supreme Court. We've not seen a president of this country ever do this. And we're on the eve of celebrating 250 years of this great American experiment here, right this weekend in Massachusetts. In fact, never in the course of history has a president so refused to comply with the rule of law. It's bad for our people. It's bad for our democracy. It's very bad for business. And I'll tell you the other thing. The fear is real. I've heard from people here who have been green card holders from countries like Canada and Germany and other European countries who are in the process of the final step in their naturalization interview. They don't know whether they should show up for that for fear of being arrested and hauled off to some Gulag somewhere in El Salvador. That's the reality. And that's why it is very important that people stand up. It's very important. What Harvard University did and said enough is enough.
- [09:13]
Christiane Amanpour
You just mentioned Pam Bondi and I was actually interested because I hadn't realized that, you know, you had worked together with her in the past. So Pam Bondi is sitting in the White House when President Trump and President Bukele are there and talking about this, this guy who's been deported to Salvador. And Stephen Miller stands up as if on script and on cue and says that no, he's been viewed as a criminal. Where there's his lawyers, everybody else says that there's no evidence he's not a gang member. Trump administration itself said it was an administrative error. When you talk about Republicans, why is it that a Pam Bondi would sit there and let this happen? Do you think she really believes this?
- [09:56]
Maura Healey
I can't really begin to get my head around what is going on. What I see, the responses, it's certainly not the, but not anything that is operating within a system that is a system of laws and the rule of law in this country. And that has been important to who America is for these past 250 years.
- [10:20]
Christiane Amanpour
And not to mention, of course, those foreign students who are also incarcerated with no due process and no charges. Governor Healy, thank you so much for joining us.
- [10:30]
Maura Healey
Thanks for having me.
- [10:31]
Christiane Amanpour
Coming up later on the show, Harvard, its name is almost mythical. It's older even than the United States itself. As Trump targets these academic institutions, the president of Wesleyan University tells me what's at stake. And later in the show, retrograde, the West End play showcasing Sidney Poitier's battle against Hollywood's Red Scare. I talk to playwright Ryan Callie Cameron about the uncanny parallels today.
- [11:03]
Claire Duffy
Claire, I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, how to choose the right vpn, whether to trust public WI fi, what to do with those annoying cookie pop ups, and more. To help me answer these rapid fire questions, I've invited Rachel Toback back to the show. You may remember her from our episode about setting and managing your passwords. Rachel is an ethical hacker and the CEO of Social Proof Security where she helps people and companies keep their data Safe. Listen to CNN's terms of service with me, Claire Duffy, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [11:48]
Christiane Amanpour
Welcome back to the program. As we've discussed earlier in the show, the Trump administration continues its tireless campaign to reshape America. And right now, universities are paying the price. Literally. Just this week the government halted more than 2 billion in 4 federal funding for Harvard after the college rejected White House demands to essentially surrender its independence. With Harvard now leading the way, other major US universities are also trying to figure out how to face down similar ultimatums. Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, was the first to speak out publicly. And what's more, he warned that the Trump administration's quote, selling Jews a dangerous lie by claiming its crackdown is is to combat anti Semitism. And this week, as students, professors and researchers around the nation and the world watch in alarm, Roth joined me from his campus in Connecticut with the robust defence of academic freedom. So let me first ask you where you discovered the steel in your spine not to break. What was the point at which you said we cannot do this?
- [12:56]
Michael Roth
Well, that's a great question, because there are some things the federal government can rightly insist upon, and I don't have to agree with those things, but I do have to comply with the law. For example, the end of affirmative action was a change in how we do admissions and we obey the law. We don't use racial preferences at all in our admissions process. I think we should be able to, but the government disagrees and we follow the law. That seems pretty straightforward in our case. We actually got rid of legacy admissions also at that time, because if we're not going to give preferences, we shouldn't give preferences to our alumni either. But there are some things that the government insists upon that are contrary to law, which is to tell universities who to admit, to tell universities how to teach, to tell universities how to understand belonging or fairness on their campuses. And I think the outrageous arrest and threatened deportation of international students really made me stand up and write some essays about this, even though I disagree deeply with the politics of those students. That shouldn't matter in America. You have the right to speak your mind, whether you have a green card or you're a citizen. And for the federal government to just show up one day at your door and take you away because of the ideas you express, that is anti American, anti educational and undermines our freedom.
- [14:21]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, I want to ask you about that because you wrote an op ed in the New York Times. Trump is selling Jews a dangerous lie. And this is one paragraph that you wrote, Jew hatred is real, but today's anti anti Semitism isn't a legitimate effort to fight it. It's a cover for a wide range of agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare of Jewish people. Jews who applaud the administration's crackdown will soon find that they do so at their peril. This is really an important statement. So explain. First of all, the last segment will soon find that they applaud this at their peril. You're addressing your own community.
- [14:59]
Michael Roth
Yes. As a Jew myself, I am appalled that people who support Israel will ally themselves with an administration that is using scapegoating, racism and, and which has no trouble supping with Nazis when it's inconvenient for them. I'm appalled that my fellow Jews will support this because they think it'd be good for Israel. I myself believe strongly in Israel's right to defend itself. I'm critical of the current government in Israel. But all of that shouldn't matter. The idea that you can say you're fighting antisemitism and then cancel DEI programs which actually can be used to protect Jews is absurd. The idea that you say you're fighting anti Semitism, so you're canceling research grants for diabetes research or Alzheimer's research. This is ridiculous. What the Trump administration is doing now is demanding a loyalty oath. They are demanding that schools express loyalty to the president and his current beliefs. This has nothing to do with anti antisemitism and Jews who align themselves with leaders because they think those leaders are picking on other people. Eventually, the Jews find themselves the targets of that same abuse. And we've seen this throughout history. The rabbis have talked about it. Beware of governments that seem to be your friend and then violate the law. You may like the way they violate the law now, but in the future, it'll be at our own expense.
- [16:30]
Christiane Amanpour
You know, I'm sitting here in the UK And I cover parts of the world which are not democracies and don't have protections and do crack down on their students. Right now, those brave students who've been protesting in Turkey, many, many of them are in jail. Of course, there's no due process. This is the kind of thing we're used to seeing there. How shocking is it, and how long do you think it can last in the United States?
- [16:53]
Michael Roth
It's terrifically shocking, and I fear it will last if people don't speak out against it. It will last if citizens, whether they're at universities or elsewhere, say we need to protect our freedom. This is not just about universities. This will be about businesses. This is about churches and synagogues and mosques. This is about civil society, where one should have the ability to speak freely. And our position as Americans in the university world has been so strong because we have freedom of inquiry.
- [17:24]
Christiane Amanpour
I want to ask you the funding that's at threat the government funding, whether it's the $2.2 billion at Harvard, which has been stopped, whether you're funding Colombia's, et cetera in. Is this for DEI projects? Is this for Palestinian, Israeli studies? What is this funding for?
- [17:41]
Michael Roth
It's for everything, Christiane. It's for scientific research. We have a researcher here who works on things for the physics for the Department of Defense and Energy. And they just are freezing things because they can not because there's some coherent agenda there. They're punishing schools for not being loyal in their view.
- [18:07]
Christiane Amanpour
Is it just about loyalty or is it a bigger conservative agenda as expressed by Chris Ruffo? And you've heard the interviews, he's the head of an organization, a conservative organization dedicated to doing what you just told me to, taking down liberal universities. He also says that the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty across the board is totally lopsided, you know, and says that they want colorblind admissions. Do they have a point?
- [18:40]
Michael Roth
Absolutely. I wrote in, I think 2017 in the wall Street Journal about the need for an affirmative action program for conservatives on university campus. That's because in the humanities especially and in the interpretive social sciences, we tend to hire people who are left of center. But the schools that they're attacking, it's not like they're graduating these legions of progressives or radicals. You know, people graduating from Harvard these days, they want to be in Wall Street.
- [19:15]
Christiane Amanpour
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, thank you so much indeed for joining us. Thank you.
- [19:20]
Michael Roth
Thank you for having me.
- [19:23]
Christiane Amanpour
These are critical times for presidents like Roth as the administration continues to single out Harvard with moves to try to change its tax exempt status. Now next, South Korea is fighting back against AI powered abuse online. We have a special report speaking to the women who've had enough. Welcome back. Now, artificial intelligence holds a lot of promise, but the dark side is still proving difficult to control. And we human beings are caught in its trap. In South Korea, regular photos of ordinary women are twisted into explicit images by men they often don't even know. And now women are fighting back against this latest wave of online abuse, as CNN's Mike Valerio now reports from Seoul.
- [20:18]
Mike Valerio
It's a reckoning across South Korea. Real lives photos of real people twisted and exploited through AI. You're looking at protests against those who go on social media. Find profile pictures, just everyday images of women and cruelly change them into what looks like real explicit material. They are deepfakes, AI manipulations.
- [20:44]
Claire Duffy
There were lots of terrible images and then my face edited onto Them.
- [20:49]
Mike Valerio
This is Ruma. She asked us to use her alias and silhouette her interview to protect her safety and privacy. Ruma is a former student at the prestigious Seoul National University, and she told us how she found out on her phone that this kind of AI crime happened to her.
- [21:06]
Claire Duffy
I think I was having lunch with my mom and then my phone started ringing. The burst of messages and photos, you know, I was like, bombarded with all these images that I had never imagined like, in my life.
- [21:19]
Mike Valerio
Ruma says she saw that fake nude photos of herself were shared on the messaging app Telegram. They were in a chat room where AI deepfakes were encouraged by dozens of anonymous users.
- [21:30]
Claire Duffy
My whole body started shaking so bad.
- [21:33]
Mike Valerio
Ruma went to the police, but she also went to cyber activist and journalist Won Eunji. Won is renowned in South Korea for investigating cybercrimes, and Ruma asked Wonder to find who made the explicit deepfakes. Won asked us to pixelate her face so she can keep working undercover.
- [21:51]
Claire Duffy
In my opinion, in Korea, acquaintance humiliation or degrading acquaintances has been viewed as a sort of game.
- [21:59]
Mike Valerio
Do you find that depressing beyond words that people think this is a game?
- [22:04]
Claire Duffy
It's a serious issue. Especially the perpetrators post photos of women they know along with their names, ages, schools, workplaces and places they live on social media.
- [22:17]
Mike Valerio
Juan posed as a man on Telegram and helped lead police to arrest two former Seoul National University students who exploited Ruma. Ruma said she barely knew those students at all. Seoul Central District Court sentenced one of the former students to 10 years in prison and the other four years imprisonment. They were convicted of violating a law covering sexual protection of children and adolescents. Seoul National University said the school will strengthen preventative education to raise awareness among the members of the university about digital sex crimes and do its best to protect victims and prevent recurrence.
- [22:52]
Christiane Amanpour
The defect crime is very serious in.
- [22:55]
Claire Duffy
Korea, but it's not taken seriously in Korean society.
- [23:00]
Mike Valerio
Kim Nam Hee is one of South Korea's lawmakers who passed stronger penalties in September to fight the crimes. The maximum prison time is now seven years, up from five years for anybody convicted of creating non consensual deepfake explicit images with the intention of distributing them. Do you think that that's strong enough?
- [23:19]
Claire Duffy
Personally, I don't think increasing sentences is the only solution. What's been problematic is that investigations and punishments have been passive until now. Only 20% of those indicted for deepfake crimes have actually received prison sentences.
- [23:33]
Mike Valerio
Telegram announced its moderators are removing explicit deepfakes and the app is sharing data with authorities to remove and target illegal activity. In a breakthrough, Seoul police said help from telegram led to the recent arrest of a man who allegedly masterminded the exploitation of more than 200 people since 2020. For the victims and how they recover, Ruma tells us deepfakes reshaped how she sees the world and how she sees herself.
- [23:58]
Claire Duffy
My whole personality changed. I think I was much more outgoing, much more sociable. But after the incident, I had to kind of retreat to myself and to feel safe.
- [24:13]
Mike Valerio
Mike Valerio, cnn, Seoul.
- [24:15]
Christiane Amanpour
After a break, Sidney Poitier stars on London's West End. Well, it's really a new play based on his early career in the 1919s. My conversation with playwright Ryan Cali Cameron about the Red Scare back then and lessons for today after this.
- [24:32]
Ryan Calais Cameron
It's in the title, retrograde. You know, it's like if we don't learn from some of the things in our past, then we're due to repeat.
- [24:38]
Christiane Amanpour
Them at Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.
- [25:11]
Maura Healey
Edu.
- [25:17]
Christiane Amanpour
Welcome back to the program. In this week's Letter from London, we turn to an era from which painful lessons can be learned. At the height of the Cold war in the 1950s, McCarthyism created a witch hunt across the United States known as the Red Scare. This very dark time in American history is the backdrop for a new play here in London by Ryan Calais Cameron, one of Britain's most exciting young playwrights. Retrograde takes an episode in the early life of Sidney Poitier, who became the first black man to win an Oscar for Best Actor. Here he has to decide whether to accept a star making contract with ugly strings attached. Ryan Kelly Cameron came in to discuss his latest play and what attracted him to this very American story. Ryan Kelly Cameron, thank you for coming in.
- [26:06]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Thank you for having me.
- [26:07]
Christiane Amanpour
From a busy schedule with this new hit West End play. So what made you choose Sidney Poitier? I mean, literally, if anybody sees the play, which they do, retrograde, it's a case study about McCarthyism through essentially one day, just about a meeting in an.
- [26:23]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Office between 90 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I came across this article that he was, he was speaking with OPRAH about one time that he was at NBC and he almost got blacklisted. And I was like, what? I'd heard about the blacklisting. So, so much, so much of my Path of the Artist. I knew that kind of stuff, but I never heard of it from the perspective of a black actor. Someone that was already dealing with Jim.
- [26:48]
Christiane Amanpour
Crow.
- [26:50]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Redlining, and then now this. I was like, that, to me, sounds like the beginnings of a story. And as I continued to read about what happened to him through his memoirs, you know, it started to sound more like a thriller. And I was like, okay, someone's gotta be writing this.
- [27:04]
Christiane Amanpour
So now let's start with one of the early monologues from. Or dialogues from the play. So he's in the meeting with the writer who's going to make him the star of an NBC program that's gonna skyrocket his career. And there's the company lawyer or the production guy, and he says, yes, but. So here's what Sidney Poitier says about the script that's just been handed to him.
- [27:30]
Ryan Calais Cameron
I'm leafing through the script. I'm like, marty, I don't understand. I don't understand what the part is. He says, buddy, it's Tommy. He's offered you Tommy. See, I think about. I think about that moment a lot. I didn't even assume, when being offered something, even from a friend, that I would be one of the central storytellers without caricature or stereotype. See, I love this movie because it brings something otherworldly that people like yourself cannot even fathom.
- [28:04]
Christiane Amanpour
So there he was, expressing his joy and delight of getting this leading role.
- [28:08]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:10]
Christiane Amanpour
And then they tell him, but actually it comes with some very ugly strings attached. Exactly.
- [28:14]
Ryan Calais Cameron
It comes at a price. So the price is his soul, man. You know, it's everything that he. That he is that made him who he is. His integrity, you know, and he has to sell out or he has to give the name of. I'm trying not to give too much away. But he has to give the name of Paul Robeson, who is a massive giant of a man and icon to him. And he has to consider what is more important to him. His integrity or moving along in this industry that he's a newcomer in.
- [28:38]
Christiane Amanpour
There is a moment in the play where he talks about. And you. Well, you wanted to pay homage to something Sidney Poitier had done in an actual film called the Heat of the Night, when he stared down and actually engaged in some physical retaliation.
- [28:53]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:54]
Christiane Amanpour
So tell us what you were trying to do with that. Yeah, I'm gonna play the clip. This is the heat of the night. Sidney Poitier and the plantation owner.
- [29:02]
Ryan Calais Cameron
We were just trying to clarify some of the evidence. Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhous house, say, last night about midnight? So that slap is the. It's the slap that echoes through generations to me, you know, and I was like, I need to get that moment in this.
- [29:27]
Christiane Amanpour
And how did you get it in for. For those who haven't seen it.
- [29:29]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Yeah, I think it's about Sidney taking ownership over. Over his image and over the path that he is going to take. And a moment in the play where he truly becomes the man that he was born to be, you know, and he gets won over on the big bad guy in this play, Mr. Parks, which night after night, gets a massive applause from the audience. But I was trying to recreate, you know, every time I watch that slap, you know, it does that to an audience.
- [29:56]
Christiane Amanpour
And again, it is really awful what they were asked to do, whether they were black or white or man or women, you know, they were told to disavow any kind of political affiliation. In his case, civil rights, Martin Luther King. So again, this is the. This is the creative tension throughout.
- [30:12]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Yeah.
- [30:13]
Christiane Amanpour
Did you write. I mean, you didn't write it with today in mind, but when you see what's happening in the United States today.
- [30:20]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Yeah.
- [30:21]
Christiane Amanpour
With all of this, actually, they're calling it like a new red scare, what's happening on American campuses, you know, et cetera.
- [30:28]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Do you know what? I did my first draft in 2018. Right. So there were a lot of things in my head when I was writing it of, like, if we don't rectify some of the things that we're seeing today. You know what I mean? And it's like, for me as an artist, you know, one point is like, wow, my play is really relevant. And also, this is really scary. This is really scary because when I was writing it, I was like, you know, it was almost like a fever dream, and now it's reality.
- [30:53]
Christiane Amanpour
So.
- [30:53]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Yeah, it's in the title, retrograde. You know, it's like, if we don't learn from some of the things in our past, then we're due to repeat them.
- [30:59]
Christiane Amanpour
And you being. And you've spoken a lot about being inspired by a lot of Americana, American history, American culture. Would you today want to take this play to the United States in this climate?
- [31:13]
Ryan Calais Cameron
I think this play belongs in the United States. It feels like, you know, when I wrote it, it had new York in mind. It's got its essence there. The characters are there. It breathes that kind of like you say in Americana. And I think it's like you were saying, it's more relevant now than it's ever been.
- [31:30]
Christiane Amanpour
Well, an amazing play and not giving away the spoiler. Does Sidney Poitier accept these ugly strings or not?
- [31:38]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Oh, I can't tell you that. I can't tell you that. But it is on at the Apollo right now. So.
- [31:44]
Christiane Amanpour
It'S really great. Ryan, Kelly Cameron, thanks for as always.
- [31:47]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Thank you very much.
- [31:49]
Christiane Amanpour
And this extraordinary play is on now at London's Apollo Theatre until June. Just a note. It took 38 more years for another black man to win the Oscar. Denzel Washington in 2002. After the break, history repeats itself in Sudan. I go back to my archive. 20 years ago in Darfur. How things never change. Welcome back. We turn now to a bleak milestone. This week marks two years since the latest war in Sudan. The UN Says it's the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Even refugee camps are under attack. This is an entirely man made disaster. Sudan is now the only country in the world experiencing famine. This week, Britain and the EU have committed $750 million in life saving assistance. And it all reminded me of the horrendous genocide during the 2004 Darfur War, which I covered. Mass star displacement and violence at the hands of rebel militias and governments. Decades later, as the world looks away, we cannot. Here's my report from then. I started covering refugee crises just after the first Gulf War when millions of Iraqi Kurds fled Saddam Hussein's violent campaign of revenge. We watched them huddle pitifully across the border in Iran. But soon the US Formed a no fly zone to protect them. And as they return to resettle in northern Iraq, right now, the biggest and most urgent refugee problem is in Darfur, an embattled and desperately poor region in western Sudan where people have been caught up in a seemingly endless ethnic conflict. Hundreds of thousands of them have died and many more, hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes. Refugees in their own land. We're here at the Riyadh camp outside El Janina, the capital of western Darfur. And what you can see is people living in basic structures. You can't even call these huts because they're just a bunch of twigs and straw matting that people have had to put up. They don't even have plastic shelter. And that's going to be a big, big problem because the rainy season has just started. Sometimes it comes down in Sheets like, as one person described, sheets of glass. We're in what's called an ambulatory therapeutic feeding center. This is set up by Medecin Sans Frontieres, the French relief group. And it's something that they've done exceptionally here to treat the most severely malnourished children. First, they put them in these scales to determine their weight compared to how old they are. This little upper arm bracelet tells the story. Green is okay, yellow at risk. Orange is malnourished, and red is severe malnutrition. That's the case with hamdi Ismail. He's one and a half years old and weighs only about 12 pounds. His grandmother, Khadija has brought him here because he can't keep any food down. She says he's also got the flu. For a population on the edge like this one, a simple case of diarrhea can be a killer. MSF has found 20% of the children in western Darfur are severely malnourished. That's one in every five children. Those as badly off as Hamdi don't have long to live unless they can keep fluids and formula down. Here we are in Habila, a village that has not had any food distribution since June. And so this plain is bringing in much needed food aid. It's a giant Russian illusion commandeered by the un, the World Food Program. And any minute now, it's going to open up. There we see it and 12 tons of aid is going to flock the ground. Then these armies of people come to collect it and take it to the distribution point. There are columns of men who've come up here and they're gonna haul it back on their bags. And then they're the ladies. These people have come with their little straw brushes, little baskets, and literally they're picking up every single grain. It's that desperately needed. It is the promise of home that sustains millions during their darkest hours while never being allowed to return home. Just sows the seeds for the next generation of war and conflict. And what about Gaza? Starvation stalks that enclave again. As one Palestinian leader says, for more than six weeks now, not a slice of bread, not a glass of water, not any medicine has been allowed in. Dozens of women and children are being killed every day, sacrificed in Israel's 18 month war on Hamas. When we come back, remembering a giant. As tributes pour in for Peru's legendary writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, his legacy and what he told me about how he got started. And finally, a tribute to a titan of literature, a major figure in the Latin American wave of artistic renaissance. The great Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa passed away at the age of 89 this week. Known for novels like the Time of the Hero and Conversation in the Cathedral, many of his works depicted the horrors of tyranny and the fight against it. His colorful career included a Nobel Prize, a run for president and an infamous punch up with his fellow great Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He remained an influential voice late into his life, and when I spoke to him just a couple of years ago, he told me how it all began. You were kind of a modern day Cyrano de Bergerac writing love letters for your student colleagues. How did that come about?
- [38:08]
Michael Roth
Well, it was a way of.
- [38:12]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Using.
- [38:12]
Michael Roth
Literature to seduce people.
- [38:16]
Christiane Amanpour
You know.
- [38:19]
Michael Roth
I had this impression that.
- [38:22]
Christiane Amanpour
My letters were able to convince people.
- [38:28]
Michael Roth
To became friends of mine. It was a way to get acquainted with the words, with the language, with the Spanish.
- [38:46]
Christiane Amanpour
Probably.
- [38:48]
Michael Roth
It was just a radical exercise. You know, be in touch with people through language.
- [38:57]
Christiane Amanpour
And that is seductive indeed. One literary critic described Llosa as a polymath who wears his wisdom lightly with eyes and ears everywhere and a voice as loud as thunder. That is a great epitaph and that is all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all our shows online, this podcast@cnn.com audio and on all other major platforms. I'm Christiane Ampour in London. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next week. This week on THE Assignment with Me, Audie Cornish. My guest is Larry Wilmore.
- [39:40]
Claire Duffy
He's a writer and producer who's worked.
- [39:42]
Christiane Amanpour
On some of the most successful shows of the century, In Living Color, the Bernie Mac show, the Daily Show, Blackish, Insecure, we're just naming a few, but in his heart, he's still a comedian. I'm getting back into doing standup again.
- [39:55]
Ryan Calais Cameron
Which I really haven't done full time in a while.
- [39:58]
Christiane Amanpour
So what? Wait a second. Like, you're going, you're doing open mics? I'm going up Saturday night. I'm going to start working on a new hour. Yeah. So it's a little scary.
- [40:07]
Michael Roth
Audie, don't give me your hug.
- [40:09]
Christiane Amanpour
I can imagine. What do you think is pulling at your chest here? I feel like I have to say something.
- [40:16]
Ryan Calais Cameron
I can't stay silent anymore about just.
- [40:18]
Christiane Amanpour
The world that I'm in. Listen to the Assignment with Me, Audie Cornish. Streaming now on your favorite podcast, Apple.