'We Can Be Brave'

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "We Can Be Brave"

Amanpour | CNN Podcasts | October 31, 2025

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Overview

This episode of Amanpour delves into the theme of courage in modern times, highlighting stories of personal bravery and societal challenges. Host Christiane Amanpour brings forward powerful conversations with Washington Bishop Marianne Buddy about moral courage and her children's book "We Can Be Brave," interviews pioneering astronaut Eileen Collins about breaking barriers in space, and closes with a discussion on systemic abuse and activism inside Alabama’s prisons with the filmmakers behind HBO’s documentary "The Alabama Solution." The conversations intricately weave the notion of bravery—from the pulpit and the launchpad to the prison yard—into the broader American fabric confronting fear, division, and injustice.

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Segment I: Marianne Buddy — Teaching Courage to the Next Generation

[02:15 – 15:45]

Key Discussion Points

• Adapting “We Can Be Brave” for Young Readers

  • Bishop Buddy underscores the importance of teaching courage to children, reflecting on how early life experiences shape future decisions.
  • Quote [02:32]:

    "The most consequential decisions we make in life have their roots in things that happened to us when we were young."
    —Marianne Buddy

• Is Courage Taught or Innate?

  • She insists courage can absolutely be learned—not only innate—by stepping into unknowns and continually practicing bravery.
  • Quote [03:38]:

    "It is something that we learn throughout our lives."
    —Marianne Buddy

• Role Models and Collective Courage

  • Buddy cites Eleanor Roosevelt’s definition: “doing what you think you cannot do,” and speaks to moments where courage was demanded of her, especially in public acts.
  • Community support and being inspired by others’ bravery are vital.

• Speaking Truth During a Divisive Era

  • Amanpour recalls Buddy's high-profile appeal for compassion directed at President Trump during a national cathedral service.
  • Quote [06:11]:

    "I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now... [including] gay, lesbian, and transgender children... those fleeing war zones and persecution."
    —Marianne Buddy (pulpit address, replayed by Amanpour)

• Repercussions and Public Reaction

  • Mixed response: criticism from President Trump’s supporters, immense support from others, but the act was rooted in “basic biblical and spiritual values.”
  • Quote [07:30]:

    "It was an opportunity... to honor the very people who were being and are being so dehumanized now."
    —Marianne Buddy

• America’s 'Culture of Contempt'

  • Buddy elaborates on polarization and normalized hostility, warning of the dangers of viewing ideological opponents with “intense suspicion and even hatred.”
  • Quote [09:56]:

    "The language of contempt has become increasingly normalized in our daily speech."
    —Marianne Buddy

• Ecumenical Hope: Pope Leo & King Charles III Pray Together

  • Buddy is moved by acts of unity between faith leaders, seeing it as a profound public demonstration of common purpose and reconciliation.
  • Quote [12:28]:

    "To see the highest of leaders do so in a public way... It was inspiring. It brought tears."
    —Marianne Buddy

• Passing Courage Forward: Parenting as a “Masterclass”

  • She reflects on learning from children’s resilience and the importance of elders nurturing young leaders.
  • Quote [14:21]:

    "For me, parenting was a masterclass in courage—not one that I taught, but one where I was the student."
    —Marianne Buddy

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Segment II: Eileen Collins — Breaking Barriers in the Cosmos

[16:50 – 36:34]

Key Discussion Points

• On Being in Space

  • Collins describes the physical sensations and joys (and annoyances) of living in microgravity.
  • Believes space tourism will boom if made affordable and safe.
  • Quote [18:23]:

    "The human experience of being in space is so wonderful... Space tourism will be huge."
    —Eileen Collins

• Early Challenges & Upbringing

  • Raised in Elmira, NY, she worked several jobs to afford flying lessons and relied on books for role models.
  • Emphasizes joy of flying, exploration, and perseverance.

• Being a Trailblazer in a Male-Dominated Field

  • First woman to pilot (1995) and command (1999) a space shuttle—immense scrutiny, few female role models, heavy burden of representation.
  • Quote [24:46]:

    "I did not want to make a mistake because I didn't want people to say, oh, look, the woman made a mistake. I was the first, and I was setting a precedent for how people would perceive women in the future."
    —Eileen Collins

• Preparation, Fear, and Focus

  • Intense training offset anxiety; pressure heightened by being the 'first.'
  • Mental rehearsal, discipline, and teamwork carry her through high-stakes moments.

• On Support Systems

  • Husband Pat Youngs, himself a pilot, provided partnership and practical support to balance careers and parenting.

• Spaceflight Dangers: Lessons from Disaster and Recovery

  • Discusses the impact of the Columbia disaster, the pressure of "return to flight," and the tense moments managing heat shield uncertainty.
  • Quote [28:06]:

    "In the return to flight mission, we did have this foam fall off... We had a plan in case we did have damage... We called it Safe Haven."
    —Eileen Collins

• International Cooperation: Shuttle–Mir Missions

  • Humanizes Russian cosmonauts, laments how geopolitics hampers cooperation. Current technical realities still necessitate US–Russian collaboration in space.
  • Quote [31:29]:

    "What I've learned is that they're just like us... We have so many similarities, more than we have differences."
    —Eileen Collins

• Gender Standards and Military Service

  • On current debates regarding "male standards" in combat, Collins recalls rejecting lower standards for women and advocating for true equality.
  • Quote [34:33]:

    "We as the women were like, you don't need to treat us any differently. We're tough. We're here because we love the mission."
    —Eileen Collins

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Segment III: “The Alabama Solution” — Exposing Prison Abuse through Activism and Film

[37:44 – 52:38]

Key Discussion Points

• Documenting Systemic Abuse

  • Filmmakers Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki describe the dire, overcrowded, under-resourced conditions of Alabama’s prisons, relying on contraband cell phone footage for unfiltered access.
  • Quote [38:19]:

    "The conditions are horrible inside Alabama's prison system, and they're deadly and they're brutal and they are upheld by a very corrupt administration."
    —Charlotte Kaufman

• Why Cell Phones, and What Do They Expose?

  • Officers themselves are implicated in trafficking drugs and phones; cell phone footage lays bare daily violence, lack of medical care, forced labor, and a deadly environment.
  • Quote [40:09]:

    "Officers are operating a very lucrative trade in drugs and cell phones."
    —Andrew Jarecki

• Case Study: Stephen Davis

  • Story of an inmate beaten to death (allegedly by an officer); state claims “use of deadly force was warranted” but filmmakers’ investigation—backed by multiple witnesses—portrays a cover-up of abuse.

• Inmate Activism: The Free Alabama Movement

  • Leaders like Robert Earl Council “Kinetic Justice” and Melvin Ray use smuggled phones to mobilize inmates, spark strikes, and share stories with the outside world.
  • Quote [44:01]:

    "They have understood that if they can reach the public, the public will be horrified by what's happening."
    —Charlotte Kaufman

• Forced Labor and Economic Interests

  • Inmates not only maintain prisons but also are sent out to work in state facilities and for corporations, despite not being considered safe for release—reflecting deep economic incentives.

• Systemic Evasion and Government Accountability

  • State authorities refuse to acknowledge widespread abuses, attempting to block the flow of information (“jammers”), rather than improve conditions.

• A National Problem

  • Secrecy, lack of accountability, and forced labor are not unique to Alabama—these systemic issues pervade American prisons.
  • Quote [51:22]:

    "Our film is also about what happens when a government is allowed to detain people... with little to no accountability."
    —Charlotte Kaufman

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Memorable Quotes

• On Moral Courage

  "Courage isn't something that only brave people have, but that it's a lifelong journey of lessons and practice and efforts that we make large and small."
  —Marianne Buddy [02:32]

• On Setting Precedents

  "I did not want to make a mistake because I didn't want people to say, oh, look, the woman made a mistake."
  —Eileen Collins [24:46]

• On Systemic Injustice

  "How can a journalist go into a war zone but can't go into a prison in the United States of America?"
  —Anonymous Inmate/Prison Activist [39:32]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:15]: Bishop Marianne Buddy on adapting "We Can Be Brave" for children
• [06:11]: Replay of Bishop Buddy’s pulpit address to President Trump
• [09:56]: Buddy explains the "culture of contempt" in America
• [12:28]: Reflections on Pope Leo and King Charles III praying together
• [18:23]: Eileen Collins describes the experience of being in space
• [24:46]: Collins on first-woman pressure: “I did not want to make a mistake...”
• [28:06]: Collins on managing post-Columbia disaster missions, the “Safe Haven” plan
• [31:29]: Collins on U.S.–Russia space cooperation
• [34:33]: Collins challenges double standards for women in the military
• [38:19]: Charlotte Kaufman on Alabama prison conditions
• [39:32]: Inmate activist questions lack of press access to prisons
• [44:01]: On inmate activism and “The Free Alabama Movement”
• [51:22]: Kaufman: Broader implications for all of America’s prisons

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Tone and Style

The episode intertwines gravity with hope, often alternating between concern for contemporary crises (societal polarization, institutional abuse) and the uplifting stories of those who face down fear and promote change. The speakers are eloquent, passionate, and direct, sharing personal anecdotes, institutional critiques, and appeals for empathy, accountability, and progress.

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This summary provides a comprehensive map of the episode for listeners, highlighting major themes, critical moments, and the indelible voices who champion courage in today’s fraught environment.

Transcript

[Christiane Amanpour]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up.

[Marion Buddy]

I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We're scared now.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Washington Bishop Marianne Buddy tells me about beseeching a president and her new book, we Can Be Brave Then.

[Eileen Collins]

I did not want to make a mistake because I didn't want people to say, oh, look, the woman made a mistake.

[Christiane Amanpour]

The first female start Shuttle commander. I talked to Eileen Collins about shooting for the stars and making history. Also ahead, how can a journalist go.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

Into a war zone but can't go into a prison in the United States.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Of America, a shocking expose of unchecked abuse. The filmmakers behind the new documentary the Alabama Solution tell Hari Srinivasan about the inmates who risked their lives to reveal the truth. Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour. In London. Professors and students afraid to speak freely on college campuses. Federal workers afraid of losing their jobs. LGBTQ groups afraid of rights rollbacks. Immigrants afraid of raids and mass deportations. For many, the opening act of President Donald Trump's second term has been defined by fear. And yet people stand. Nearly 7 million Americans are estimated to have marched across all 50 states this month in protest. And our first guest used her moment in the national spotlight to speak up at Washington's mighty national cathedral. Marion Buddy, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, spoke to him, implored him from her pulpit to have mercy for those who may be frightened for the future. Now, a book she wrote during Trump 1.0 has been adapted for younger readers, and it's called We Can Be Brave. She joined me from Washington to explain how she hopes they will find their own moments of courage. Bishop Marion Buddy, welcome to our program.

[Marion Buddy]

Thank you very much.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I want to start by asking you the obvious. You brought out a book several years ago, and you brought it out again for children. If I could say the children's version, we can be brave. Tell me why you've adapted it for younger readers.

[Marion Buddy]

Well, first of all, thank you. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to adapt Themes of Courage for younger readers, first of all, because many of the most consequential decisions we make in life have their roots in things that happened to us when we were young and the choices that we made when we were young. So I wanted to underscore that for young readers that they already have important lessons of courage in their lifetime. I wanted to give them as many insights and lessons that I could from my own life and more importantly, from characters and biblical and historical figures that they have known to remind them, to remind us all that courage isn't something that only brave people have, but that it's a lifelong journey of lessons and practice and efforts that we make large and small.

[Christiane Amanpour]

So let me ask you, then, do you think this book is a bit of a prim? I mean, can you learn? Can you be taught braveness?

[Marion Buddy]

Oh, absolutely. I think we all are. I think from the moments, from the. From our earliest steps in childhood, we are always crossing thresholds of things we've never done before. And every time we do, we're learning something about what courage requires.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And.

[Marion Buddy]

And I think we are created to do that very thing, to cross those thresholds. And so, absolutely, it is something that we learn throughout our lives.

[Christiane Amanpour]

So, in other words, it's not just innate, it's something that you can learn by everything you absorb and read. Exactly. So you quote Eleanor Roosevelt's definition of courage, Doing what you think you cannot do.

[Marion Buddy]

So exactly.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Did you ever do something that you thought you could not do?

[Marion Buddy]

I would say weekly, I have done something I thought I couldn't do, and particularly in young adulthood, early adolescence, the things that just seemed impossible. But, you know, Even in my 60s, there are times when I feel that what's being asked of me is beyond what I can do as a person of faith. I draw upon the spiritual reservoirs that we all have, and I wanted to lift those up as well, as well as the communal aspect of courage, that it's actually a bit contagious. We are inspired by the courage that we see in other people that give us confidence that we might be able to do something of the same.

[Christiane Amanpour]

So I want to ask you this, because most people know a very visible demonstration of your courage. You may not call it courage, but some people thought it was the definition of courage when you spoke truth to power, and you spoke your truth in the form of a supplication, really, to President Donald Trump during his. Just after his inaugural. Before I play it, I just want to know, did you define that as courageous?

[Marion Buddy]

Ooh. Well, it certainly required my willingness to step into a place of vulnerability where I could not predict or control the outcome of what I believed was mine to say in that moment. So in that way, I would say it did require of me courage.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Okay, so now we're going to play what you said from the pulpit on that day with President Trump in the front row. And, you know, it was a religious ceremony. Here we go.

[Marion Buddy]

In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion. And welcome here.

[Christiane Amanpour]

You've talked about just what it took for you to speak that truth to that power. We now hear what you said, and that was in January. It's now 10 months later. And all that you said there actually has been actioned by President Trump and his administration. The fear amongst the gay and lesbian and transgender community, the fear amongst immigrants and children who see their parents snatched from every which way and deported, and even kids being deported. When you said it, a. What was the reaction and how did your congregation react to you?

[Marion Buddy]

The reaction was widespread. I think it was well known immediately afterwards that the president and his supporters were not at all pleased and thought that I had been, at best, inappropriate and worst, deeply outrageous in my remarks. On the other side, there was an enormous outpouring of support and gratitude from around the country and around the world. And so it's an interesting phenomenon to be a part of something like that. But I would say that it was an opportunity for me to lift up some very basic biblical and spiritual values into that space and to honor the very people who were being and are being so dehumanized now. And when you ask about the congregation I serve, I would say that many of the people that I serve support the positions that I've taken because they are not mine. They are part of our broad spiritual tradition. Others disagree. We are not a monolithic church, but they respect my convictions, and I respect those who differ with me.

[Christiane Amanpour]

So you're never under threat of being cancelled?

[Marion Buddy]

Not at the moment. We live in interesting times, we do.

[Christiane Amanpour]

You talk about a culture of contempt in the United States. You know, for me, that was quite a shocking way to put it. I come from abroad. I've seen, you know, the great parts of the US I came over there to, you know, make my fame and fortune, or whatever you say, follow my dreams. And you talk about this was in a sermon this spring, actually, so it is new, this in Germany. You said one of the greatest challenges in the United States today is a culture of contempt that has normalized hateful speech and encourages violence. You've also said that we are deeply divided. The intensity of this polarization and this culture of contempt sustains, you know, a threat to destroy us. It's actively promoted by those within and outside the United States who benefit financially and politically from our divisions. So it's a big thought that you are talking about. Yeah, it's a big, big thing. Tell me a bit more about the culture of contempt that you identify.

[Marion Buddy]

It's not something that I. It's not a concept unique to me, but I am persuaded by virtue of what we. What we are invited to consume through the media, through social media, through almost every messaging source that we have in this country, to view those with whom we disagree through lenses of intense suspicion and even hatred. And so you can see the statistics that say that those of us who are on one side of a political or cultural divide see those on the other side with increasing hostility. And we've been given license to speak to and about one another in the most extreme forms. And I don't think there's any disputing that. You just have to just follow any social media feed or cultural influencer to see that that's the. The case. I think what's important for us as Americans to realize is that we have all been influenced by this culture, and the language of contempt has become increasingly normalized in our daily speech. And so how we can every one of us pay attention to the ways that we speak to and about one another, and perhaps to have greater curiosity and a willingness to engage with those who see the world differently and not to allow those who put us in caricatures of difference to hold the final word. Now, I do want to make the distinction between the ways that many of us relate to each other in our neighborhoods and in our communities, but the public arena, and increasingly some of our private spaces are marked by greater and greater hostility.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I guess then you must have been encouraged and actually sort of empowered when you saw two of the major world faith leaders meet together in the Vatican, in the Sistine Chapel just recently. Right? The American Pope Leo, Roman Catholic, and the British King Charles iii, head of the Church of England. Two different strains of Christianity, and they prayed together. And it was the first time that the British had allowed a king or any monarch to be showed praying publicly. Just what was that lesson? What's the lesson to be learned? What did you take from it?

[Marion Buddy]

Well, first of all, it's a very personal connection on both sides of that. As an American, huge admirer of Pope Leo and so grateful for his witness on the global stage, and King Charles and the Church of England, that is the tradition to which I belong in the wider Anglican Communion. And so to see the two of them together and to know something of the backstory of how long the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have been in dialogue to work to find highest possible ground between us where we can be united in our witness to Christ and his message of love in the world. While acknowledging on so many levels, in fact, my very ordination stands right in the middle of the differences between our traditions. And yet that didn't keep the two of them from not only speaking, but praying together. And I might add that Anglicans and Roman Catholics pray together all the time in other contexts. Right. And I happen to be married to a Roman Catholic. So it's not that we aren't praying together, but to see the highest of leaders do so in a public way to demonstrate that common purpose was. It was. It was inspiring. It brought tears.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And it was the first time in 500 years that these two. 500 years.

[Marion Buddy]

Yeah.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Amazing. But it's interesting what you say because you said a little bit, you know, I'm sort of in the middle. You are an ordained woman. The Catholics do not do that. I wonder whether you beat up on your husband for that and try to get.

[Marion Buddy]

Well, he's very much in agreement with the ordination of women.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Let me end, because this is a book for youngsters. And you say in your book, parenting was for me a masterclass in courage. Not a class that I taught, but one where I was the student. Finish that thought.

[Marion Buddy]

Well, as I mentioned earlier, witnessing how very young children, and then throughout adolescence and young adulthood, how our children and grandchildren cross these enormous thresholds of both physical, emotional tasks that they have never done before, and how they must persevere and pick themselves up from failure and start again and learn to discern between all the voices that come at them where truth lies for them and how the spirit that is within them comes into their own, comes into being and formation. I. I cannot stress highly enough how significant and important it is for those of us who are elders, not only to cherish our young people, but to marvel at how they are created to do such extraordinary things in their lives and how we, as the elders around them, are poised to support and encourage and then allow them to take their place, their rightful place as emerging leaders among us.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Bishop Marion Buddy, thank you very much indeed. I'm going to add one word. We can all be brave. Thank you so much.

[Marion Buddy]

Indeed. Thank you.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Coming up to another trailblazer. This one broke through the glass ceiling into space. I speak to the first female shuttle pilot and commander, the American astronaut Eileen Collins.

[Claire Duffy]

I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. This week on the podcast Terms of Service, in the US more than half of adults read below a sixth grade level.

[Marion Buddy]

That's right.

[Claire Duffy]

Reading levels among 12th graders have also recently dropped to 20 year lows. Why do you think this is happening? Well, partially. It's Covid Susan Newman. She's a professor and department chair at NYU and a specialist in early literacy development.

[Marion Buddy]

We see greater absentee rates in our schools like never before, which is extraordinary in terms of just learning about literacy.

[Claire Duffy]

Listen to CNN's Terms of Service wherever.

[Charlotte Kaufman]

You get your podcasts.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And now, from one show of courage to another. NASA is working very hard to get humans back on the moon before 2030. The last time that happened was over 50, 50 years ago when Eileen Collins was just a teenager in upstate New York. She had later become the first female space shuttle commander. Here's what she told CNN aboard her final mission, which was in 2005.

[President George W. Bush]

I think it's time for us to come home, but I'm having a great time up here. The Earth is absolutely beautiful. We're having a great time as a crew. We're really having the space experiences of a lifetime. For me, we've done a little bit of everything on. I'm so happy to have done it. But it's time to come home and keep working on getting the shuttle better and ready to fly in the future and time to see our families again.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And that moment is coming. Her incredible journey is the subject of the film Space Woman. Here's a clip.

[Hari Srinivasan]

There was a large part of the community that didn't just think she couldn't.

[Marion Buddy]

Do it, but were probably actively rooting against her.

[Eileen Collins]

She once told me, you had to be better than the men to be equal. That's exactly what I want to do.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

3, 2, 1.

[Eileen Collins]

I think until we are tested, we don't know what we're capable of.

[Christiane Amanpour]

And we talked about her capability and all these firsts when she joined me here in the London studio. Commander Collins, welcome to the program. Can I ask you, you've been retired for a few years. How much did you love it being in space?

[Eileen Collins]

I loved it so much that I would go back someday, not right now, because I've got a lot going on. But the feeling that you, that a human, I would say a human body feels physically is so unique. I can't really compare it to anything on Earth. The fluid shift that you get, it can be a little bit annoying. The first day. You might have a little bit of like stomach awareness. You know, it's a little irritating when your collar's floating up around your neck, and you're losing things, and maybe you're bumping into your crewmates. That's the kind of thing that a person gets over in the first couple days. And being in space is effortless. It can make you lazy because you're not expending a lot of energy. You're not working against gravity like you do here on Earth. So your muscles can get weak, your heart can get weak, Your bones actually lose strength. They lose calcium. But I think I will say the human experience of being in space is so wonderful that space tourism, I believe, will be extremely successful someday. I have no doubt. I don't know when it will happen. The cost has to come down, and it's got to get safer. We've got to fly more. But as we fly more, it gets. I want to say something that people can afford and safe, where people are willing to take the risk. Space tourism will be huge.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Fantastic to hear because there's so much talk about it. But as you say, it needs a little bit more work. So here you are, a young girl growing up in. Am I getting this right? Elmira, New York.

[Eileen Collins]

Elmira, New York.

[Christiane Amanpour]

ElmirA, which was known as the sort of gliding center of the United States with the winds.

[Hari Srinivasan]

That's right.

[Christiane Amanpour]

You were taken by your father to see a lot of the planes and sort of plane spotting exercise. And you loved it. You decided that you loved it, but you needed to do a lot of work to get into pilot school and then, you know, astronaut school and all. How difficult was it for you, being a groundbreaking woman in this?

[Eileen Collins]

Well, I think it's difficult on many different levels. The first thing is financial. So for someone that wants to be a pilot, I mean, that costs money to take flying lessons. So while I was, you know, a teenager living in Elmira, I took. I took on a lot of jobs that were not like the best jobs in the world. I was actually a janitor. I worked at a. At a golf course. I worked at my church. But I learned something from all of those jobs. But I also saved up my money for flying lessons. And I think it was also difficult from the angle that there were not many women flying. Back in those days. I didn't have a woman role model that I knew personally. So I found my role models in books. And I remember as a kid, my mom took us to the library and I found the section on. Eventually when I was older, I found the section on pilots. And I read books on, you know, men and women pilots, military pilots, civilian pilots, the pilots are explorers. And what they did over the history of, you know, since the first flight with the Wright brothers, you know, up until rockets were invented and now we have astronauts. And to me, that was appealing. And I think not only did I love the flying part because I like, you know, I found that I was pretty good at, although I wasn't good at sports, I was good at flying. So I enjoyed the actual flying part, But I also enjoyed I'm going somewhere, I'm traveling, I'm exploring, and I'm going places I haven't been before. So I think that, you know, it's. It was difficult, yes, But I think the joy that you get that I got at the other end was worth the uphill climb.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Well, it was an uphill climb, not just because of it, you know, it's a massively accomplished job, but because you were the first woman, you're the first woman to pilot a space shuttle back in 1995, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission back in 1999. But I want to watch this clip about the pre launch. We're going to play that and talk about what it was like getting ready.

[Eileen Collins]

Looking at the shuttle at night, it's just overwhelming. Brillian. It's one of the most incredible things that I've ever seen. And I'm thinking, I'm gonna launch on that thing. Okay. Watching the clock count down, that's when your heart starts beating.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I'm watching you mesmerized, looking at that experience from all those years ago. Do you remember the emotions, your heart, you know, the adrenaline? How did you keep all of that in check?

[Eileen Collins]

I would say the first thing is the training. So it's very important that we are not distracted by our environment because we as commander and pilot have to be ready to react to an emergency or something unusual that might happen. If we had not trained for the loud noise, all the shaking, all the lights flashing in the window, the massive acceleration that your body is under. If you had not trained for that, you would possibly lose your ability to think straight. So we train, train, train. We also practice malfunctions and running checklists in case, like, an engine fails or you have some kind of a leak or you have a crack in the window. There's all kinds of things that you train for. So on launch day, I was actually very confident and I think I was excited more about, hey, I'm actually, I'm going up in space and I have a great mission. The mission I believe in, and I'm going to be part of that mission. And I've got a great team around me. So I think that's more where the excitement comes from that I don't think I had fear going out to launch. I think it was more. If there was any fear, it was more like, if there's a problem, am I going to make a mistake or am I going to handle it like a genius that I'd like to be? So I think it's more along those lines. Focus is the big thing. Yes.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I was interested in part of the documentary. One of the scientists who went up with you, Mike. The British.

[Eileen Collins]

Mike Folb.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Mike Folb. And he talks about how you were under essentially the microscope because you were the first woman pilot, but also how it's really, you have to be constantly concentrating. Because he said even a 3 centimeter mistake could be the mistake between, I don't know, the rockets.

[Eileen Collins]

That's right.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Disbanding or something else catastrophic falling off. So I just. It's a lot of pressure all the time up there.

[Eileen Collins]

I think there's a lot of pressure for all the pilots, men and women. But because I was the first woman. In fact, before I went up on my first flight, my friends who are women pilots, you know, military and civilian, they would say to me, eileen, go for it. Do it for us. Show them that the women can do it. They put more pressure on me than I would put on myself. I did not want to make a mistake because I didn't want people to say, oh, look, the woman made a mistake. I was the first, and I was setting a precedent for how people would perceive women in the future. And I did not want to set a bad precedent. I'm a swimmer, I'm a runner. Every time I would be out there doing anything, I'd be running these malfunctions through my head and how I would handle them. I wanted to be the hero that saved the spacecraft. That was my motivation.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Well, and you certainly were the hero of all your missions. Interesting. I think the profile on your husband is really interesting because he comes across as so supportive. He himself was a pilot. Uh, you tell us the story. You never thought you were gonna get married, you didn't want to get married, and suddenly this guy turns up in, I don't know, flight suit or not, but across your. Across your desk and asks you out within the first 10 minutes.

[Eileen Collins]

Well, I used to say, marriage is gonna tie me down and I'm gonna not be able to go out and pursue my dreams. Well, that's not entirely true. If you Find the right person. And Pat was. Pat Youngs, my husband, who was an Air Force pilot and became an airline pilot. He was supportive of me. And as an airline pilot, he was able to follow me through my test pilot position and eventually as an astronaut, because their bases can change and they can commute if they have to. So the fact that he was willing to do that and be with me as long as I supported his career, which is tough for the spouse of an airline pilot because they're traveling half the time and they're going through sleep shifts. And so that can be physically hard on him, too. So I think we supported each other, similar careers in that we're flying, but different enough. The missions were different enough that it was interesting. We'd come back and talk to each other about, hey, what happened in your training or on your flight overseas, or, you know, just. It was really great. And I think we support each other. It's not just one way. And then we had the children. They came along and so Pat was very supportive of the children when I was. Well, when I. Whether I was there or not, he was a great dad for the kids.

[Christiane Amanpour]

It is. It is actually really nice to see all that. Let's just put this up here now, this phone call from President Bush. This is him in 2005, which I think was your last mission.

[Eileen Collins]

Yes, yes.

[President George W. Bush]

Obviously, as you prepare to come back.

[Eileen Collins]

A lot of Americans will be praying.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

For a safe return.

[Eileen Collins]

So it's great talking to you.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

Thanks for being such great examples of courage for a lot of our fellow citizens.

[President George W. Bush]

Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. We want to tell you that we really enjoy what we're doing. We really believe in our mission, and we believe in space exploration and getting people off the planet and seeing what's out there.

[Christiane Amanpour]

But that must have been really gratifying, especially since that was your final mission. And it came after a really tricky. When one of the. There was a Challenger disaster. Then there was one of your own missions where the foam tiles or something came. So tell me about those. Because, you know, public does focus on that. Yeah, yeah.

[Eileen Collins]

I say just in any old regular. I don't say regular, but a normal space shuttle flight, there's enough pressure on the crew. Ours was one step higher than that in that we had just had the accident and we had lost seven crew members in that accident. I mean, our crew was five weeks from launch when that accident happened in 2003. And so, of course, we weren't going to fly five weeks later. We had to go into accident investigation. There was so much we had to do. And then we switched into the return to flight period, which meant there were many technical problems that had to be fixed to ensure that we didn't have that same thing that caused the accident happen to us. Well, we thought we had fixed everything in that two and a half years. Well, we didn't. There was something we missed. So on our launch, the return to flight mission, we did have this foam fall off for the, I want to say the mission that we lost, that hit their heat shield. Fortunately, the piece that fell off our flight did not hit us. You know, I got a note one day like the President, President Bush would like to talk with the crew. And I thought, oh, no, I don't want to mess this up. This is really important. So we did the call. And I was probably more nervous on that call than I was on anything else we did because we had not trained for that call with the President. I should have anticipated it, but I was actually quite honored that he was willing to speak with us.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I'm sure, I'm sure you were, and that he recognized your groundbreaking experience there too. But I want to play a clip from that mission where you were stuck up in space for a while and it was very touch and go.

[Unknown Narrator or Reporter]

We had some repair techniques that were not well proven. What we didn't know was whether the shuttle was capable of safe reentry, whether we could bring the crew back on Discovery or not. They were stuck in space until we could prove the heat shield was not damaged.

[Christiane Amanpour]

I mean, you know, I know you all are trained and you have to deal with, but you must have been thinking, what if we never get down? What if something terrible happens? I mean, you know, the Challenger had happened also 10 years previously, just about right.

[Eileen Collins]

So. So we had a plan in case we did have damage to our heat shield and we couldn't repair it. Safe haven, we called it Safe haven, where my, myself and my seven crew members could stay on the space station. Now, we could not have saved the shuttle. That would have had to. We would have had to send that back and it would burn up in the atmosphere. But my crew could have stayed on the space station until a rescue flew up to get us.

[Christiane Amanpour]

One of the things that I thought was just so beautifully demonstrated in the film, and you must have just loved it when it happening was in the mid-90s, your first missions when you joined up with the space station Mir that the Russians were on.

[President George W. Bush]

I want to say that Mir is very beautiful and it was very shiny and we were very Happy to meet.

[Christiane Amanpour]

You in the sky and that you had a whole sort of amazing relationship with them and greetings and exchanging gifts and cookies and sweets and things like that, trying to learn a few bits of the language. I mean, it just seems like a, an eon ago that there was that kind of cooperation, and now there's no cooperation on the Earth, just about. So maybe it still exists in space, but what was it like for you?

[Eileen Collins]

Yeah, so President Clinton started this Shuttle Mirror program back in 1993. And then, so was when we started training for it. And then 1995, we flew our first mission. Now, in the training, I got to know the cosmonauts. Now, at first it was like, yeah, I'm former military. They were the Soviet Union. They were like the bad guys. Well, now the cosmonauts come to the United States and we, the astronauts, go over to Russia. And I've been twice to Russia to train. And what I've learned is that they're just like us. They're humans. Yes, the culture is different, but the human nature of people, we have so many similarities, more than we have differences. So I became friends with many of the cosmonauts, you know, the men and the women. Of course. I once flew with a woman cosmonaut. And so I've learned that, you know, we, we laugh together, we solved problems together, we became friends. Even the flight controllers and different managers and instructors over there, we became friends. And then you can see how quickly that can be lost when the leadership, you know, you can see the leadership of the country doesn't always reflect what the people are or what the people want. I mean, it varies. But after, after Russia invaded Ukraine, we talked about, should we separate the space station, the Russian component from the US as well as the European and the Japanese component. Well, you can't do that. There's no technical way to do that. So we're still working with the Russians now. And believe it or not, we're working well at our, I want to say the worker bee level, where we have American US Astronauts launching on the Soyuz, even European and Japanese astronauts, and then the Russians are launching on the SpaceX Dragon out of Florida. So we're still, we're moving along now. And, you know, we don't really like talk about the war that much, but we're all aware of what's happening and we just hope that it is over and a peaceful solution as quickly as possible.

[Christiane Amanpour]

You know, you told me before we came on air that you retired as a U.S. air Force colonel. You're wearing your. Your uniform and you're proud of it. So I wonder what you think about the current Secretary of Defense who's decided to call himself, I think, Secretary of War. They've decided to call just unilaterally, the Pentagon, Department of War or whatever it is. But he called all these generals and commanders and Admirals to D.C. recently spoke about returning to a male standard in combat jobs. Now. Retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, who in Kentucky is a Senate candidate, wrote on X. This morning's grandstanding at Quantico only solidified what we already know. Pete Hegseth continues to disparage and lie about women in the military. He claimed the military needs to, quote, return to the male standard in combat jobs of 1990. But here's the truth. There's never been a separate male and female standard. When women entered combat roles, one standard was set, and we've been meeting it ever since. You can either do the job or you can't. Period. Your reaction?

[Eileen Collins]

Yeah, there's actually. I love the question, by the way. I went through basic training now, so I agree with what she said now. But it changes over the years. So when I went through basic training, it was a different standard for the women. Now, that was 1976, so the men had to run a mile and a half in 12 minutes or less. The women only had to do a one and a half continuous run, and no one cared about the time. And I said, that's not right. I said, why can't I go? I know the women can. I know that we, as long as we're in good shape, can do the male standard. So I ran with the guys, and myself and one other woman were the only two that ran with the guys. And, you know, I mean, we couldn't beat the best guy in the group, but we were still able to make the standard. And I was trying to show the leadership, they thought they had to treat us differently. They thought that. And so we as the women were like, you don't need to treat us any differently. We're tough. We're here because we love the mission. We want to be like, I wanted to be a pilot. And in fact, the other gal that ran with me, she wanted to be a nurse, and she wanted to be a military nurse. And so we're like, yeah, we're good. Actually, she became a doctor, but we, like, yeah, have us do. So I think part of it is we need to educate our leaders as to what we're capable of doing. And I think sometimes, and I saw this in pilot training. They were trying to let the first class of women go through by, you know, let's help them out a little bit. No, don't do that. Don't help us. We expect us to do as good as the men because we want the challenge. Otherwise we wouldn't have signed up for the military. I mean, we don't sign up for the military because it's easy. We sign up because it's hard and we want them to push us. So I agree with, actually, I agree with both of them because I think eventually they're going to come together. And I think that the secretary of defense or secretary of war will, as he starts watching what the women are doing, he'll come around and he'll see the attitude of the women and the tough. If you're not, if you don't want to be tough, you're not going to join the military. That's the way I put it. So kudos for both of them.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Commander Eileen Collins, thank you very much.

[Eileen Collins]

Thanks.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Coming up after the break, the Alabama Solution, the new documentary that takes an unprecedented look inside America's prisons. We hear from the filmmakers next to Alabama, a state that locks up more of its population than almost any country on earth. That's what inspired our next guest to peek behind the curtain and through a network of prisoners willing to risk it all to expose the truth. The Alabama Solution was born. Here is some of the trailer.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

Their biggest fear is to see us come together on one accord. We gotta take our power back. We have to come together and make a stand that our life is worth something. I came to prison in 1985. I know what these folks are doing.

[Christiane Amanpour]

To break that silence. Filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman speak to Hari Srinivasan about how their shocking discoveries inspired a campaign for change.

[Hari Srinivasan]

Chris, Jon, thanks. Andrew Jarecki, Charlotte Kaufman, thank you both for joining us. You recently directed a documentary called the Alabama Solution about the conditions inside Alabama's prison system, which houses some 20,000 individuals. I mean, your film has incredible footage from inside inmates who have access to cell phones. But what are the conditions there? Because from the outside, what we see is that the state prisons are operating at nearly 200% of their capacity with just a third of the required staff. So what does that lead to?

[Charlotte Kaufman]

The conditions are horrible inside Alabama's prison system, and they're deadly and they're brutal and they are upheld by a very corrupt administration. These conditions have been documented in a Department of justice report that came out in 2019, and further documentation followed up in a Department of justice lawsuit. But it's very, very hard to understand the everyday brutality and violation of constitutional rights by just reading a report. But once you see it on the cell phone footage, there's a whole new level of understanding it on a. On a visceral, human level. And what you see is an environment where your life is threatened every day, where you are not guaranteed medical care, where there's rampant drug use, where people are being forced to work for free, where mental health crises are being exacerbated. And I think that what we hope the audience will take from the film is beyond what any written legal document could provide.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

We had record numbers of people leaving out of here in body bags. They don't want the public to see what's really going on on the inside. How can a journalists go into a war zone but can't go into a prison in the United States of America? The state is settling one lawsuit after another. There's no consequences for their actions. It's not the inmates that's killing them, folks.

[Hari Srinivasan]

Andrew, the. The cell phone footage, these are from contraband phones, right? But how is it that so many inmates had access to cell phones? And how did you get it?

[Andrew Jarecki]

I was talking to one inmate in the system and asked about how it's possible that there's so many drugs in the system and that there are so many cell phones, which was shocking to us as well. Where are they coming from? And he sort of looked at me incredulously and said, you know, we don't leave. Right. And it struck me that it was clear these things were coming in. And we learned about this as we investigated from officers. And officers are operating a very lucrative trade in drugs and cell phones.

[Hari Srinivasan]

You highlight a number of individual stories in the documentary, and one of those was a man named Stephen Davis who dies in prison. It's actually through anonymous phone call that his mother hears that her son was beaten to death.

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

Okay, well, I understand.

[Christiane Amanpour]

Who's this?

[Inmate or Prison Activist]

Well, don't. You know, I'm just. I know you're grieving and mourning, and I. But I just. I wanted to tell you that your son was beaten to death by an officer. That was a murder. You know, they sweep stuff underneath the rug all the time about this.

[Hari Srinivasan]

Tell our audience a little bit about Stephen Davis and what happened to him.

[Andrew Jarecki]

Well, like a lot of people that are incarcerated, Stephen was a somewhat troubled kid, but not very different than a lot. You know, he went through his life and ran into some problems, especially because of drug use. And so he was in prison under the sort of felony murder statute, because he was in a car with somebody who went into a house to buy drugs and there was an altercation and that person shot someone and then came back out in the car and forced him to drive, drive away. So he had never pulled the trigger. And there are many people in prison who do pull the trigger or have pulled the trigger, but he ended up in a jail where he was tased and essentially was dead for a number of minutes until he was revived, and then after that had more difficulty, continued to medicate himself with drugs and ended up in one of the worst prisons in Alabama. There are 14 of those prisons. And it's clear that he got into altercation with an officer. They will say, oh, well, that's because he was threatening the officer. But as we hear from the informant who calls us, he says they make things up all the time like that because they want to be able to say that the inmate was responsible and that they had no alternative but to use deadly force, which was clearly not the case. And we ended up having the ability to hear from a whole series of witnesses who were present at the time and said that was just a made up story.

[Hari Srinivasan]

We should note that the state of Alabama, in the case of Stephen Davis, says that they maintain that Officer Roderick Gadsden's use of deadly force was warranted because Stephen Davis refused to drop his knives. But you also focus in on how this idea of human rights inside a prison has a long history going back to the civil rights movement and perhaps even earlier. And a couple of the people that you focus in on, Robert Orr Council known as Kinetic justice, and Melvin Ray, who, after really years of suffering in solitary confinement and living in these conditions, they sort of band together and create this thing, this, this idea, this Free Alabama movement, and tell our audience a little bit about what that is and how they were able to orchestrate a statewide sort of work strike.

[Charlotte Kaufman]

Robert Earle Council, Melvin Ray and many other men who we spoke to, but who don't appear in the film have understood for over a decade the power of the court of public opinion. And they have understood that if they can reach the public, that the public will be horrified by what's happening inside these facilities in terms of brutality, in terms of free labor, in terms of profiting off of the suffering of others. And they have, you know, really since cell phones first appeared inside these facilities, since around 2013, have been using the devices to capture their realities and share them with the public and with the press in hopes of sparking a conversation about the dire need to change how we deal with justice in this country. And they also have always recognized the power of the, you know, the importance of the economics in this situation, that this is a system that is profitable. This is a system that provides great value to the state in terms of labor, $450 million a year in terms of unpaid services and lab. And that they have the power to communicate with the outside world. And then they also have the power to, as they say, shut the system down and prevent it from profiting and hope that that will be a lever to start a real conversation about change.

[Andrew Jarecki]

When you think about the work strike that these men have undertaken, again, it's a peaceful protest. And that's something that's so difficult to achieve in the free world. And yet these men, being restricted by tiny forms of communication, furtively being able to use cell phones to try to organize, were able to just reduce the amount of work that was happening in the prisons. And not just in the prisons. We were really shocked to find that it's not just that Alabama is using the men to sweep the floors inside the prison, which maybe people could say, well, if they're incarcerated, they should do their part. But actually they're sh shipped out in vans every morning. They work in lots of state facilities, the governor's mansion or on road crews. They work at the state fair, but also they're essentially leased to corporations. So a lot of these men who are not deemed safe enough to be released from prison are every day going to work at McDonald's or going to work at Burger King or going to work at KFC or going to work at the Hyundai plant or the Budweiser distributor. They're out in the world and yet they're not not considered safe enough to be given a chance to reenter society, which is why parole is so low in the state.

[Hari Srinivasan]

You know, the department of justice had a multi year investigation into this. And in the lawsuit that they filed against Alabama, they said the complaint alleges that the conditions at Alabama's prisons for men violate the constitution because Alabama fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner on prisoner violence and prisoner on prisoner sexual abuse abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff. Now, for the record, we did reach out to the Alabama Department of Corrections for comment about the conditions that your film highlights as we speak. We haven't heard back yet, but they did respond to Good morning America earlier this month. And in that they said the Alabama Department of Corrections is aware of the film. Film Production began in 2019 with footage acquired from inmate contraband cell phones. The ADOC cannot confirm or comment on the authenticity of any video footage obtained illegally. What. What kind of response has the state had? And I guess. What's your response to them?

[Charlotte Kaufman]

Well, I think the. The state is responding to our film in a similar way that they've responded to the Department of Justice report, which is to say we don't. We don't have a systemic issue across all our prisons, and we're going to dare defend our rights to run our prisons the way we want. And I think, you know, they can try to say that they can't validate the footage in the film, but we made our film across six years, and we did not just collect video footage. We also did extensive reporting through filing FOIAs, autopsy, speaking to multiple government sources, inside sources. And we have not only investigated the deaths you see in the film, but we have also investigated all deaths that have happened within the facilities since 2019, since the release of the Department of Justice report. And our investigation shows that the death rate has doubled during that time. As well. As, you know, the drivers, the. The preventable drivers of death, like drug, murder, suicide, have also increased rapidly. So this is a system that is still out of control and that the proposed solutions, like building new facilities, are not realizing real results. And in fact, things are getting, you know, have declined further. So it is still as urgent a situation as it was in 2019 when the Department of Justice first came in, as today.

[Andrew Jarecki]

I interviewed Steve Marshall, who's the Attorney General of the State, and asked him if he thought that there were serious problems in the prisons. And he said, well, there's this idea that we have some systemic problem in all of our prisons. And I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I think that that's in part because there's a sort of philosophy that you can act like something's not happening even if the public is asking questions, but it just also represents the fact that these people are locked away in places that the public is not allowed to see into. Journalists are not allowed to go into prisons, except very occasionally in the country, because hypothetically, they're like safety considerations. But the reality is these things are happening. There's nothing the state can do to prevent the information from going out other than stopping the cell phones. And in fact, that's what they're trying to do right now. So they're installing jammers and spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the information stop flowing rather than trying to improve the conditions that are obviously generating this kind of information.

[Hari Srinivasan]

You know, I wonder when you talk about the phones, when you talk about the sort of access to information and transparency, whether this is limited to Alabama or whether this lack of accountability and insight that we have into prison systems, whether you were able to find this type of a pattern repeating in other states as well.

[Charlotte Kaufman]

I would say, you know, the conditions that allowed for the crisis in Alabama to deepen to such a severe extent exist all throughout prisons in America. Secrecy, lack of accountability, a punitive mindset, a ability to make people work for free, that that exists in all of America's facilities. And I would say, you know, yes, our film is about Alabama and yes, our film is about prisons, but our film is also about what happens when a government is allowed to detain people under constrained and surveyed communication with little to no accountability. And that's not just happening in terms of our state or federal criminal prison system. That's happening in other arenas, too. There is an urgent conversation we need to have about whether detaining people secretly and cutting them off from civil society and cutting the press off from being able to report on what's happening in institutions is compatible with a democracy.

[Hari Srinivasan]

The HBO original documentary the Alabama Solution is now available to stream on HBO Max. And I want to thank the filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, both for joining us and just for making the film. Thank you so much.

[Andrew Jarecki]

Thank you for watching and thanks for sharing this with your audience.

[Charlotte Kaufman]

Yeah, thanks for having us.

[Christiane Amanpour]

An important story indeed. That's it for now, though. If you ever miss our show, you can find that latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. Remember, you can always catch us online on our website and all over social media. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.

[Unknown Narrator or Reporter]

News fatigue. Have I Got News for you? Is the cure and also the disease. CNN's Comedy Quiz show is back. Back making sense of the mayhem and definitely adding to it. Have I Got News for you? Saturday at 9 on CNN.