Amanpour – "What We Can Learn From UN Legend U Thant"

Date: October 10, 2025
Host: Christiane Amanpour (CNN)
Featured Guests: Thant Myint-U, Werner Herzog, Arundhati Roy, Hari Srinivasan

Episode Overview

This episode of Amanpour examines the crises and opportunities in today’s chaotic global landscape, drawing lessons from the mid-20th century—particularly the legacy of U Thant, former UN Secretary General. Christiane Amanpour explores U Thant's diplomatic influence during key moments such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Middle East peace efforts with his grandson and historian Thant Myint-U, discusses the nature of truth in the age of AI and misinformation with Werner Herzog, and delves into the complexities of personal history and resilience with author Arundhati Roy about her new memoir.

Segment 1: U Thant—Lessons from a Golden Era of Diplomacy

Guest: Thant Myint-U (historian and grandson of U Thant)
Timestamps: 02:35–19:31

U Thant’s Journey and Significance

• Background: U Thant’s rise from a humble, rural Burmese upbringing to the pinnacle of global diplomacy highlighted the possibility of new leadership in the post-colonial era.
  • "He was from a well-to-do family, but suddenly impoverished...at almost age 40, he decides on a midlife career change." – Thant Myint-U [03:45].
• First Asian Secretary General: His identity resonated with newly independent nations.
  • “He was the first Asian Secretary General…emerging as independent, newly decolonized nations.” – Amanpour [04:29].

UN and the Six-Day War

• U Thant’s Withdrawal of Peacekeepers (1967):
  • “He played a very decisive role because he pulled out UN peacekeepers from the front line. So many blamed him for that.” – Thant Myint-U [05:19].
  • Context: Withdrawal demanded by Egypt's Nasser; U Thant faced criticism but had little real leverage as the mission was untenable.
  • “He was a useful scapegoat by those who wanted to say they had no alternative but to take military action at that point.” [05:58].
• Missed Opportunity for Peace (pre-Yom Kippur War, 70s):
  • U Thant brokered a near-agreement for sweeping withdrawal and security guarantees, thwarted by Kissinger.
  • "At the last minute it was Henry Kissinger who undermined it by basically advising Golda Meir...to go against the plan..." – Thant Myint-U [07:10].

The Cuban Missile Crisis: U Thant’s Unsung Role

• Key Mediator:
  • Thant Myint-U reveals his grandfather’s behind-the-scenes role in de-escalating the crisis —not widely recognized in public imagination.
    • “From the moment that Kennedy went on television and announced the blockade…the world was on the brink of a nuclear holocaust...he had to craft that intervention...to give both men the time and...political space they needed to take a step back.” – Thant Myint-U [09:00].
• Direct Diplomacy:
  • U Thant shuttled messages, held personal meetings, and mediated between superpowers and Castro.
    • “He said to Castro, look, you come from a small country, I come from a small country…The world is on the verge of a nuclear war. We all need to take a deep breath and take a step back. And Castro accepted that.” – Thant Myint-U [10:49].
• Historic Letters:
  • Khrushchev’s letter to U Thant demonstrates the trust and respect accorded to him:
    • “I welcome your initiative...I agree with your proposal, which is in the interest of peace.” – Nikita Khrushchev, read by Thant Myint-U [11:31].

UN Diplomacy, Personal Style & The Limits of Power

• UN’s Peak Influence: U Thant could convene all major actors; had close relationships with Kennedy and, initially, with Johnson; mediated amid deadlocked Security Councils [12:06].
• On Vietnam:
  • U Thant foresaw U.S. defeat and the war’s futility earlier than most American leaders.
    • “He could see something, even in 63, 64...which was that they would lose the war and that...what was important was a graceful exit from Vietnam that would retain American prestige, allow for peaceful reunification…” – Thant Myint-U [14:27].
  • Fell out with LBJ, Nixon, and Kissinger as the US sidelined the UN and, in Nixon's case, weaponized anti-UN sentiment.

Legacy and Farewell

• Human Dimension:
  • “He led not by being the loudest person in the room...but by showing a kind of moral imagination...and giving people a sense of...the other side’s opinions, sensitivities, prejudices, feelings.” – Thant Myint-U [13:08].
• Farewell Ceremony: U Thant’s symbolic importance in his final days was highlighted by the attendance of global icons and an impromptu first public performance of John Lennon's “Imagine”.
  • "...John Lennon said, I'm going to play everyone a song that you've probably never heard before...And he sang Imagine for the first time. And this was at the lunch for my grandfather's retirement, December 71." [18:13].

Reflection on the UN’s Role Today

• Lost Potential and Need for Renewed Imagination:
  • “There is this missing piece. There was this time when the UN was actually successful and it was almost purposely undermined. And unless we go back to that history and understand exactly what happened...we'll be less able to imagine what's possible today.” – Thant Myint-U [19:31].
• Christiane Amanpour: "Interesting, you call it the untold story. In other words, the untold successes of the UN." [19:49].

Segment 2: The Nature and Future of Truth in the Age of Misinformation

Guest: Werner Herzog (filmmaker, author)
Timestamps: 21:08–36:55

The Eternal Struggle for Truth

• Herzog’s View:
  • "Truth has a hard time nowadays. It is a historical phenomenon. We have fake news since the beginning of written documentation, Pharaonic times..." – Werner Herzog [22:21].
  • The internet supercharges—but does not create—disinformation: “Since we have the Internet...fake news are spreading very, very fast and they are omnipresent...the blatant lies we have measured, it spread five times as fast as something that's true." [22:21].

Hope and Resilience

• A Call to Persevere:
  • “All the chapters are 10–12 pages long. The last chapter is called the Future of Truth and it’s only two lines long: future. Truth has no future. But truth does not have a past either. But we will not, we must not, we cannot abandon the search for it.” [23:55].
  • Importance of verifying across perspectives: “I would immediately go to...cnn...to Al Jazeera, to the Vatican, to the Chinese news agency. And all of a sudden you have a much more nuanced image of what is going on.” [23:55].

Art, Imagination, and the Blurring of Truth

• Fitzcarraldo and the Power of Grand Metaphor:

  • Herzog reflects on his commitment to "doing the doable" in film:
    • “I refused to have a plastic, little plastic boat hauled over a little hill...I have to do it there. It cannot be a Botanical garden. It cannot be a plastic boat. And I moved it over the mountain...Do the doable. That's what I keep preaching.” [25:53].
  • The genuine act, not the replication, fosters a deeper kind of truth—a metaphor whose resonance cannot be precisely defined.

• Confession as Artful Truth:

  • On a stranger’s real confession to Herzog while he played a priest:
    • “He called the cameras in, confessed to me on camera, and he felt so much better than with a real priest. And that's stunning...those are encounters with truth that have come throughout my life, in my work, all the time.” [29:58].

The AI Challenge

• Herzog’s Disdain for AI “Creativity”:
  • “I'm not really interested...Even a film scripted and created the images by AI, a short film, it's soulless, dead on arrival and only a reflection, a mimicry of the most common denominator.” [32:48].

Ecstatic Truth—Art Illuminating Essence

• On Deeper Truths Beyond Facts:
  • “Nobody of us knows what truth is...But somehow we have it in us...It's an endeavor, a voyage, It's a search. And when I speak of the ecstasy of truth, it's like late medieval mystics that step outside of their existence and they have insights, deeper insights about faith. Same thing in movies...” [34:35].
  • “Michelangelo...modifies facts in such a way that we are understanding a deeper essence. Some sort of a truth of the Virgin and of the man of Sorrows.” [34:35].

Segment 3: Arundhati Roy—Memory, Darkness, and the Freedom to Write

Guest: Arundhati Roy (author, with interviewer Hari Srinivasan)
Timestamps: 38:12–52:55

On Writing a Memoir—Personal and Literary Motives

• Mother and Daughter Relationship:
  • Roy’s memoir "Mother Mary Comes to Me" exposes the depth and contradictions of her relationship with her mother—a celebrated educator and complex, imposing figure:
    • “She was such an extraordinary person in, in good ways and bad...She deserved a place in literature...Can I put this extraordinary person out as a writer without labels...because she was confounding.” – Arundhati Roy [39:45].
• Unfiltered Portrayal:
  • Roy refuses to shield her mother from criticism or mythologize her.
    • “Those are terrible things she did. But also she did the most extraordinary things...Can I present the Light and the darkness without kind of taking away from either?” [41:54].

Surviving Hardship and Finding Identity

• Emotional Complexity:
  • “I don't know. I mean, I can't say that I ever felt worthless because of the things that she didn't say to me, because I could just see that it was coming from some place of anger and it wasn't...it didn't make me feel like, oh, I'm nothing. I just remember feeling that I need to get away fast, you know, in order not to be destroyed, I need to get away fast.” [44:03].

Political Awakening and Loss

• Activism and Literary Freedom:
  • On breaking with the comfort of her post-Booker life:
    • “I was not being judgmental, but I just knew that I couldn't live in there and be the writer that I was wanting to be, you know...Which is a little bit of a hooligan and a little bit of a, you know, person who's just walking, walking on the edge.” [47:50].
  • Writing political essays “kicked me off that literary fairy princess, Booker Prize winning person. And yes, it was liberating...from the time of my childhood, I've always dreaded being trapped in a space where I'm expected to be a certain way...” [48:20].

Risks, Legal Peril, and Commitment

• On Living under Threat:
  • Ongoing legal threats in India and solidarity with others targeted:
    • “Everybody's kind of caught in this sort of mesh of legal threats and police threats. Some people have been in prison for a long, long time, held as examples to other people...all sorts of people are in jail, activists in jail, lawyers, students...” [50:03].

Embracing Darkness for Freedom and Art

• The Gift of Darkness:
  • Roy links her difficult upbringing to her capacity as a writer:
    • “To me, I learned those lessons early, not just with her, but also in the years I spent in Delhi where I had nothing and no one and no money. And that was a great university for me...I turned it into literature, into art, into real writing.” [51:47].

Memorable Quotes

• “There was this time when the UN was actually successful and it was almost purposely undermined. And unless we go back to that history and understand exactly what happened...we’ll be less able to imagine what’s possible today.” – Thant Myint-U [19:31]
• “The last chapter is...two lines long and it says: Future. Truth has no future. But truth does not have a past either. But we will not, we must not, we cannot abandon the search for it.” – Werner Herzog [23:55]
• “I turned it into literature, into art, into real writing.” – Arundhati Roy [51:47]

Key Timestamps and Segments

• 02:35–19:31: Thant Myint-U on U Thant’s life, the UN in the 60s–70s, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and the legacy of lost opportunities in peacemaking.
• 21:08–36:55: Werner Herzog on the history and future of truth, the blurring of art and reality, and the role of imagination and art in accessing deeper truths.
• 38:12–52:55: Arundhati Roy and Hari Srinivasan in conversation about Roy’s memoir, the creative and destructive forces of family, her political awakening, and the transforming power of hardship.

Conclusion

Through rich conversations with Thant Myint-U, Werner Herzog, and Arundhati Roy, this episode of Amanpour illustrates how the crises and achievements of the past inform our contemporary struggles with war, peace, and the elusive search for both truth and justice. The legacy of U Thant’s quiet integrity, the persistence needed in an age of “blatant lies,” and the transformation of darkness into art all offer vital lessons for a hopeful, if troubled, future.