Peter Frankopan (3:32)

I think everything. It's hour by hour, day by day, and also what comes of the discussions. In the meantime, we've got a two week ceasefire that already looks like it's not really holding. We see activity in Lebanon by the idf, but also pipeline attacks by the Iranians and missiles still being shot. So although we think we've reached the end of the line and have peace to look forward to, things are pretty precarious to me.

Christiane Amanpour (3:55)

Can you imagine war as we've just seen breaking out again?

Peter Frankopan (3:59)

Well, if it's diminishing returns, there aren't that many targets left to hit in Iran. I mean, you can start hitting electricity substations and desalination plants, as Trump has threatened to do, but there's only so much point in blowing up bridges and then degrading the country altogether. At some point, Iran needs to reconsolidate and needs to start to rebuild. One of the questions that the US Side should be thinking about is what does that rebuild actually look like? And who's going to play a role in the reconstruction of Iran?

Christiane Amanpour (4:26)

So imagine a table, a room in which both sides walk in in Pakistan, mediated by the leaders there. This is after a series of assassinations, but also after some of these same US negotiators essentially were revealed to be, I don't know, peddling, I don't know what you might call them because they were in negotiations thinking that they were going to continue the Iranians, both times June and in February when the wars started, the very next day.

Peter Frankopan (4:59)

Look, I think that's a real challenge seen from the perspective of Persia as was and then Iran from the 1930s onwards. The way in which people see history is that the west constantly betrays. It promises one thing and then does something different. It installs its own leaders, it takes away prime ministers who've been elected, it tries to take Iran's oil. And part of the problem, I think under the Trump administration, both last June and also in February was mid negotiations, have tried to get some kind of settlements. Both times, the US either authorized an attack or attacked themselves. So I think the challenge is, can whatever Trump and his negotiating team offer, will it hold? And can Iran have credibility? Can there be guarantees that allow Iran to think this is a final settlement. That's something that I think is unfortunate about how the US has gone about this, which is to place Iran in a position where it doesn't trust the world's military and political hegemon, the United States. That's right.

Christiane Amanpour (5:51)

Yeah. But I mean, there's been lack of Trust for decades, 47 years since this Islamic Republic. The United States clearly still has a lot of leverage because the Iranians want the sanctions lifted. The Iranians still have leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. Where do you see a sort of a meeting of the minds or, you know, a win, win situation being able to be negotiated?

Peter Frankopan (6:14)

There is a deal, right? I mean, that's what we learned from this president, that everybody has a price and the architecture of what you can buy and sell. You've got to meet in the middle. I think that the problem is that Iran's 10 points that it wants in its peace plan doesn't look unreasonable. It wants some form of reparations. It wants some form of ability to rebuild. It wants sanctions dropped. That if you listen again to the Iranian side, that's been about things like pharmaceuticals and medicine not being able to get to Iran over the last 20 years. So it's whether that will be relaxed or whether the US Overplays its hand and now thinks it's in the position to dictate terms. And because the American military is supreme globally and has done from a logistical point of view, has kneecapped Iran. I think it's what's in the gift of Trump, whether he has the appetite to be generous towards the Iranian side. I think that that's a little bit of the fog now about what a settlement might look like.

Christiane Amanpour (7:04)

People who hear you saying generous will probably have their hair on fire. And also the Iranians have been known to overplay their negotiating hat. So what you describe is a very febrile moment that takes real smart, real idea of where they want to end up and the ability to do it. You talked about the, I guess, imperial times, colonial times, and the distrust. You've compared this, that is the Strait of Hormuz crisis to the Suez crisis of the 50s. Just remind us what that was and what the geostrategic shift in power was then.

Peter Frankopan (7:41)

Well, today we'll talk about choke points and the vulnerability of homose. But there are lots of these all around the world. So the Panama Canal is one of the. The Babamende, the entry point to the Red Sea and other. And the Suez Canal that sits at the top of the Red Sea was the way through which Europe got most of its oil, through the Middle East. After the Second World War, at a time when Europe was shattered by Hitler's armies, by the pushback to free Europe, and it needed oil. In the 1950s, Egypt wanted to nationalize the canal. And as a result, the British and the French devised a plan to go in and secure the canal for their own purposes. And at that point, Eisenhower's administration in the US Called their bluff and said they weren't prepared to sanction Western colonization. Recolonization of choke points. At that point, the British and the French plan fell apart. Huge economic pressure because the canal got blocked. Energy supplies, too. And eventually the British had to go to the IMF for a bailout to save their economy. So that idea of single passageways of water impacting local economies has a long history.

Christiane Amanpour (8:41)

But did that also place the United States as the undisputed superpower? Because Britain was very strong in parts of the world. It's still had empire.

Peter Frankopan (8:49)

Yeah, I think that the United States has always seen most of the time eye to eye with the west, but that doesn't mean that it's a free pass to do what you like, when you like. So I think that the US Sees the world as, you know, better than anyone Christian, sees the world through a very different lens to how we do here in Europe. That's why we're finding it difficult to get on with each other at the moment, because the Europeans and the US don't seem to see eye to eye, even though it seems very plain to both that the other one is wrong about things. But at that time, the British and the French, exhausted by war, it takes money and resource, militarize. And it's not as easy to do as you think, because the pressure of closing waterways inflicts a lot of pain, as we've seen in the last few weeks.

Christiane Amanpour (9:29)

I guess what I'm trying to get at is the rising superpower China, because there's a famous quote, and it was sort of portrayed on the Economist Xi, looking at Trump obviously superimposed and saying in a quote, never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. So do you think this exhausted United States? If you think it is, and they've been saying, you know, we're running out of ammunition and this, and that is a boon to China and could actually accelerate China's move to overtake the U.S.

Peter Frankopan (9:59)

look, I don't think the U.S. is exhausted. I think the question is, what does the US Want? What does the settlement look like in Iran and in the Gulf? And, you know, we saw when we spoke earlier at the end of last year about the national security strategy, the whole structure of that was that the United States was only going to look after the Western Hemisphere and pull away from the Middle East. Trump, before he was elected, at his inauguration speech, talked about how he wasn't going to start any wars and deliberately to stay out of the Middle East. I think what happens with China, and it was interesting, Trump gave credit to China for getting this agreement to talk in Islamabad, that China needs people in the west and all over the world to be able to buy their goods made in their factories. So if societies and countries can't keep the lights on and get poorer, that hurts China's domestic economy. So it might be a geopolitical win that China looks like it's more stable and offering to deal with other countries in more collaborative ways. You could take your view on whether you think that's true or not, but China needs the global economy to keep on working. So we have a Chinese Marxist, Leninist state talking about capitalism, about globalization, about free markets, inverted commerce, but it needs people to stay wealthy enough to be able to buy things. If that doesn't happen, China's economy gets into trouble.

Christiane Amanpour (11:08)

You mentioned that Trump has changed. You talk about the national security doctrine, which they put out, where he was essentially claiming the Western Hemisphere and almost like giving the west out and actually saying, I think, that Europe was in a civilizational decline. But also this is very different, his actions compared to what he said and telegraphed both in 2016 and in 2020 on his inaugural speeches.

Peter Frankopan (11:32)

You know, the world has changed as well since then. I mean, we've seen even the change of AI over the last 15 months has been huge. The way in which natural resources, critical minerals are trying to be sold by the U.S. i think Trump is also opportunistic in how he sees the world. What happened in Venezuela, for example, was a set of circumstances that created opportunity for Trump to extract Maduro. And to start a chain of events that depends on who you want to listen to, has not necessarily been the worst outcome for Venezuela. I think in Iran, the same set of dominoes lined up where there was a shot that Trump thought he had. And it's again, time will tell whether that intervention in Iran leads to a more moderate and stable Iran war.

Christiane Amanpour (12:13)

Yes.

Peter Frankopan (12:14)

My guess is if you decapitate any form of enterprise, whether it's a criminal one or a mafia group, for example, you tend to produce high levels of Fracture more violence, high levels of competition between the next tier down to try and take power, and you create fragility. That's what history would normally teach you. And so what you'd expect in Iran would be not a moderate state that emerges, but lots of competing voices that try and take territory off each other.

Christiane Amanpour (12:38)

That is political power, political, military, economic people. Because honestly, at the beginning, this was about the people sparked by their very courageous protests at the end of this year into the beginning, and then mowed down by the regime, and then Trump and Netanyahu saying, we're coming to help you. That was the sort of framework before the nuclear peace and the missiles and all the rest of it. Where does this now leave historically, do you think the Iranian people?

Peter Frankopan (13:04)

Well, I think if you talk about civilizational erasure and talk in terms of genocide, that doesn't play particularly well on the streets of Iran. Look, I think there is a pathway and a landing route where something more positive could come out of this, where an idea about what a rebuild process looks like in Iran could emerge from Islamabad or from beyond. But that requires lots of support from the Gulf states to see things eye to eye. It requires a settlement or some form of change of what's happening in Lebanon at the moment. But the pieces are lying there on the table. The question is whether Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the negotiating team, are able to snatch victory for the jaws of defeat, or whether they're going to deliver defeat from the jaws of victory. Now, there are opportunities in these crises. What we've seen since 28th February has been devastating, but no one is mourning the loss of authoritarian regime in Iran. But it's whether now light will follow. And those embers, we just think back to the end of the Second World War, three years after Hitler shot himself, the west allies were paying and helping rebuild West Germany into something that became an economic and a political and a liberal democracy. That might happen, but my guess would be it won't.

Christiane Amanpour (14:16)

Doesn't seem to be the message anyway. And let me just ask you, because one of the principals, we're told, who's on his way to Islamabad is The vice president, J.D. vance, who, en route or just before has been in Europe campaigning for the illiberal democracy of Viktor Orban in Hungary and really using some incredibly incendiary language that's also about, you know, the future. It's telegraphing what the United States sees itself and where it sees its allies, which are not the regular European NATO allies, are they?

Peter Frankopan (14:53)

No, but I think the US Has a view that this administration, and you could disagree with it, but it's not hard to see what it is. I think here in Europe, articulating what our vision is, is rather different. You know, we tend to talk about free trade agreements and ways in which we can buy lam or semiconductors in other parts of the world at cheaper prices. I think that political artic of what an administration wants is not necessarily a bad thing. But the US well, it's hugely confident about what it is that it thinks it wants. So the US Feels that the architecture of international organizations restricts and ties American hands behind their back. And I think you've got to work through. Do you need allies in the world of today and tomorrow? Does NATO really represent nothing from American perspective? On a day where we've seen Russian data ships going off to data cables and undermining architecture in the North Atlantic, is it helpful to be part of a group? And can the US Afford to alienate and antagonize even its friends?

Christiane Amanpour (15:46)

In the middle of all of this, Trump has again attacked NATO, said that they were cowards not to come to his defense in his war of choice. But also the NATO secretary general has been trying to, you know, douse some flames. But Trump really came out with a strong social media post. It is considered that one of America's superpowers is its alliances, not just NATO, but all over the world. So what do you think and what would happen if the US Pulls out of NATO for the rest of the alliance?

Peter Frankopan (16:13)

I think you could ask the question which is if you draw the wrong lessons from history, then you reach dangerous conclusions. So you could take the view, if you're American, that threatening to use a nuclear weapon in Iran, which is what Trump effectively was trying to do, has brought about a set of negotiations. I think talking about eradicating an entire people overnight is not done by dropping bombs on electricity plants. I think there was a clear threat of a use of a weapon of mass destruction. That might not have been what Trump meant, but that was signaled very clearly. JD Vance, in fact, in Budapest talked about the US Using tools they haven't used before. And I think that most people around the world thought that that was a very specific threat. I think it's, you know, we've seen this week again, Donald Trump come back to the idea of Greenland. He's called it a badly governed piece of ice that the United States wants. If the United States threatened to use heavy series of weapons, whether they're nuclear or otherwise, against Denmark in order to get their way or to force Denmark to a negotiation, you could see that you could treat your friends as negatively and as badly and as aggressively as you treat your allies. So it seems that this administration thinks that US Leads supreme and America first, which was Trump's call sign, has become America alone.

Christiane Amanpour (17:22)

Historian Peter Frankman, thank you very much. Later in the program, tirelessly fighting for racial justice in America, Bryan Stevenson tells me about his fourth civil rights monument. In the face of President Trump's assault on dei, We turn now to the culture war raging in America. Since taking office, President Trump and his cabinet have had DEI squarely in their sides and attacking equal rights protections at home and bullying other countries to do the same as the price of doing business with the United States. As a civil rights lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson has been fighting back. In Montgomery, Alabama, in 2018, he opened a national memorial dedicated to victims of lynching. Now he's been telling me about his fourth project, focused on Montgomery's 1955-65 decade, when Black residents launched the historic bus boycot and with it, a movement to help transform the country. Bryan Stevenson, welcome back to our program.

Bryan Stevenson (18:39)

It's great to be with you.

Christiane Amanpour (18:41)

So let's just recap a little bit. President Trump signed an executive order called Restoring truth and sanity to American history and basically ordering a purge of what he called divisive race centered ideology from a lot of American public spaces, parks, historic sites and museums. And right in the middle of this, you are opening a new, I might say, challenge to that ideology and putting, you know, putting the legacy of racism and civil rights right front and center. So tell us about Montgomery Square.

Bryan Stevenson (19:14)

Yeah, well, we are deeply committed to pushing our country to recognize and address the harms of our history in a more honest way. We've never really created cultural institutions in this country that deal honestly with with the harms and legacy of slavery. We haven't dealt with the challenges created by 100 Years of Lynching and terror violence, which shaped the demographic geography of our country. And I think we've actually undermined and compromised our ability to talk honestly about the Jim Crow era, the more recent era of civil rights. And so Montgomery Square is our effort to invite people to have a deeper appreciation of what happened here in Montgomery between 1955 and 1965, a decade that we believe changed the world. Because what people did here in 1955 by committing to a bus boycott birthed the modern civil rights movement. And that has inspired people all over the globe to believe that without more money or more Guns or more political power. We can still make a difference in creating a world that values human dignity and human rights.

Christiane Amanpour (20:24)

I was going to ask you why you focused specifically on that decade, but told us, and it's important. And of course, everybody knows the bus boycott and everybody knows what happened when Rosa Parks decided to take her rightful seat or not move from her rightful seat in the, in the bus. And your Montgomery Square has at its, at its entrance, kind of the bronze cast of her hands holding up her number. Right. Her arrest number when, when she was arrested. Tell me about that moment, Remind us all and why you chose that image and that sculpture.

Bryan Stevenson (21:00)

Yeah. I think in some way it's an invitation to learn what we don't know. And I think most people in this country don't know that. Buses in Montgomery were an unavoidable space of racial humiliation. This community was just segregated and deeply, deeply organized around race. Black people couldn't go to public libraries, couldn't use public schools, couldn't go to public pools, couldn't do anything that allowed them to be in the presence of other white people. It was even against the law for black and white people to play checkers together in this city. The one place where there was this forced sharing of space were the buses. And what people don't know is that even there, black people were being humiliated on a daily basis. For a black person to ride the city bus, you had to pay your fare at the front, get off the bus board in the rear of the bus, you had to sit only in the section designated for black people. Even when there were no white people on the bus and white seats were empty, black people would be standing at the back. And there were acts of violence and abuse and degradation almost every day. And that's what people don't know. They don't know that a black woman named Viola white in the 1940s who worked at Maxwell, refused to give up her seat. And she was arrested and convicted. And then a white police officer went to her home, abducted her 16 year old daughter, took her to a cemetery and raped her. This young child bravely, bravely confronted the police for what they did. She went to a local leader named Ed Nixon. They insisted that this officer be arrested and prosecuted. And the judge allowed the officer to leave town rather than be held accountable for this. And these acts of violence continued throughout the 40s and 50s. In 1950, a black man named Hilliard Brooks, a World War II veteran, got on the bus. He paid his fare in the front. Then he was told that there were no seats. And so he was not going to be able to ride the bus. And so this black man just said, well, give me my dime back. Give me my fare back. And the bus driver refused, and the driver called the police. The police officer entered the bus and ended up killing Mr. Brooks, shooting him dead, leaving his pregnant wife and two young children without a father. And these kinds of incidents happened all the time. And that was the lead up to 1955, when five women before Rosa Parks got arrested. Claudette Colvin was 15. Sophia McDonald, Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith. All of these women were pushing back against this system. And then on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks also said, no, I will not cooperate. And she was arrested. And because she was such a vibrant and forceful person in our community, the secretary of the naacp, someone who investigated and stood up for black women and men when they were being abused, the community rallied and began what became a 382 bus boycott, which was unprecedented in terms of economic boycotts and organizing in this country. And it eventually worked because a young lawyer named Fred Gray filed a lawsuit, Browder vs. Gayle, that went all the way to the U.S. supreme Court and resulted in the court declaring racial segregation on Montgomery's buses unconstitutional.

Christiane Amanpour (24:21)

It's really interesting to hear you lay it all out, because it's not like, oh, Rosa park arrived. Boom, everything changed. It's really methodical. There are a lot of people who paved her way, and then the court system, as you said. And you've interviewed a lot of these people for your Equal Justice Initiative. Um, I want to play a little sound bite from Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery. She has childhood memories of life after the bus boycott ended. After the Boycott ended, that December 20th and December 21st, when they took that ride, everybody's cheering because you think all this Kumbaya. And it wasn't because the very next month, January of 1957, there were two days that we had bombings. One was January 10th, and one was January 27th. I get really confused myself, because I don't want to be quoted wrong. So maybe I admit that I might be wrong on my dates, but on one of those dates, the bombings took place in all the churches and the pastors homes. And you could just lay in your bed and you listen to the bombs go off, because our black community was very small. So even though somebody said they lived, like two or three miles away, you could still hear the bombings. And she talks about how her sister picked glass out of shoes that were placed by windows, or all of this, you Know, seeing Klan people march in her street, you know, it just goes to show that even breaking it doesn't end it.

Bryan Stevenson (25:49)

No. There was so much violence surrounding this effort. And again, I don't think people understand that. Immediately after the boycott started, Dr. King started. Home was bombed. His wife, Coretta Scott King, and their infant daughter were at home. There were multiple bombings of churches. There was harassment. Dr. King was arrested for driving 30 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone. 115 boycott leaders were arrested and prosecuted. We have a picture of all of them holding up their arrest numbers because they took this as a sign of affirmation rather than as a sign of abuse. They gladly went singing to the police station and held up those emblems which are typically associated with shame, and they held them up as badges of honor. And that was the way in which this community responded to the threats and the violence. It was intimidating. It was certainly, certainly terrifying. But people pressed on. But, yes, it continued. And after the boycott, there were efforts to desegregate the library and the swimming pools and all of the public spaces where black people had been exclud sit ins trying to desegregate restaurants. Of course, we know about the Freedom Rides that John Lewis and others organized. But in each instance, there would be violence. The picture of John Lewis with blood rolling down his face and another young man pulling out teeth that had been battered. And I don't think we have appreciated just the nature of the resistance to integration. And part of the thing that we're trying to help people understand is that, you know, when the Civil Rights act was passed in 1964, when the Voting Rights act in 1965, it wasn't just that people said everything's okay. And in fact, every southern legislator in Congress, almost every Congress member from the south, voted against the Voting Rights act, voted against the Civil Rights act, and were as determined to resist them after they were passed as they were before they were passed. And so in Montgomery, they created high schools, but they named them after Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Sidney Lanier, a Confederate general. To signal their opposition to integration, white people left the public schools. And so this struggle continued long past landmark.

Christiane Amanpour (28:06)

It's continuing now. I mean, you've got prominent white administration people hitting back decades of trying to, you know, level the playing field, you know, Trump, his administration, as I said, their attacks on dei. You've got Hegseth, the current Secretary of Defense. Basically, he's like, obsessed by it. He has addressed. Well, he did address President Trump in January, maybe just after the inauguration, this is what he said about how he was going to transform the military.

Peter Frankopan (28:37)

We will have the best and brightest in every position possible. As you said in your inaugural, it is colorblind and merit based. The best leaders possible, whether it's flying Black Hawks and flying airplanes, leading platoons, or in government. The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department. And we need the best and brightest, whether it's in our air traffic control or whether it's in our generals or whether it's throughout government.

Christiane Amanpour (29:05)

I mean, honestly, you know, for you and me to hear that, you as a black man, me as a woman, you know, to see that he did that. The first firing was the highly decorated General C.Q. brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and then many female officers as well, purging records of a Medal of Honor winner with a Hispanic sounding surname. I mean, honestly. And that's now.

Bryan Stevenson (29:28)

Yeah. And what's so vexing, to be honest, what's so really heartbreaking is that it's dishonest. So, you know, people talk about colorblindness, but it's not. You know, the administration has basically restored a presumption that of incompetence, a presumption of unworthiness. And they've applied it to black and brown people, they have applied it to women. So if you're black or brown in a leadership position, the presumption is that you don't deserve that. That's not colorblindness. That is actually another manifestation of racial bigotry. That's not gender blindness. That's another manifestation of these presumptions that if you're a woman or if you're a person of color, that you're somehow incompetent without appreciating that many of the leaders of color, many women in leadership positions, had to be so much better than their white male counterparts to get those opportunities. And the other thing that the administration has done, which is just so gratuitous, you know, the Congress a couple of years ago said we can't have military bases named after people whose whole identity was connected to white supremacy, to this notion that black people are not as good as white people, to this idea that black people should be enslaved. People like Robert E. Lee, people like those Confederate leaders who fought against the United States. And to restore the names of these people to military basis in 2025 is the kind of assault, it's the kind of actual sort of insult on top of injury that I think represents this challenge that we are in. We are in a narrative crisis. In America, there are people who want to, to ignore the harms of our history. They want to minimize the consequences of this history. And I think that we risk our freedom if we don't recognize that we are still carrying an infection created by this narrative of racial difference that we crafted during the time of slavery, that we enforced through lynching, violence during the time of lynching, that we codified during the time of segregation. The weight of that harm, the history of that harm sits on us, and it creates conflict and division and distrust. And if we do not move forward, we will remain unhealthy and incapable of becoming the kind of nation that many of us want this nation to become.

Christiane Amanpour (31:42)

Well, to that end, in announcing the opening of this now your fourth legacy and historic site, you said Montgomery Square seeks to challenge this untruthful twisting of history and help society understand this civil rights decade with, with a factual account of this era. Um, and, and I just wanted to ask you because, you know, you've been doing this for, for decades. You did meet Rosa Parks, uh, the hero, as we've talked about the, the bus boycott, and you told her about your work and defending convicts on death row and wrong filled convictions. She said, this is going to make you tired. Tired. Tired, Are you?

Bryan Stevenson (32:20)

No, I, actually, I, I, I mean, yes, there are times when I get tired doing this work now. I mean, we're seeing cultural sites and museums forced to take out content. They're actually scrutinizing the interpretive centers on the Selma to Montgomery march and pulling content out. And that is exhausting and it is certainly challenging. But no, I'm actually feeling the spirit, the forces of those people who've come before me. I walk these streets of Montgomery knowing that the generation before me had to put on their Sunday best, go places where they would get beaten and battered and bloodied. And I know that they would go home, wipe the blood off, change their clothes, and go back and do it again. So I cannot at this point in my career say I'm too tired to do the things that must be done. And to be honest, Christian, I'm actually feeling more energized, more determined, more committed. I've decided recently that if I have to represent the 10 million Black people who were enslaved for 246 years because government officials are trying to hide their history, eliminate their names and cultural spaces, take away the challenges of their lives, I will represent those who endured the immense suffering and the constant sorrow of the horrors of slavery. I'm prepared to represent the millions of people in this country forced off their lands because of terror, violence, who fled to the Midwest and the Northwest because we tolerated lynchings and terrorism. If I have to represent the tens of millions of people who had to deal with the humiliation of segregation, who are being told now that they can't talk about that, I'm prepared to do that. I just think our generation, my generation, and the generations after me have to embrace the spirit of those who came before us. I'm the great grandchild of people who were enslaved. It's their hope of freedom, their hope of struggle, their hope of a better day that allowed it to be possible for me to be where I am. And I cannot turn my back on that. I will not abandon that. And if anything, I'm prepared to do more, say more, be more in this moment of crisis, because I think that's what we are called to do if we want to honor the legacy of those who've come before us.

Christiane Amanpour (34:22)

As the great John Lewis said, make good trouble. You certainly are doing that. Thank you very much, Bryan Stevenson.

Bryan Stevenson (34:29)

My pleasure.

Christiane Amanpour (34:30)

And coming up after the break, as the crew of Artemis 2 prepare for splashdown, a look back at my conversation with astronaut Michael Collins, who flew on the Apollo 11 mission that first landed men on the moon. Welcome back. Artemis 2 is on its way to Earth now after looping the moon and taking the astronauts further from our blue planet than humans have ever been before.

Michael Collins (35:09)

And we have seen just some extraordinary things, things that I thought we might see. They looked similar to what I thought they might look like and other things that I just had never even imagined. And those were different perspectives that we saw these things from. But I have to say, it hasn't changed my perspective or the perspective that I launched with. The perspective I launched with was that we live on a fragile planet in the vacuum, in the void of space. We know this from, from science. We're very fortunate to live on planet Earth. And the other perspective that I've sort of learned from others through life is that our purpose on the planet as humans is to find joy. To find the joy in lifting each other up by creating solutions together instead of destroying. And when you see it from out here, it doesn't change it, it just absolutely reaffirms that.

Christiane Amanpour (36:07)

The crew shared awe inspiring images throughout their lunar flyby, the success of which gives hope for future moon landings perhaps as soon as 2028. In 2019, I spoke to Michael Collins, the US astronaut who flew the historic Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon alongside Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. He Told me what he learned on that remarkable journey into the unknown, even though he never step foot onto the lunar surface. Michael Collins, welcome to the program.

Michael Collins (36:40)

Thank you very much, Christiane. I'm enjoying being here.

Christiane Amanpour (36:44)

Well, look, it is really a privilege to be speaking with you. You and your merry band of spacemen have inspired the whole world for 50 years now. And I just wanted to know whether you have a specific moment, a specific memory from blast off to splashdown, that stands out especially for you.

Michael Collins (37:04)

I think of all the things that happened on Apollo 11, there were so many of them. I always regard the flight to and from the moon as like a long and fragile daisy chain of events. But the one that I think that is the unanimous favorite of most space crews is when you see those three parachutes open and wow, up until then you thought you were coming home, but you couldn't be 100% sure of it. But you see those beautiful parachutes on top of the Apollo command module and you say, whoosh, here we go. It's okay. Wow.

Christiane Amanpour (37:43)

Wow. You know what, In a way, I hadn't expected you to say that because it does bring up the whole concept of cosmic death and what might have happened. Did you think about death? Did you think when you were up there that. That you might not come back or Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin might not make it back off the moon, into the module and back home?

Michael Collins (38:04)

Oh, certainly the three of us were keenly aware of the dangers involved, but it was not something that we talked about. We never said, oh, gosh, maybe this is getting too dangerous, we shouldn't do it. That was way back in some obscure dark corner of our mind, and we had more important things to do, if not more important, more immediate things to take care of.

Christiane Amanpour (38:29)

You certainly did. And obviously being on the moon, orbiting around as you were waiting for them and conducting your unique and special mission was unbelievable. And I just want to ask you whether you still remember that first glimpse, that overwhelming glimpse of what you described as finally a three dimensional sphere that was the moon. You talk about it very in detail and poignantly in your book.

Michael Collins (38:57)

Well, I don't know how poignant the view was, but it was certainly an impressive view. You know, that tiny little silver sliver that lives up above my backyard had been replaced by a gigantic three dimensional bulbous thing that was almost trying to push its way into our window. The sun was coming from behind. So it was the sun's rays were cascading around the rim and gave it a wonderful illumination, accentuating the highs of the craters and the lows of the maria upon which the craters were. It was a great thing. However, it was nothing compared to seeing the Earth from afar. That was the main chance. That was it.

Christiane Amanpour (39:53)

Oh, wow. I want to ask you about that, but let me just first say you called it the most awesome sphere I have ever seen. The belly of its bulges out towards us in such a pronounced fashion that I almost feel I can reach out and touch it.

Michael Collins (40:09)

And I believe I added, or I should have added, and it didn't. Did not give us any feeling of welcome, if anything. Seemed like perhaps a slightly hostile place, at least to me.

Christiane Amanpour (40:22)

Obviously, everybody has spoken to you and asked you about what it was like not to walk on the Moon, that you were the one still up there orbiting and you didn't get a chance. But I find it so cool that the way you talk about it is that you celebrated this unique position that you were in to be able to kind of manage the whole thing and get them back safely and land them safely and all the rest of it. Tell me a little bit about how you saw your mission even though you didn't step foot on the Moon.

Michael Collins (40:54)

Well, the question that is usually asked me is, were you not lonely, the loneliest person who had ever been on a lonely voyage around the Moon and the lonely orbit, you were isolated in your lonely thoughts, weren't you? Terribly lonely? And I was just amazed by that. No, I was no way lonely. I felt very much a part of what was going on with Neil and Buzz. I was their ticket home. The whole apparatus, the procedures, the machinery, it all together to be worked by three people. And the third that I had, I didn't. Clearly, I did not have the best seat on Apollo, but I was delighted to have the one that was really the culmination of John F. Kennedy's dream to put someone on the moon by the end of the decade.

Christiane Amanpour (41:51)

What was it about John Kennedy's promise that impacted you so much? His dream of, as he said, sending a man to the moon and bringing him back safely?

Michael Collins (42:03)

Well, I thought of that a great deal. I thought that was a masterpiece of simplicity. President Kennedy had told us what to do and when to do it, and we had to fill in how to do it. But as we went along that path toward the last few years of preparation, his words rang and they helped us immeasurably. We could say, hey, you better get work. And John F. Kennedy said, and the end of the decade is coming and we're behind here and we've got to do a better job in the other place. It was a wonderful assistant to us in our profession, preparations. I thought of it a great deal.

Christiane Amanpour (42:51)

Yes, I can imagine you did. Just going back to your position and your unique position during the moon landing, you gave a first interview to the great Walter Cronkite when you came back and this is what he asked you and your answer to him.

Michael Collins (43:06)

I'd like to ask one just small personal question. Are you going to get tired of hearing them talk about walking on the moon before these series of tours was over? Not at all. I'm enjoying it very much. As you know, I was over on the backside of the moon for half their walk and I kept coming around the front side, you know, with the what did they say, what are they doing? Attitude. And I'm very happy to have them fill me in on those details.

Christiane Amanpour (43:30)

Now again, I think that's so a really interesting way of putting it. And I just want to know where you were, what side of the moon were you on when they took their first steps? And when Neil Armstrong said, you know, one small step, one giant leap, did you actually hear that in real time?

Michael Collins (43:51)

Yes, I did hear that. I, you know, 50 years is a long time to remember each and every detail on where I was. I was in a two hour orbit around and around the Moon and I, I got some of what was said on the surface by the two of them and other bits and pieces of it I missed. But the parts that I missed, Mission control was constantly yakking in my ear. So I knew pretty much what was going on at all times.

Christiane Amanpour (44:24)

You said a moment ago that one of the most dramatic sights was the sight of the Earth from space, that you found it. Just an incredible vision. Let me first play you what Neil Armstrong said about it, and then I want to ask you how you felt about it.

Michael Collins (44:42)

Could you describe what you're looking at? Over. Roger. You're seeing Earth as we see it on our left hand window, just a little more than a half Earth. We're looking at the eastern Pacific Ocean and the north half of the top half of the screen. We can see North America, Alaska, United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America.

Christiane Amanpour (45:20)

So that was Neil Armstrong's observations. You also talked about this blue and white sphere and you, you wrote in capital letters that the Earth looked fragile. Tell me about that.

Michael Collins (45:33)

At the time I was really not able to explain that to myself. I know we're the third rock out from the sun. I felt an overriding quality of fragility about the Earth as I Looked at it, I can remember somewhere along the line I said, hey, Houston, I've got the world in my window. And. And I'm very conscious of that. And I think that's a feeling. The world in your window. Your window, Christiane, everyone's window. To have the world in your window. And you examine that little sphere critically and see how is it, how's your health today? How are you feeling today, world? Are you okay? Are you fragile? What kind of fragility are you suffering from? Can we have, can we help you? Can we do anything about it?

Christiane Amanpour (46:25)

And you know, it's really interesting because that is front and center of so many people's minds right now. How to save our planet, how to save our world. And when you were up there, there were only 3 billion people on planet Earth. Now there's nearly 8 billion people. Do you worry about the state of our world? What message, as somebody who's seen it from up there, would you give to world leaders?

Michael Collins (46:50)

Well, I do in fact worry about our population. Eight billion, as you say. And before we know it, there will be 10 billion. And that's 10 billion people who are going to be using plastic cups which are going to get thrown into the ocean and shredded on the rocky bottom and ingested by fish who die and float to the surface. So that's the kind of maritime situation that we face. And when I think of fragility, I think of little tiny pieces of plastic and a myriad of other horrible things that we daily do to trash this planet of ours. And it bothers me a lot. Yes, it does.

Christiane Amanpour (47:37)

I bet it does. And it bothers a lot of people. And you're in a unique position of authority to warn us about the fragility of our world. Can I ask you how you got on? What was your relationship with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong? Not just during the four or five plus day mission, but preparing for it. What was your relationship like?

Michael Collins (48:02)

Our relationship during our training was that of. Of what I once described as three amiable strangers. I didn't mean that as a criticism of Neil or Buzz, but simply that we were named to be on the crew with a scant six months to get prepared for it. And we were all business. We felt like we were behind. We felt like we had the weight of the world on our shoulders. Shoulders. So we were pretty much amiable strangers, you might say. After the flight of Apollo 11, I really got to know Neil Armstrong a lot better. And he was impressive. Neil was a very intelligent man and he had a scope of Interest that far left, far right and around the middle of the technology that we were all three involved with. He was a student of history, primarily a history of science. Wherever we went, he was our spokesman. When we went on an around the world trip after the flight of Apollo 11, and I think we visited something like 29 cities. And so he made 29 speeches. And he was masterful at it. He was a wonderful spokesman. He made people feel so much a part of it. Everywhere we went, people said, we did it, we did this thing. And part of that was seeing Neil up close. But I think that's his legacy is, hey, we did it. We human beings left this dinky little planet and went elsewhere. And that's what I remember the most about Neil. He was a wonderful choice to be the first person to walk on the moon.

Christiane Amanpour (50:04)

That's so gracious of you and sad that he is not around to celebrate the 50th anniversary. And to that point, I just want to read you an excerpt from a standby letter that President Nixon had. He obviously congratulated you from the Overland office, but there was also a letter in case you didn't make it home. And he wrote, fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come, will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind. And you've spoken so eloquently just now about the mission, about what it means. What would have happened, Mike Collins, had you been in the orbiter and they hadn't made it, would you have gone back? I mean, people have asked you this before. You would have returned to Earth, right?

Michael Collins (51:09)

That's correct. I had no landing gear on my machine. I couldn't go down and help them in any way, so. So the choice was to commit suicide or come home by myself. And I would have come home by myself. Would not have been a happy trip. And I knew that I would be a marked man for the rest of my life if that should ensue. But those were the choices.

Christiane Amanpour (51:34)

Wow, it's so stark. And so I want to play this really very, very amusing picture which is you all in quarantine just after you splashdown President Nixon visiting the three of you in quarantine. He's applauding you from behind A small, very tough piece of glass. And there you are, smiling out. Your wives came and saw you in quarantine, and you had to spend three weeks there in case of moon germs. And you've said, frankly, that that was pointless. Why was that pointless?

Michael Collins (52:07)

No, I don't recall it. I said it was pointless. I perhaps said it was pointless that our colony of white mice was so large. At the time, I'd been reading a book by John Steinbeck of mice and men. I got thinking about that. The three of us had gone to the moon and come back, and there we were. And that was either a wonderful achievement or the worst tragedy that this poor planet had ever seen, depending on whether we'd brought any deadly pathogens back with us or not. Now, if the. If the white mice were happy, there were a bunch of. Maybe 30 of them. 30 little guys were scampering around. And if they were happy, we were happy. If they started dying, Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. So when I consider Steinbeck and Of mice and men, my conclusion is the mice are more important than the men.

Christiane Amanpour (53:03)

Well, Michael Collins, what a great way to end. And congratulations.

Michael Collins (53:07)

Well, thank you. Christiane, take care of London.

Christiane Amanpour (53:11)

I will. And you take care of our world.

Michael Collins (53:13)

Thank you.

Christiane Amanpour (53:14)

Awesome, indeed. And that's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the 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.

Bryan Stevenson (53:36)

I'm Eva Longoria, and I'm setting out

Peter Frankopan (53:38)

to really experience France, to savor its

Bryan Stevenson (53:41)

world celebrated cuisine and explore the country's rich history.

Peter Frankopan (53:46)

Searching For France premieres April 12th on CNN. And next day on the CNN app.