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Amanpour
Interview with Former U.S. National Security Council Official Gary Sick; Interview with "The Fear of 13" Actor Adrien Brody; Interview with "The Fear of 13" Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino; Interview with The Atlantic Staff Writer McKay Coppins. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired April 03, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GARY SICK, FORMER U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL OFFICIAL: We are just flouting the laws of war, humanitarian procedure, and there's a cost that
goes with that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: As the war with Iran reaches a critical point, a man who advised three U.S. presidents looks back, former national security official Gary
Sick, on what Washington got right and wrong then and now.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADRIEN BRODY, ACTOR, "THE FEAR OF 13": To suffer gives you understanding of the suffering of others.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- justice after a wrongful conviction. A new Broadway play, "Fear of 13," tells the story of a man on death row. Oscar winner Adrien
Brody and playwright Lindsey Ferrentino join me.
Also, ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCKAY COPPINS, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: There was something about the sudden rise of gambling that was changing the culture of America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- America's sports betting boom. Journalist McKay Coppins goes inside the world of legal gambling and what it says about the country
today.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York.
Exactly five weeks ago, Iranian and Omani mediators believed they were making progress on resolving the critical nuclear issue with the United
States. Then came war. Now, President Trump tries to galvanize domestic support for something that has no stated end, something he just admitted he
thought would take three days.
In his speech to the nation, he seemed to dismiss retrieving Iran's highly enriched uranium or even opening up the crucial Strait of Hormuz. Markets
fell and oil prices rose again.
The miscalculations keep piling up. Thousands have been killed in Iran, including more than 230 children since the start of this war. Israel is now
apparently trying to assassinate diplomats and maybe even diplomacy itself. The seeds of this current conflict in the Middle East are deep and go back
decades.
My next guest has been in the room advising past presidents on crucial foreign policy. Gary Sick was the principal White House aide for Iran
before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution. He served in the U.S. National Security Council during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan
administrations. And at 91 years old now, he is still sharing his vital lessons from history. And he came into our studio to tell us where he sees
this all heading.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Gary Sick, welcome back to our program.
GARY SICK, FORMER U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL OFFICIAL: I am delighted to be here.
AMANPOUR: So, you have served every president practically in a specific era, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and particularly on this issue of Iran. What
would you be telling this current president about how to deal with this thorny subject which has bedeviled every administration for the last nearly
50 years?
SICK: Well, I think in the first place, he wouldn't hire me. He doesn't -- he's not looking for expertise. And that's one of the real problems, is
that people who know a lot about Iran would never have done what he has just done. And, I mean, it was clearly done on a whim, without a lot of
thinking, without a tremendous amount of preparation. And we're seeing the consequences.
I think that Trump, really, he plays a tactical game. He's got problems, and he deals with them impulsively, one after another. And if something
gives him a tactical advantage, he's a deal-maker. He's not a history- maker.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about Trump as deal-maker, transactional, tactical kind of guy, and not a strategist. All the things that he's been
saying, which appear often to be contradictory, like we're talking to the Iranians when there's no evidence of that, we want to, you know, make sure
their nuclear saying, which appear often to be contradictory, like we're talking to the Iranians when there's no evidence of that, we want to, you
know, make sure their nuclear program is never even, you know, used again, much less being a threat. We've won. Even if we move out without opening
the Straits of Hormuz, that's up to others.
What do you think that public messaging says to Americans, but most importantly to the Iranians at this crucial time?
SICK: I think the Iranians don't trust a single thing that they hear from him or the Americans. I mean, I think Iran's relationship with the United
States -- I mean, we've been disappointed, they've disappointed us, they've done things that we didn't want them to do and took us by surprise, and
we've done the same kind of thing.
And I would say both sides look at this and think the other side is completely untrustworthy and unworthy of even serious attention.
AMANPOUR: In 2015, in his second term, Obama did instruct his experts to engage in serious negotiations with the Iranians, and it took a couple of
years, but they came out with a JCPOA, which most analysts say was maybe not perfect, but it was good, and it was an arms control agreement and
nothing more, nothing less.
SICK: That's right.
AMANPOUR: It took two years, and in the interim, or just before it, when Obama addressed the Iranians as the Islamic Republic of Iran, Khamenei, the
now-assassinated supreme leader, responded, told people to stop chanting, death to America. We will judge depending on what this president does. He
said, you change your behavior, and ours will change, too. Was that, to you, rhetoric, or was it real?
SICK: No, no, it was real. Actually, Iran wanted people to acknowledge who they were, what they were, the Islamic Republic. We laughed at that, and I
remember from the very first day, I was walking out of the State Department while this was going on, the revolution was just over, and I ran into a
very senior Washington know-it-all type guy, and he said, look, this group isn't going to last six weeks. And he took -- and these guys, it's about as
much attention as he would give to them.
AMANPOUR: So, 47 years later, they're still here. And given that they are the military underdogs, they are still fighting their corner.
SICK: Basically, Iran has mastered, in many ways invented, the whole business about asymmetrical fighting, about dealing with somebody who's
bigger and tougher than you are, which is basically everybody else in the world, I mean, every major power.
I must say, if I can just stop for a second, I was taught in the U.S. government, I was an intelligence officer for years and years in the Navy,
and we were told unequivocally that the United States is not in the business of assassination. We do not kill senior leaders and the like under
any circumstances. And I thought that was a very sensible position, because in the first place, you kill somebody at a high level, and then you can be
sure you've created a whole body of people who are going to come after you or come after your country forever, and they're never going to go away.
And just -- anyway, never mind. But --
AMANPOUR: Plus, you have nobody to negotiate with.
SICK: But assassination is not an answer.
AMANPOUR: Let's get back to the history. Now, you served Carter, Reagan, Ford on this particular issue, right?
SICK: Correct.
AMANPOUR: The revolution. President Carter, who you served, went to Iran famously on the Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, 77 into 78, state visit in
Tehran, and declared the Shah was the guarantor of an island of stability in the Middle East. Those were his words. And eight days later, the
revolution started bubbling.
You guys, you're an intelligence official, clearly got it wrong. The cables that were going back and forth from the embassy in Iran to Washington were
like, no, no, there's no sign of revolution on the horizon. How badly did you all disservice your government?
SICK: I've spent now 40 more years looking at that and thinking about it and considering what really went on. And I would say unequivocally that
this was one of the greatest intelligence failures in American history. You've got to start with Kissinger and Nixon, who came to Iran and talked
to the Shah just before all of this started.
[13:10:00]
The Shah told them, I will be happy to act as your representative in the Gulf and take care of your interests, but don't go looking over my
shoulder. If you want to know what's going on in Iran, ask us. Ask me, and I'll tell you. And of course, he didn't know what was going on in Iran part
of the time. But more than that, he wouldn't tell us if it was really a crucial issue.
AMANPOUR: Of course not. It wasn't in the Shah's interest. Did you meet the Shah?
SICK: I met him.
AMANPOUR: What impression did you have of him? Why do you think he said no?
SICK: When he was operating according to a script, he was very reliable and really quite good. When he departed from the script, he was really
uncomfortable. He didn't know what he was doing, and he didn't trust his own instincts at all.
AMANPOUR: So, let's just hold a second, because the massive wall of distrust between Iran and the United States, there have been many
occasions. For instance, during the revolution, the hostage crisis. Before that, the U.S. coup that brought basically the Shah back against a kind of
democratically appointed Mossadegh. And that was partly because Mossadegh nationalized the oil. The Brits didn't like that.
SICK: That's right.
AMANPOUR: They involved themselves in the coup, partly because the U.S. was very concerned about Iran toppling and therefore a real ally in the
Cold War disappearing, right?
SICK: Yes. Opening the Soviets.
AMANPOUR: So, they bring the Shah back, and that almost creates --
SICK: But you have to go back before that. When -- it looked as if things were really going to pot, what did the Shah do? He just picked up and ran.
He went off to Italy. And it was only after we and the Brits stirred up the revolution on his side that he came back and was put into place.
AMANPOUR: So, you paid people, essentially, on the ground to do -- to shout for the Shah and bring him back?
SICK: I mean, that sense of grievance that the Iranians had of our interference with their form of government and with their way of thinking
was really considered beyond the pale. And if you look at some of the things that are going on now about, you know, the assassination campaign
that is underway plus destruction of things, and I think about just mistakes. I mean, in the first day of the war, we sent a missile in to a
girls' school.
AMANPOUR: This was in Minab, in the South. The U.S. hasn't admitted it, by the way, even though initial forensic investigations say it was a tomahawk.
SICK: Yes. It's pretty clear that that --
AMANPOUR: And it says that it was based on old maps.
SICK: It was an old map that they used, that it wasn't accurate anymore. But in the process, we killed over 100 schoolgirls. And that's 100 families
that will never forgive us for what we did. And what -- regardless of your strategic objectives or anything else, that's a high price to pay. It
really is.
AMANPOUR: Talking about the attack on the girls' school and Trump's apparent pivot to actually war and military intervention, whether it's in
Venezuela, whether it might be in Cuba, whether it's in a big way now in Iran, how does that sit with you? Because there's been no legal effort to
get consensus around going to war. War seems to be now the default action or some kind of military intervention seems to be a default action for the
United States.
SICK: I think with everything we do, we are undercutting the laws of war. And basically, over the past several centuries, we've gradually been
accumulating and growing laws of war about how you behave in a war. And it doesn't keep us from going to war, but it does mean that you only do it
under certain circumstances. When there's an imminent threat, there was no imminent threat.
Jimmy Carter had an imminent threat. If he had wanted to go to war with Iran, he had an excuse. He had a reason to do it. Trump had no such excuse.
And we are just flouting the laws of war, humanitarian procedure, and there's a cost that goes with that.
We're the superpower. We're the strongest country in the world, and we are supposedly a country of laws. And yet, we're the ones that are just
battering away at these rules that have grown up over years for very good reasons. I mean, they aren't there just casually. You don't attack somebody
just out of the blue. You have to have a reason to do these things. You don't act disproportionately.
[13:15:00]
So, if you get hit and two of your people get killed and you wipe out a village, that's not proportional, and it's against the laws of war. And
there's a whole series of things, and we're breaking those laws every day.
AMANPOUR: You're 91 years old. You've had a lifetime of public service. Did you ever think that you would see your country in this position?
SICK: No. I would have -- no. I'm not -- I've been around enough to know that you can't predict the future and that it surprises you, but I would
never have believed that we would find ourselves in the position that we're in as the rogue nation in the world.
AMANPOUR: There have been a lot of miscalculations. We talked about Iranian mistrust of America, American mistrust of Iran because of the
hostage crisis and other things. But Iran, and it showed up even after 9/11, has been historically the most pro-American country in the entire
region. Even now, the people of America's Arab allies are not pro-American, by and large, even though the leaders may be.
What could America have done to capitalize on the fact that this massive country of almost 100 million were pro-Western and pro-American, even under
this theocratic regime?
SICK: I have to say that Obama got it just about right. He addressed them in a form that made them look good or that at least recognized their
sovereignty and their individual government. He negotiated with them directly over a long period of time. He sent probably the best nuclear team
that the United States has ever assembled, and he put them to work for more than a year talking to the Iranians.
Look at any other president, and you don't see any of that. It was, how do we get rid of Iran? How do we stop them? How do we make them look bad? And,
unfortunately, it just doesn't work. They desperately appreciated the fact that Obama took them seriously. But, of course, Obama paid a big price for
it in the United States.
AMANPOUR: First and foremost, no matter how Iran negotiated with the U.S. finally in the JCPOA, it has demonstrated that it is a great threat to its
own people, and most recently with the massacres after the last serious set of protests. How can the United States deal with a country like that?
SICK: Well, it's exactly the problem that Obama faced, and he waited until his second term. He knew he was taking a chance. He paid a high price for
it politically, and people are still giving him a hard time, Obama, I mean, for trying to open up in some form to Iran.
But, in reality, we deal with a lot of governments that we don't agree with, and we even make friends with them. And you realize the Vietnam War
was going on at roughly the same time as the Iranian Revolution, and there we lost more than 50,000 Americans who were killed as a result of it. And
within a few years afterwards, we were dealing with them, we had full relations with them, developing close relationships, not because we loved
them or that we appreciated what they had done, but because it was to our advantage to do that. The same thing could have happened.
Basically, if you want the idea of historic mistakes, and I think we're in one right now, the fact that Iran took the American hostages and held them
and humiliated us over a period of more than a year, it actually entered the American psyche in a way that we can't escape it.
And so, we hate Iran more than we should, probably, and more than it's good for us. We would be smart to find a way to deal with them the same way we
deal with Vietnam and other countries, not to mention Russia and China, where we've had developed relationships because we needed to for strategic
reasons.
[13:20:00]
So, I -- but they did that to us, and nobody had ever forgiven them for it. And I can't forgive them either. You know, that it was a stupid, stupid
thing to do. They got a tactical advantage out of it. They won elections in the country, carried their revolution forward. But it was a stupid thing to
do, and it's hugely costly. It has cost them in ways that we can't even imagine.
AMANPOUR: Including right now.
SICK: Including.
AMANPOUR: Gary Sick, thank you so much for your unique perspective.
SICK: Thank you. Great to see you again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Sobering lessons indeed. Later in the program, the cost of proving your innocence. Adrien Brody brings the real-life story of a
wrongful conviction to Broadway.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, to the U.S. justice system, and this is a story of injustice, memory, and the fragile line between truth and conviction. "The
Fear of 13" tells the real-life story of a man who spent more than two decades on death row for a crime he insists he did not commit, only to be
exonerated by DNA evidence. The play has traveled from London's West End to Broadway, and it brings this story to life through an intimate portrait of
survival, belief, and failures.
I sat down with Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody, who takes on the role, and playwright Lindsey Ferrentino, who wrote it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Lindsey Ferrentino, Adrien Brody, welcome to the program.
ADRIEN BRODY, ACTOR, "THE FEAR OF 13": Thank you.
MCKAY COPPINS, PLAYWRIGHT, "THE FEAR OF 13": Thank you.
AMANPOUR: You're a very serious dude. Can I just start by asking you something a bit funny that I read? I didn't see it.
BRODY: First of all, I was going to say, am I? You don't know me that well.
AMANPOUR: Was there a Super Bowl ad that you did when you kind of made fun of your own serious self?
BRODY: Yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: How, what, when?
BRODY: I thought it was brilliant. When they submitted that to me --
AMANPOUR: Although you say it youself.
BRODY: -- I -- well, no, I didn't create it, but I thought it was conceptually quite fun to come up with that idea, but also, to have the
opportunity to laugh at a certain perception, not only of myself, but of serious actors. And --
AMANPOUR: Can you give us just one line?
BRODY: From the commercial?
AMANPOUR: Yes, yes.
BRODY: I can handle that for you. I'm sure they're going to be thrilled. You just plugged them. But the funny line was, can I cry? Because I'm just
looking for an opportunity to find some drama. And there is no drama, and that's the whole point.
AMANPOUR: No, there isn't, because it's a -- anyway, we won't go into the product placement. But this is now drama. Now --
BRODY: No, we're talking about serious stuff.
AMANPOUR: Now, you're serious. And I saw this play in London at the Donmar, I believe it was, right, Donmar? Amazing. What is it about the
character of Yarris that drew you in and made you want to play this?
BRODY: Well, it's Nick Yarris's story, and who is the man that I portray, who is a man who'd served over two decades on death row, incarcerated for a
crime that he had not committed. So, that alone speaks to not just his individual plight and the grave injustice that he's experienced, but this
pervasive sense of injustice, which references an even greater injustice that you're very privy to in the world of news and what we experience.
[13:25:00]
And for me as an artist or in an artistic capacity to be able to explore and help open the conversation and consider these grave issues and ailments
within our society are very important and meaningful.
Lindsey wrote an incredible play, incredible work. It is incredible. And the words were so moving that they pulled me out of my own apprehension of
doing theatre for many years and getting back up onto the table.
AMANPOUR: And this is your first Broadway, yes?
BRODY: First time doing Broadway.
AMANPOUR: Yes. How does it feel?
BRODY: It's very exciting. I'm enjoying it. You know, I find it exhilarating. It's exhausting, but it's just --
AMANPOUR: Yes, you're on all the time, and sometimes more than once a day.
BRODY: Yes, we just had two shows.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
BRODY: It's very alive, and I love communing with an audience, and I love the relationship that ensues. And every night it's different, and certain
things they find amusing, and certain things they gasp and find shocking, and it's really a wonderful exchange.
AMANPOUR: And, Lindsey, you wrote it. As Adrien's talking, you know, obviously in the United States people know, especially through the news and
documentary, of this massive and pervasive injustice, and the whole idea of DNA exoneration is not new.
So, how do you see audiences react differently? Because maybe they're not as -- you know, maybe they don't know as much about this in the U.K. as
they do here. Do you see a different reaction?
FERRENTINO: Yes, we've been talking about this a lot, is that I feel like in the U.K. when the play was done, you got a lot of gasps, because the
audience doesn't have the death penalty. They can look at the play with a sort of critical distance and go, isn't it crazy, the justice system in
America? Whereas the audience reaction here, there are shocks, you know, shocks in the play and gasps, but there's also a sort of knowingness to the
audience response and an anger and a complicity, I think, in the part of the audience that we're all sort of complicit in a system, in a culture, in
a country that produces stories like this.
AMANPOUR: That's so interesting to use the word complicit, actually. And I understand from Lindsey that there was quite a lot of rewrites from the
London version that I saw to this one. What do you think needed to be adjusted and why were there rewrites?
BRODY: It's a -- I think it's just a --
FERRENTINO: Why were there --
BRODY: Why? That's what I've been asking.
FERRENTINO: Why?
AMANPOUR: I'm going to ask you both.
BRODY: I've been asking that question. No, there are -- you know, I think there are opportunities to discover things. Night after night you discover
things, even as a performer. And I think Lindsey's had time to, you know --
AMANPOUR: Adjust.
BRODY: Well, not just adjust, but to hone in on details, storytelling approaches, things that work differently with different settings. I mean,
this is a new iteration of the play. It's not, you know, entirely new cast, wonderful work, and every individual's own sensibilities crafts a different
call and response. And certain things may have been comedic in London, or certain things shouldn't quite be as comedic, and they're landing quite
comedic here. And that's not wonderful for where we are in the story. And so, we'll all discuss that and Lindsey will --
AMANPOUR: And yet, when we read about it, I'm going to ask you to just give us a brief synopsis for our viewers.
FERRENTINO: Yes, sure.
AMANPOUR: You know, it's obviously very dramatic, very sad, but darkly humorous.
FERRENTINO: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Tell me about Nick Yarris and why the dark humor? What was it about him?
FERRENTINO: Well --
BRODY: He exudes.
FERRENTINO: He exudes. And so do you.
BRODY: Yes. So do I.
FERRENTINO: You know, I think, you know, Nick was a man who's wrongfully incarcerated on death row for 22 years and was able to exonerate himself
through his love of storytelling and his ability to articulate his own story, which he learned in prison, from reading books and finding his own
voice.
But I think also, when you talk to anyone who's ben incarcerated, they don't want their incarceration to be the only thing that defines their
existence. And so, I think it was important in the telling of the story that we capture, and it's something that I'm so grateful to Adrien also has
helped pull out all of these different sides of this person. That he was a romantic and an adventure seeker, and he's hilarious. And he has a gallows
sense of humor about his time in prison, and that you want the character to contain those multitudes, you know.
[13:30:00]
AMANPOUR: Twenty years is a huge, long, long time. Did he come out bitter, or did he come out grateful or what was --
BRODY: I -- you know, I don't -- I'm sure it's very complex. And what I admire about Nick is that he -- the man that I understand today, and the
man who presents himself to the world, is someone who's incredibly empathetic, genuinely interested in others. He's worked tirelessly to help
exonerate other former inmates.
And he has -- you're very aware of the harrowing circumstances that this man has endured in his life. Yet, all the edge and everything that is
within him that has kept him alive, and he kind of expresses a great deal of grace, and a great deal of humanness, and understanding, you know.
To suffer gives you understanding of the suffering of others, you know. And you can find great depths of suffering within the world around you if you
have a glimpse of it, and he's had more than his share.
AMANPOUR: And he's obviously quite deep. You say that he read a lot, and "The Fear of 13," the word -- tell me where that comes from, because it's a
word he discovered as he was reading. There's some Greek version, can you pronounce it?
BRODY: Oh, Triskaidekaphobia? Sure.
AMANPOUR: Oh, there you go.
BRODY: Sure. Yes.
AMANPOUR: What was it again?
BRODY: Triskaidekaphobia. It's actually a real phobia, but it's less about that as much.
AMANPOUR: Then why did you use it as a title?
FERRENTINO: Well, it is the title of the documentary, and Nick, which in the documentary, in prison, he learns all of these words, and he self-
educates, and that's one of the words that he learns, and sort of a passing reference in the documentary. But in the play, we've taken it, and he had a
very -- I won't go into detail about it, a traumatic experience at a young age, and 13 becomes a sort of symbolic metaphor for becoming a man.
AMANPOUR: And you also said that he was a romantic, and that comes through, and we know that he had a romantic relationship with the other
character in the play, who is the activist who basically comes to try to figure out if she can, you know, help him with his case. Tell me a little
bit about that relationship.
FERRENTINO: So, in the play, there's a woman named Jackie who comes in to visit him with an abolitionist group looking to abolish the death penalty.
And they come into prisons, regardless of guilt or innocence, and just sit across from someone and say, tell me your story, and I'm just here to
witness your story. And in doing that, they develop a sort of deep friendship, which turns into love, which turns into him reigniting his
spark to fight for his own innocence.
AMANPOUR: And they get married?
FERRENTINO: They do get married.
AMANPOUR: Are they still married?
FERRENTINO: No.
AMANPOUR: No, OK. All right. I won't go there. But he's still alive, Nick, right?
FERRENTINO: Yes, he's at the show every day.
AMANPOUR: So, you met him. He was -- was he in the writer room?
BRODY: Yes. He's very much alive. Yes.
AMANPOUR: Yes?
BRODY: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And what was it like meeting him? Does he have a say in how his story is told?
BRODY: He's been very involved, you know, and very helpful to have Nick's approval. And it's beyond approval. I really love what this feels like for
Nick. I think it's quite freeing and healing in a lot of ways, as I can only imagine, to have all your hardships and story, and to be such a
wonderful storyteller yourself, to have someone like Lindsey to find the eloquence of weaving his poetic language and gregariousness, and then to
offer it to someone to conjure up every night and share it with people. And it is quite moving. And -- so, I think it's been quite healing for him.
It's been wonderful for me to see his response to it. Yes.
AMANPOUR: And the people's response to him and his story. You are both New Yorkers, as far as I gather. You were born and raised here and went to
school here, and now you're treading the boards for the first time on Broadway, for sure.
For both of you, what does it mean to be New Yorkers delivering this work of art here in New York at this stage in your career? For you first.
[13:35:00]
BRODY: Well, you know, I started acting very young, and my first work as a boy started in the theater off Broadway, Lower East Side and in Brooklyn at
BAM. And --
AMANPOUR: That's quite something.
BRODY: Yes.
AMANPOUR: BAM to be your first.
BRODY: Yes. I did a workshop with Elizabeth Swados at 11 or 12.
FERRENTINO: Wow.
BRODY: Yes, it was wonderful.
AMANPOUR: What was the play? I don't recall. I was so young. It was a long time ago. But I do remember her very well, and I remember a similar bond
that I always say that I loved in London and I love here, is when you get to work with a troop of actors on a play, and you all have to lift each
other up every day. It's such a lovely thing.
It's very different from film. You can get that with one or two actors that you gel with, but film is quite compartmentalized. The process, the
relationship with others, and, you know, it's so beautiful to be up, again, lifting each other up, responding from each other every night, and relying
on one another. And I think it forms this quite intimate, and you're vulnerable, and it's so beautiful.
And I remember that from those days. I remember sitting around. We'd all eat our cheap Chinese food and talk and have a thing. I was so young, and I
just loved --
AMANPOUR: Camaraderie.
BRODY: -- camaraderie but also, sharing this love of acting and expression with others who were gifted and finding inspiration, all of it. And there's
stuff every night that I look at certain things people do, and they're so nuanced and fun and alive and their own, and it's beautiful. And so, it's
such a treat to watch people.
I mean, you know, Tess is wonderful, and each actor on the stage with me every night is bringing something that's so special. And I can't -- that
has never left, and that's, I guess, the beauty of it. Of course, the privilege and the honor of overcoming my own fear of getting up and doing
Broadway, because it is quite a task.
But I -- it's a beautiful thing. I'm very honored, and I've always admired the Broadway community and the community of actors who are capable and
brave enough to present work on a stage night after night, eight shows a week for an audience and so on.
AMANPOUR: And, Lindsey, for you, both of your plays, "The Queen of Versailles" and this one, have been taken from documentaries. Do you think
you'll do the reverse? Have you done the reverse before, done documentaries and film?
FERRENTINO: No, but I think I -- I used to write only fiction, but I always did an extreme amount of research and was always looking for a true
story that I then fictionalized. And I think during COVID, when things were so uncertain, I was just looking for grounding in truth, so started doing
these true stories. I don't know if it will continue that way, but it's an amazing -- it's an invitation to bring people into your life when you're
doing a true story about someone who actually exists in the world and sort of expands your awareness in a more real way, which is so thrilling, yes.
AMANPOUR: Well, it's out there. It got great reviews in London, and I'm sure it will here. It's in previews right now, right?
FERRENTINO: It is, yes.
AMANPOUR: OK. Lindsey Ferrentino, Adrien Brody, thank you very much indeed.
FERRENTINO: Thank you. Thanks for having us.
BRODY: A pleasure to see you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: "The Fear of 13," as produced and acted by our two guests, is currently on Broadway now.
Coming up, after the break, he set out to report on America's betting boom but got pulled in himself. What McKay Coppins of The Atlantic discovered.
That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:40:00]
AMANPOUR: Now, a different spectacle as March Madness grips America and huge sums are wagered on college basketball, one journalist decided to step
inside the frenzy. McKay Coppins of The Atlantic spent a year as what he calls a degenerate gambler, placing bets throughout the American football
season to understand the explosive rise of legalized sports betting and the hold it now has on millions of Americans. He's joining Michel Martin to
discuss what the normalization of betting reveals about modern American culture.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. McKay Coppins, thanks so much for joining us once again.
MCKAY COPPINS, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Happy to do it.
MARTIN: You know, we think of you as a political journalist. You know, you do these deep dives into complex policy issues. You did this great
biography of Mitt Romney. What made you think of gambling? Because you didn't just sort of do kind of the usual outside-in journalistic approach,
like interview people.
The Atlantic spotted you some dough and said, gamble this, kind of become part of this world, you know, and see how it goes. And that presented a
problem for you ethically, right? Because of your faith practice. You're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gambling is
not something that is approved of, you know, by the church. So, what did you do to kind of sort that through?
COPPINS: Well, I -- you know, I took the experiment to my bishop and had a very awkward conversation with him, which I write about in the piece.
Basically, I told him, look, my editors want to stake me $10,000 to gamble with for journalistic purposes, which right off the bat, you know, that
sounds like a preposterous thing to tell your bishop. And I kind of watched as a look of pastoral concern bloomed across his face.
And, you know, ultimately, he gave his kind of tacit blessing for the experiment. He recognized that gambling with my employer's money versus my
own was different. But he also said, look, I've seen this vice ruin enough people's lives that I can't let you leave without a word of warning. And he
told me some cautionary tales. And he talked about how this can become a slippery slope and what starts out as sort of a modest habit can really
come to consume your life. And the last thing he said to me before I left his office was, be careful.
And at the time, I will admit that I kind of shrugged him off a little smugly. You know, I said, look, this is a gimmick for a magazine article.
It's not going to affect me, you know, personally, spiritually. It's not going to be a big deal. And I have to say, in retrospect, his warning was
actually kind of prophetic.
MARTIN: You write that since legalization in 2018, Americans have wagered more than half a trillion dollars on sports. And roughly half of men aged
18 to 49 have online betting accounts. It's almost like it's like in the air now. Say more about that. Like, why is that?
COPPINS: Yes. I mean, there were a bunch of things that changed kind of all at once in the last decade. And I think it's easy to forget that this
new kind of Wild West era we're in is very new, right? As of 10 years ago, people were gambling around $5 billion a year on sports legally. Last year,
it was $160 billion.
The average person, if they wanted to gamble on sports, either had to go to Las Vegas or one of a handful of other jurisdictions where it was allowed,
or they had to seek out a bookie or call an offshore sportsbook in Antigua and, you know, really put some work in. What's changed is that once states
started to legalize it, the online sportsbooks just exploded in popularity, right?
All of a sudden, almost overnight, we took what was widely seen as a pretty dangerous vice that should be regulated and stigmatized and put it on
everyone's phone and eliminated all the friction that once existed to access that vice, right?
And so, when you say it feels like it's in the air, I agree with you. I mean, I feel like you can't watch sports. You can't talk about sports. You
can't listen to a sports podcast without just finding yourself in the middle of a conversation about gambling.
[13:45:00]
All the sports analysis, the punditry now is about point spreads and money lines and prop bets and parlays. And, you know, one statistic I came across
that I thought was really alarming was that almost a third of 11-year-old boys say that they have gambled in the past year in America.
MARTIN: Let's talk about you. You had an early win. You were up, what was it, 20 bucks?
COPPINS: 20 bucks on the first night, yes. Which may be the worst thing that could have possibly happened to me because I was all of a sudden
filled with irrational confidence that I could win a ton of money as a gambler.
MARTIN: Oh, my God. But it kind of went south pretty fast.
COPPINS: Yes.
MARTIN: You won just three out of your first 14 bets, but then somehow you had irrational exuberance and you still thought you could gain the system.
Why is that? That's kind of funny.
COPPINS: Well, you know, I think this is something inherent to the psychology of gambling, right, which is this industry thrives on people
believing that they are the exception, right? That they are the ones that are going to be able to beat the odds, beat the house, make money doing
this when almost nobody does. And I think this is important to know. Almost nobody wins at this, and yet we all believe we're going to be the
exception.
MARTIN: Yes. How is that possible? How is it that nobody can win?
COPPINS: Well, the whole kind of economy of online sports betting in particular is very deliberately rigged against the recreational better,
right? For one thing, for every bet that you make, the sports books essentially charge you four and a half percent, which means that after you
pay that and you pay taxes on your winnings, you actually need to win 55 percent of your bets to break even. It's not just enough to win most of
your bets.
And then there are all these other little things that the sports books do to kind of make sure that the average gambler is losing. So, for example,
you can bet on live games as they're happening. If you watch any given NBA game, NFL game, the line on your app on that game is constantly moving,
fluctuating based on what's happening on the field or the court. But if you're watching from home on TV, you might not realize that you're watching
on a 20 to 30-second delay. The sports books have a live data feed on what's happening in the game. And so, you're essentially betting against
somebody who lives 30 seconds in the future.
And so, there -- yes, a hundred little things like this that ensure that the industry is almost always winning. And yet, again, they're so good at
making you think that you're going to be able to defy the odds. And they do it in insidious ways, right? If you go a couple of days, for example,
without gambling, they will send you something called a reload bonus or a no-sweat bet, basically enticing you back to the app saying, hey, we'll
give you free credits on our app to keep you gambling, right, or if you lose your next bet, we'll just refund you with more credits that you can
use for your next bet.
MARTIN: When did you realize, oh, you know, bishop might have had a point here? Maybe this is not the fun, detached intellectual exercise that I
thought this might be. When did you start to notice?
COPPINS: I mean, honestly, it was just within a few weeks that I realized it was bleeding into my personal life. I mean, I very quickly was hiding in
the bathroom or in the kitchen pantry to put my bets in so that my kids wouldn't see me gambling on my phone. I was routinely staying up well past
midnight to watch the games that I was betting on and then staying up even later looking through DraftKings or FanDuel for more bets, which meant that
I was then sleeping in later.
I was less present with my family. My wife started to get annoyed, you know, that I wasn't available in the mornings to help with the kids. And we
got into an argument, I think, around October. And that was one of the first moments where I realized, oh, this isn't just affecting me. It's
affecting the people around me. And it really just got worse from there.
The truth is, even as I recognized that it was having an effect on my relationships, that it was making me more distracted, more irritable, less
present, I also didn't want to stop. I mean, you could have told me right then, we're calling off the story, the assignment's over, and I would have
wanted to keep going. It pretty quickly became clear that this was not just a journalistic exercise anymore, it was becoming more of an obsession.
MARTIN: It sounds like an addiction. It sounds like you know it's having a harmful effect on you, but you keep doing it anyway, you keep thinking,
you're -- it's going to -- you can stop any time I want.
[13:50:00]
You know, and it also -- you need more and more of the thing in order just to feel OK.
COPPINS: That definitely happened to me. I mean, I remember when I first started, I was putting about $100 on any given game, right? But what
happens is, after a while, you need more action to feel the kind of adrenaline rush of the bet. So, then it was $200, then it was $300, then by
the end, I was betting $500 on a game. And I was doing, you know, increasingly reckless bets, you know, multi-leg parlays, crazy long shot
prop bets that had very little chance of paying off.
But the fact that it was so risky made it more exciting, right? And most studies suggest that around 3 percent to 5 percent of people who gamble
online will eventually become gambling addicts. A much greater number will exhibit compulsive behaviors like I was. And it will start to bleed into
their lives.
MARTIN: Well, let me just bring in what the companies say about themselves. This is the, these are statements that we pulled from their
sites. The FanDuel says it's, quote, "committed to ensuring that every customer has access to the right tools and support," and that it encourages
users to, quote, "be aware of their betting habits and monitor their spending," end quote. DraftKing says, it's more fun when it's for fun and
urges people to only bet what you can afford. And it says they say they offer tools like limits and self-exclusion.
And when you hear those statements alongside your reporting, how do you assess that? Are those effective?
COPPINS: The tools are effective if the customers use them, but they're not required to use them. And I will say that even as somebody who came to
this as a complete novice, signed up for these apps, I wasn't even aware that these tools existed until several months into my reporting.
The -- once I was really looking into it, I interviewed some executives at FanDuel and DraftKings. I was made aware of all these tools and they're
great. I would not say that they lead with them. I would not say that if you pull up the app on any given day, it's telling you to slow down, to be
careful.
And look, I don't want to be too cynical here. I actually think that these companies do want to be good corporate citizens. What they told me was that
they don't want money from gambling addicts, that they do just fine with just regular people who are having fun as recreational gamblers. And I
think they believe that. But they're also running up against a basic economic reality of sports betting, which is that the overwhelming majority
of their profits and revenues come from the 10 percent of people who gamble the most.
And so, what that means is that they don't have a super strong economic incentive to kick people off their platforms who are gambling a lot, maybe
to excess, because that's how they make all their money.
MARTIN: So, let's talk about you again. How deep in the hole did you wind up at the end of it? I mean, the Atlantic Center are going to spot you 10
grand. How much did you really lose?
COPPINS: I returned to them about $120. The morning after the Super Bowl, I sat down at my desk and I looked through all my wagers and realized I had
basically lost everything and realizing that I didn't want to stop gambling, that even though the experiment was supposed to be over, I was
now looking at the March Madness odds and I was looking at, you know, the predictive markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. I realized that the
temptation was not going to go away.
And so, I actually signed what's called a self-exclusion form, which is available and pretty much every state that has online gambling. And if you
sign it, you submit it to the state and they cut off your access to online sportsbooks. The sportsbooks shut down your account. They are legally not
permitted to take your money. And so, yes, I signed one of those.
MARTIN: You mentioned Kalshi and Polymarket. People can essentially bet on everything from elections to the weather. Do you think that there's
something that needs to happen there?
COPPINS: Yes. No, to me, the prediction markets are, in some ways, kind of the logical endpoint of the sports betting explosion in America, right,
that we have taken the logic of gambling and the ease of online gambling and now extended it to everything else in American life, right? Culture,
art, politics, war. And I think it's really dangerous.
I think that the fact that you can gamble on whether a nuclear bomb will be detonated somewhere in America before the end of the year or how many
people will be deported or whether Gaza will experience a famine or, you know, all this kind of very serious, grave life or death issues is, I
think, morally repugnant. But also, the danger is that it kind of invites corruption, right?
[13:55:00]
It invites people with insider knowledge, military insiders, political insiders to cash in on their insider knowledge and maybe even more
dangerously, they could start manipulating public events Kalshi and Polymarket bets.
And, you know, who's to say that some military insider won't place a bet on Polymarket that a missile will strike somewhere in Tehran on a certain date
and then make sure that that happens, right? That this is where I think we need the most urgent regulation is on these prediction markets, because it
is truly a Wild West. They're completely unregulated. And I think they're kind of a disaster in the making.
MARTIN: McKay Coppins, thank you so much for talking with us.
COPPINS: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: So, beware the ides of March Madness. 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 New
York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
