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Amanpour
Interview with Legacy Podcast Co-Host and Oxford University Professor of Global History Peter Frankopan; Interview with Equal Justice Founder and Executive Director Bryan Stevenson; Interview with Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired April 10, 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.
PETER FRANKOPAN, CO-HOST, LEGACY PODCAST AND PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL HISTORY, OXFORD UNIVERSITY: 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.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: With a fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States, what hope for diplomacy to find a lasting solution? Historian Peter
Frankopan joins me.
Then --
BRYAN STEVENSON, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EQUAL JUSTICE: What people did here in 1955 by committing to a bus boycott birthed the modern
civil rights movement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- as Trump and company waged war on DEI inside America, elevating those who first fought for equality, civil rights leader Bryan
Stevenson tells me about the legacy of Montgomery in the 1950s.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A tiny little silver sliver that lives up above my backyard had been replaced by a gigantic three-dimensional bulbous thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- to the moon and back again. As the Artemis II crew make their way back to Earth, we hear again from the late astronaut Michael Collins,
who flew on the Apollo 11 mission.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
Both sides claiming victory, a fragile ceasefire and a lot of confusion. Pakistan is set to host talks between the United States and Iran after an
11th hour move this week, announcing a temporary two-week ceasefire and plans to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel and the United States insist that Lebanon is not covered by the ceasefire. And right after it was declared, indeed, Israel carried out its
heaviest bombing raid yet on that country, killing hundreds of people. So, will this torpedo the ceasefire? And after five weeks of deadly war, are
the U.S. and Iran effectively back to square one?
With me to discuss is historian Peter Frankopan. OK. Thank you for coming back to this program at this time. What do you make of where we are right
now? Winners, losers, the road ahead?
PETER FRANKOPAN, CO-HOST, LEGACY PODCAST AND PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL HISTORY, OXFORD UNIVERSITY: 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.
AMANPOUR: Can you imagine war, as we've just seen, breaking out again?
FRANKOPAN: Well, it's diminishing returns. There aren't that many targets left to hit in Iran. I mean, you could 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. And one of the questions that the U.S. 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?
AMANPOUR: 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 U.S. 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.
FRANKOPAN: Look, I think that's a real challenge. You know, 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 U.S. 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? And that's something that I think is unfortunate about how the U.S. has gone about this, which
is to place Iran in a position where it doesn't trust the world's military and political hegemon.
AMANPOUR: The United States?
FRANKOPAN: That's right.
[13:05:00]
AMANPOUR: Yes. 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 a win-win situation being able to be negotiated?
FRANKOPAN: 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. And 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 U.S. overplays its hand and now thinks it's in a position to dictate terms. And because the
American military is supreme globally and has done, you know, 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. And I think that that's a little bit of the fog now about
what a settlement might look like.
AMANPOUR: People who hear you saying generous will probably have their hair on fire. And also, the Iranians have been known to overplay their
negotiating hand. So, what you describe is a very febrile moment that takes real smarts, 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 their distrust. You've compared this, i.e., the Strait of Hormuz crisis, to the
Suez crisis of the '50s. Just remind us what that was and what the geo- strategic shift in power was then.
FRANKOPAN: Well, today we'll talk about choke points and the vulnerability of Hormuz, but there are lots of these all around the world. So, the Panama
Canal is one, the Bab el-Mandeb, the entry point to the Red Sea, another. 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 and 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 U.S. 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.
AMANPOUR: But did that also place the United States as the undisputed superpower? Because Britain was very strong in many parts of the world. It
still had empire.
FRANKOPAN: Yes, 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 U.S. sees the world, as you know better than anyone, Christiane, 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 U.S. 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 to militaries. 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.
AMANPOUR: 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.?
FRANKOPAN: Yes. Look, I don't think the U.S. is exhausted. I think the question is, what does the U.S. want? What does a 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 from 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.
[13:10:00]
So, we have a Chinese Marxist Leninist state talking about capitalism, about globalization, about free markets, in inverted commas, 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. You mentioned that Trump has
changed.
AMANPOUR: 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.
FRANKOPAN: You know, the world has changed as well since then. I mean, we've seen even the change of A.I. 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. You know, what happened in Venezuela, for example, was a set of circumstances that
created an 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 again, time
will tell whether that intervention in Iran leads to a more moderate and stable Iran.
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
to take territory off each other.
AMANPOUR: I.e., political power.
FRANKOPAN: Political, military, economic.
AMANPOUR: And where does this leave the 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?
FRANKOPAN: 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 has -- 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 from the jaws of defeat, or whether they're going to deliver defeat from the jaws of victory. There are
opportunities in these crises.
What we've seen since the 28th of February has been devastating, but no one is mourning the loss of an authoritarian regime in Iran. But it's whether
or not light will follow. And those embers, you know, we could 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.
AMANPOUR: It 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?
FRANKOPAN: No, but I think that, you know, the U.S. has a view, 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 lamb or semiconductors in other parts of the world at cheaper prices.
I think that political articulation of what an administration wants is not necessarily a bad thing. But the U.S. is --
AMANPOUR: It's a cultural war?
FRANKOPAN: Well, it's hugely confident about what it is that it thinks it wants. So, the U.S. 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 an American perspective on a day where we've seen Russian ships going after data cables
and undermining architecture in the North Atlantic? Is it helpful to be part of a group? And can the U.S. afford to alienate and antagonize even
its friends?
[13:15:00]
AMANPOUR: 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 U.S. pulls out of NATO for the rest of the alliance?
FRANKOPAN: 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 be what Trump meant, but that was signaled very clearly. J.D. Vance, in Budapest, talked about
the U.S. 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 wanted 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 U.S. leads supreme. And America first, which was Trump's call sign, has become America alone.
AMANPOUR: Historian Peter Frankopan, 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.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: We turn now to the culture war raging in America. Since taking office, President Trump and his cabinet have had DEIs squarely in their
sights, 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 boycott and with it a movement to help transform the country.
Bryan Stevenson, welcome back to our program.
BRYAN STEVENSON, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EQUAL JUSTICE: It's great to be with you.
AMANPOUR: 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're opening a new, I might say, challenge to that ideology and putting the legacy of racism and civil
rights right front and center. So, tell us about Montgomery Square.
STEVENSON: Yes. 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 the harms and legacy of slavery.
[13:20:00]
We haven't dealt with the challenges created by a hundred 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.
AMANPOUR: I was going to ask you why you focused specifically on that decade, but you've 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
bus. And your Montgomery Square has at its entrance, kind of, the bronze cast of her hands holding up her number, right, her arrest number when she
was arrested. Tell me about that moment, remind us all, and why you chose that image and that sculpture.
STEVENSON: Yes. I think in some ways 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 base. 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 E. D. 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 had 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 versus 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.
[13:25:00]
AMANPOUR: 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.
I want to play a little soundbite from Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery. She has childhood memories of life after the bus boycott ended.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VALDA HARRIS MONTGOMERY, VETERAN OF CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: After the boycott ended, that December 20th and December 21st when they took that
ride, everybody's cheering because you think all is kumbaya. And, you know, it wasn't because the very next month, January of 1957, there were two days
that we had bombings. One was January the 10th and one was January the 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 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.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And she talks about how her sister picked glass out of shoes that were placed by windows, 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.
STEVENSON: 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's 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 excluded. There were 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 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 OK.
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 was 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 at the landmark --
AMANPOUR: And frankly, it's continuing now. I mean, you've got prominent white administration people hitting back at decades of trying to 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: 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 Blackhawks 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.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: 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.
[13:05:00]
STEVENSON: Yes. 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 of incompetence, a presumption of unworthiness, a
presumption of incompetence, a presumption of incompetence, a presumption 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, 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 bases 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 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.
AMANPOUR: 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 a factual account of this era.
And I just wanted to ask you because, you know, you've been doing this for decades. You did meet Rosa Parks, the hero, as we've talked about, the bus
boycott. And you told her about your work and defending convicts on death row and wrongful convictions. She said, this is going to make you tired,
tired, tired. Are you?
STEVENSON: You know, actually, 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 walked 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, Christiane, 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 in 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.
[13:35:00]
AMANPOUR: As the great John Lewis said, make good trouble. You certainly are doing that. Thank you very much, Brian Stevenson.
STEVENSON: My pleasure.
AMANPOUR: And coming up after the break, as the crew of Artemis II 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.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back. Artemis II 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEREMY HANSEN, ARTEMIS II MISSION SPECIALIST: 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. What the perspective I launched with was that we live on a
fragile planet in the vacuum and the void of space. We know this 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 they're, you know, our purpose on the planet as humans is to
find joy, to find the joy and 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.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: 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 U.S. 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 stepped foot onto the lunar surface.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Michael Collins, welcome to the program.
MICHAEL COLLINS, APOLLO 11 ASTRONAUT: Thank you very much, Christiane. And I'm enjoying being here.
AMANPOUR: 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 blastoff to splash down that stands out, especially
for you.
COLLINS: I think of all the things that happened on Apollo 11, there was so many of them. I always regard the flight to and from the moon is like a
long and fragile days, the 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. Wow. Up until then you thought you were coming home but you couldn't be 100 percent sure. But you see the beautiful parachutes on
top of the Apollo Command Module and you say, here we go. It's OK.
AMANPOUR: Wow, 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?
[13:40:00]
Did you think when you were up there 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?
COLLINS: 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.
AMANPOUR: 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.
COLLINS: 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 bulb that's staying 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 it gave it a wonderful illumination accentuating the highs of the craters and the lows
of the (INAUDIBLE) upon which the craters were raised. It was a great thing. However, it was nothing compared to seeing the Earth from afar. That
was the main chance. That was it.
AMANPOUR: Oh, wow. I want to ask you about that. But let me first say, you called it, the most awesome sphere I have ever seen. The belly of its
bulges out toward us in such a pronounced fashion that I almost feel like I can reach out and touch it.
COLLINS: And I believe I added or I should have added it did not give us any feeling of welcome. If anything, it seemed like perhaps a slightly
hostile place, at least to me.
AMANPOUR: 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 you that celebrated this unique position 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 about how you saw your mission, even though you didn't step foot on the moon.
COLLINS: 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 and your lonely thoughts. Weren't you terribly lonely? And I was just amazed by that. I said, 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 had all been put 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 the culmination of
John F. Kennedy's dream to put someone on the moon by the end of the decade.
AMANPOUR: 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.
COLLINS: 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 the how do it. But as we went along that path toward the liftoff, 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, the end of the decade is coming and we're behind here and we got to do a better job
than the other place. It was a wonderful assistant to us in our preparations. I thought of it a great deal.
[13:45:00]
AMANPOUR: 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALTER CRONKITE, AMERICAN BROADCAST JOURNALIST: I had like to ask one of the small personal questions. Are you going to get tired of hearing them
talk about walking on the moon before these series of chores is over?
COLLINS: Not at all. I'm going to enjoy it very much. I -- 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 -- when they say, what are they doing attitude, and I'm very happy to have them fill me on those details
now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Again, I think that's so 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?
COLLINS: 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 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 I missed mission control was constantly yakking in my ear. So, I knew pretty much what was going on at all times.
AMANPOUR: 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could you describe what you're looking at? Over.
ARMSTRONG: You're seeing Earth, as we see it, on our left-hand window. Just little more than a half. We're looking at the Eastern Pacific Ocean in
the north half of the -- top half of the screen. We can see North America, Alaska, United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So. that was Neil Armstrong's observations. You also talked about this blue and white sphere and you wrote in capital letters that the
Earth looked fragile. Tell me about that.
COLLINS: 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, and I've got the world in my window. 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 is your healthy today? How are you feeling today, world? Are you OK? Are you
fragile? What kind of fragility are you suffering from? Can we help you? Can we do anything about it?
AMANPOUR: And, you know, it's interesting because that is front and center of so many people's minds 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 has seen it up there, would you give to world leaders?
COLLINS: Well, I do, in fact, worry about our population. 8 billion, as you say, and before we know it, there will be 10 billion and that is 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.
AMANPOUR: 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?
[13:50:00]
COLLINS: Our relationship during our training was that 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 we had the weight of the world on our 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 the student of history, primarily a history of science. Wherever we went, he was our spokesman. When we went on our around-the world-trip after
our 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. Everyone where we went people said, we did this thing. And part of that was seeing Neil up close.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
COLLINS: But I think that's his legacy is, hey, we did it. We human beings left this stinky 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.
AMANPOUR: 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 Oval 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 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 asked you this before. You would have returned to Earth, right?
COLLINS: That's correct. I had no landing gear on my machine. I couldn't go down and help them in any way. So, the choice was to commit suicide or
come home by myself, and I would have come home by myself. It would not have been a happy trip and I knew I would be a marked man for the rest of
my life if that should ensue, but those were the choices.
AMANPOUR: Wow. It's so stark. And so, I want to play this really very, very amusing picture, which is you're all in quarantine just after you
splashed down. 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?
COLLINS: No, I don't recall that I said it was pointless. I perhaps said it was pointless that our colony of white mice was so large. At the time, I
had been reading a book by John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men," and I got thinking about that. Oh, 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
brought any deadly pathogens back with us or not.
Now, if the white mice were happy, there were a bunch of them, maybe 30 of them. 30 little guys were scampering around. And if they were happy, we
were happy. If they started dying, oh, oh, oh.
[13:55:00]
So, when I consider Steinbeck and "Of Mice and Men," my conclusion is the mice are more important than the men.
AMANPOUR: Well, Michael Collins, what a great way to end and congratulations.
COLLINS: Well, thank you, Christiane. Take care of London.
AMANPOUR: I will. And you take care of our world.
COLLINS: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: 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.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
