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Amanpour
Interview with CJP Founder and National Convener Abhijeet Dipke; Interview with Venezuelan Conductor Gustavo Dudamel; Interview with Climate.us Director and Managing Editor Rebecca Lindsey. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired August 14, 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)
ABHIJEET DIPKE, FOUNDER AND NATIONAL CONVENER, CJP: It was really heartbreaking to see that the police was using pellet guns against
students. But despite of that, the students didn't go back to their homes. They continued the protest and they responded to the brutality with memes
and humor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Is India on the cusp of change as the youth take to the streets? I speak to the head of its Gen Z street movement, the Cockroach Janta
Party.
Then --
GUSTAVO DUDAMEL, VENEZUELAN CONDUCTOR: It's a moment. It's a moment of connection. It's a moment of interaction. It's a moment of empathy. And
when you understand that, that is not only the technical thing, it's not only the historical thing that it says not is about feeling, then it
changed everything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- the power of classical music with maestro Gustavo Dudamel. We talk about his extraordinary career and his love for his homeland,
Venezuela, which is still reeling from devastating earthquakes.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REBECCA LINDSEY, DIRECTOR AND MANAGING EDITOR, CLIMATE.US: The administration disbanded all of those scientists and completely took the
entire website offline. So, now all of the most authoritative reports on climate impacts in the U.S. in the United States have been taken down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- extreme heat this summer, denial from the Trump administration and the battle for accurate climate change information.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
In India, the youth are demanding they be heard. This week has seen another protest movement escalate with thousands of young job seekers and students
taking to the streets in one of the country's poorest states. It is part of a week's long protest demanding reforms to the recruitment processes for
government jobs. And it comes just after the emergence of the Cockroach movement, a youth led campaign demanding exam and education reform. It
began with defiant irony online, but quickly grew into a national outcry, culminating in the resignation of the education minister.
So, as the country gets ready to celebrate 79 years of independence from Britain tomorrow, the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP
Party face one of the biggest and toughest challenges in years. The resignation of the education minister was a rare concession for the leader
devoted to his own strong man image.
Now, Abhijeet Dipke is the head of the Cockroach Janta Party, the face of India's first Gen Z movement that's resonating all over the world now. He
was recently a student at Boston University, and he's joining me from New Delhi. Abhijeet Dipke, welcome to the program.
ABHIJEET DIPKE, FOUNDER AND NATIONAL CONVENER, CJP: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: You know, I wonder how it feels to be the focus of so much international attention, obviously attention in India, but people are
looking at you and thinking, wow, this is the way to win politically. How do you feel now about your movement after the education minister resigned,
the government conceded quite a lot of the points that your movement was demanding?
DIPKE: Actually, it feels really good because the protest has been successful. We have been successful in getting the resignation of the
education minister who was responsible for the death of more than 20 students who died by suicide because of the paper leak that happened in the
medical entrance exam in India.
However, we believe that the resignation is not the biggest victory. The biggest victory is that people have become fearless while questioning the
government, because there was a trend happening in India where people were afraid of speaking up, people were scared of questioning the government
because whenever somebody used to speak against the government, they used to file cases against them, they even used to put them behind the jail.
And we saw even during this protest, there was extreme brutality done by the police officers against kids who were just 17, 18 years old. In front
of my own eyes, the police actually beaten up a 12-year-old girl. Some of the male police officers even tried to grab the girls by their neck and
they beat them with batons, tear gases and even pellet guns. It was really heartbreaking to see that the police was using pellet guns against
students.
[13:05:00]
But despite of that, the students didn't go back to their homes. They continued the protest and they responded the brutality with memes and
humor. And I think nothing could be more beautiful than that. And this was truly a victory of democracy.
AMANPOUR: So, let me ask you this, because you mentioned the trigger and that was the leaking of these medical exams. And the horrendous fact that
as you say, several people took their own lives over it. Can you explain to us why it is so dramatic, why it is so stressful that young people in India
were, felt that they had no chance and no choice other than to take their own lives?
We're sitting here in the U.K. this week as all, you know, A-level results and you know, results for university come out, end of high school results.
What is it about the Indian ones that are so dramatically important?
DIPKE: In India, whenever a child grows up, he goes to school, there is a pressure on him. There is expectations from them, from the children that
either they should become a successful engineer or a doctor. And you can see this across the world. Majority of the people that you see across the
world are mostly in the engineering field or even in the doctors, they are mostly Indians. And that is because in India, that is considered as one of
the most prestigious job one can have. And that is also the parameter of your success.
So, in India, either you have to become a doctor or an engineer, and only then you will be considered as someone who has a successful career. And
that is why the children in India always face a lot of pressure while growing up, even while studying, because they feel that if they don't
become doctor or an engineer, they have failed. Such is the situation and such is the, I would say, conditioning in the country.
And when there is this kind of conditioning, the students are already under a lot of stress, lot of burden, and they study for like 15 to 16 hours in a
day for three to four years, right, from the eighth grade, they start preparing for the engineering entrance exams and medical entrance exams.
And for that, there are all coaching institutions. So, the children go to a coaching institution as well as schools.
AMANPOUR: Yes. So, I understand. You've laid it out very clearly. And on top of all that, apparently some two-thirds of India's population is under
35 years old. So, we'll get to that in a second, but you also are a student.
How did this suddenly come to be? There you are working for your own academic progress, and you get up and come to India having started this
movement. What happened? How did it trigger it?
DIPKE: I had just graduated and completed my master's. And after that, I just saw the chief justice of India made a comment where he compared the
youth with cockroaches and parasites for criticizing the system. And I just made a tweet on that. How can the chief justice of India can make a comment
where he compares the youth with cockroaches and parasites?
And after that, the whole thing blew up. Many people started reposting, resharing that tweet. And after that, that led me to the idea, why not
launch a parody party, political party, which could be called as the Cockroach Janta Party, taking inspiration from the same word that the chief
justice of India used to demean the youth. And that particular satirical political party gained huge traction. And then we launched our social media
platforms for that parody political party.
But within four days, the Indian government banned those social media accounts on Twitter by calling me a national security threat. And I was an
international student, an Indian student in the U.S. I was there on an Indian passport. And my own government was calling me a national security
threat, someone who has lived his entire life in India, someone who has studied in the country and who has just came to the U.S. in just last two
years.
So, I was very disappointed, very disheartened. More than that, I was heartbroken that the government of my own country was calling me a national
security threat. And that is why I chose to come back to my country and to prove that I'm not a national security threat. If anything, I'm a patriot
and I love my country, just not in the way this government expects me to, but I do love my country.
AMANPOUR: So, it's very clear that, and you put your -- you know, your body in the -- you know, on the line there to defend democracy in your own
country. So, what happens next? Does this remain the CJP? Will it still keep the name Cockroach? Will you continue it as a political movement, or
has it done what you wanted it to do, got the resignation of a minister, got concessions from the government? Are you going to continue and do you
think it has legs, so to speak?
[13:10:00]
DIPKE: Christiane, I'm really happy to tell you that what began on 20 June in India, a sit-in protest that has spread across the country, now it's no
longer just the Gen Z, the Gen Alpha in the country. 10, 12-year-old kids are protesting in their schools, especially the public schools where they
are. Where facilities are very bad. The public schools in India are in like complete shambles. They don't have benches to sit on. They don't have
drinking water. They don't even have washrooms.
And for that, the Gen Alpha, these 10, 12 years old kids are protesting, taking inspiration from what happened during the Gen Z protest. And it has
already been spread across the country. So, we do believe that. What happened with the resignation of the education minister was just a
beginning to seek accountability from the system.
And now, everybody is starting their own protest, demanding accountability from the system, from the ministers. And people are raising their voices
like never before in last 10, 12 years.
AMANPOUR: Yes, Abhijeet Dipke, you know, because you've lived it, that the Modi government has been very successful in essentially blanking out and
suppressing a lot of political opposition, certainly media diversity and opposition. But since your movement, the BJP, Modi's party, has now lost a
constituency that it had held for three decades. And it appears to be, you know, on shaky ground, especially under, amongst the young voters and young
people.
Are you -- is this something you think will expand? Do you think his government is really on the defensive? And two, are you a one issue party
or does it go beyond all these education issues that you've just laid out?
DIPKE: OK. To answer your first question, it definitely has the potential because we do believe that because the government was so adamant and had
grown so arrogant in last one decade that it stopped listening to the people. And now, the people have like got really frustrated, really fed up
of this government. And that is why we saw such huge movement started with the Cockroach Janta Party. And now, we can also see its consequences, even
in the elections where they lost the seat where they were in power for last 30 years.
So, of course, if they are not going to listen to the people, if they are just going to ignore the people and keep torturing them, keep harassing the
citizens, this is what the result will be.
And to your second question, the Cockroach Janta Party will remain a public pressure group and education will be our core issue. But apart from that,
unemployment in India is the biggest crisis as of now because 80 percent of the unemployed people in the country are degree holders.
In India, in today's time, having a degree is no longer considered as an asset. It has become a liability. And people are really frustrated with
that because with the cost of living being unemployed has been really put people in a very difficult position where they are struggling for their
livelihoods.
AMANPOUR: And what about -- you know, you just said that you'd been accused by your government of being a threat, a national security threat.
As I said, you know, the mainstream media is not exactly a friend of diverse political parties who are opposed to the BJP.
Are you getting space? Are they trying to blank you? Do you think that you're able to get your message across or you still just on social media?
How are you campaigning and organizing, in other words?
DIPKE: No. So, we are holding meetings, like we are holding -- I'm really sorry. We are holding meetings in different parts of the country. We have
expanded our organization. We have expanded our core team. But yes, the government and the ruling party are still trying to suppress our voices.
Just yesterday, we were supposed to have a volunteers meet where more than thousand people had come together to discuss the road ahead. And we had
booked a venue, but the owner of the venue was threatened by the ruling party members, telling them that if you give venue to the Cockroach Janta
Party for a meeting, we will hang you upside down. These are the kind of threats that the people who are giving venues to the Cockroach Janta Party
to hold meetings, these are the kind of threats they are getting.
And apart from that, they are doing something very notorious with Meta. On Instagram, if you post anything with the word cockroach, the government has
asked Meta to suppress the social media reach of it. So, these are the things that they are trying to suppress our voices on social media and as
well on the ground. But I believe that's going to be useless since the people are really fed up and now the people are no longer scared of this
government and they will come out on the streets if the government keeps suppressing their voices.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you something, because you've probably heard this. Obviously, the government and those who oppose you have been saying that,
you know, your movement is also under foreign influence, that some of this big social media traction is bots. What is your answer to that?
[13:15:00]
DIPKE: Like, they are free to investigate us, why are they accusing us? You have all the machinery. You have all the agencies. Why don't you just
investigate us and why don't you just bring the factsheet? Why are you just keeping on accusing us? Go ahead, investigate us. And if we are guilty,
give us the punishment.
But since they are not investigating, they are just only accusing just to defame the movement, and this is not the first time. In last few years
whenever there has been a protest or whenever somebody has to speak up against this government, they have always been linked with foreign powers
be it the laborers. Be it the farmers or be it the doctors, whenever somebody has tried to speak against this government, they have always
linked them with foreign powers.
AMANPOUR: Yes. So, let me ask you finally here you are burst onto the Indian and the international stage but still I hear, correct me if I'm
wrong, that your mother as many, many Indian mothers and fathers want to matchmake you, to get her son married. Is that true? Are you going to
submit to the motherly pressure? Are you going to go back to your college in in in in the United States or are you staying right where you are?
DIPKE: No. I'm going to stay put in India. I've come back to my home and I'm going to be here and I have already completed my studies in the U.S.
And so, I'm not going to go back.
And come into the matchmaking thing, Indian parents don't care what you do in your life. They don't care at all. The only thing they care about is
when are you going to get married, when their kid is going to get married. I'm not going to submit to that pressure because right now my top most
priority is to carry forward the movement, to carry forward the Cockroach Janta Party and do whatever is possible to make a meaningful change in the
country.
AMANPOUR: Well, Abhijeet Dipke, I wish you good luck dealing with your parents and really it's going to be very interesting to watch your progress
that has been so remarkable and so inspiring around the world. So, thanks for being with us.
DIPKE: Thank you, Christiane. Thank you so much.
AMANPOUR: No matter how far you go, how high you climb, a mother has her priorities and of course we continue to ask the Indian government for their
perspective.
Later in the program, a visit to London's stunning Royal Albert Hall to meet the most celebrated conductor of his generation. My interview with
Gustavo Dudamel after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, this summer as ever music is taking over London for the annual proms. It's a 131-year-old classical music festival which is held at
the Royal Albert Hall, and one of the main draws this year the Venezuelan dynamo, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra. He's taken
that from strength to strength since he picked up the conductor's baton there 17 years ago.
And now, he's going out on a high as he heads east to take over the New York Philharmonic. It is a triumphant moment for Dudamel but it's tinged
also with some tragedy. His homeland Venezuela still struggling in the wake of the devastating earthquakes that struck it in June killing more than
6,000 people.
[13:20:00]
I spoke to Dudamel at the Royal Albert Hall about music, empathy, and why classical is never going out of fashion.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Gustavo Dudamel, welcome back to our program.
GUSTAVO DUDAMEL, VENEZUELAN CONDUCTOR: Thank you very much.
AMANPOUR: So, if I could say, you are the it man of the conducting world or the cultural world right now. You're about to take over the New York
Philharmonic from the L.A. Philharmonic. You conducted the Muppets in halftime at the World Cup Final, and you're literally everywhere. What does
it feel like at this stage of your career to be so relevant still and so much part of the cultural dialogue?
DUDAMEL: Well, I think -- first of all, thank you. It's so wonderful to be back talking to you. It's such a pleasure. And you know, I think this --
you know, I go back to my childhood, and I didn't want to be a famous conductor conducting the big orchestras. For me, it was like to be with my
friends and having fun making music and enjoying what we were doing. And it's exactly the same thing. When I have the chance to do this kind of
crazy and amazing things, it's exactly the same feeling.
And I think it's good in the sense of, for young people, I'm not anymore as young as I was before, you know, to be a reference, but for them to see
that, you know, also classical music, it have a very fun and joyful side, which is not.
AMANPOUR: Well, that is actually really interesting. I was going to ask you, because the first half of your performance was Beethoven, and then you
have more contemporary in the second half. What is it about classical music that really strikes you? And what makes it lasting? Because people say, oh,
you know, the kids don't care, but they do. I saw the age range of the people who came to see you here.
DUDAMEL: That's true. You know, my thing is, when you really understand the action of music, that is not only the entertainment, because then you
start to compare, you know, this kind of music, I like this. When you see the action, all music, I will not put only classical music, is to be part
of a very special dimension. It's a moment.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DUDAMEL: It's a moment of connection. It's a moment of interaction. It's a moment of empathy. And when you understand that, that is not only the
technical thing, it's not only the historical thing that it says, if not, it's about feeling, then it changed everything.
When we play "Pastoral Symphony," for example, Beethoven wanted for people to feel, not only to listen to music, if not to feel that they were in the
summer, enjoying the nature and all of that. I think for us, it's very important to, with our soul, you know, sometimes it's too intellectual, but
with our soul to really try to transmit that, because people sometimes they come to a concert and you close your eyes and you are listening, but at the
same time, you are feeling an energy. That dimension is unique.
And that is why it's so important for our world that it's getting so disconnected. When you are in a concert hall, you are sitting so tight next
to each other. So, you are really connected. I think it's a very powerful thing.
AMANPOUR: I don't know whether you turn around, I know you do, but maybe not in full conducting, but between pieces, and saw the people on the
floor.
DUDAMEL: Standing.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, there's all these beautiful seats, but there were a lot of people on the floor. And I noticed quite elderly people had managed to
get their way to the front and were leaning against that bar. And there were younger people at the back. When you see elderly people stand still,
and younger people for hours, just listening to you, how does it make you feel when you see the audience?
DUDAMEL: Well, I think, you know, then we succeed, you know. That is, I think, the moment that you say, like, people love what they are receiving,
you know. But not only receiving, you know, it's also that connection, it's that interaction. It's not only what happened on the stage, it's that
person that is standing there, making an effort, but that effort disappear. It becomes joy, it becomes, you know, connection with beauty. And that is
the best.
AMANPOUR: So, you know, you were talking about being young and how this has been in your blood, in your body since you were a young man. Your
father was very musical. And in Venezuela, you joined the El Sistema system, which was created to allow disadvantaged youth to partake in this
kind of elitist thing, which is classical music.
[13:25:00]
But it blows my mind when I read that, you know, you conducted your first orchestra at the age of 11.
DUDAMEL: Yes, yes. But that is crazy.
AMANPOUR: I mean, how did that come about? Tell me about it.
DUDAMEL: Well, it's -- I was conducting before at home. The recordings and my toys, that is -- that was --
AMANPOUR: You were conducting your toys?
DUDAMEL: My toys.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
DUDAMEL: And that -- and with the big orchestras. I always, when I arrived to rehearse to these huge orchestras, I said, I conducted you when I was
seven, eight years old, and I rehearsed. I destroyed the LPs because I was going back, stopping, it's not together, this softer, and I went back and
back and back.
So, when I was 11 years old, I was playing in an orchestra. It was called the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, and it was a youth orchestra that we have in
my town, in my hometown, Barquisimeto, and the conductor was late, and I started -- I went to the podium and I started to conduct. That was the
thing. And I remember I was trying to imitate Herbert von Karajan, because he was -- in all the videos, I never saw him live. But --
AMANPOUR: He was the legend, right?
DUDAMEL: He was legend, Berlin Philharmonic, all of that. But he always, in the videos, he conducted with his eyes closed, you know, and I was
conducting with my eyes closed, and then I started to listen, like people was, they were getting serious, and then when I opened my eyes, I saw the
conductor of the orchestra, I said, my career is finished in music, because I said, you know, I was imitating him, I was imitating the other teacher, I
was imitating the big conductors, and then he said, like, oh, OK, keep doing, keep doing the rehearsal.
And then he said, at the end of the rehearsal, look, you are good in this, would you want to be my assistant conductor? And that was the beginning.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
AMANPOUR: Let me just ask you about Venezuela, because, boy, oh, boy, Sistema kind of put it on the cultural map, but right now it's on the
political map. When we spoke before, you were very reluctant to talk politically, but things have really moved on. The United States,
essentially, it's running Venezuela. What do you think when you think about your country's future right now?
DUDAMEL: Well, look, as you know, it's a very difficult situation, but at the same time, I think, you know, it's a moment that we have to take an
opportunity to get out of this very tragic and difficult situation. I think that people are tired of politics.
If you talk to a Venezuelan, you know, that is there, they are tired about that polemic thing of politics. They want to get out of the situation, and
I think it have to come a new time when we rebuild the country, not only economically, but through the education of people, through a new vision of
a new Venezuela that is not only that we are great people, good people, resilient people that do, if not, you know, we are strong and we can build
something.
You know, I'm part of a program that, you know, have crossed nine, 10, or 11 governments. It have not survived, it have, you know, strongly lived,
you know, the life of Venezuela in the last 50 years, and it's still there, producing wonderful citizens, not only musicians, citizens, you know,
because it's not a musical factory, the sistema.
Sistema is, we use music to transform the life of children that can be doctors, engineers, workers, whatever. This is the thing that we have to
see. If we -- if the country, you know, if we behave as -- you know, as an orchestra that maybe is an utopia, you know, we can say like, yes, we
cannot live by harmony, but yes, we can create harmony, but we have to be able to listen to each other's first, you know, to respect each other's, to
make justice, and then to create something that, you know, work, you know.
AMANPOUR: You knew the Chavistas, you knew, you know, Delcy, and now you know the United States, you've been there for 17 years in Los Angeles, you
know, with the Philharmonic, I mean, you're a major figure there, and you are also an immigrant at a time when immigrants are under massive pressure
and attack by this particular government, and actually, frankly, previous ones, but especially by this one.
DUDAMEL: Yes.
AMANPOUR: How do you resolve that in your mind? You know that half your, maybe your orchestra is terrified of being rounded up and deported, and yet
you are somebody able to maybe be a bridge. Do you ever see that?
[13:30:00]
DUDAMEL: Well, yes, yes. I think, you know, we have our responsibilities as public figures, but we have to know how to use that, you know. We are in
a moment that everything is so flammable, so whatever you say, it creates an opinion, and it increase the bad side of, it's incredible, because we
live in a world that everything is happening so fast that, you know, we are getting like addict to the bad things, you know, to have that information
and that -- so, we --
AMANPOUR: That's really interesting. You're getting addicted to all this - - all the bad things.
DUDAMEL: Exactly. All of this, you know, unrest, all of this fight. We have to open a space where it's not that empathy, you know. And empathy,
when you have empathy, you don't have to agree with the other, you know, but you listen to the other. You don't have to respect that, the opinion,
but you listen and you create your space to create a bridge and a balance between the two opinions. If not, where we can arrive, you know.
AMANPOUR: And I was struck by what you said about El Sistema is that it was about all sorts of disciplines, including the discipline of joy. In
other words, that joy is in fact a discipline that needs to be worked on.
DUDAMEL: Absolutely. Yes, because harmony is a discipline, you know. Harmony, we only talk about harmony specifically with the course and all of
that, but harmony is a spiritual thing that we live, all of us, you know, and when we discipline our harmony, for me, for myself, in this noisy
world, what is my exercise every day? You know, to balance my harmony.
Every day, you know, I take my time to be in silence, but not in silence completely like a silence that we understand. It's a lot of sounds, it's a
lot of voices there, and how I can balance that, how I can say something that maybe can heal and not destroy.
AMANPOUR: Talking about destroy, obviously Venezuela had a catastrophic couple of earthquakes, and you are -- one of your last performances with
the L.A. Philharmonic is to do a concert for Venezuela. Where will that take place? How do you feel doing that for your own country? What do they
need?
DUDAMEL: Well, it's catastrophic because this is like something like, you know, we have one crisis, and it comes another one that it create this very
difficult situation. But of course, we have to unite forces and create, you know, ways to support all of the situation, which it will take a lot of
time to recover. Because the thing is that sometimes things happens, and then in few days, people forget because there are other things happening.
So, that is why for me, it's taking time to build something that we can think in rebuilding in the future.
And look what happened also in Colombia just a few days ago. So, I think the earth is talking, you know, to us. And I think this concert is going to
be very special.
AMANPOUR: Do you find young people still really attracted and interested in classical music? You don't think it's a dying art?
DUDAMEL: Completely. I don't think it's a dying art. It depends how you see it. For example, we went with the L.A. Philharmonic to Coachella.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
DUDAMEL: And that was historic because it was --
AMANPOUR: That's the great rock concert in the desert in California that happens.
DUDAMEL: In the desert. Exactly.
AMANPOUR: I don't know if it's every year. But --
DUDAMEL: Every year.
AMANPOUR: Yes, yes.
DUDAMEL: Every year. Exactly, every year. And we had the chance to go to - - we went there last year and we mix. We play Bach, Beethoven, Strauss, John Williams, Stravinsky together with, you know, LL Cool J, Leve, Cynthia
Erivo, David Grohl. We combine all of that and it was beautiful. It was an amazing journey.
But you have to -- you really have to take the risk, but not as a -- it's not an obligation. It's a need. You have to do this. And understand that
this is a way, it's not to conquer, but to really make people feel that they belong, you know. Art is a result of -- it's the most beautiful result
of humankind, you know.
AMANPOUR: Now, it's no secret that L.A. on the West Coast and New York on the East Coast are competing on everything, including their Philharmonics.
And one side says, I'm the best. The other says, I'm the best. How are you going to deal with that?
[13:35:00]
DUDAMEL: No, I think they are sisters. You know, I don't see a competition. I think culturally each orchestra is different because their
own background, their own lifestyle, cultural, the place, what culturally offer. But I don't see a competition between the two orchestras.
AMANPOUR: What made you want to take the New York job?
DUDAMEL: Well, I think -- it is because I think 17 years, 20 years with the L.A. Philharmonic, it have been such an amazing journey. I don't see
this as an end. It's not the end of the book. It's an end of a chapter. It's one of the oldest orchestra in United States, same year, 1842 was
founded the New York Philharmonic, same year of the Vienna Philharmonic. So, it's an history. It's a place that I love. I love New York since I came
the first time. And I have the chance, you know, to create also a new home, but not leaving the old home.
AMANPOUR: Apparently, you're keeping your apartment just in case in L.A.
DUDAMEL: As in Venezuela, you know, I left Venezuela, let's say to work in Los Angeles, but you never leave your home, you know, it's always your
home.
AMANPOUR: Did your home survive? The earthquake?
DUDAMEL: Yes, yes, yes. It suffered the things, but not as others. But yes, you know, you are creating homes, you know, it's the life of a
conductor, you know, when you have the chance that is different with soloists because soloists, they have to travel everywhere and be different
place. When you are a music director in an orchestra, you are settled for a long amount of time where you can develop a home. So, I create a home in
Los Angeles, now I'm creating a home in New York. So, I'm blessed to have homes.
AMANPOUR: You are, and so are they. Gustavo Dudamel, thank you so much for being with us.
DUDAMEL: Thank you so much.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And just before he takes over on the East Coast, he's going to be going out with a final bash that perfectly blends his love of America
and Venezuela. He'll host the Benefit A Concert for Venezuela next Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl. And the proms is available on BBC iPlayer and BBC
Sounds for viewers in the U.K.
Coming up, with Europe feeling the heat in yet another summer scorcher, we can no longer turn away from climate change. Why trusted information is so
vital, after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Now, here in Britain we're experiencing yet another massive heat wave. In fact, the fifth of the season to hit Europe and the world's oceans
reached their highest temperatures ever recognized for July. Now, more than ever people need reliable information. And in the United States the federal
government's climate.gov website has been considered one of the most trusted sources of climate information. That is until the Trump
administration shut it down. The site's manager Rebecca Lindsey was laid off along with all of her colleagues and she lays out the stakes with Hari
Sreenivasan.
[13:40:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Rebecca, Lindsey, thanks so much for joining us.
So, in 2025, the Trump administration laid off hundreds of employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Shortly after, the website
that was called climate.gov, that was a critical source of climate information, was shut down. And as the website's program manager, you were
among the 280,000 federal workers who lost their jobs during that period.
Rebecca, I guess, first of all, for people who are unaware, what is Climate.us, and why does it need to be in the first place?
REBECCA LINDSEY, DIRECTOR AND MANAGING EDITOR, CLIMATE.US: Climate.us is the non-profit successor of NOAA's climate.gov website. We are a public
information portal to provide climate information, data, tools, educational resources to the public to help people understand climate and to make
decisions to protect themselves and the things they care about.
SREENIVASAN: So, what happened to climate.gov?
LINDSEY: The new administration in winter of last year shut down the entire program. I was a federal employee. I was fired within a couple of
months. The remainder of my teammates who were federal contractors were removed from their contract, and the whole team was basically disbanded.
SREENIVASAN: And you had been working there for how long? Give me an idea of how large the team was and what you would do to put this site together.
LINDSEY: I had been there about 15 years. Climate.gov wasn't just a website, it was a climate education and literacy program that NOAA
supported to help NOAA understand what kinds of information the public and teachers and the media wanted about climate and then provide that for them.
SREENIVASAN: So, the administration didn't specifically say why this was being shut down. When you go to the old site, there was a message for
visitors that said, in compliance with Executive Order 14303, future research products previously housed under climate.gov will be available at
NOAA.gov/climate and its affiliate websites.
So, when you look at that, doesn't the information still exist? And isn't it still accessible to Americans?
LINDSEY: Well, what you'll notice is when you go to NOAA.gov/climate, that was the home page of climate.gov, it has been redirected to that page
permanently. And then all of the links on that page that previously pointed users back to resources on climate.gov have been stripped from that page.
So, essentially, it's what they've done is it's sort of like they renovated a store and had the front door open into a closet. You go in, there's no
pathway out to the kinds of information that we had on climate.gov.
Now, it's true that there's lots of climate information still available from NOAA. You will find the climate data, the monthly reports, the annual
summary of the state of the climate. So, you will find things that tell you, for example, that 2025 was, you know, so many degrees above the pre-
industrial average.
What you won't find any more easily is any explanation of why that is, why the past 10 years have been the hottest years in the historical record. No
discussion about the human influence on climate or the potential impacts that the world and the country is going to experience from climate change.
They have sort of -- they seem to have retreated to a position where all they're going to do is provide data.
They're going to have a server, they're going to have -- you know, they're going to have files that, you know, people can download and get data. But
what climate.gov did and what Climate.us is going to do is build that bridge between the data and the public that needs things explained with
non-technical terms in plain language.
We made a big effort to go to the data and develop data visualizations and graphics that tell the story so that we're not just telling people global
sea level is rising. We go to the data, we pull it, we make a map, we show people this is how sea level has risen in the past century. That sort of
bridge building and interpretation and context, that is what the federal government and NOAA in particular is retreating from.
SREENIVASAN: I mean you can see the numbers but without any kind of interpretation we're not going to make policy decisions on what's important
to us based on those numbers if we don't really understand what those numbers mean or what context they're in.
[13:45:00]
LINDSEY: Yes, I think one thing that we heard a lot, we got a -- we had our fair number of critics in all the years we were operating at NOAA.
People who deny the reality of climate change would write in and complain to us. And frequently, their criticisms and their outrage revolved around
this idea that somehow science was trying to tell them what to do.
Science is, you know, you're giving us this information, and now you're forcing us to make changes we don't want to make or interfere with the free
market in ways we don't like. But the science only tells us what's happening. What we choose to do about it, that is based on our values,
based on what matters to us. And the reality is climate, responding to human caused climate change is not just going to be about reducing our
emissions.
We have to think about adaptation and resilience at the same time. I wish that people would accept that science and scientists are not trying to tell
us what to do. They're trying to tell us what is going to happen. And why would we not want to have that information?
SREENIVASAN: Can you tell me a little bit more about the information that is now missing from the government websites?
LINDSEY: Climate.gov, as I say, technically, the site is still there. But the entire website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which is the
congressionally mandated organization that Congress created in 1990 to help the nation understand and prepare for the impacts of human caused climate
change. The administration disbanded all of those scientists and completely took the entire website offline. So, now all of the most authoritative
reports on climate impacts in the U.S. in the United States have been taken down.
At the EPA, a whole section of the site which had what they called their climate change indicators, which is all kinds of different data driven
examples of how climate is affecting things that Americans care about, like streamflow, and the timing of the spring growing season. All of those
different indicators of how climate is affecting our world have been taken down.
So, there's just it's -- again, it's that collection of resources that are interpreting the science and the data for a non-technical audience. Those
are the resources that are disappearing from across the federal science space.
SREENIVASAN: In this restoration, you're working with just two other women here, one, including your sister, who was also part of the agency. But how
are you managing to try to keep a copy essentially of an entire federal site with just three people?
LINDSEY: Well, so we are very fortunate that in addition to sites like the Internet Archive, there was people began in late 2024, anticipating that
the government, the new administration was not going to be friendly to climate. And so, people began making clones of the site and the technology
now exists that pretty much anyone can go to a website and clone it.
So, we have -- the technical challenges are actually the least of our challenges. And we were -- the fact that we -- you know, the fact that we
were able to stand up an almost complete clone of the site with just our three people and then we hired contractors using some of the crowdsource
funding that we have raised. We we've launched essentially a GoFundMe when we started this initiative, and we used that money to hire web developers
to rebuild the clone of the site that launched on -- at the end of June.
The hard part is restoring and resuming our day-to-day operations, the producing stories, engaging with our audience, you know, keeping abreast of
what's in the news and trying to understand what kinds of climate information would be relevant to public and current events. That takes a
team. And it's a team that we don't yet have the resources to hire.
I'm the writer and the editor. My sister Mary is the lead data visualizer. We have another woman named Anna Eshelman, who is our graphics -- graphic
design, and layout person. But we really need double that staff. And that the government, I would argue, was the right person, the right entity to
support that because this is in the realm of public education. This is the kind of thing that benefits all of society.
[13:50:00]
And, you know, finding foundations and private donors to support this work is -- it's been a challenge. And we -- you know, we aren't sure, we still
aren't sure exactly how much of climate.gov operations and activities we're going to be able to actually resume. But we're just -- we've taken this
risk, and we're just going to keep trying.
SREENIVASAN: So, I wonder, has the tone of the content changed? Have you been writing differently? Have you been a bigger advocate? Because it seems
like if you had none of the restrictions of the government that perhaps some of the content would be different, or do you have kind of a different
goal in mind?
LINDSEY: At this point, we do not intend to change our editorial focus, or our workflows. We take very seriously and we take pride in the fact that
some media watchdog websites describe us as pro science, but nonpartisan. And that's a reputation and a standard that we intend to keep.
We do not intend to begin doing more advocacy for getting people to do something about climate. What we may do that's different is NOAA's mission
did not extend very deeply into the science of mitigation of climate change. And there is science behind all of these ideas that people are
considering for not just reducing emissions, but potentially enhancing ocean natural processes in the ocean to sequester more carbon, planting
more trees to absorb more carbon.
There's even technology that's being studied and tested to do what's called direct air capture, where they literally come up with ways to suck carbon
dioxide out of the air and turn it into fuel or turn it into carbon fiber to be used to build things.
We might have the capacity, the ability now that we are no longer, you know, under NOAA and solely focused on NOAA's mission, we might have the
ability to begin publishing content and explainers about the science behind mitigation. But even if we do sort of widen our editorial scope, topic
wise, the framing is always going to be the same. It is about the science of these things and not about trying to persuade people or, you know,
companies to do those things. We want to stick very strongly to nonpartisan providing information.
SREENIVASAN: I wonder if a more climate friendly administration comes back into office. Do you want to hand over the keys to Climate.us? I mean, is
the goal here to create something that will outlast every administration that comes in, regardless of who's --
LINDSEY: That is our goal. Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt you there. That is our goal. We -- you know, the fact that this was -- that it was so easy for
this administration to dismantle all of these communication activities around climate science, I think it's -- you know, I consider it evidence
that we should not make a site that has such an important mission so vulnerable again.
I also think that potentially bringing it out of the federal firewall creates an opportunity to partner more broadly with organizations across
different levels of government, state governments, tribal governments, local communities. And so, in a way, it may make the site more able to be
the all of society source of information that the country really needs. However, we don't know what's going to happen.
SREENIVASAN: The director and managing editor of Climate.us, Rebecca Lindsey, thanks so much for your time.
LINDSEY: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And finally, nobody does it better, and she's not so vain. She is the singer Carly Simon, who makes her return this weekend with her first
album of original songs since 2008, while also battling a debilitating disease.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[13:55:00]
AMANPOUR: That's called "Howl," the very beginning of her new album, "Comes in Waves," featuring Simon's trademark poetry and her wit. And it
also comes at a time of great personal struggle for the 82-year-old artist who recently revealed that she's got Parkinson's disease. In a touching and
candid open letter, she also discussed composing her new work, writing, there were melodies, verses and ideas written down and tucked away for
someone to listen to. And she says, I have some unknown future when I would have the time and attention to finish them. Apparently, she says, that
future is now.
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. And 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
