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Amanpour
Interview with Parents RISE! Co-Founder Lori Schott; Interview with Whistleblower and former Meta executive Arturo Bejar; Interview with The Atlantic Staff Writer Rose Horowitch; Interview with Musician Susanna Hoffs. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired August 27, 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]
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyonr, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
Major changes to children's social media use, and Meta paying $18 billion to settle that landmark case accusing them of harming children. A real win
for child safety or just a stopgap? I'll ask two people at the heart of this very issue. Former Meta employee and whistleblower, Arturo Bejar, he
was a key witness in the case, and Colorado mother Lori Schott, who lost her daughter to social media addiction.
Then, the Butcher of Bosnia dies at The Hague. Ratko Mladic, orchestrator of the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre. Looking back at when
Christiane came face to face with the war criminal, plus reaction from correspondent Nic Robertson.
Plus, staying connected has never been easier, and yet loneliness is spreading amongst young people. Staff writer at the Atlantic Rose Horowitch
tells me about this epidemic.
Also, ahead, catastrophic scenes in Nepal as rescuers race against time after those deadly flash floods. We get the very latest.
And finally, "The List." The icon behind '80s pop band The Bangles is back with a deeply personal album. Singer-songwriter Susanna Hoffs joins me.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
Obsession over likes, endless notifications and unlimited time on social media apps. Now, all of this might be changing for teens across the U.S. In
the largest big tech settlement in American history, Meta has agreed to pay $18 billion, spread over a decade, after dozens of states sued the company
for designing its platforms to be addictive and endangering young people's mental health, which Meta denies.
Perhaps more significantly, the owner of Facebook and Instagram has also agreed to enforce stricter child safety rules, such as implementing default
time limits and disabling likes for users under the age of 18. Countries like the U.K. and South Korea want these measures applied outside of the
U.S. as well.
While some call this a step in the right direction, others feel these changes barely scratched the surface, as Meta continues to be embroiled in
lawsuits from individuals and families over the impact of their products on minors. So, are our days of doom-scrolling truly numbered? And what more
needs to be done?
Former Meta employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar was a key witness in this Meta case, and Lori Schott is a mother from Colorado who lost her
daughter to social media addiction. And they're joining me now to discuss all of this.
Welcome, both of you. I really appreciate the time, especially from you, Lori. Our condolences for the loss of your daughter, Annalee. You have been
so brave and outspoken about this to continue to spread what you believe is an important message for other families and companies like Meta to really
enforce and focus on.
Before we discuss this settlement, you refer to yourself, Lori, as a survivor parent. You've described your daughter, Annalee. She sounds
amazing. A kind, brave girl with a heart as big as the outdoors. I see that large pin that you were wearing in her memory.
After she died in 2020 at the age of 18, you then uncovered journals that she kept and digital trails that reveal how algorithms pushed her to
isolate herself and feed her dark thoughts. As we noted, you have made the brave choice of being an advocate and a face of so many other parents'
fears and concerns and worst nightmares.
When looking back at what she wrote in those journals, what do you want people to understand about the vulnerabilities that she felt and what you
believe social media sites helped enable?
LORI SCHOTT, CO-FOUNDER, PARENTS RISE!: You know, Annalee passed in 2020. It's before any of the brave whistleblowers had came forward. And what we
discovered when we started piecing the puzzle of her life together, she left us a note on the day she died that said, I love my family. Don't be
sad for me. It's not you. It's me.
[13:05:00]
It enabled me to go downstairs and start to try to piece together what happened to a little girl that just had a blessed life and a loved family.
And what we found were the internal thoughts and her processes for trying to deal with social media that engaged her with beauty filters and other
appearance-altering, unhealthy comparisons. And it just destroyed her. It destroyed her self-esteem.
And at the same time, this engagement-driven recommendation and constant notification was just pulling her back into this deep and dark content,
even as far as telling her not to believe her parents and that, you know, taking her life was the only way to stop the pain.
GOLODRYGA: And Arturo, we should note that there's no way we will ever be able to fully connect Annalee's untimely passing with her use of social
media, but it's pretty clear that it exacerbated whatever mental trauma she was experiencing. I'm curious if you think any of these changes that Meta
says it will enforce now would prevent some of the things that we just heard from Lori.
ARTURO BEJAR, WHISTLEBLOWER AND FORMER META EXECUTIVE: Yes, that is the issue at the heart of what's difficult about the Consent Decree, which is
that it doesn't address the substance of the addiction, and it doesn't address the kind of content that Annalee got recommended, which in 2021 the
company knew was affecting one innate 13 to 15-year-olds every seven days multiple times.
And so, until you address the sort of definition of harm that Meta denies, these recommendations that can create a stream of content that to a
vulnerable teen in a moment of vulnerability could help teach somebody or encourage somebody to take their own life, we will continue to see this
because these products continue to be harmful, but just less hours a day, and that's not enough.
GOLODRYGA: Yes, Meta, we should note, did not -- as we said in the introduction, did not accept any wrongdoing here in this settlement, denied
all of the allegations in the trial. What it did say it will introduce is new features like the two-hour daily screen time cap, night curfews, and a
default turn-off for beauty filters. What do you make of these changes, Arturo? Are they at least a step in the right direction? I know your focus
is the algorithm, but will these steps help?
BEJAR: I mean, they'll help, and it's a landmark moment where Meta gets to sit side-by-side with big tobacco and opioids as a company that had to
settle because a product was harmful, even if they won't admit it in the settlement.
Now, the thing about these features that we talked about is that you can take away beauty filters, and that helps, but, again, negative comparison
continues to be an issue. You can take away likes, but they kept views enabled, so you can see the number of views a reel has, and today that's
the primary driver of harm is what makes teenagers copy behavior.
And so, in order for these changes to be effective, you have to look at them as a package, because a good way to think about what happened is we're
telling teens that it's OK to smoke cigarettes for two hours a day rather than as much as they could, and that's just not enough.
GOLODRYGA: Yes, it does really change the way you look at it when you put it into that perspective, using that analogy of a cigarette, though it's
not a direct connection, direct tie in terms of the addiction. But you were talking about a concept such as keeping eyeballs on a screen that's going
to continue just perhaps for less time.
Lori, nonetheless, you call this an inflection point. I'd like to play some sound from an interview yesterday that CNN had with the attorney general of
California on this issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROB BONTA, CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think people will look back and see this moment as that inflection point, that transformative moment, that
watershed moment when things changed. Of course, there was wind at our back with the Southern California lawsuit, you know, the verdict of the
individual who was harmed, as well as New Mexico, their verdict.
But this is 51 states, the District of Columbia and territories, all standing together, banding together, holding the line, bipartisan, holding
Meta accountable and making unprecedented, historic, transformative changes which will echo and permeate throughout the industry. It's just a matter of
time, in my humble opinion, before TikTok and YouTube and Snap come on board. So, I think this is that moment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[13:10:00]
GOLODRYGA: So, I don't want to put words in Arturo's mouth here. But it does seem like the attorney general is a bit more optimistic about the
turning point that this really is, in this case, for not only Meta, but other social media companies. Do you agree with the attorney general or do
you still remain quite skeptical about the changes that we will see implemented as Arturo, who worked at the company, is?
SCHOTT: You know, I think this is a step forward. Looking back at where we were in starting our advocacy work and telling our stories about our
children, we didn't have a step forward or a path forward we even fell. We felt we were up against the biggest, most powerful companies in the world,
which we were. So, I'm thankful.
You know, when I told my story to my attorney general in Colorado, who was one of the four that was in Oakland, he listened. And for me, that was a
huge win. He saw Annalee's journals. He saw the content that she was viewing and the structure and design of these platforms. So, in that sense,
we got a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do in holding all these social media companies accountable and also heading to D.C. and our
state capitals to get universal safety protocols in place.
And we need people like Arturo by our side, which he has been. And he is a warrior with us to make sure that we do this right and we hold them
accountable. Meta isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it because they were drug into a court of law and forced into
this situation.
GOLODRYGA: Arturo, you were asked during cross-examination by Meta's attorney, Brian Stekloff, about the choices you made yourself as a parent,
specifically helping your daughter open an Instagram account. What did you learn after she opened that account? And what do you think that Instagram
or Meta's attorney was getting at or trying to accomplish by talking about the role you yourself as not only a former employee, but a parent of a
child on Instagram? What do you think he was trying to accomplish with the answer he wanted from you?
BEJAR: Yes. I mean, what I found is that soon after she opened her account, she started experiencing unwanted sexual advances, receiving
requests for sex, receiving misogyny, harassment, bullying, the kinds of things that I've spoken to many survivor parents, and kids have died from
these things. And she tried to use all of Instagram's tools, and she didn't get any help. And so, my experience as one of the most skilled parents I
could think of in this domain was that I was powerless at preventing the harm my daughter was experiencing, and all I could do was help her navigate
it.
Now, the question has to do with what is the parent's responsibility around this? And I think that absolutely parents have a role to play, but every
survivor parent that I've spoken to was careful and engaged and thoughtful. And the product that we give our children has to be safe enough, so it
doesn't require -- imagine a car, where a parent has to sit in the car next to the kid all of the time in order for that to be safe, right? The car has
to be safe enough for the kid to get into, and so that's really the conversation we're having here. Is the car safe enough so that when you
hand it to a young person, they're not needlessly exposed to harm as they have been to date, and I believe will continue after the settlement.
GOLODRYGA: So, you do not believe the car is safe enough, that the social media platforms are safe enough to provide for minors. You wrote to Mark
Zuckerberg directly and expressed your concerns by relaying what your daughter experienced, Mark Zuckerberg himself a parent to younger children.
I'm curious, A, what his response was, and B, there do seem to be continuous reports over the years. Most recently, I believe the New York
Times had a piece last week about how tech companies, while continuing to see their businesses grow and continue to hope and push for more accounts
and users, themselves behave quite differently when it comes to what their children are able to do on social media.
BEJAR: That's exactly it. I wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, and in that email, there was not only the experience of my daughter, but numbers about one in
eight kids getting unwanted sexual advances on Instagram every seven days, one in five having negative social comparison, the kind of issues that
Annalie experienced, one in five every seven days, multiple times. Numbers that are just staggering in terms of when you think about the number of
American teens that happen.
That was my testimony in the trial, that Mark Zuckerberg knew the rates at which teens were experiencing harm, and instead of fixing it, which he can,
he made a public statement about harm is, makes it seem like if it's not there, misleading parents and creating a false impression of security.
[13:15:00]
They themselves don't let their kids with screens, they have their own schools for them, they create an environment for their kids that's separate
from most working parents and what we have to deal with. And so, I think that it's essential to take the steps that continue -- sorry?
GOLODRYGA: Oh, no. We're just playing -- we're playing sound and video from Mark Zuckerberg walking into court. So, I'm sorry, I know you can't
see the screen, so that may be a bit confusing. Apologies. If you want to just finish your point quickly.
BEJAR: Oh, yes, of course. I mean, I think that the real apology that Mark Zuckerberg should have given survivor parents is to sit down with each of
them and understand what happened in their product that could have prevented what happened to their kids. Until that happens, there's still a
lot of work to be done.
GOLODRYGA: And do you, Lori, do you still hope for an apology? Do you look for an apology from Mark Zuckerberg and other executives?
SCHOTT: I need to not hear anything from Mark Zuckerberg. My whole focus is getting these platforms to a safer place. His words are a void to me and
all the other parents. He had every opportunity. And I said, when I sat in the courtroom, even in Los Angeles and saw the emails where they knew that
they were harming children before my daughter died, they had every opportunity to make changes within the design of these platforms and they
did nothing. I contribute her death to him and the platform decisions that he made.
GOLODRYGA: Well, I do want to thank both of you, Lori Schott, especially you for your bravery and taking the time to continue to fight for your
daughter and pursuing justice for so many other young children who we've lost far too early and speaking for their parents as well. And thank you,
Arturo. Appreciate the time.
And still to come for us, the Bosnian-Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic dies behind bars. We look back at Christiane's archives when she came face to
face with the Butcher of Bosnia.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GOLODRYGA: Welcome back. Now, the notorious war criminal known as the Butcher of Bosnia is dead. Ratko Mladic died behind bars at the age of 84.
Tragically, thousands of victims who were killed on his orders led much shorter lives.
[13:20:00]
As the military commander of the Bosnian-Serb forces during the Yugoslav wars in the '90s, he oversaw Europe's deadliest massacre since the
Holocaust, systematically murdering more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the tiny town of Srebrenica. They were crimes against humanity for which he
was tried and convicted at the Hague, where he saw out the rest of his life in a U.N. prison.
Christiane was a young correspondent in Bosnia during that horrific war and came face to face with Mladic.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RATKO MLADIC, THEN-BOSNIAN-SERB COMMANDER (through translator): We'd be poor without the Muslims. It's good to have them around, but in a smaller
concentration.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Shilling words from the man they called the Butcher of Bosnia, General Ratko Mladic. The snide
humor masked his killer instinct. It defined Mladic and it made him an uncomfortable man to confront. And we'd see this preening smile again and
again as the war unfolded.
Indeed, the Muslims, the Bosnian government says, I'd been covering the Bosnian war for more than a year by the time I met him, living in this
shelled, sniped, and besieged city of Sarajevo. A year of witnessing the ferocious war machine that the Bosnian-Serb commander had unleashed, and he
did not like my reporting.
MLADIC (through translator): What's the lady's name?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Christiane.
MLADIC (through translator): Christiane. I like Kennedy's, Christina. It won't be difficult for her to understand because when I saw her first
reports from Sarajevo, I was very angry.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Mladic was commanding the Bosnian-Serb military mission to carve out their own ethnically pure republic and join it into a
greater Serbia. This was a daily occurrence, dodging bullets as we covered the unfolding tragedy. For the Bosnian Muslims, the villain was clear.
AMANPOUR: There are -- you know, your own people and your soldiers, to them, you're a great man. You're a hero. To your enemies, you're somebody
to be feared and somebody to be hated. How do you feel about that?
MLADIC (through translator): Very interesting question. Both things you say are correct.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Prosecutors say what Mladic believed to be his greatness was in fact ethnic cleansing and genocide. It would reach its
climax with the massacre at Srebrenica, July 11, 1995, more than three years into this brutal war. It was meant to be a U.N.-protected zone for
Muslims. When Mladic's forces overran U.N. positions and invaded the tiny enclave, they handed out candy, and General Mladic promised the townspeople
they would be safe. Of course, they were not. His soldiers slaughtered more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys who tried to flee.
Hurem Suljic was one who miraculously survived the massacre. I tracked him down in the Bosnian-held town of Tuzla four months later.
HUREM SULJIC, SREBRENICA MASSACRE SURVIVOR (through translator): The Serbs said, don't look around. Then I heard a lot of shooting and bodies fell on
top of me. They were the people standing behind me. I fell, too.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Here, he says, he saw Mladic one last time.
SULJIC (through translator): He stood there and waited until they killed them. When they killed them, he got back in his car and left.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): After that massacre, the U.S. led a bombing campaign against Bosnian-Serb military positions and peace negotiations
that eventually ended the fighting. Mladic became a wanted man and soon went into hiding.
I never knew if I would see him again, the man with whom I'd stood on a Bosnian hilltop at the height of the war. But it was with deep satisfaction
that I watched Mladic stand in the dock at The Hague to finally face the justice he so brutally denied others.
MLADIC (through translator): Yes, I'm General Ratko Mladic.
AMANPOUR: America has called -- calls him a war criminal, and under any kind of U.N. tribunal, he may have to be prosecuted. What does he think
about that? And it's a tough question, but he's a tough man, and he can answer it.
MLADIC (through translator): Yes, I can take it. I've taken more rough ones. I can take hers, too. I defended my people, and only my people can
judge me, and there's no greater honor than defending your people.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Some twisted definition of honor.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR (voice-over): And for more now let's bring in Christiane, who is joining us by phone. Christiane, I know you are away this week, but this
story is so important to you. It's one that you have covered more than anyone else. So, we are grateful that you're taking the time to call in and
give us some more context a- and perspective.
[13:25:00]
Remind our viewers what was happening in the region at the time and how that rhetoric specifically paved the way for the genocide that ultimately
occurred.
AMANPOUR (on camera): Indeed, Bianna. And first thing, wild horses couldn't have kept me away from reflecting on this moment. This was so
incredibly important to the world, to Europe. We were brought up in the era of never again, and again was happening in Europe. And the West, the
democracies were doing nothing to stop it.
What happened was when the Soviet Union collapsed, then Yugoslavia started collapsing. The constituent states that made up Yugoslavia wanted their own
freedoms, whether it was Croatia, Bosnia, you know, Slovenia, Montenegro, all over. They wanted their own freedoms and their own democracies.
When it came to Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic, the president of former Yugoslavia, said no. And he empowered his henchmen in the Bosnian-Serb
Republic, self-declared Bosnian-Serb Republic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, to enact what was a process of ethnic cleansing in order to create,
as I said at the beginning, an ethnically pure, white, Serbian, Christian state.
Bosnia had been absolutely diverse and multicultural. The majority of the citizens were European Muslims. And they were -- many of them intermarried.
Many of them had spent decades and decades, you know, being friends and colleagues and relatives of each other. And up comes Mladic and Serbian
presidents Milosevic and Karadzic, and they put an end to this by what happened in the Balkan Wars for those four years.
The Siege of Sarajevo was masterminded by them. That was an attempt to try to get Bosnia to surrender. Then Mladic went against all international laws
and rules and regulations and invaded, having told the West he never would, and told the U.N. he never would, invaded a U.N. safe area known as
Srebrenica. And that was the last straw for the International Community. And as I said, they ended up intervening to put an end to this war.
But it reminds me not just of the disaster that befell the West and Europe throughout the '90s, but reminds us also this is happening again. Russia is
trying to do the same thing in Europe. And it reminds me that we, the journalists, did our jobs. We kept this horror in everybody's sights, in
Technicolor, live television, at the end of the 20th century, so that nobody could say we didn't know.
And even though they took a long time to intervene, you know, three and a half to four years after the massacre in Srebrenica, they did eventually
stop the war and they did pave the way for people like Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, even Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, to be sent to
jail and tried, rather sent to a trial, tried, sentenced, you know, convicted and put in prison for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately,
Bianna, it's not the kind of justice that anybody then gave to the thousands and thousands of victims.
GOLODRYGA: And it came at the cost of, as you noted, thousands of victims whose lives could have been saved if there had been intervention much
sooner. You famously said covering Bosnia taught you that phrase that we hear from you now, to be truthful, not neutral.
As you've just laid out, the West watched this genocide unfold, in large part due to reporting like yours. And still, still, there were thousands
killed, and this took far too long. Did journalism, in your view, looking back, ultimately succeed here?
AMANPOUR: I have to say I think it did, because even though it took a long time, the whole journalistic community was opposed to this story. It wasn't
just Western journalists, not just American, not just European. It was also in Muslim countries all over the world. It was everywhere, really. And it
was in, you know, the headlines for the entirety of the war.
And so, I think that when eventually Milosevic threatened Kosovo with the same disaster that he had overseen in Bosnia, then you had the Clinton
administration make a preemptive humanitarian intervention led by President Clinton. Tony Blair was on board and others. It wasn't formally NATO, but
there was so-called the Coalition of the Willing. And they prevented a mass genocide, mass murder in Kosovo before it could actually take place. And
that eventually led to the toppling by his own Serbian people of Slobodan Milosevic, and the emerging of a nascent democracy inside Serbia.
[13:30:00]
That is a threat right now, because nationalists, populists with an ethnic agenda are in charge in Serbia right now, and also in the Bosnian-Serb
Republic. The peace that the United States brought and the rest of its partners is under threat, politically, not so much by war right now, but
politically, to try to undo. And guess who is supported by Russia and President Putin.
So, this is, again, a very, very important reminder that we have to keep our eye on this. But I would say that I am proud of all the journalists who
covered these crimes in real time and didn't let West turn away and built the ledger of evidence and accountability that was used, a lot of it, in
the court proceedings.
And again, Bianna, this was also very important for us journalists, in that it was the first time in history of covering war that journalists were
actually targeted by the Bosnian-Serbs and by the Serbs, because they wanted to kill the messengers and did not want the story to get out. And
that then led to so many years since where journalists have been deliberately targeted for telling these incredibly difficult stories. But
we were committed.
GOLODRYGA: Yes. And journalists lost their lives. Some of them sustained very serious injuries in covering this war. It is chilling as we are
sitting there watching those images of you asking, asking, Mladic, those very tough, very fair and truthful, not neutral questions. Christiane,
thank you so much.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Thank you, Bianna.
GOLODRYGA: And now, we've been talking about the impacts of social media addiction, and it seems that our own reliance on technology has led to a
major increase in loneliness. Experts saying we could be in the midst of a global loneliness epidemic among young people. In her latest piece for The
Atlantic, Rose Horowitch is raising the alarm that even college students have stopped hanging out. She joins me from New York.
Rose, good to see you again. I can't even fathom the image of college students not spending time together, which was just synonymous with my
college experience and so many others. And we'll get to that in just a moment. But we led this show with this groundbreaking settlement from Meta
and the impact that social media has had on the lives, on all of our lives, but specifically on young users' lives, those in their teens and young 20s.
Do you think there's sort of a correlation, if not a causation, to this loneliness epidemic that you're writing about?
ROSE HOROWITCH, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes. So, it's really interesting. Loneliness was increasing even in the decade prior to the
pandemic among college students. And so, when I was interviewing experts, they were talking about how that timeline made them think that social
media, short-form videos, smartphones, you know, could really be something that's causing this.
We know that young people report spending much more time on social media, which can crowd out time that they might previously have been interacting
with one another in person. And also, you know, it shows kind of a highlight reel of someone's social life, and so it's much easier to kind of
compare and find your own life wanting. So, you know, several of the experts that I interviewed, you know, definitely thought that that could be
a factor.
GOLODRYGA: A recent report by the FT found that in the U.S., 1 in 10 young adults do not spend a single minute interacting with another person. And in
the United Kingdom, the share of young people who do not have a single friend has shot up from 1 in 100 in 2015 to 1 in 20 today. That is shocking
data. Do you think that makes for a legitimate official pandemic here? Epidemic. I'm sorry. We spent so much time talking about medical terms.
Epidemic.
HOROWITCH: Yes. So, it's so interesting. And I think what that Financial Times story really shows is that, you know, it's so important, of course,
to look at the averages and to look at, you know, the average amount of time that people are spending with one another, but, you know, it's also
really important to look at, you know, kind of what that misses.
And, you know, this proportion of people who have maybe always socialized less, you know, we've seen their time spent socializing just crater in the
years since the pandemic. And so, you know, it has been -- it really is something that I think is cause for concern and is a real challenge, you
know, that people just, you know, aren't interacting with anyone.
GOLODRYGA: Another sign here that we're seeing in development is a growing inequality of social connection. Can you get into more about why that is
happening?
[13:35:00]
HOROWITCH: Yes. So, we know that, you know, there are the highest rates of loneliness among people who aren't in school and who aren't working. And
so, I think there really is a socioeconomic dimension to this where, you know, as we see the decline in third spaces, people can just be priced out
in many ways of spending time with one another. And so, it's much sort of harder to have some of those casual interactions or to, you know, be able
to afford a lot of activities that people might, you know, previously have spent, you know, with one another.
And so, I think that, you know, really makes a change where, you know, there is this kind of economic and class dimension here.
GOLODRYGA: The last time you were on with us -- hopefully we can talk about better news and trends. The last time you were on with us was
covering your shocking piece about the age of reading and how that is in decline, if not over. Now, you've written a piece about loneliness on
college campuses, and you're not the only one that is sounding the alarm about this.
Listen to what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy -- former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, told Christiane on this program two years ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. VIVEK MURTHY, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: One of the most striking things on the university tour that I did in the United States was just the
volume on the campuses and in the dining halls was much lower. I remember when I was in university that the loudest place on campus was actually the
dining hall. We would all finish our classes, come there, and everyone wanted to talk, talk, talk and catch up.
But not only is it quieter there because people aren't talking, they're on their devices, but so many students came up to me and said, how are we
supposed to build connection with one another when the culture isn't to engage people in conversation?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: What is making it so difficult for students? What have you learned in your reporting and research on college campuses of all places to
gather and socialize?
HOROWITCH: So, I think, you know, there is that element of smartphones and social media, as we discussed. You know, we've also seen and what experts
were saying to me, that the pandemic has kind of changed the way college works in some sense. You know, professors record their lectures. They post
them online. More students are now fully remote.
And so, you know, there's a kind of a loss of some of those casual interactions that you might have had as you were going to class. And so, I
think that's a real change. And something that was very striking to me as I was reporting this piece was talking to university leaders who were
actually thinking about how to get students to socialize more and spend more time with one another. They were trying to think about how to design
the campus infrastructure so that students would almost be forced to run into one another and spend time with each other. And that was something
that I just hadn't thought they would have to be sort of intentionally focusing on.
GOLODRYGA: So, as I mentioned, the play on words there, the slip between pandemic and epidemic. I mean, we spent so many years focused on COVID.
Now, six years later, it's clear that that really did leave a mark on activity, on behavior. Do people think this is going to be seen as a
permanent shift?
HOROWITCH: Yes. So, you know, researchers that I spoke with talked about how, you know, the pandemic hit when a lot of college students today were
in a really crucial period of kind of social and emotional development. And so, you know, now they're having kind of a lot more of the experiences that
they might have previously had in adolescence in college. You know, they're drinking for the first time, having their first romantic relationships. And
so, that's a real change.
And we see in survey data that, you know, the pandemic really led to a huge spike in loneliness. I think something that is a positive sign is that, you
know, in the past few years, we're starting to see loneliness levels, you know, sort of start to decline to get back to some of that pre-pandemic
baseline. So, that is a positive sign that, you know, we can reverse this. We don't know exactly why it might be, but, you know, that things could
improve. But it still is a very high rate of loneliness and, you know, still was increasing in the decade prior to the pandemic.
GOLODRYGA: How is this impacting this specific generation in terms of jobs, job security, economic security and the cost of living, and also
dating and starting families or at least thinking about starting families? Because there is some data that suggests that the dating is actually in
decline.
HOROWITCH: Yes. So, there's definitely data suggesting, you know, that young people are having fewer romantic relationships. And, you know, we
know that young people end up reporting kind of when they reflect on social interactions, that those were incredibly meaningful to them. And, you know,
though we've seen a huge increase in time spent, you know, gaming and, you know, on social media and watching videos and television.
[13:40:00]
You know, when people do that, even though they're pouring time into it, they end up reporting that that is not meaningful to their lives.
And so, you know, I think the challenge that we see is that, you know, people are really devoting time to something that they then kind of reflect
on, you know, with maybe some regret or dissatisfaction, you know, whereas when people do spend time together, you know, we know that's really
crucial, you know, for relationships, for their quality of life and health and well-being.
GOLODRYGA: So, we're also now focused on A.I. and in this battle of is it good, is it bad, how is A.I. impacting some of the issues we've touched on
for college students?
HOROWITCH: Yes. So, you know, there's been some interesting studies about, you know, young people kind of interacting with chatbots. Some of my
colleagues have reported about, you know, people dating A.I. chatbots. And I think there's some, you know, initial research that suggests that that
doesn't really alleviate loneliness, that even though you're having a conversation with, you know, this machine that can often be very
sycophantic, that it doesn't actually, you know, make you feel better or have, you know, the same effects as spending time with a person, a real
person.
And so, you know, I think we will have to see, you know, as time goes on, what ends up happening with artificial intelligence and how this affects
loneliness. But there are some, you know, worrying signs of if you do, you know, spend a lot of time interacting with an A.I. chatbot or sort of
consider it to be a friend or even a romantic partner, you know, it is then very hard to kind of go spend time with a human who might not kind of
answer everything exactly as you want to hear and who has, you know, thoughts and opinions really of their own.
And so, you know, that's something that I do worry about and that I hear from experts that I speak with, just the worry of, you know, young people
becoming so accustomed to talking with a machine that agrees with them that ends up being hard to kind of have those interactions with real people.
GOLODRYGA: Fascinating, as always. Rose Horowitch, staff writer at The Atlantic, thank you for joining us.
And coming up, the legend behind '80s American pop band The Bangles is back with her first album and all the original tunes in over a decade. Singer-
songwriter Susanna Hoffs joins me after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:45:00]
GOLODRYGA: We turn now to the border of Nepal and China, where rescuers are battling extraordinary conditions after a torrent of floodwaters
devastated communities there. Hundreds have been killed, and those numbers sadly seem to be rising. At least 700 foreign nationals are among the more
than 1,300 people missing. While scientists are still examining the cause of the flooding, it appears a glacial collapse when a large chunk of ice
shears off and plummets down a mountain slope was behind the disaster.
Nepali authorities warn another potential flood surge could still come. Correspondent Hanako Montgomery has the latest from the region.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, over there in the distance is the Trishuli River, which is the river that flooded and killed, we now
know, over 100 people and left hundreds more missing. And if you can take a look over here, there is just a massive layer of mud and debris over what
used to be green rice fields. This all used to be Green Valley, and now it's just covered in debris and in mud.
And just behind me here, a team of police officers have arrived. They're ascertaining the extent of damage, and they're speaking to local villagers
about who might need rescuing, who might need some assistance. We're told that the local mayor is also here to provide the police with more
information.
And I just want to show you just how extensive this damage was. And you can tell here, just even on this road, at least over 100 meters away from the
actual river, you can see the mud has come up. It's blocked off parts of the road. We can't actually go any further than this, because the extent of
damage is just that bad. We're told that if we were trying to go further, it could be a risk to our lives. So, we're staying here for now.
But the extent of economic damage, the extent of lives lost is just immeasurable at the moment. And of course, Nepal, the government is still
trying to ascertain just how many people have died and still trying to rescue those who might be in desperate, desperate need of assistance.
So, I'm walking down one of the main roads in Nepal, and this entire place used to be covered in mud. They've cleared part of it now. And I want to
show you some of the damage that we've been seeing. This house, I mean, its first floor is completely submerged in flood water. You can see some of the
windows and doors just caked in mud. This house over here, I mean, its walls have completely collapsed. It's unlivable. And down here is a gas
station, and again, just completely inaccessible and totally destroyed by this flood water and the mud and debris that are brought with it.
Now, the Nepali government has said that several hundred people have been confirmed dead, several hundred more still missing. And they are afraid
that the death toll could tick up in the coming hours and days as they are still trying to find any remaining survivors.
And this village that we're currently in is actually several dozen kilometers away from the worst of the damage. So, you can imagine if you
get higher up in the Himalayan mountains, just how many people have lost their homes, their livelihoods and their loved ones. And now, they're left
with very little, trying to find any remnants of hope, any remnants of their family members as they try to pick up the pieces of their lives now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLODRYGA: Our thanks to Hanako Montgomery. We'll continue to be covering this devastating story, but we do want to end on some good news for you,
some fun news, music.
In 1981, musician Susanna Hoffs in her early 20s posted an ad in an underground weekly looking for some bandmates. Well, that's how The Bengals
first got together and the rest, as you know, is rock and roll history. The Bengals racked up a whole karaoke night of hit songs, including "Manic
Monday," "Walk Like an Egyptian" and my favorite, "Eternal Flame."
Susanna Hoffs never stopped making music, though, and now she's about to release her first album of original songs in more than a decade. It's
called The List. Here's a clip from the lead single, "Casablanca," a wistful memory of a walk through New Orleans with Grateful Dead heartthrob
Bob Weir.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: OK. This is a personal one for me. In 1989, I won tickets to see The Bengals play a concert in Houston, Texas. I went through the radio
station 93Q. It was my first rock concert. And so, on that note, all these years later, I'm so pleased to welcome Susanna Hoffs to the program. I knew
we were destined to meet.
SUSANNA HOFFS, MUSICIAN: Yes, that is so amazing to me. Oh, thank you.
GOLODRYGA: It was worth the wait. I wrote in a letter to our radio station thinking it was just going to go disappear in the ether. And we got a
letter back and my mom and I went to your show, and it was magical. And here you are.
[13:50:00]
You haven't aged. Your music has only matured and improved. And your new album, "The List," dropped September 18th. It's your first album, as we
noted, of original music since 2012. How does it feel now to have a new album coming out?
HOFFS: It feels thrilling and joyous. And I collaborated with some wonderful musicians on this album and worked with C.J. Camerieri, who was
producing the album. And we just had the best time. We recorded the whole record in my living room. It turns out my living room is better than any
recording studio that I'd ever been in.
And it made it so cozy. We'd start off, I'd make everybody coffee, and somehow, we would just start talking about our lives. And I would tell some
stories from my life. And those stories are interwoven into the songs. I didn't know it was happening. It was just a conversation. But then it grew
into this suite of songs.
GOLODRYGA: Is this a new approach for you in songwriting, or is this always how you've worked?
HOFFS: It's been, over the years, different collaborations. I tend to like collaborating with other people. My dear friend Billy Steinberg and Tom
Kelly, who wrote "Eternal Flame" with me, that was a great grouping of ideas and voices and how that song came together, a song that I love very
much. But it was somewhat similar. In that case, Billy did the lyrics, and Tom and I worked on the music part, and I did some of the lyrics, too. And
it's a longer story.
But I think musicians love just communing with one another. And eventually, it just seems that we start writing a song about things in our lives,
stories, moments. They trigger how the songs are born.
GOLODRYGA: And this title of the album, "The List," is it true that it's based on -- there's an actual list, a handwritten list, of everyone you've
ever gone out with, culminating in Jay Roach, the best of all, the director, your husband.
HOFFS: The best of all, my husband of 30-plus years and going strong, our relationship. Yes. So, I realized that back in the day when we all had
Filofaxes, or at least I had one, and it was very precious to me, I had notated anyone that I had dated. And it sort of just went down during that
era of the '80s when I was in The Bengals, and we were touring, and lots was happening. A lot of things were happening, really fun adventures.
But the encounters I had with these various lads, a few actors, musicians, you know, and it just -- I unearthed this page where I just penciled in the
list, and it sort of led to a conversation with my now-music writing partners. And it just -- the song kind of was born from that list and the
conversations about those days and those relationships, the good, the bad, the otherwise, you know, and just that era of my life. But it really, it
spawned kind of a whole suite of songs.
GOLODRYGA: And then you landed on the one.
HOFFS: Yes.
GOLODRYGA: I want to ask about the song, "Time." It's about your relationship with your adult sons and your memories of raising them. I want
to read a lyric from that song. I see you dancing in the kitchen. I feel your tiny hand in mine. But if you fly back home this summer, we could
spend a little while.
It's so relatable for any parent. I feel like my son was just born and he's 14 now. Your sons are older than you were when you started performing in
The Bengals.
HOFFS: Oh, wow. That's right.
GOLODRYGA: Talk about that experience in raising boys.
HOFFS: Oh, Jay and I had the great fortune of having these two lads who were so sort of socially conscious. And they went to a really wonderful
school called Crossroads that, you know, had a lot. It was more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was like being a good person. So, I
was very lucky that they grew up in that type of environment. And they're very kind and thoughtful and wise children. And I'm so proud of them. Jay
and I are so proud of our kids. Yes.
GOLODRYGA: In the final 30 seconds, I'd be remiss not to ask you your reflection on Dolly Parton. We literally have 30 seconds. If there's just
one sentence, one word that comes to mind, what is it?
HOFFS: A beautiful human being, one to admire forever. Her music will live on forever. Her voice was like no other.
[13:55:00]
Her tremulous, beautiful delivery, this tone of her voice. She was just a beautiful, beautiful human being. And I'm so -- I admire her so much, and
I'm so sad for her passing. And I will always be a Dolly Parton fan forever.
GOLODRYGA: Well, I said that it was my favorite song of yours for a reason, and I think it sums it up by saying she's also an eternal flame for
all of us.
HOFFS: Thank you.
GOLODRYGA: Susannah Hoffs, I promise, I just thought of that. I wasn't waiting for this moment, but it applies for sure. I am a huge fan of yours.
This has been such a gift to be able to talk to you. Thank you, congratulations on the new album.
HOFFS: Thank you so much.
GOLODRYGA: Say hello to your number one and the two boys who must be so proud of you. Thank you.
HOFFS: Thank you.
GOLODRYGA: All right. That is it for now. Thank you so much for joining us, and goodbye from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
