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The Amanpour Hour
Interview With Hamas Political Bureau Member And Senior Hamas Official Basem Naim; Interview With "American Doctor" Subject Dr. Mark Perlmutter; Interview With "American Doctor" Subject Dr. Feroze Sidhwa; Interview With CJP Founder And National Convener Abhijeet Dipke; The Assassination Attempt That Rocked Monaco; Interview With "Half Man" Creator And Actor Richard Gadd; New York Philharmonic's Historic Pyongyang Visit; 40 Years Since Paul Simon's "Graceland". Aired 11a-12p ET
Aired August 22, 2026 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:00:38]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.
Here's where we're headed this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: No peace in sight between Israelis and Palestinians. A Hamas official tells me about the state of Donald Trump's plan.
And I am joined by two American doctors who tell me what it's like in Gaza as hospitals crumble.
Then the student who left the United States and went home to India to take on the government with his Cockroach Movement. I speak to Abhijeet Dipke about how India's Gen Z won their first battle.
And the Ukrainian woman who tried to blow up a Ukrainian millionaire in Monaco for $8,000, then turned up dead. We have a special investigation into just what happened.
Also ahead, "Half Man", the dark new show from "Baby Reindeer's" Richard Gadd. He tells me why he keeps returning to trauma and male relationships.
Plus, President Trump resets his gaze on Kim Jong-un, joining a list of recent American leaders trying to woo North Korea's Kim dynasty into major concessions.
From my archive, George W. Bush and the high-stakes cultural exchange that saw the New York Philharmonic play in Pyongyang.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
It seems Israel is in no mood for peace negotiations right now. Airstrikes raining down on Gaza this week, even as U.S. envoy and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Prime Minister Netanyahu to push a plan that Hamas has accepted.
Now, as both sides haggle over the sequencing of disarmament and withdrawal, earlier this week, I spoke to a member of Hamas' political bureau about the state of those talks.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BASEM NAIM, HAMAS POLITICAL BUREAU MEMBER: At the moment, we have a serious chance to have a Palestinian State. Hamas will be converted at that time into a political party, we will give up. Our weapons will be handed over to the Palestinian State. Our armed fighters will be members or part of the Palestinian National Army or Guard.
But this is -- at the end of the process -- therefore, I agree with you. This political conflict, the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, it is not an armed conflict. It is a political conflict. It has to be solved politically. But it has to guarantee the political rights of Palestinians to have an independent, self- sovereign state.
And Hamas, in its political document in 2017, has clearly stated that Hamas can accept a state on '67 borders with Jerusalem as a capital and guaranteeing the right of Palestinian refugees, the right of return to Palestinian refugees.
Who has used this chance to build on this a political solution? No one, including neither the Israelis nor the International Community.
If there is a will, it will happen. It depends on President Trump himself, who we thank him many times for his plan and his will.
We are still committed. We want to facilitate, to cooperate the whole plan, but it depends on how much they can oblige or pressure Israel to accept the plan, regardless of their internal conflicts.
And we should not, again, pay the price for his success in the elections from the lives of my beloved people in Gaza. But we are committed and we believe there is a good chance and it can happen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Over the last three years of war, since Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded by attacking Gaza, volunteer doctors and medics from around the world have been coming to Gaza to try to help, including Americans.
[11:04:45]
AMANPOUR: And it's creating a strange paradox as they attempt to fix the damage done by Israel's American-made weapons and bombs. I spoke with two such doctors, Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa,
about their grueling work, which is now the subject of a new documentary, "American Doctor".
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program.
Feroze Sidhwa, you know, again, this is a very, very difficult situation. Just being a doctor in Gaza under war must have been incredibly, incredibly difficult.
What do you remember? Tell me a little bit about the conditions that you were working under while you were there for a good period of time.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA, SUBJECT, "AMERICAN DOCTOR": Well, the conditions were horrible. I've been to Gaza twice. The first time was March and April of 2024, and then again in March and April of 2025. I tried to go back in November, but I was blocked.
The conditions are horrendous. They got worse from the first time I was there to the second time I was there. In speaking to everybody who's there now and has been there recently, they're even getting worse still.
The entire -- you know, when you destroy an entire society, all the way down to the level of the sewage system, I mean literally the sewage system and the ability of people to even live indoors, for the most part, is gone.
An anesthesiologist that I know well, Dr. Nizar (ph), he just texted me yesterday with a video of him just soaked in sweat because he's living in this tent encampment where he lives under basically a plastic bag. And, you know, in the sweltering heat of Gaza right now, he's just boiling in this tent.
There's no access to clean water. There's no access to sewage. And half the hospitals have been destroyed. And the few remaining hospitals that are actually partially functioning, none of them fully functioning, are unable to cope with this.
You know, if you eradicate everything in a society that keeps people healthy, there's going to be mass death and disease, and that's exactly what we're seeing.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you both, because I got a deep sense of not just you being committed -- or all three of you, committed medical workers and doctors, and surgeons who've gone to help save lives and do no harm. But I also got the sense that you were there as activists as well.
Would that be an accurate description, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, that you were also activists?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER, SUBJECT, "AMERICAN DOCTOR": We evolved into activists. We were there when the World Central Kitchen vans got destroyed on our first trip. Feroze and I were together.
And I had contacted Chuck Schumer's office, called his office, spoke to it four times from Gaza, contacted the American embassies, there's two in Israel, on four different occasions to try to seek help, because we had a dozen Americans in our troop, and I wanted to secure their safety, because we were going to drive on the same road with the same permission from Israel in a couple of weeks.
They'd come back home, and I didn't want A missile through our van, the roof our van either.
I got no response from Chuck Schumer's office. I got no response from the American embassy. And this whole time, on this intervening time, I'm sewing together or pronouncing dead press workers.
And then I realized finally on the way out of Gaza, there was a line of trucks that was 31 or so miles long, eight trucks aside, these are 18-wheelers, filled with rotting food and dead animals that were being brought in for a food supply, and none of them were coming into the then-still-open Rafah border.
And that -- the horror of what I saw the weeks before and what I saw on the way out, realizing that my government was taking no action to protect us, realizing that the press was not allowed in, no foreign press was allowed in, and that they were targeting the denizen press, made us really the only truth-tellers that were there.
AMANPOUR: I do want to play this little clip, Mark, because it's about you talking with the director of the documentary, and she's feeling uncomfortable with some of the images and feels that perhaps they should be blurred or pixelated. Let's just play this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. PERLMUTTER: This is what my tax dollars did. What your tax dollars did. What my neighbor's tax dollars did. They have the right to know the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Dr. Feroze, do you think, in retrospect, that all that you did and all that you showed and all that you spoke about publicly while you were doing it and when you'd come out helped move the dial?
Because I don't need to tell you that opinions about what Israel did in Gaza have really taken on a whole new, you know, reality.
DR. SIDHWA: Yes. American opinions have definitely changed. I doubt it had anything to do with what I did specifically. I think mostly it had to do, quite honestly, with the fact that the Palestinians were broadcasting a lot of this, a lot of the horror and violence that was being inflicted on them day by day.
And people could just see it on their phones, you know, before the social media apps were kind of closed up.
[11:09:50]
DR. SIDHWA: And, you know, that made an impression on people. You know, now somebody like Ms. Rachel is aware of what's going on. And that's kind of -- it's kind of hard to put that genie back in the bottle when you've seen -- you know, the official number is that 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza.
By my estimate, and I think I'm the only person who's actually tried to figure this out, it's probably closer to 70,000.
That's an enormous level of killing. And it just couldn't be hidden.
AMANPOUR: Well, Doctors Feroze and Mark, thank you very, very much for being on this program. And certainly, this film is getting a lot of attention. So, thank you very much for talking to us about it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up later on the show, he turned a joke about cockroaches into a Gen Z protest movement shaking up India. I speak with Abhijeet Dipke about taking on Modi's government and what comes next.
Also ahead, "Baby Reindeer" creator Richard Gadd is back with "Half Man", a provocative new drama about masculinity and brotherhood. My conversation with him later in the program.
[11:10:53]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
In India, young people are taking to the streets demanding jobs and education reform. Over the past few months, thousands -- tens of thousands have protested over government hiring practices following the rise of the youth-led Cockroach Movement, which helped force the education minister to resign. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu Nationalist Party face a growing Gen Z challenge.
Abhijeet Dipke leads the Cockroach Movement and spoke to me from New Delhi.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: 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.
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.
But despite of that -- 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: 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 Masters. 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.
[11:19:44]
DIPKE: 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, what happens next? Does this remain -- the CJP, will it still keep the name Cockroach? Will you continue it as a political movement?
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 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 the 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: 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 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.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: I'll admit, I still find that amusing.
Coming up, an exclusive report on the Monaco bombing that stunned the world. Why was a Ukrainian millionaire targeted and who wanted him dead? The answers after this.
[11:22:43]
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
The dust is settling after a bombing in Monaco, which stunned the tiny, super-wealthy city state in late June. A Ukrainian millionaire was targeted by a woman also from Ukraine. But the details are murky.
CNN's Matthew Chance went to Monaco to find out about the assassination attempt and talked to its main target. Here's that exclusive report.
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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It's a super glamorous playground for the super-rich. One of the world's tiniest nations, Monaco promotes itself as a haven of wealth and tranquility on the picturesque shores of the Mediterranean.
But one evening in June, as a Ukrainian-born businessman walked home with his family, that carefully manicured image of security and calm was shattered, plunging the principality into violence and chaos.
Well, this is the exact place where the explosion took place. You can still see the impact of the shrapnel, the stucco plaster work here around the door has all fallen off.
And you know if I lift up the tarp here, you can see the marble steps and the brickwork is all shattered.
We've also made contact with the target of the attack, and despite his grave injuries, he's agreed to speak out.
VADYM YERMOLAIEV, BUSINESSMAN (through translator): When the explosion went off, I saw my partner Anna lying on the steps with badly-injured legs. My son was waving his bloodied arms, and I had burns across my whole body and was missing pieces of flesh.
I'm not a confrontational person. I've always tried to avoid any sharp conflicts, so I don't understand the reason why this happened.
CHANCE: There's a suggestion in Ukraine, and there are reports in Ukraine that this assassination attempt was linked to your involvement, alleged involvement in organized crime. How do you answer that?
YERMOLAIEV (through translator): I personally have never in my life had anything to do with that.
[11:29:44]
YERMOLAIEV: The Monaco police also asked me if my family could be involved, which was almost funny, as everything I own is already registered to my wife and children.
CHANCE: But clearly, someone wanted to send a message.
This is the face of the bomber, a 39-year-old single mother from Ukraine, Anastasiia Berezovska. She even recorded herself planting the device, in what investigators say was part of a complex international plot they're still trying to unravel.
Well, these narrow, twisting streets snaking through tiny Monaco are some of the most heavily-surveilled anywhere in the world. There are more than 1,400 surveillance cameras, basically watching everything anybody does, and a police officer for every 60 residents of the principality.
The bombing appears to have been carefully planned to bypass all of that tight security.
And Monaco's police department is now under intense pressure to understand what went wrong.
Multiple theories are being explored, the police chief admitted, though he refused to elaborate or discuss the glaring connections with Ukraine and its security services.
Within a Kyiv court those connections have become impossible to ignore. Two men, a serving officer with Ukrainian military intelligence, and a former security agent, now stand accused of executing Anastasiia Berezovska and burying the Monaco bomber in a shallow grave after she fled home.
For the Ukrainian authorities fighting a bitter war with Russia, it's a potentially embarrassing link that risks straining relations with its European backers.
Ukrainian military intelligence say the suspects are just criminals. But fueling speculation, Vadym Yermolaiev is sanctioned by Ukraine for doing business with its Russian enemies, though he's ruling out any link to his bombing.
YERMOLAIEV: I can't imagine it had anything to do with the Ukrainian sanctions against me, because that would mean our state is potentially engaged in extrajudicial executions, and I just can't believe that. CHANCE: After the bombing, you accused the Ukrainian Security Services of being behind it. Is that still your view?
YERMOLAIEV: That's not just my view. All the facts point to it. But I think this was a contracted hit. Someone privately hired military intelligence specialists who know how to do this, and they took it on for money.
CHANCE: In both Monaco and Kyiv, investigations are now in full swing to uncover the facts, including the possible role of Ukrainian guns- for-hire or rogue agents, making one of the world's most glamorous enclaves feel a lot less secure.
Matthew Chance, CNN -- Monaco.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Still to come, "Baby Reindeer" made Richard Gadd a global phenomenon. Now he's back with "Half Man", an even darker new drama about masculinity, trauma and the complicated bonds between men. My conversation with him, next.
[11:33:41]
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
After the extraordinary success of "Baby Reindeer", Richard Gadd is back with another dark exploration of trauma, identity and masculinity. His new drama "Half Man" follows two men who consider themselves brothers through three decades of an intense and often toxic and codependent relationship. Here's a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ruben is the best and the worst thing all at once.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't think I'd see you again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: You can watch "Half Man" on the BBC and on HBO MAX, which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
I spoke to Richard Gadd this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program.
RICHARD GADD, CREATOR AND ACTOR, "HALF MAN": Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So, look, you know, you went from the frying pan into the fire or whatever. "Baby Reindeer" was not exactly sugar-coated, and "Half Man" is, I don't know, is it more bleak? It's certainly -- it's certainly rough and tough. No idea of doing something slightly different?
GADD: Well, I'll think about it, I promise you. Yes, it might be a rom-com next, who knows.
[11:39:45]
GADD: But I -- yes. I -- you know, life, I like to explore the darker edges of life, the kind of difficult contradictions that we all kind of face on a daily basis as humans.
I think, you know, in this day and age, quite a lot of television is quite commercial and broad, and I like to try to dig deep into the idiosyncrasy and the difficulties of the human condition. So, that's where these two shows come from.
AMANPOUR: So, tell me a little bit about the story. We know that "Baby Reindeer" was, you know, your character was being stalked, et cetera. That was a huge success.
This one is a very brittle, violent, loving relationship between two kin, essentially.
GADD: Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, I wanted to basically show the kind of depths of male repression. Really, ultimately, the show has a lot of violence in, and there's a lot of -- you know, the words that surround the show are these popular words now, you know, like toxic masculinity and manosphere.
But for me, aside from the kind of those sociopolitical terms, I think the show is about the difficulty of expression, particularly of a slightly lost generation of men who grew up in, like, the 80s in the U.K., who grew up in a kind of less than accepting time.
And it's about the difficulty of expressing. Ultimately, for me, the show is about the difficulties of them loving one another and loving themselves. And that, I think, is the great struggle behind a lot of the masculinity crisis that we see today.
AMANPOUR: You didn't -- I think you didn't intend to be acting in this. What changed?
GADD: Well, a number of things changed. I think "Baby Reindeer" changed a bit of the narrative because suddenly I was -- I guess, I was like a marketable personality, thanks to "Baby Reindeer", suddenly. And there was a calling from the channels for me to be in it in a meaningful way, from a kind of marketing perspective and from all kinds of things.
And Jamie really wanted me to be in it. I remember I really wanted Jamie to play Niall. And when I flew out to L.A. to meet him, to kind of convince him to be in the project and to discuss it with him, he said, I really want you to be in this. Have you thought about playing Ruben?
And I sort of was like, how did you land on that from Donny Dunn? It didn't kind of make sense for me. But he said, look, I really think you could do it.
And then the channels were kind of echoing similar sentiments. And so, I had this really night of the long soul thinking about it, thinking about, oh, what if it goes wrong? What if I make a fool of myself? What if people don't buy it?
But I realized that all my thoughts were kind of fear of failure type thoughts, or worry of what people might think.
And I think if that's the reason for not doing something, then it's not a good enough reason.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And Jamie, of course, is Jamie Bell, who does play Niall, a great actor.
You said that, you know, this fame of "Baby Reindeer" just made you into a big, big, big property now. What is that like for you? What is this transformation from where you started to right now?
GADD: It's been a huge adjustment. I mean, I'm more used to it now. I think it's been over two years now since "Baby Reindeer" came out. But I remember at the time, it was a real whirlpool.
The show was a kind of -- "Baby Reindeer" was an arthouse show on a major television platform. And it had all the spirits and trappings of an indie film.
So, really, when you do an indie film with idiosyncratic subject matter and dark subject matter, you never expected to have such commercial potential.
And then it came out on the Thursday. And I think by the Sunday, you know, my follower count was exploding through the roof. I was getting recognized wherever I went.
And it was literally overnight. And it was a huge, huge adjustment. It was a huge adjustment to just suddenly be in the public eye to that extent and to just go about my daily life.
I'm used to it now. I love chatting to people in the streets. If people come up to me, that's totally fine. At the time, it was the most -- it was just so overwhelming. But also, some of the best times as well.
I mean, everyone wants to have a show that, you know, change -- is a cultural discussion point. And "Baby Reindeer" was that. And I'm super proud of that.
AMANPOUR: Well, Richard Gadd, thank you very much. And of course, we know that a lot of this started at the Edinburgh Fringe -- that's going on right now.
And you did say maybe a romcom. I know that you're very keen and you really love "The Office", which is not a romcom. But, you know, comedy might be in your future. We'll wait and see. Great to have you on. Thank you. GADD: Thanks so much. Lovely chatting. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And we'll keep waiting.
Still ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My instant reaction was no way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: An extraordinary experiment in diplomacy through music. We look back at the New York Philharmonic's historic journey to North Korea. That's next.
[11:44:17]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
South Korea is again casting a wary eye on its U.S. ally after President Trump ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce joint military exercises with Seoul, citing, among other things, his own good relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jung-un.
For three generations, Washington has tried to court the Kims. From Carter meeting Kim Il-sung to Albright meeting Kim Jong-il to the most recent summit between Trump and Kim Jung-un -- all designed to end Pyongyang's nuclear program and its threats to the region.
Nearly two decades ago, I witnessed the George W. Bush effort. It opened with extraordinary flourish.
[11:49:46]
AMANPOUR: The New York Philharmonic orchestra embarking on an unprecedented performance in Pyongyang.
Here's that report from 2008.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ladies and gentlemen, our plane is landing at Pyongyang Airport within 15 minutes.
AMANPOUR: You're about to enter one of the world's most mysterious countries, North Korea, ruled by a man as secretive as he is isolated perhaps until now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm very happy to see all of you from the United States, U.K., Germany. AMANPOUR: This is exclusive footage from a diplomatic trip into North
Korea, not nuclear diplomacy, but musical diplomacy to negotiate one of the most historic cultural events of recent times.
The famed New York Philharmonic Orchestra, performing in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang.
ZARIN MEHTA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC: They're open to whatever we want.
AMANPOUR: Zarin Mehta, president of the New York Philharmonic.
Clearly in a -- in a situation like this, when you have a supreme leader, if they want to get things done, they'll get things done. But the big question is, why do they want to get this done?
MEHTA: They need commerce. They need trade.
On Sunday we drove around. There was hardly any traffic and they told us there were no cars because they don't have oil.
AMANPOUR: So they open about their weaknesses.
MEHTA: We see they were.
AMANPOUR: This openness was as surprising as the North Korean invitation.
MEHTA: They wanted us right away. This was August of 2007.
AMANPOUR: The Philharmonic laid down conditions which the North Koreans met.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beautiful.
AMANPOUR: A concert hall that would fit 1,500 people, an international press contingent, freedom to play what they wanted.
And perhaps the most important condition -- guaranteed safety for the seven Philharmonic musicians of Korean descent.
LISA KIM, SOUTH KOREAN MUSICIAN: My instant reaction was no way. We're not going.
AMANPOUR: North Korea is the last place musician and South Korean Lisa Kim ever wanted to go to. She grew up with the stories of her parents running for their lives when the North invaded the South in 1950, hiding in the mountains in fear. Fear that still lingers today.
KIM: Since we are from the South, I mean, were South Koreans that maybe we might get kidnaped.
AMANPOUR: Lisa and her family wanted to boycott the trip until a visit from this man, Ambassador Christopher Hill. The Bush administration's key diplomat in negotiations with North Korea did some personal diplomacy with the orchestra.
CHRISTOPHER HILL, THEN-U.S. ASST. SECRETARY, BUREAU OF EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS: It can't just be done at a nuclear negotiation table. We need to start having some people to people exchanges, some cultural exchanges.
AMANPOUR: Whether this historic concert is a PR coup for the North Korean government or the beginning of a real thaw with the U.S., the orchestra's conductor, Lorin Maazel, feels the risk is worth it.
LORIN MAAZEL, THEN-CONDUCTOR, NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA: It is a risk, and it does take some courage. And one has to swallow hard.
AMANPOUR: Christiane Amanpour, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And the truth is, back then, Kim did agree to dismantle his main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. We watched it and the process had legs until Kim died.
The current Kim has taken a much harder line, has dozens of nuclear bombs now, despite three meetings with Donald Trump.
When we come back, a different kind of cultural diplomacy. 40 years since "Graceland", how Paul Simon's South African magnum opus, once criticized for breaking an apartheid boycott, became recognized as one of the world's greatest albums.
[11:53:50]
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AMANPOUR: And finally, this week marks the 40th anniversary of Paul Simon's seminal album, "Graceland".
(MUSIC)
AMANPOUR: Initially criticized for breaking the cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa, which Simon visited in order to work with African artists, it has since become revered as a masterpiece.
The South African artists, like the male choir, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who struggled under apartheid, found global fame after collaborating with him.
Here's what they told us about that experience.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALBERT MAZIBUKO, FOUNDING MEMBER, LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO: We started to hear that there was a cultural boycott. but we said, but our music has to be heard all over the world. So this is a chance. So it was a great thing for us to be able to, you know, to collaborate with Paul Simon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And when I spoke to Simon about the crafting of this legendary work, he told me how Ladysmith s former leader, Joseph Shabalala, felt sure the album could make a difference.
[11:59:41]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL SIMON, MUSICIAN: He's a very spiritual man and was very aware of what could be accomplished with the music from "Graceland", and what could be accomplished in the -- in the -- in the context of helping black South Africans.
It's very hard to get the truth, but musicians will often bring it on a level that goes right to the heart.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Indeed they will.
And that's all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.
I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching, and we'll be back next week.
