(dramatic music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour & Company".

Here's what's coming up.

- The next war begins underwater.

- [Christiane] "Twist".

Author Colum McCann tells me about his new book, exploring the deep sea cables that connect the whole world.

Then, an exclusive, horrors inside an Iranian prison.

omana Karadsheh speaks to rapper Samin Yasin about his journey from death row to exile.

Plus... - It's not just red carpets and tiaras and glamour.

- [Christiane] 60 years of "The Sound of Music".

We look back at my conversation with Julie Andrews as she takes me behind the scenes of that iconic movie.

Also ahead, "When the Going Was Good".

Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter reflects on a career during the last golden age of magazines with Walter Isaacson.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) - [Narrator] "Amanpour & Company" is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the Family Foundation of Leila and Mickey Straus, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

This week has put the security of internet communication starkly in the spotlight, with the White House still blaming the messenger and not the blatant breach of classified material.

So we begin tonight with a tale of the murky world that keeps all of us connected, undersea internet cables.

The online world relies upon these snaking seabed roots, and yet they're incredibly vulnerable to sabotage.

NATO has even deployed warships for deterrence against a series of cable cuts in the Baltic Sea.

This real world drama is captured in vivid detail in a novel by my first guest tonight.

"Twist" is about an Irish writer following a repair crew which has been sent out to mend these broken cables off the coast of Africa.

It's a dramatic story, as much about danger, engineering, and global security as it is about a new sort of colonialism.

Author Colum McCann has written widely on war and peace from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, as well as his conversations with the Pope.

As I discovered, he has his finger firmly on the pulse of our world's big issues, wrapped up as riveting literary masterpieces.

Colum McCann, welcome to the program.

Look, you've written a lot of books.

Why "Twist", why undersea cables, for heaven's sake?

- Well, I was astounded when I found out that 95% of our world's intercontinental information bounces around on the bottom of the sea floor, where in fact, you and I are right now in pulses, in billions of pulses of light traveling around the world, not only between ourselves, but between all of your wonderful viewers.

- Okay, so that sounds really great.

So I guess what I'm trying to understand, the technicality is that, as you say, all our information is transmitted in these pulses through these undersea cables, right?

- That's correct.

The world is governed now by our underwater cables.

Everybody thinks the cloud is in the air, that somehow it's celestial, and our voices go up there and our emojis go up there and our financial transactions somehow go up there, and then come down in some sort of dark rain.

But the truth of the matter is that it's actually, like, dwelling in the actual abyss, in the abyssal zone and the hadal zone at the very bottom of the sea.

There are about 400 plus cables in the world that carry over $10 trillion worth of financial information every single day.

And this amazes me because it's nothing bigger than a garden hose carrying all that information, and within the garden hose, there are fibers that are no bigger than your eyelash.

I have a little paper clip here.

It's thinner than this actual paperclip.

This sort of thing astounds me.

If it's not a miracle, then it's something that I have to try to explain through science, through fiction.

It seems to me extraordinarily scary, especially because they can be sabotaged.

- Well, that's what I wanna get to you, actually, Colum, because we're in a moment where you've seen the incredible sort of incompetence of the current Trump Administration in using another system for classified discussions on the Houthi attack plan a couple of weeks ago.

And so the question is, these cables also can be used for secret government communications, but how vulnerable are they?

- They're actually extremely vulnerable.

I talked to a British admiral quite recently, and he said that the next war begins underwater.

He said, "Don't be surprised by that."

Yes, we're talking now about drones and we're talking about aerial engagement, but the next one will start with cables, and cables will be cut, and there will be information denied and disinformation supplied.

- Okay.

- In all sorts of ways.

- Okay, so- - And- - Sorry, just so interesting, because one of the main areas is in the Red Sea where the Houthis are, the Iran backed group- - Exactly.

- That was the target of the American airstrikes recently.

And we know, you say the next war, but we know that Russia has been blamed for cutting certain cables.

There's been a lot of this going on since the Ukraine War, maybe even before, that we didn't know about.

So this is already a battleground.

- It's a massive battleground, and people are out there.

They're out there in ships, they're out there in submarines.

This sounds like the plot of the wildest spy novel, but you know, the truth is that it's staring us there in our eyes.

All those cables that get cut in the Baltic Sea, all the cables that get cut in the Red Sea, every single one of those has political implications, precisely because it carries not only so much of our lives, but it carries the exact military information that gets used, abused, and frankly, is out there and can be listened to and taken away from us.

And therefore, it's almost like, you know, the T. S. Eliot poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".

We have to be there until human voices wake us at the bottom of the sea, and we drown.

- Yeah.

You know, this novel, 'cause it's a novel, despite its real life implications, is set in Africa.

I'd like to know why, but you also talk about, you know, you refer a lot to "Heart of Darkness", the Joseph Conrad book about the horror of neo-colonial or colonialism.

And fast forward to today, Meta is going to be building the world's longest undersea cable.

I just wanna read this quote from your book.

"The same corporations who controlled the cables controlled the information too.

It was a well-dressed shell game.

All the myopia.

All the greed.

A new cable would make millions of dollars for his owners.

It was also quite possible that the information within was owned or tapped or both.

The old colonialism was dressed up in a tube.

It snaked the floors of our unsilent seas."

Explain your thinking.

And by the way, who does own all these, you know, cables?

I know Meta apparently does, but who else?

- Meta own them.

Google own them.

Microsoft own them.

Amazon own them.

Much of the big tech are players in this incredible game.

Not only do they have the information that is within, you know, all our little daily movements, our phone calls, our likes, our dislikes, but they own the apparatus that carries them.

And guess what?

All of these tubes follow the old colonial slaving and trade routes.

It's a bizarre image for a new digital colonialism that we have to be entirely aware of.

We might not be talking in 20, 30 years about national colonialism, but we might be talking very seriously about corporate colonialism.

When the cable gets cut, say, for example, with a landslide, underwater landslide, or an earthquake, a boat has to go out, say, from Cape Town, and travel there for two weeks, and then it has to find the cable, which is sometimes buried underneath meters and meters of inland debris that has taken the cable out.

And these people who go out to sea, they're like the firemen of the sea, if you will, have to go there and they have to find the cable, and they can't come back until they do.

Sometimes it's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Now, if a bad actor decided that they wanted to take out a cable, they would take it at the deepest point in the ocean that they possibly could, and we would be left scrambling.

This has been around for a number of years.

I'm not saying anything new.

At the bottom of the sea, you can cut the cable.

Close to shore, you can cut the cable.

Trawlers do it all the time.

At the landing stations where these cables come in all around the world, there is very little security.

I have, in New York, gone to a landing station where all the world's cable information is coming in and stood over the manhole cover.

If I had a crowbar in my hands, I could have lifted up that manhole cover.

I don't travel with a crowbar, by the way.

But I could have lifted up that manhole cover, reached down and touched all the voices, all the images, all the pulses, all the crazy stuff that is going through.

- Wow.

- And if I wanted to, like Elon Musk, I don't carry a chainsaw, if I took a chainsaw, I could take out the internet for a day or two.

This stuff is entirely vulnerable.

- It really does sound even more vulnerable than I had thought.

So you mentioned Elon Musk, you mentioned America.

You are also a dual passport holder.

You have lived in the US for a long time.

What have you been discovering about what people are thinking in schools or wherever you... 'Cause you really are a sort of investigator, and you go and you talk to a whole range of people.

What are students telling you now about this moment?

- We're all scared.

Writers are scared.

Students are scared.

It's almost as if we have been concussed, we got a punch to the back of the brain and a second sort of dolphin punch as we rose up.

But there's a great sense of, you know, a building resistance, people figuring out what they're gonna say, how they're gonna say it, without sounding, you know, crazy or anything, to build a form of powerful resistance that's able to talk about what's going on in Gaza, that's able to talk about Ukraine, that's able to talk about Sudan, and yes, also talk about what's happening within the United States.

I have a nonprofit called Narrative 4, where we bring young people together from disparate backgrounds, and they tell stories to one another.

'Cause it's my opinion that stories can change the world.

If we bring these young people together, telling their stories from different angles, we can help at least a tiny drop, a tiny, tiny drop of healing to begin.

- You know, Colum, it's really interesting that you say we're all scared, and it does seem to be that inside the United States, people are scared of the consequences.

We've seen what's happened, you know, the Trump Administration, or Trump, has challenged lawyers, challenged the courts, which are still standing strong.

Challenged academia, challenged the press.

And maybe challenge is too benign a word.

But overseas, actually, people are standing up.

The government of Canada is, and Mexico, and Europe.

And you yourself have been very connected with the Pope.

You've given some speeches, you've done writings, and you see him, and people have talked about him recently, as just his Christian faith, his empathy, what he believes in, being a real act of resistance.

Tell me more about that.

- Well, I had the extraordinary honor of being invited to the Vatican by Pope Francis, primarily because I wrote a book called "Apeirogon", and "Apeirogon" took place in Israel and Palestine.

It's about two fathers who have lost their daughters in separate incidents.

The real life fathers are Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin.

And, you know, they bring a message of peace by saying, "We don't have to love each other.

We don't even have to like one another.

But we must understand one another."

And when Pope Francis heard this, he wanted to invite them to talk to them.

And he brought them in to his personal quarters in the Vatican, and I have never seen anybody in my entire career of listening, 'cause it's what I like to do, I've never seen anybody listen so powerfully, so beautifully, so silently, so quietly, and receive the words of Rami and Bassam and sort of have them enter him in an extraordinary way.

I could see the grace, I could see the beauty.

And when he spoke, he spoke a little bit in English, but when he really wanted to speak, he spoke in Spanish to a translator to us.

And he talked about this idea of stories healing the world, stories becoming medicine, the idea that we must begin to try to know one another.

And yes, he's become intensely political.

He's become a sort of lightning rod of hope for so many of us.

And who would've known that this, you know, great conservative heaving organization that that was in so much trouble could somehow, at least him within it, be a beacon of light, again, pulsing its way around the world?

- It's really important to remember that, particularly as he's been so ill recently.

He's now been discharged back to the Vatican.

But let me ask you, because Rami and Bassam are such interesting people.

Rami, of course, Israeli, Bassam is Palestinian.

I had Bassam on my show, talking with another Israeli friend he had over these similar tragedies.

And it is incredible when you see people from both sides talking and empathizing with each other, so I understand and hear you on the power of storytelling.

How are Rami and Bassam now in this, you know, in this horror that's continuing there?

- It's a beautiful question, a power.

And I am happy to tell you, also distraught to tell you, that they are heartbroken, they are angry, they are confused, and they too are scared, especially Bassam, who's in the West Bank, and he sees these things unfolding in front of his eyes, these horrors and these land grabs that are going on.

His own children being stopped at checkpoints and, you know, being humiliated in extraordinary ways.

And yet he still gets up every morning.

He waters his garden, he gets on the phone, he gets on Zooms, and he talks to Rami every single day.

They called each other October 7th, they called each other October 8th.

He said, "You come stay with me, brother, or I will come stay with you."

They're an extraordinary example that some people might scoff at as sort of sentimental and naive.

There's no naivety.

There's a courage there that goes beyond any traditional form of courage, that says, "We're neighbors, and we're going to have to be neighbors.

We're gonna have to learn to be neighbors."

And one of the things that we can do is use the power of our grief to change this stuff around and not turn justice into any form of revenge.

- You know, Colum, as you speak, I'm thinking about one of the Palestinian filmmakers from "No Other Land", the Oscar-winning documentary, who was beaten up, arrested, held, you know, and aggressed by settlers, and just thinking, like, what you just said, you know, they worked with Israelis, you know, Palestinians and Israelis together.

And for me, those are the people who bring hope to a future, 'cause they still have hope.

They're still talking to each other, like Bassam and Rami are doing.

Let's translate a little bit, finally.

You are also in touch with Senator George Mitchell.

There's another fabulous anniversary for the great Good Friday Agreement of Northern Ireland coming up.

And you've been helping him, I believe, writing the speech for this.

You're quite close to him.

This is a phenomenal example of how you get people from two sides of a very, very bitter war to make peace.

What are you thinking now?

What do you think you want George Mitchell to say?

- I mean, thank you for bringing up Senator Mitchell and all of his work.

Look, he finds the possible within the supposedly impossible, 'cause I would've told you, I'm 60 years old now, and when I was 16 years old, I would've told you it would've been entirely impossible for things in Northern Ireland to be at peace, and for my island to have 27 years of peace.

I would've laughed at you.

I would've said, "That's absolutely crazy."

But the thing about it is that there are people there, men, and particularly women, in fact, especially in Northern Ireland, women of purpose and conviction, who believe that this stuff not only should stop, but will stop, and has to stop.

One of the things that Senator Mitchell is talking about is passing the torch.

It's time to give a younger generation a chance to understand.

They'll take it in new ways, in absolutely new directions.

But the fact that the peace has held, yes, it's shaky, yes, it's a bit dodgy at times, and everybody knows that, but it has held, and it is a shining human example of what can be done when we listen to each other and we have an empathy and a decency and a compassion for one another.

And Senator Mitchell, you know, has built a career out of all of this.

He's 92 years old now, or 92 years young, rather, 'cause he's pretty incredible.

He's still saying, you know, "This is what we need."

He still has a sort of form of what I would call a radical hope.

He might not call it a radical hope.

He finds it to be entirely grounded and proper and reasonable.

And these are shattered times.

We all know they're shattered times.

In fact, when we even try to pick up pieces of the shattered times, they shatter in our hands instantly because the world is moving in an exponential way.

Let's remember that we have peace in places like Northern Ireland.

Let's remember that there are people of peace and engagement in all sorts of places that don't get recognized.

Whether they're in the West Bank, whether they're in Gaza, whether they're in Israel, whether they're in Ukraine, people are doing things.

And I think if we remember them, we're gonna be on the road to some form of healing.

- Without a doubt.

Not just healing, but solutions.

Definitely, we should raise the voices of the peace makers.

Colum McCann, thank you so much, author of "Twist".

That's your latest book.

- Thanks.

- And as someone who covered the Good Friday Agreement, I'm looking forward to George Mitchell's speech.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much.

- Now to a journey from death row to exile, which has captured the attention of so many.

Iranian-Kurdish rapper Saman Yasin was detained during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran.

When he was given medical leave last October, he fled the country, and now he's speaking out about the treatment he endured behind bars in this exclusive report by Jomana Karadsheh.

And just a warning that it does contain descriptions of torture.

- [Jomana] It was a treacherous trek to freedom for a man on a mission to tell the world of the horrors he survived.

After two years in the deepest, darkest cells of the Islamic Republic's prisons, Saman Yasin emerged a broken man.

(Saman speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] "Physically, the torture I endured has changed me tremendously.

I developed a lot of trauma after prison."

- [Jomana] The Iranian-Kurdish rapper recently escaped.

Now in Germany, he sat down with us for this exclusive interview, revealing in terrifying detail what he says he endured behind bars, an ordeal that led him to the gallows and back.

(Saman rapping in foreign language) - [Jomana] The 29-year-old had long been a rebel, his music, he says, a form of protest against oppression and social injustice.

(protestors chanting in foreign language) - [Jomana] And when Iranians rose up in what was known as the Woman, Life, Freedom protest in 2022, Yasin was among the masses out on the streets.

Their uprising was met with brutal force.

(guns firing) Hundreds were killed according to the UN.

Thousands detained.

Yasin was one of dozens of protestors who appeared in what rights groups described as sham trials, based on forced confessions extracted under torture.

(Saman speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] "During those first two, three months, I was under the most severe torture.

The interrogators themselves told me, 'Whatever happens to you here, no one will know.

This place doesn't even exist on the map.'"

- I know this is very difficult for you, but are you able to describe this physical torture that, you know, they put you through?

(Saman speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] "They took me to a cold room and left me hanging there.

That room, I heard from the other prisoners, that they call it the morgue because it is freezing cold.

They hoisted me up, one hour, two hours, just hanging.

They asked me, 'Are you going to write a confession or not?'"

- [Jomana] Yasin says his interrogators wanted him to confess that he was the man in this video, that he had a gun and fired it three times during a protest.

His denials, he says, only led to more severe torture.

(Saman speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] "The interrogators inserted a pen into my left nostril and then forcefully hit it from below.

I passed out from the pain, and when I woke up, I was covered in blood."

- [Jomana] Within weeks of his arrest, he was sentenced to death for the Islamic Republic's crime of waging war against God.

While on death row, he says, they put him through the unimaginable.

(Saman speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] "They told me, 'Go up these steps.'

Then they put a noose around my neck.

I was under that noose for about 15 minutes."

- Yasin's death sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court.

Then last year, he was sentenced to five years in prison, accused of colluding against national security.

His health and mental state deteriorated so much in prison, they had to release him on medical furlough in October, back into the arms of a mother who thought she would never see her boy again.

Soon after a complex nose surgery, authorities summoned him back to jail.

"There was no going back," he says.

He paid smugglers to get him out through the mountains to Northern Iraq.

With the help of activists and a politician in Germany, he made it to Berlin, beginning a new life all alone in a strange place far from home.

Healing will be hard.

He says just breathing through his shattered nose is a constant reminder of what they did to him.

Iran did not respond to CNN's request for comment on Yasin's case.

His account is consistent with the findings of a two year UN investigation into the crackdown that documented widespread use of torture and mock executions, accusing the regime of crimes against humanity.

(Saman rapping in foreign language) - [Jomana] Yasin is now turning his trauma into lyrics, a survivor's testimony for the world to hear.

(Saman speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] "When you want freedom and have a great goal, you'll inevitably have to pay a price for it.

I did not just witness these things, I lived through them, and now I feel an even greater responsibility toward the people than I did before."

(upbeat radio music) - [Jomana] A responsibility to be the voice of those he left behind bars, a voice he vows that will not be silenced.

- Jomana Karadsheh reporting.

Now, music and lyrics have been important barometers of all avenues of life since time immemorial.

This week, a very different sound celebrates its 60th birthday.

It is "The Sound of Music", which I first watched growing up in Iran, the sweeping musical about a nun finding love and a whole new family in the Austrian Alps, with its threatening undertones amid the rise of the Nazis.

Its massive and enduring success confirmed Julie Andrews as the biggest star on the planet.

We spoke back in 2019 when she released a memoir, and she told me then about what it was like playing Maria and other beloved characters like Mary Poppins.

Julie Andrews, welcome to the program.

- It's a pleasure to be here.

- And it's a great pleasure to have you on board.

Let's just talk about Mary Poppins for a moment, 'cause that was your first ever film.

- Yeah.

- You came from vaudeville here in England.

- Yes, to Broadway.

- And who approached you to do "Mary Poppins"?

Why?

(Julie chuckles) - Well, I was on Broadway for quite a while in "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot", and wonderful, wonderful musicals.

And I was in "Camelot" with Richard Burton, the wondrous Richard Burton, and Walt Disney came to see the show.

- The man himself.

- The man himself.

And apparently, I didn't know it, but he'd been advised to come and see that young lady in "Camelot".

And he came backstage, and I thought he was coming back to just be polite and sort of say he enjoyed the show and so on.

But he proceeded to tell me about this live action animation film that he was planning, of P. L. Travers' "Mary Poppins", and asked if I'd like to come to Hollywood and see the designs and hear the songs and so on.

I was gobsmacked, and I said, "Oh, Mr. Disney, I would love to, but I'm so sorry, I'm pregnant."

And he said, "Well, that's all right, we'll wait".

So, I had no idea that a movie takes as long as it does with pre-production and so on.

So, lo and behold, about nine months later, with my new baby in tow and my husband, we went off to Hollywood.

- I read that you said that you were worried that you might be typecast as this English nanny.

- Yes, yeah.

- I wonder whether you might agree with somebody who might say, in fact, you were one of the first female superheroes.

Because "Mary Poppins" is all about, essentially, a female superhero.

- Well, that's true.

Especially these days.

- Yeah.

- With the MeToo movement and so many things happening.

I never thought about that.

Well, she was very forthright, wasn't she?

And forthcoming, and stated her mind.

- And all the flying and the acrobatics.

- Yes, yes, she was a... You know, I never thought of it that way, Christiane.

Well, thank you.

(Christiane laughs) - And tell us, because it wasn't the easiest of performances for you in terms of the harnesses and the wires- - That's right.

- And the physicality of it.

- Well, there were so many special effects in the film, including the flying sequences, and you know, in those days, they didn't have the amazing things that they have these days, which can make it so much easier, to do animation as well as live action.

♪ Oh, supercalifragilisticexpialidocis ♪ ♪ Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious ♪ ♪ If you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious ♪ ♪ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocis ♪ - So, Disney really invented everything at the studio.

And I was flying around in excruciatingly painful harnesses.

- Wow.

- And there was a day when I very nearly got dropped, but... Well, I did drop, actually, but it was- - Were you like a sack of potatoes?

- Yes, but it was almost the last day of filming and they were saving all the important flying stuff, presumably at the end of the film, in case there was an accident, when I would've got most in the can already.

- And sure enough, there was an accident.

- And there was.

I felt myself slipping a little bit on the wire, so I called down and said, "You know, when I come down, could you please be kind enough to just bring me down gently, 'cause I think..." Well, I wasn't sure, at which point I did go all the way to the stage.

But the good thing is I had counterbalancing equipment as well.

Of course I did.

But I did come down pretty hard.

- Again, very ahead of its time, all of this.

You got all the awards possible for "Mary Poppins".

Golden Globe, you got the Oscar.

- I know, amazing.

- It was pretty amazing.

But there is this legend that perhaps you should have been chosen for the film version of "My Fair Lady".

You were Eliza Doolittle on Broadway.

And there's a very funny story about when you accept the Golden Globe.

- That's right.

- Tell me.

- The producer, Jack Warner, who produced the film of "My Fair Lady", was, of course, at the Golden Globes, because it was also nominated.

And just before I went on stage, something made me say to the table where I was sitting, "You know, I suppose somewhere along the way, I should thank Jack Warner, because if I'd done 'My Fair Lady', I wouldn't have been able to do 'Mary Poppins'."

So, immediately, all my chums said, "Oh, do it, Julie, just do it."

And I thought, "No, I can't do that."

You know, I'm so new in Hollywood.

But when I got up there, some wicked impulse made me say, "And of course, finally, I have to thank Mr. Warner for making all this possible in the first place."

And there was this awful silence, and I thought, "Oh my God, you know, my career has ended."

But then they burst out laughing, including Mr. Warner, who was a good sport about it.

- And a very powerful mogul in Hollywood.

- Well, huge mogul.

But he was dear about it, and he got what I was about.

- And then you did "Sound of Music".

- Yes.

- Which again, you know, is everybody's favorite film.

- Well, how lucky can a girl get?

- I mean, how many times has everybody seen it?

I was fascinated though, because that iconic shot of you emerging on the top of the mountain and, you know, the camera pans up... ♪ The hills are alive with the sound of music ♪ ♪ With songs they have sung for a thousand years ♪ - [Christiane] It was very hard work, wasn't it?

Because you said it was done by a helicopter.

- It's no accident that I've called this new memoir "Home Work".

- "Home Work".

- Because I wanted to show that it's not just red carpets and tiaras and glamour.

It really isn't.

And as you well know, your business and my business, it's really a lot of work to get it right and try to do it well, and long hours and much travel, and I just wanted to show that.

- But in this particular opening sequence, the helicopter was- - Oh, the famous helicopter.

- The famous helicopter was flying around, trying to get the shot.

- Yes.

- And how did it affect you physically?

- Well, it was just one very small piece of film, but it was that moment of walking toward the camera and doing that spin at the beginning of the film.

And so I started at one end of the field and the helicopter, with an incredibly good cameraman hanging out the side of it, with this huge camera strapped to him, from the other end of the field, and we approached each other.

It really was the most extraordinary sight to see this helicopter coming at me sideways, sort of crab-like or grasshopper-like or something, across the field, as it got lower and lower and lower.

And then I made my turn, and then the director signaled for another take and another take and another take.

But every time the helicopter went back to his side of the field and I went back to mine, the downdraft from those jet engines just knocked me flat into the grass.

So eventually, I was sort of coming up with mud and hay and a few things like that.

I kept indicating to the cameraman, couldn't he please make a wider turn around me?

And I just got that, "Fine, let's do another turn."

- "Let's do it again."

- Yeah.

(laughs) - And then extraordinarily, and I didn't know this until just researching, the famous scene in the rowboat on the river in "Sound of Music".

- Right, right.

- Where you're making a surprise for Captain von Trapp.

- Well, he's suddenly come home, and we didn't realize that he was home.

- [Christiane] Right.

- And so I stand up in the boat and say, "Oh, captain, you're home," at which point we all tumble out of the boat.

And just before that take on the lake, the assistant director came wading out into the water toward me, and I lent down and said, "What?"

And he said, "Well, can I just ask you something?

The littlest one can't swim, so could you fall forward out of the boat and grab her as quickly as you can?"

And I thought, "Oh my God."

A huge responsibility.

- Yes.

- And of course, the boat rocked and rocked and rocked again, and I went straight over the back with my feet rather like Mary Poppins, and I've never swam so fast in my life.

- As poor, little Gretl.

- Yes.

And she was a trooper.

I mean, she really was.

She went under a couple of times, poor child.

- I mean, it is extra...

I mean, nobody would let that happen today, right?

- No, I don't think so.

- I mean, health and safety would be all over the place.

- Yeah.

I mean, of course, everybody was wading into the water to try and reach her, but they'd ask me to try to get her first.

- But the doing, of course, for you, was also your voice.

- Yes.

- And you write very poignantly.

"It's like opening your chest and bearing your soul.

My singing teacher used to say to me, 'Singing with a great orchestra is like being carried along in the most comfortable armchair.

It can engulf you when you feel that incredible, intense joy coming over you.'"

- Yes, it can, it can make you almost want to weep, and I think I further write that that's the moment to give it to the audience, because that joy is so intense.

- And so you also say it was heartbreaking when you lost your voice and you couldn't sing anymore.

- Yes.

Well, actually that part of my life is not touched on in this memoir.

- Not in this book.

- But I think everybody knows that there was an operation, and that sadly, it wasn't successful.

And here's the amazing thing, that I discovered so much else when I wasn't singing anymore, writing, and writing with my daughter, and writing all our children's books together.

And yes, I mourned the loss tremendously.

But she said, my lovely Emma said, "Well, Mom, you've just found a different way of using your voice," which I thought was...

It was as if a weight dropped off my shoulders when she said that.

Because I do as much as possible, include music in everything I do, and enjoy it still, of course, so much.

I miss singing hugely.

But I probably...

Thank God it happened at this age, at a later age in my life, because I probably would've stopped fairly soon.

- Amazing.

- Yeah.

- You've had a second and third act.

- Well, yes, it is amazing, isn't it?

- Yeah, it's great.

Thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you, Christiana.

It was lovely talking to you.

- It was lovely talking to you.

Next, a glimpse inside the glamour and the intensity of glossy magazine production in its heyday.

Graydon Carter was the editor of Vanity Fair for 25 years, and in his new memoir, he reflects on his career adventures.

He tells Walter Isaacson about the golden age of magazines and how he made it to the top from his humble beginnings.

- Thank you, Christiane, and Graydon Carter, welcome to the show.

- Walter, thank you.

- You know, one of the things we biographers sometimes think about is that it's all about Dad when it's a successful person.

And then I'm reading this book, and your father is quite a character.

Tell me, let's start there.

Tell me about him.

- Well, he was a pilot during World War II and flew Spitfires and Lancasters.

He did not have what you would call a mind for business, and had a business that did not do well after the war.

But he loved flying, and he loved flying and sailing and skiing and golf.

And he was, yeah, I know he was a character, and he loved wood.

And he would take my brother and I, we were, like, you know, like nine and five, to look for wood on the side of the road that the National Commission, Capital Commission, which was in Ottawa where we grew up in, and would go out there to get free firewood.

He was quite cheap and would turn the thermostat down to 45 degrees a night.

This is in a city where it would easily be 30, 40 below at night.

- And so you actually worked as a lumberjack, on lines.

Tell me about some of those jobs and how that affected how you hired people when you got to be rich and famous.

- Well, I never got to be rich and famous, but it did affect the way I hired people.

My parents, like a lot of their friends, sent their kids out west to toughen them up and to, if you could, get a job as a lineman for the railroad.

And then I went out and worked for six months for the Canadian National Railroad out on the Saskatchewan Prairie, and I lived in a box car with 11 other guys.

Most of them had minor criminal records.

They'd had a spot of trouble when they were growing up.

And I overcame my fear of heights and learned how to climb telegraph poles.

And I had one of the great experiences of my life, and I adored all the guys I worked with.

And so when I hired people, especially assistants when they're young, rather than sort of silver plated internships, I look for people who've worked in restaurants or worked at a dude wrench or done something with their hands, and I do think that if you can handle...

If you're a waiter, a waitress, and you can handle three or four tables of six or eight difficult diners, everything else in life is gonna come easy.

- You and I joined Time together and probably talk about when the going was good.

Tell me about your first few months at Time when we were there.

- Well, I mean, I arrived from Canada.

It was in the fall, but it was still warm, and I only had really warm clothing, coming from Canada.

I had an old blazer with a crest on it, and I wore it to a meeting, and somebody at the meeting asked if I worked as a doorman.

And so I was sort of slightly horrified.

So I went back that night, and with a razor blade, sewed the label, the crest off of my jacket, and it left sort of a dark patch because the rest of the jacket had faded, and I looked even more foolish.

But it was exhilarating for me.

I mean, the rest of you guys, I mean, all of you were incredibly talented and much smarter than the people I'd been around.

- Wait, tell me about that team that you came in with at Time.

- Well, it was you, it was Kurt Andersen, became my partner at Spy.

It was Michiko Kakutani, became a Pulitzer Prize winner and chief book critic of the New York Times.

Maureen Dowd, a Pulitzer Prize winning critic for the Times.

There was Pico Iyer, the wonderful writer.

There was Jim Kelly, who became the editor of Time.

There was Rich Stengel, who became the editor of Time.

There was Steve Smith, who became the editor of US News and World Report.

Who am I missing here?

Frank Rich became the chief theater critic for The Times.

- I always thought that you were the consummate insider and also outsider.

You could play both roles.

Did you feel that way at Time?

- No, I felt like an outsider, but I was dying to get into the melting pot and just melt.

I tried to get rid of my Canadianisms.

I tried to dress like an American.

And I just wanted to sort of fit in with all you.

- One of the subtitles for this book could have been, "Expense Accounts I Have Known".

Tell me about your expense account at Time.

- Well, it was the same as yours, and the fact is, I'd never had one before.

And to be in your 20s, paying $200 a month rent in New York and having an expense account, I felt like I was in heaven.

And I didn't cook a meal for the first five years.

I don't think I turned on my oven once.

I don't think I knew how to turn on my oven.

And so to be able to go to restaurants, and I remember in those days, you rarely went out for lunch with one or two people that you didn't split a bottle of wine, and to me, it was just absolute nirvana.

- Was there something prophetic about that, that we should have reigned back knowing that it was gonna be difficult in the future?

- Oh, God, no, it wouldn't have changed a thing.

First of all, I think the expenses were such a small line item in the overall cost of putting out Time.

No, I think that is an important element in maintaining staff and keeping staff happy and committed.

I mean, then I went to Conde Nast, where the expenses were exponentially greater.

But Si Newhouse, who ran Conde Nast, you know, he wasn't just throwing the money out the window, he wanted to make Conde Nast the dominant magazine publisher in America.

And he did.

- And he did it by spending money even on, like, Annie Leibovitz, which helped define your Vanity Fair's look and feel.

- 100%.

I mean, she was our principal photographer, and I remember one time, we were a quarter of a million dollars away from what she wanted for her contract and what we wanted to pay her, and I mentioned this to Si, and he just said, "Oh, let's pay it."

He said, "I don't wanna nickel and dime her."

- I love it when nickel and diming is referred to as $250,000 a year.

- Me too, me too.

- So, tell me about when you were at Time, I used to walk down the halls, and I'd see you and Kurt huddled together, and you were inventing Spy Magazine.

What was going through your head?

Why did you decide, "Okay, we wanna get out of Time and invent a new form of magazine"?

- Well, everybody else at the magazine seemed to be doing very well, and I knew that I wasn't cut out to be Time material.

- Wait, why is that?

- I just wasn't.

I wasn't Ivy League, I wasn't as buttoned down.

I wasn't as good a writer.

And so I just, I could, you know, I could sort of read the writing on the wall, and I thought I had this idea for a magazine, and then I approached Jim Kelly first, but he sort of, I think he knew he was gonna be the editor at one point.

And then I approached Kurt, and he was in right away.

And so then over a 10 month period, we planned out the entire magazine.

- Well, but you said you had an idea for a magazine.

I love Spy, but tell me, what was the idea behind it?

- It was just a funny, satirical, fact-based magazine about New York City, which was then, as you know, it had come out of bankruptcy or near bankruptcy.

All of a sudden, it was awash with this new money coming from investment bankers, their wives were the ladies who lunched, and the city was sort of alive with a lot of characters showing off the money they had.

And that's sort of great for journalism, and we wanted to write about that.

- And it was basically poking fun at the pretensions of this elite, like in the tradition of H. L. Mencken way back, on magazines.

Tell me about, let's start with Donald Trump.

How did he get to be a stubby-fingered vulgarian?

- Not stubby, short-fingered, not stubby.

- Short-fingered, short-fingered vulgarian.

- He'd be offended by stubby.

- Yes, exactly, and we don't wanna offend him.

- As he is by short.

No, I was always in need of money 'cause I had a number of kids, and so I took an assignment from GQ to write a story about him, and it was his first national exposure.

So I spent three weeks with him, and he was very excited to have me around.

And to be honest, I found him charming in a salesman type way.

He uses your name like every three or four sentences the way a tin, aluminum siding salesman would use it.

But in the story, I'd made mention that I thought his hands looked too small for his body, so at Spy Magazine later on, we came up of epithets for people, and we called him, "A short-fingered vulgarian."

That truly drove him crazy.

- And how did Donald Trump react over the years on the short-fingered vulgarian?

He sent you missives at times.

- Well, firstly, yes, he would send me nasty notes.

Then he threatened to sue us.

Then when I became the editor of Vanity Fair, the transactional Donald Trump, I think he realized that he better calm this feud, such as it was, down.

And he tried to become friends and we had dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

I've had dinner with him and Melania.

He invited me to one of his weddings.

But it just couldn't hold, and so I would write something about him in Vanity Fair, and he would, once Twitter got started, he started tweeting horrible things about me.

He would call me sloppy and dopey.

He said my wife thought I was a total loser.

He said that Vanity Fair was losing steam.

The Oscar party wasn't hot.

The food at our restaurant, the Waverly Inn, was terrible.

And I blew up all these tweets about this large, and I framed them and had 'em all up inside my wall for visitors to see when they came to visit me.

- You talk about him being transactional, that even though you had poked fun of him, once you were powerful, he was trying to make it up.

That's a theme of this book too.

Whether it's Michael Ovitz or Donald Trump, all these people you pilloried when you were at Spy, they then all wanna be transactional and make it up to you.

- That was simply because of the chair I was sitting in at Vanity Fair.

I think it was very important to them.

And, you know, I did my best to give them a fair shake.

But Mike Ovitz was, you know, then the most powerful man in Hollywood, and he had a dramatic fall, and we did two or three stories on that.

And I always used to say that Vanity Fair was the magazine that if you rose to success, it'd be the magazine you'd wanna have that story written about, and if you fell from those heights, it's the least favorite magazine you'd want to have written about.

- How did the Vanity Fair job come along?

- (chuckles) There was an intermediary period between Spy and Vanity Fair, and I edited this newspaper called The New York Observer, and it was a very sleepy, Upper East Side newspaper.

It was a broadsheet on salmon colored paper.

It was very well designed.

But I took the job and I thought I could make it a thing at a certain point, like, readable, and then at some point, a must read.

And about six months in, seven months in, I started sending complimentary copies to friends of mine that I'd met over the years, and to a lot of them, they were editors in Europe.

And Si, he takes an annual tour of all his properties in Europe.

- [Walter] This is Si Newhouse who owns Conde Nast.

- Si Newhouse who owned Conde Nast, and Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

And he stopped off in London and Paris and Milan, and he saw copies of The New York Observer and everybody's in (indistinct), and returned to America under the misguided impression that this was an international hit.

So he called me in, and he asked if I would be interested in two magazines.

And I thought he was gonna say something like GQ or Details, neither of which I could improve on.

And he offered me either The New Yorker or Vanity Fair.

And we had spent five years making fun of the writing style, the editor, the contributors of Vanity Fair, and so we settled on The New Yorker, and I spent a lot, two weeks, the next two weeks, working on a plan.

I only told Jim Kelly, my agent, Andrew Wiley, and my family about this.

And the day that it was supposed to be announced, Anna Winter called me and said, "It's going to be the other magazine," and I thought, "Oh, God, I don't have a plan for that," but I said, "I'll take the job," because we desperately needed the extra money.

And the first two years were rocky because the people at the magazine, I don't think they fully trusted me because of Spy, but I thought if I just be myself and treat them fairly and compassionately, it'll work out.

And I went two years without firing anybody, and in one week, I let three people go, which was more people than I'd let go and fired in my entire life, and then things sort of changed, that people started coming around to the way I wanted the magazine to be, and we tried to change the house style of writing, and I wanted people to work together in a collegial, friendly, respectful manner.

And for the next 23 years, it pretty much was that.

- And you had some of the best writers in the business, and you just kind of recruited big names and gave them long form.

Tell me about some of them.

- Well, I went after writers I thought...

I wanted clever writers like Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott to be columnists.

But I also wanted writers who could write big narrative stories that had a beginning, middle, and end, and they could run between 8,000 words and 20,000 words, but they had to be able to tell a story.

So I had people like, you know, Michael Hare and David Halberstam and Sebastian Junger.

- [Walter] And Michael Lewis.

- Michael Lewis and Maureen Orth and Marie Brenner.

And eventually, we had about 50 writers on contract.

- Why has that desire for brilliant long form narrative fallen out?

- It hasn't, it's just so expensive, because...

I should have thrown Bryan Burrough in there as well.

It's just so expensive, because a writer has to spend, you know, three months, sometimes half a year on a story, and they've got to make a living, and we could afford to pay them during that period.

Like when Dominick Dunne, he spent almost a year in Los Angeles covering the OJ Simpson trial, and it was a big thing for Vanity Fair.

He was a huge star.

And that probably cost us a million dollars a year or more for those stories.

- Your relationship with Anna Wintour is carefully woven through the book.

Tell me about her.

- Okay, first of all, we were very good friends.

I wrote for her for a number of years.

She introduced me to Si, she brought me into Conde Nast.

She was a great and sort of cozy colleague, and we had a very good relationship.

I think she started living up to this nuclear winter reputation.

I didn't find that to be the case until much later in our relationship.

But then eventually, she became a little unpredictable when I met her, and I've said this in my book, but I was never sure when I saw her whether she'd treat me like one of her best friends or the parking lot attendant.

And so when she became the editor-in-chief of Conde Nast, she made an effort, she made an attempt to try to take over half my staff and put them under her, and that sort of put a chill on the relationship and it put a chill on my time at Conde Nast.

I was coming up to my 25th year at Vanity Fair, and I thought it's time to do something different.

- Graydon Carter, thank you so much for joining us.

- Walter, thank you.

- They don't make them like Graydon anymore.

And that is it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/amanpour.

Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.