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[bright upbeat music] - Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour.
We're looking back at some of this year's favorite interviews.
Here's what's coming up.
- I just didn't wanna be alive anymore.
- [Amanpour] The Duchess of Sussex shares her pain.
I talked to Sir Peter Westmacott, former Royal Insider, and former Ambassador to the United States about what Meghan and Harry's story reveals about the Royal family.
Also joining me British American writer, Bonnie Greer and.
- This is a moment to not talk about trust but to show that you can be trusted.
- [Amanpour] This Belgium prime minister is a feminist.
On International Women's Day, we talked to Alexander De Croo a male ally, who means it.
Then, the glaring inequalities of the global vaccine rollout from Dr. Ayoade Alakija tasked with getting every African a shot in the arm.
Plus. - They told me about this mission, and then they asked if I wanted to go to space and immediately I said, yes, it was a no brainer.
- [Amanpour] A billionaire invites a cancer survivor to see stars.
Entrepreneur, Jared Isaacman, and physician assistant Hayley Arceneaux, tell Walter Isaacson about the charitable civilian mission to space.
[bright ambient music] - [Announcer] Amanpour & Company is made possible by; The Anderson Family Fund, Sue and Edgar Wacheinheim III, The Cheryl and Phillip Milstein family, Candace King Weir, The Strauss Family Foundation, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, additional support provided by these funders and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
- Welcome to the program everyone, I'm Christiane Amanpour in London where the British Royal family is dealing with the shock waves from Meghan and Harry's interview with Oprah.
In her first public comments since taking a step back from official duties, the Duchess of Sussex gave a glimpse into what it was really like for her after marrying Prince Harry.
She says she was so isolated and unsupported that she thought about taking her own life, and she told prince Harry about that.
- I knew that if I didn't say it, that I would do it, and I just didn't wanna be alive anymore.
And that was a very clear, and real and frightening, constant thought.
And I remember how he just cradled me and I was... I went to the Institution and I said that I needed to go somewhere to get help, said that I've never felt this way before and I need to go somewhere.
And I was told that I couldn't, that it wouldn't be good for the Institution.
- Now among many shocking revelations, Meghan also claimed unnamed members of the Royal household had very troubling conversations with Harry while she was pregnant about what the color of their son's skin would be.
Today Oprah said that it was not the Queen or Prince Philip.
So Peter Westmacott served as Deputy Private Secretary to Prince Charles, Harry's father, of course, later he was British Ambassador to the United States.
More than 17 million Americans watched last night and million more we'll watch around the world tonight.
Ambassador Westmacott is joining me now and thanks for being with us.
I want to know from your gut reaction and from your perspective, having been on the inside in the Royal household as private secretary, how big a drama, how much of a shockwave is this for the Institution as Meghan calls it, the firm has many other others call it, just basically the Royal household?
- Well, thank you Christiane for having me on.
Of course we don't yet know quite what the impact will be, but we do recall that some of the very big interviews that Prince Charles gave and Princess Diana did make an impact and there were shockwaves for some time.
And it's obviously clear from the reactions that there have been to this two hour program, that there will be reverberations.
I think, how will the family react?
I suspect many of members won't actually watch this, that's quite often what happens in the Royal family.
My guess is there will be a degree of hurt that there is a personal nature to some of these criticisms.
And of course let's remember that in most families, the opportunity to work out your personal difficulties is there in private.
And here we have a lot of this laid back.
one side of a story and that's always a painful thing to do.
And it's a particularly painful thing to do when you are the most public family in the country, if not in the world and where you have a very strong sense of your duty and responsibility to discharge your public duties, and hopefully not normally, to have all your private affairs made public.
So obviously there'll be an impact.
But I think also that the inclination, especially from a Monarch who's been on the throne, as long as she has, and has seen it all will be just to get on with life.
- Okay, that's interesting.
I wondered whether you thought maybe given the nature of the allegations for instance about racism that they might be forced to put out some kind of statement to address some of those.
Let me just play this sound bite which by now everybody has seen, and people are digesting and was pretty shocking when it landed on Oprah's lap.
Let's just play this.
- In those months when I was pregnant all around this same time.
So we have in tandem the conversation of he won't be given security, he's not gonna be given a title and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he's born.
- What?
There's a conversation with you?
- With Harry.
- About how dark your baby is going to be?
- Potentially and what that would mean or look like.
- Well, I mean, you can see the visible shock from Oprah who's pretty much seen and heard it all.
What did you feel when you just listened to that?
- Couple of points, Christiane.
The first thing I would say is that, thinking back to the wedding, not a little bit less than three years ago, I thought the way the Prince of Wales walked Meghan down the aisle, so to speak at Windsor Castle because her own father wasn't there, was a splendid gesture of welcome.
And I sensed at the time that... I know at the time he could not have been happier for them and delighted to see the Royal family issue like as inclusively modernizing, terrible words, but I used them anyway in the way that it was.
It was a wonderful occasion and I think the Royal family were quite delighted and we saw that in the pleasure on the Queen's face and the other members of the family.
So I think that was utterly genuine.
I'm surprised by some of the things that have been said, the business of whether or not he is going to be called prince.
Of course, there's a protocol about that.
It is the grandchildren of reigning Monarchs are given the title prince, is the normal rule.
And so I'm not sure that it's totally surprising that that wasn't the case for Archie, but of course, I don't know the full background.
And the other comment, it's deeply wounding and my consents that the pain that the Duchess must've felt, but sometimes there are moments when they're all guilty of a kind of unconscious bias.
We say something, we don't realize the unintended consequence of it and how painful those things can be when they're actually sometimes said innocently, naively, stupidly.
So I don't know the background, but I'm just thinking that all of us have sometimes said stuff which afterwards we thought was crass or insensitive, possibly racist, but in my judgment anyway, usually not intended to be.
So I don't know the background.
It's distressing the way it was told, and I totally understand the shock that Oprah Winfrey felt but I think people might want to know the full story.
- Yeah, I mean is the shock that's actually being heard around the world and both Harry and Meghan were very, very clear in there interview that none of this feeling of hurt or being targeted, did they lay at the feet of the Queen or Prince Phillip.
They were very clear about that.
In fact, Meghan said over and over again, that she felt very welcomed by the Queen and very comfortable in the Queen's presence.
But as someone, for instance, who was around when the Princess Diana drama was happening, and we know that Prince Harry has said over and again, and not for the first time last night, that he didn't wanna see history repeat itself with the press hounding his wife like they did his mother.
We know how traumatic and how much PTSD he has about the death of his mother, which he lays at the feet of the press essentially.
You also had to deal with that.
I mean, talk honestly about what many believe is a fairly rabid nature of the British Royal and tabloid press.
- I think Christiane the first thing to say is that it's hard to imagine or to explain the degree of stress that comes from the exposure that you get once you marry into the most famous family in the world.
You may think you're prepared for it, but it is incredibly difficult.
The Duchess of York found it very painful, Princess of Wales found it at times extraordinarily painful.
So it's a level of scrutiny and everything you do do, or don't do some of the stories that are told are true, some are not.
If they couldn't get the principles then they would sometimes have a go at the court, yes and the people that were trying to advise them like me.
So that's the first thing is it's really very, very hard.
So I think it's not totally surprising that that should be out there as a sense of concern.
but I was very distressed to hear that she was even contemplating suicide.
But it is a very difficult process and that's why I think members of the public or members who are not from Royal background need as much help as they possibly can to adapt to such an existence.
- I think almost that's kind of the message here that no matter how much outsiders think they know what they're going into, they really don't.
And the sense of duty that the actual Royal family feel and have been trained from childhood presumably to try to follow is very difficult for outsiders to understand.
- I think you've touched on a very important point there.
I do sense, I'm speaking for myself that from the point of view of the Royal family, the counterpart to the privileges that come from being born, by birth, by an accidental birth into this extraordinary position is a very strong sense of duty and responsibility, and that is felt throughout the Royal family.
And of course it is therefore transmitted onto people who come from the outside and adapting to that when you haven't been born to it is really very difficult sometimes.
I'm sorry, I interrupted.
- No, no, that's okay.
Before I move on, 'cause I wanna talk to Bonnie Greer in a second, but very quickly.
I mean, look, Prince Andrew is an active of the Royal family and he's had some pretty, pretty difficult and serious allegations leveled at him.
And he did an interview that did not turn out very well for him and yet it seems that Meghan seems to be hounded more by the press than Prince Andrew was.
Can you see that sort of disconnect between a woman of color, who's an outsider and an actual one of them, one of us, son, Prince Andrew?
- I don't see that.
I recall that she got a fantastically positive, enthusiastic, happy press at the beginning and then things went a bit difficult afterwards.
There was some stories about behavior and activity or private flights, shower parties, whatever it was, nasty stuff that was written about her.
And what we do have to remember, I remember saying this at the time of the wedding.
It's wonderful now, but the way the media operate is that they build somebody up high in order to watch them fall crashing down when they decide that the tide has changed or something happens.
It's a very difficult thing. - Right, right.
- But I didn't see this as being linked in any sense to an issue of race.
I simply never detected that.
And I've never sensed any sense of racist prejudice within members of the Royal family who are, by the way, deeply attached to the Commonwealth and to people of all, I would say all races and faiths in this country.
- All right, so Peter Westmacott, thank you for joining us tonight.
And listening to that is Author, Playwright and also Columnist for the New European Newspaper, Bonnie Greer.
She of course grew up in Chicago, but she's lived in the UK for the past several decades and she's joining me now from London.
Bonnie Greer, what do you make of the fact that some of what I was asking Sir Peter Westmacott, as an insider, how do you see the disconnect between how well Meghan was welcomed and how incredibly positive it all was at the beginning, which is true, to how it all went crashing down to where we are now?
- First of all Christiane, thank you for having me.
It's good to see you again.
It's a very complex situation here and I think a lot of British people don't realize the complexity of it because they're born in it.
They're raised in it.
I've been in my time a Deputy Chair of the British Museum, I have served on a board of one of Prince Charles' charities, I have an honor from the Queen so I've met her.
I've been in the palaces several times and watch people swarm around these Royals.
And it's a very, very symbiotic, I don't wanna use the word schizophrenic because that's absolutely incorrect, but it's a situation in which there's a deep love, hate, envy kind of thing here.
And the Royal family particularly those who marry into it are very cognizant of the, it could flip on a dime attitude that people have about this family.
On one hand, they love them, they're proud of them, they stand there with their flags, they're there for the weddings, they're there for the funerals, but they own them.
And I think what they must find out at the end of the day, when the lights are down and the curtains are drawn, someone turns around and tells you, your life is not yours, it belongs to them.
And right now it's going on in the country.
As some of us are talking about the kind of split in the character of the British, people are just really pushing back.
They don't want to know, they'd become very bunkered in the sense that they think the whole thing is meaningless.
But that Christiane is so interesting because that's a generational thing.
Younger people, millennials, they're not there.
And particularly the ethnic minority community, particularly the black British community who were very proud of this moment, very proud of Harry, very proud of Harry that he married Meghan and that they came together.
This is a real blow, it's a real blow.
- Let me ask you, because I asked Sir Peter Westmacott 'cause he knew it from a different side of the coin, really how one deals with the British press and the tabloid press and the Royal correspondence.
There's been so much written about it and you can see it.
You can see how different stories are written about different members of the family.
But I wanna play this bit from LBC, one of the radio stations here, and it's now quite well known because many in the black community have pointed it out as a very, either conscious or unconscious bias towards racism.
Let's just play this.
- [Michael] Right you might not agree with this probably, but Meghan Markle has never been fully accepted because of her skin color.
- Oh, God, that one again, - Let's be honest.
- [Andrew] That one again.
Do you look at her?
Michael do you look at her and see a black woman?
'Cause I don't.
I see a very attractive woman.
It's never occurred to me that... I never look her and think, 'Gosh, she's black,' in the way you look at Oprah Winfrey, you would be in no doubt.
- So Bonnie break that down for us.
- Please let me.
First of all, that's a well-known commentator here, sounds like Andrew Pierce, and there's a couple of things going on there.
First of all, of course, she's not black because she's attractive.
He doesn't think that's racist.
And then the other one is talking about, well, she's not accepted and he says... There's so many trops floating past and they're unconscious, they're deeply unconscious and it's harming the country standing.
And it's the black community here very, very deeply.
It's almost like one of these movies where you're beating your hands against this wall while you're being driven away in a truck, they're not listening to you, they don't hear you.
And in listening to Sir Peter who's very fine guy that's an example of it, they can't hear it.
And partly it's because the Royal family is by one stretch, powerful, and they're also as Harry said last time or implied, they're prisoners.
They're prisoners of the feeling of this country about this Royal family and all Royal families, because it's deep resentment as well, and they're also prisoners of the tabloid press who basically decree who they are, what they are, we talking about The Daily Mail and Mail Online.
Piers Morgan on his breakfast television show at 6:30 in the morning is a real Meghan hater.
So it's sort of envelops this country while at the same time, they love and respect the Royal family.
I mean, there was a rumor last night that Meghan and Harry said something horrible about the Queen.
Well, they didn't do that, but people were suddenly screaming.
And then you got the other side, who want the Monarchy to go, just completely go.
So abolish the monarchy was trending.
And it's deep emotional, deep emotional fight and struggle deep inside of the British.
And it's very hard to explain to people outside, but it's very deep.
- Yeah, it's really amazing to see how this has impacted so far and wide and we will watch to see how it impacts the Institution and what comes out of it.
Bonnie Greer, thank you so much for being with us again.
And of course, if you know someone who's in need of help, reach out to the International Association for Suicide Prevention or Befrienders Worldwide.
If you're in the US, reach out to the national Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
You can call them at +1 800-273-8255.
It is of course, International Women's Day, a time, not only to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of women, but also to reflect on the long road ahead to full equality.
This year, the global pandemic has hit women the hardest, especially in the workforce.
The leader of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told me that in order to make change, women need male allies.
- Women don't have access to the same means of production if you want to put it that way.
Access to credit, access to means to empower themselves and that holds them back.
And Christiane, I want to say something, we need to talk to men in order to change things.
It's not good enough to just talk to ourselves as women.
- Indeed and that was Ngozi talking to me on the eve of becoming the first female head of the World Trade Organization.
Now one man who talks the talk and walks the walk is the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
He's put gender equality at the center of his post-COVID build back plan.
And he's also the author of the book, 'The age of women, Why Feminism Also Liberates Men'. Prime Minister De Croo is joining me now from Brussels and Prime Minister welcome to the program.
I really was interested to have you on this program because you've written a book about feminism, and you've pretty much validated what the head of the WTO has said, that male allies are needed and that equality is good for men as well.
How did you come to that point of view?
What made you actually put this down in a book?
- Well, first of all, thank you for having me to talk about a topic which I've always been very interested in since young age.
I had a mom who was a very active feminist and who talked to me a lot about it, but I really rediscovered it as a Minister for Development Corporation.
Where I saw throughout the world, when there is misery throughout the world, it is women and girls who take the heavy burden.
But I also saw that when countries develop and when countries develop well, the more gender equality you have, the more inclusive your growth is, the better it actually works.
And we see that on a country level, but we also see this in our own environments.
If you have let's say the council of your kids school, the parents council, or you have a sports club in which you are in management.
If you have a decision table with only men with gray hair and blue suits, or you have a diverse decision table, I think everyone knows in these turbulent times which decision table is going to take the best decisions.
- The diverse one, of course.
So let me ask you, because you've made this a point, your government is evenly split, 10 women and 10 men, but the top eight roles, just two of them are filled by women.
And your predecessor as Prime Minister, who was a woman, she lasted actually only a year.
What are you doing to try to balance those scales and make it more female friendly because it's more efficient, and effective, and it delivers better as you've just said.
And just to add, you also have the first trans female member of government in your government as well.
- Yes, we do.
And actually on the Belgian level, no one really talked about the fact that she was trans, everyone praised her for the fact that she's a very competent minister.
Now, the key point is if you look at it, the economic case for gender equality is clear-cut, it's extremely sound.
And if you look at the world today, and this is also the case in Belgium, what a waste of talent.
I mean, we have a great education system.
If you look at the end of higher education, you see that in general women have better scores, have better grades than men.
And then we all go into labor force and 10 years down the road, the question is what happens to all those women.
Now, what we see is that there is one very decisive moment that is when we start to have families and so on.
And there we do make choices and we think that those are choices we take in free will but by accident it seems that everything which is more domestic tasks ends up with women and the men feel that they are pushed into a direction of being the one providing mostly for the household.
And that moment, you really need to take some measures.
We have doubled the paternity leave in Belgium, because we've seen that if fathers take up their father role at a very young age, that actually helps in equally distributing the tasks at home.
We've also seen that in an intelligent way, if you use CODA in an intelligent way, it works.
And for example, we see it in politics.
You've talked about our gender parity government.
We also see that in our parliament, which is the result of a pure democracy.
We have today now the parliament with the third highest share of female members of parliament and that's a good thing.
Why would you not use all the talents and all the possibilities of half of your population?
Women are not the minority, they're actually majority.
- Precisely and it's great to hear you say that, loud and clear.
So I wanna ask you then, there is a problem all over the world, certainly in Europe, women in the workforce have been disproportionately hit by this pandemic.
Let's just read some of the stats.
The Eurostat figures show women's unemployment in the EU has grown faster to 7.9% compared to 7.1% for men.
We know as you just said that under COVID there's been so much domestic and gender-based violence, it's increased during the lockdowns.
And today you visited a center for sexual assault and domestic abuse.
Again, what can you do?
Because you've just said women are half the world, they produce so much talent and actual real life GDP, and yet they're being laid off.
- Well, as I said, at the beginning of the interview, when there is trouble in the world, it's often women and girls who are disproportionately more affected.
We see that in civil war, we've also seen this in this pandemic.
It is very often women in the workforce who had to take the very heavy tasks.
And when there was a balancing to be done which with taking care of families, it was again, women who had to combine everything.
But interesting that you related to a pandemic, I think today, everyone knows the concept of a pandemic and what the impact of a pandemic is and we know it now with COVID.
But if you talk about domestic violence, if you talk about sexual violence, this has been a pandemic against women that has been going on for decades.
I mean, the human and the economic costs of sexual violence and of gender based violence is a gigantic one.
And so centers like the one I visited this morning are extremely important to open up the debates, but also to better take care of victims who often are in a situation where they are not able to file complaints and to make sure that wrongdoers are being pursued.
- Prime Minister De Croo thank you so much for joining us on this International Women's Day.
Thank you for your perspective.
And now another area of inequality is on COVID vaccines, not necessarily gender based though.
Millions of Europeans and Americans are already vaccinated, but there are some countries in Africa where not one person has been vaccinated, not a single one.
Ayoade Alakija is co-chair of the African Union Vaccine Delivery Alliance, and she's helping secure vaccines for the continent.
And she's joining me now from Abuja in Nigeria.
Welcome to the program.
You just heard my conversation with the Prime Minister of Belgium about trying to get equality and parity on a gender based issue.
What is it like for you in Africa on this vaccine issue?
What is lacking?
Why are you not getting what you need in Africa right now?
- Well, thank you very much for having me Christiane and happy International Women's Day.
Gender parity, you've just talked about and gender equity, but now today we have vaccine equity as the main issue of the moment.
In Africa, as you've said, we're seeing in European countries and America, for instance, that 3 million people are being vaccinated a day, an amazing feat of logistics and delivery, and yet in Africa, the country that has received the most vaccines to date is Nigeria that I'm sitting in today.
And we have only received 3.9 million vaccines for over 210 million people.
So there is the issue, very clear issue of total disparity in the haves and the have nots in this world.
The vaccine equity issue means that if we have mutants and variants growing in different countries around the world, whilst you'd race off to them in the Western World, in Europe or America, and try to shut our countries out, say Africa or South America.
We're in a race against time, we're in a race against the virus and there is no way that we can win this race unless we have equity, unless everybody has a chance to get a vaccine.
- And yet the resources are not equally dispersed as we've been saying.
This is what the Head of the WHO, Dr. Tedros, said about this issue.
Let's just take a listen.
- It's encouraging to see health workers in lower income countries starting to be vaccinated, but it's regrettable that this comes almost three months after some of the wealthiest countries started their vaccination campaigns.
And it's regrettable that some countries continue to prioritize vaccinating younger, healthier adults at lower risk of disease in their own populations ahead of health workers and older people elsewhere.
- So Dr. Alakija do you feel that African nations have a seat at this table about vaccinations?
And do you feel that Western countries, if they didn't before are beginning to understand that actually everybody needs to be vaccinated and that they have either the will and the resources to direct in that direction, to put in that direction?
- Great question Christiane, thanks.
The first one about the seat at the table, I sort of chuckled a little, because I've just done a lecture at the London School of Hygiene, where I've talked to young women about grabbing a seat at the table and it is very much the issue with Africa.
So if they don't give you a seat at the table, you grab a chair, and if they don't give you a chair, get on the table.
And I think that very much is what the Africa Union Vaccine Acquisition task team has done.
At the very beginning, we were left behind, there's no doubt about it.
We were left behind, there was a race for vaccines.
And I mean to absolute credit to the scientific and research community and the production and pharma companies that created and made these vaccines in record time, I think that has been one of the challenges because everyone was not quite expecting us to have vaccine so soon.
So the minute they came, they were bought up and in getting ourselves a seat at the table, Africa, led by the President Ramaphosa of South Africa decided themselves, go and look for vaccines, search the world for vaccines, which has been done.
But the issue is the Western nations to the other part of your question, not just the West, well, let's call it the the global north have bought up every available vaccine.
Production lags mean the vaccines cannot be made quick enough for the... That there's a scarcity in production.
And so as Dr. Tedros just said, very, very rightly, countries are vaccinating everybody.
There are some countries who would have, I mean, I know the UK now is down to 50 year olds and would have vaccinated everybody perhaps by June or July and yet African nations still haven't.
Some of them, I think I go back 10 African nations to date have received vaccines through the COVAX, the vaccine Alliance, which is a brilliant initiative, but it's not enough.
COVAX is looking at 20, 20 plus percent of vaccines for an entire population of people.
And as we know to reach herd immunity, we need to go higher than that.
- Dr. Alakija some people are very concerned.
Well, I'm very, very curious about the graphs that we're seeing and the charts, which show that the caseload and the death load in many African countries is really, really low.
And it sounds to us very counter-intuitive 'cause at the beginning of this, we were told that, countries with less sophisticated public health structures, more developing countries with less resources would be very badly effected.
First of all, are those correct statistics, and if they are, what do you attribute them to?
- Thanks Christiane, there are things going on there.
Number one, no, that the statistics are not correct.
We don't have adequate data, unfortunately, we don't have the diagnostics.
In Abuja that I'm sitting in today, a private test will cost you upwards of a hundred plus maybe almost $200.
Not everybody, I mean, very few people can afford that.
And not only that, you have tests in capital cities of some countries, not even all countries.
So our diagnostics capacity is very, very limited.
So what we're seeing in terms of numbers of both sick and deaths from COVID are nowhere near the true picture.
Having said that, we were expecting a deluge.
We were expecting an absolute catastrophe on the continent.
And I think what we have done is that we have dealt with epidemics before.
We've dealt with HIV/AIDS, we've dealt with Ebola, we've dealt with yellow fever, with cholera on the continent.
So our public health systems in dealing with these things responded very quickly, and that is the capacity we have on the continent.
We have people, we have capacity, we have know, how we have knowledge, but we don't have the financial resources.
And this is where the issue of equity comes in.
That we have a place at that table that you referred to earlier, where we can assist the western nations, the global north, whichever, the US the UK, who are not so able to deal with these shots because they don't have the experience, but in turn we need to be equal partners at that table.
We're not out of the begging bowl.
We're saying, look, we are the same global community.
We have to work hand in hand together to ensure that we end this pandemic and as quickly as possible.
- Right, so a personal question, because it is International Women's Day.
I want to ask you from your perspective, how it was for you to rise to where you are right now.
But also I wanted to ask the Belgium Prime Minister and I ran out of time, is he impressed by his neighboring female Prime Ministers and as far afield as New Zealand and elsewhere who really got a grip on the COVID crisis from the beginning.
- Well, first of all, let me say that Jacinda Ardern is my total hero.
My second home is Fiji.
I live in Fiji most of the time.
And, I would say that she is absolutely just an incredible woman.
What she has done has been amazing and has really given us pride.
For me, how I got to where I am, I just, I think told that story took about an hour, but it's been hard work, grit and determination.
Just never giving up, just looking up to other women of substance around the world.
Dr. Ngozi as you've just referred to earlier on is just an amazing woman, and having people like that, that one can look up to.
I would also say people like yourself, Christiane, because I have been watching you for years, you're an international woman phenomenon, so we should be celebrating you as well on this day.
And we all know what it's taken to get here and it's now up to us to make sure that the next generation and those after them can go far better and can have far less challenges than we have had along our journeys.
- You are too kind Dr. Alakija, but as they say, if you can see it, you can be it, and you definitely prove that.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
And now from the challenges here on earth to a potential future written in the stars.
Billionaire entrepreneur, Jared Isaacman is funding the world's first, all civilian space mission that's with SpaceX, and it's called Inspiration 4.
He's using the event to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which fights cancer and other diseases.
Hayley Arceneaux has been chosen as the first crew member on this flight.
She's a 29 year old cancer survivor and a physician assistant at St. Jude.
They're joining our Walter Isaacson to discuss why space travel should be open to all.
- Thank you, Christiane.
And Jared and Hayley, welcome to the show.
- Thanks for having us. - Thanks for having me.
- So Jared, tell me about this.
Why did you decide to commission or to charter in a way to be the first all civilian mission into space?
- Well, I mean, I feel like at some point this was just gonna be eventuality that space was going to be opened up to everyday people.
And, you don't just have to be lucky enough to be selected as a NASA astronaut.
So I've been kind of knocking on the door of the commercial space industry for geez, like 12, 13 years saying, whenever this day comes, please keep me in mind.
And then just recently, like really only like three and a half months ago, I was on a call and reiterated my commitment to Commercial Space Exploration, and they said, it's gonna happen sooner than you think and it might even happen in like the next year.
But I had no idea it would happen that fast and I had no idea we would have the opportunity to do the first all civilian mission to space.
- Well, you didn't wanna make this just a billionaire's hobby or something, so you reserved a couple of the seats for special purposes.
Explain that and we have Hayley here, explain how you decided to pick Hayley to be one of the seats.
- Sure, so, first of all, I don't think there's anything wrong whether it's a year from now or 10 years from now or 50 years from now, I hope like fishing buddies can go to space together.
Like that's what we're trying to work towards is to make this like really accessible and affordable for everyone because the world is more interesting when people can go and dance among the stars and such, but inspiration for it is the first.
And the first is always significant and it comes with great responsibility.
And that's why we wanted to be like incredibly thoughtful about the organization that stands to benefit which is St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, because they have absolutely nothing to do with space or rockets, but they do have an important mission right here on earth which is fighting childhood cancer.
And if we are gonna have the right to go and explore in the worlds beyond ours, then we have a responsibility to take care of some of the significant problems that we have here on earth and that's where St. Jude comes into it.
And then the second component is, is the crew selection process.
I wanted in every single one of the crew members to be able to deliver a very powerful and inspiring message in their own right.
And that's where the mission pillars came up of leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity, because I believe every one of the crew members that we're gonna bring on this mission and the process we went about to finding them will deliver a very powerful and inspiring story to a lot of people, many of which may never wanna be astronauts or go into space, but just believe that in the case of Hayley, that you can run into really difficult challenges in life and face challenges and adversity and overcome them and still live out your dreams and that may never be as an astronaut.
- Hayley man, that's amazing and you have overcome a lot, you're a cancer survivor, you'll be the youngest person ever to go into space and you're involved with St. Jude's.
So tell me, how did you decide to put your hand up?
How were you chosen and what do you hope you're representing?
- Well, I was not part of the selection process.
I hadn't even heard about this mission.
St. Jude called me in early January, and they said they had something to talk to me about.
And they told me about this mission and then they asked if I to go to space, and immediately I said, yes, it was a no-brainer.
I mean, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
And it's incredible for St. Jude with how much money that we're gonna raise for this hospital and the research that's gonna come out of this and the awareness of the hospital.
But I am just so excited to represent childhood cancer survivors everywhere.
It's an incredible honor.
And I'm a PA at St.Jude now, I work with these kids every day, I know how hard they fight and I think this is really gonna give them something to look forward to.
- Well, St.Jude's an absolutely wonderful place.
And you too, as you've said, we're a cancer survivor.
Tell me about that journey.
You have a prosthetic limb.
Tell me what you overcame and why the space flight might be so important.
- I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, which is bone cancer at age 10.
And when I got that diagnosis, I just fell apart.
At age 10 everyone I had known with cancer had died and I thought this was a death sentence.
And it wasn't until I got to St. Jude a few days later that I felt hope immediately from when I walked in the doors and I felt like I was gonna be okay.
And so I spent a year there undergoing intensive chemo, and then I had surgery that was actually able to save my leg.
They replaced the bone that was affected by the tumor with a rod that could be expanded without surgery, because I was still growing at the time and it just gave me so much quality of life.
And I had such an incredible experience at St. Jude that all I've ever wanted to do is work there, and now I have my dream job and it's incredible.
- Tell me about the kids you're working with at St. Jude and how they're reacting to this fact that you, a survivor will be flying into space.
- I have to say they are so excited.
And the first day I got back after the announcement, I was walking through the halls and I got stopped by a couple of different families.
They were just so excited to get to talk to a survivor going to space but one that really stood out was this mom and daughter came up to me.
I had never met them before.
And they started telling me about their journey and how much this meant to them and how it was giving them hope, and it really meant the whole world to me.
- So tell me the process, Jared, what happens going forward now?
How do you choose the rest of the crew?
How do you train?
- Sure, so, well, 50% of the crew is now identified.
The Dragon spacecraft that will go on fit four people, and that's your mission pillars of leadership, hope, generosity, and prosperity.
So Hayley represents our mission pillar of hope and now we have the other two.
And the mission pillar of generosity is basically a random selection as part of our fundraising effort for St. Jude.
So from the beginning of February to the end of February, if you went to the mission website, you made a donation to a great cause then you're in the running right now as part of that random selection process, and we should know who that person is like really soon in the next couple of days.
And then the final crew member seat which represents the mission spirit of prosperity well, that was an entrepreneur selection process.
And basically a lot of people created an e-commerce website and then made a video about their business, and they told the world about it on Twitter and basically shared their idea and why it should be elevated to the stars.
And then through an independent judging process, which is just wrapping up now through four independent judges, we'll select our fourth and final crew member of Inspiration 4, which represents that mission spirit of prosperity.
And then we go right into training so from now on really until the launch.
- So you are already a pilot or a trained pilot for airplanes, what will your training be like?
And do you worry a little bit that a known... This is the first time like you've had a crew with no professional astronauts?
- Well, that's for sure that today that it's a crew with no professional astronauts, but by the time we get to launch and strap into Dragon, the FAA says that we will be commercial astronauts.
And the whole training program that NASA and SpaceX and the FAA have come up with is exactly the journey we're gonna go on in just a couple of weeks from now.
- So tell me exactly what do they do to train you?
- It's a lot of simulator time.
I mean, that's the heart of it.
So there's academics on the systems that we're gonna be operating and some orbital mechanics so that we know exactly what's happening when we flip a switch or push a button, and then everything else is just repetition in the simulator of all the things that are supposed to go right and then what are the procedures in the event certain things go wrong.
And then we're when we're really comfortable in the simulator, we're also gonna have a lot of time at the Kennedy Space Center where we're gonna be doing some zip lining off of Pad 39A, which is pad safety training.
So that sounds pretty exciting actually.
And then we're gonna do some water survival training, some centrifuge training.
So we'll be well-prepared before we ever strap into the spacecraft.
- I've heard Elon Musk and of course, Jeff Bezos also talked about ending the government's monopolization it's hold on space and space travel.
Is this a good thing?
Is this something you feel should be democratized?
- Absolutely, I mean, right now you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than becoming a NASA astronaut.
And I think the world is like very interesting out in space and it should be available and accessible to everyone.
The FAA, for example, does not build aircraft.
The FAA does not fly people from one city to the next.
The FAA, a government agency is a regulatory organization.
It's designed to certify and regulate and develop procedures for safe commercial flight in the United States and around the world.
I think that NASA and all of that they've accumulated in terms of their knowledge and expertise on space exploration will wind up being in a very similar role where they're gonna make sure organizations like SpaceX and Boeing and many of the other commercial, space exploration businesses to follow are adhering to the best standards of safety and such.
But it'll be commercial industry that's gonna open up and make space accessible to everyone.
I don't think that it will be the government in the long run.
- So Hayley, tell me about what your training is gonna be, when does it start?
Is there anything special you're going to have to do given the fact that you're young and a cancer survivor?
- So we'll all be starting space training at the end of this month as a crew.
Some additional training on top of that, because I'll be the medical officer of this flight.
My background is a physician assistant I was chosen to be the medical officer, and so we'll just get a little bit of extra training because of that.
- And is this something that you always had in the back of your mind growing up that you'd love to be an astronaut?
- Well, I visited NASA actually a few months before I was diagnosed with cancer and I went in Houston and got to see where the astronauts trained.
And after seeing that, of course I wanted to be an astronaut.
I think all kids and adults that see that will want to be astronauts, but then a few months later I was diagnosed with cancer and my whole world changed, and all I've ever wanted to do since then is work at St. Jude.
But also it really, until this mission would not have impossible for me to go to space I've got artificial body part.
And until now you've really had to be physically perfect, but this mission is changing things in a really powerful way.
- A lot of us remember the Challenger Explosion in 1986 with Christa McAuliffe, a civilian, a teacher aboard, what are you doing about the safety?
How are you assuring yourself in going through the process that this is as safe as it can be?
- Well, I think it's in two parts and one of it is more in my control and the other is in the very capable hands of SpaceX.
So, SpaceX has built a fantastic rocket with amazing technology.
We've all been wowed by it seeing their rockets come back to earth and land on ships.
When you human rate rocket and let's keep in mind, there is only one human rated rocket in the United States right now and it's SpaceX's, but there's a lot of other companies making rockets right now.
So what does that mean?
It means SpaceX had to go through a very lengthy certification process with NASA who draws on 60 years of lessons learned to say that the Falcon 9 system is very safe and reliable system to take human beings into orbit.
And if you look at the track record of Falcon 9, its performance is better than any other rocket system let alone a reusable one in the history of space travel.
So it starts with a lot of confidence in some great technology.
And then second, I think it comes down to training too and taking this whole thing very seriously.
And I really said that from the start is that, we do believe in a world where families are living on lunar and Mars and colonies at some point in time and everyone's jumping in their X wings and we're living this very cool Star Wars, Star Trek life, but we've gotta start somewhere.
And getting it right from where we choose to start is so important to make sure everything else that we want to happen follows.
So we're gonna take it really seriously on training and make sure we're well-prepared.
- Hayley, it takes a bit of courage to do this, just like it takes a lot of courage to face childhood cancer.
What message are you sending about the fact that yes, this isn't totally safe.
Nothing in life is, we have to have some courage if we're gonna pursue our dreams.
- Absolutely.
And I do think that my journey with childhood cancer made me tough, it definitely made me who I am.
And with everything in life there are risks and I feel fully confident in this mission, but also I just really hope to show people just embrace life.
We know when opportunities come your way, especially that excite you and that can challenge you, go for it.
And that's why I had no hesitation when I said yes.
- Okay. Jared, tell me exactly how the mission is gonna proceed.
How do you blast off?
What do you do?
What happens?
- Sure.
So there's a lot of work from now until we get to that date where we strap into Dragon.
So it's all the training things we talked about before, but then there's additional things to like payload and experiments.
Our entire day up there will be pretty well scheduled from the time you wake up and all the experiments that you're doing along the way until you go back to sleep again.
So we have to figure out because there's a lot of demand for payload and experiments right now, it costs an awful lot of money to put things in orbit and get the results from it.
So right now we're going through that kind of a selection process too.
But once we get ready and the training is complete and payload is finally selected and we're trained on all the experiments we intend to do, well, then we're going to launch into low earth orbit.
And this is gonna be a very cool process and it's gonna go on the Falcon 9 rocket, which is a two-stage rocket orbit.
And when we get to orbit, we're gonna be going 17,500 miles an hour.
And it's gonna be a rather interesting orbit too.
For the last really 20 years, everything has kind of been a direct to the space station, but we're not going to the space station.
So we're gonna get a little bit of additional freedom to go out and kind of I would say to make some symbolic moves a little bit farther out than space station to signify where everything is gonna go next, which is to new worlds ideally back to the moon, Mars and beyond.
And we'll spend a couple days in orbit and then we come back and reenter the earth's atmosphere and we splash down in the water and then we have our big splashdown party, probably somewhere near Florida.
- Great, and tell me about those experiments that take us to the next world and beyond.
Give me an example or two.
- Sure, so one of them actually relates to the impact of radiation on cells.
So there is radiation in space.
You don't have the same protections of an atmosphere.
And we know an awful lot about the impacts of radiation on the human body at the international space station, 'cause we've literally just been there for 20 years in this more modern technologically advanced world where we can measure these types of things.
Now we're gonna go out a little bit farther than that and the radiation level, which will be very safe for sure.
It will be different than what's been studied for the last two decades.
And it's important to get data on this because if we are going to journey out again and go back to the moon or Mars and beyond, we're gonna have to know the impacts of while there's a long duration element to it, but also the radiation exposure that comes from being in space and the impact it has on human physiology.
So that will be one component of the experiments that we're pretty sure is gonna play a role in this mission.
- And what about you, Hayley, what are the scientific missions, the medical missions that excite you?
- Well, I think we're all gonna be working on the same projects together, but what I'm actually looking forward to the most while we're in space is we're figuring out how we're gonna video chat with the St Jude patients.
And kids are so visual, and I think actually getting to show them what their future can look like is gonna be so impactful, and they're gonna have so much fun with it.
- That's an amazing journey you talked about, about having dreamed, when you were 10 years old and going down, watching space launches and stuff like that, and then realizing you could not be an astronaut 'cause you just got cancer and now it all turned around.
Tell me, how are you processing this?
- I think I've been processing it slowly.
This call came completely out of nowhere and I could have never guessed that this is something that St. Jude was gonna offer and this will be part of my future, but it's becoming more and more real each time I go to SpaceX.
The last time Jared and I were there we actually got to put on astronaut suits and it was amazing.
But I think that's part of the beauty of life is you don't know what's around the corner and there can be some really beautiful things that come your way that you never expected.
And so I'm just, I'm along for this ride and I couldn't be more excited.
- Wow, Hayley, Jared so amazing, so cool, and thank you so much for joining us.
- Thank you, thanks for having us.
- Yeah, wee appreciate your time, thank you so much.
- And what an incredible journey to space that's going to be.
And that is it for our program tonight.
Remember, you can always follow me and the show on Twitter.
Thank you for watching Amanpour & Company on PBS this International Women's Day and do join us again tomorrow night.
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