hello and welcome to "amanpour & company." here's kpa ee's what's coming u. zero hour, u.s. senators have the fbi's new report on brett kavanaugh. but what crucial information does it not contain? my guests have been doing the deep research on the supreme court nominee's conduct in high school and at college. also, will we soon stop choosing our supreme court all together and let computers make the decision for us? the author of same yens t ofapi

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your pbs station from viewers like ya. welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in london. key republican senators are praise ago last-minute fbi investigation into brett kavanaugh after at least three women accused the supreme court nominee of sexual assault, supposedly fence-sitter collins of maine said the report was very thorough and jeff flake of arizona who called for the investigation along with a democratic colleague says it did not provide any additional corroborating information. republican and democratic leaders are back in their political corners. >> the fact is that these allegations have not been corroborated. none of the allegations have been corroborated by the seventh fbi investigation. not in the new fbi investigation. not anywhere. >> the most notable part of this

report subpoena what's not in it. it wloox to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited, perhaps by the white house, i don't know. >> the fbi conducted nine interviews and that did not include kavanaugh himself or his main accuser, christine blasey ford. another accuser, deborah ramirez, who did speak with the fbi, said the agency did not talk to corroborating witnessing and she said she feels like she is being silenced. what did the fbi investigation leave out? critics say a deep dive into the truth about kavanaugh's drinking. the judge's college roommate says kavanaugh's claim of never blacking out is false. >> i knew he was lying because he was my roommate. we were in a room together, our beds were ten feet apart for a couple of months and what struck me and made me more interested in speaking out about it is not

only did i know that he wasn't telling the truth; i knew he knew he wasn't telling the truth. i can tell you that he would come home and he was incoherent, stumbling, i saw him both what i would consider blackout drunk and dealing with the repercussion oefs that s of tha morning. my guests went where apparently the fbi did not. they were put on this story for very personal reasons as you'll hear and they're joining me now from new york. robin and kate, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> can i ask, because i did point out that this is not your usual beat. explain to me first kate and then robin what you were doing and why you were pulled on to this story. >> sure, christiane. i grew up in the washington area. i attended an all girl's school.

not one central to the kavanaugh discussion but one in that same region and had some cross pollination in terms of friends and activities. i was given some documents a couple weeks ago from someone i knew from the washington area who thought we should devlve ino one oddity of the yearbook page of brett kavanaugh and his friends which specifically dealt with a young woman they all knew named renata. i can get into that later but suffice it to say i started th friends of friends from ch a that period of time. i'm about ten years younger than kavanaugh and his classmates but there were enough connections that i was able to piece together a picture of what the class of '83 at his high school, georgetown prep, was like and what the culture around drinking and girls was. >> and you were -- robin, you were a classmate of kavanaugh's,

correct, at yale? >> yes, i was a classmate of brett kavanaugh at yale. class of 1987 and i was originally drawn into this because i started hearing questions around the name deborah ramirez and other reporters were hearing the same so we pooled our resources. i brought in my yearbook from yale which proved to be a helpful resource in many ways, not least of which were the photographs. and then i became a part of this team investigating the story and really kind of just digging down as deep as we could into his classmates about what their memories were and experiences with brett kavanaugh that might shed light on this process. >> fast forward to today. given all of the information and reporting you have done for the "new york times" over the last couple of weeks as you describe, what is your impression of what this fbi report contains? we understand the white house

sent selective interviews of the fbi investigation over the last few days to the senate somewhere around midnight last night. >> that's right, and my focus has been basically the people around the deborah ramirez story because that was the purview of yale. and basically there's just a critical mass of classmates who are feeling deep lly frustrated today about how this fbi process has played out. they had high hopes that when it was postponed and jeff flake spoke up to delay matters that there would be a thorough effort to turn over every stone and many of them were essentially waiting by the phone to hear from the fbi and days just went by one after the other and they finally started to realize the fbi would not be calling. in many cases they took it upon themselves to reach out on their own and that process was very frustrating. many were put on hold or sent to their local offices or directed to their local senators and to

this day most have not been interviewed as far as we know so there was a sense this process was not conducted in good faith. >> so you mentioned deborah ramirez. she was the second accuser. she is the one who accuses brett kavanaugh of exposing himself during a drinking game at a residence hall freshman year at yale. but there's also a james roche who i'm not sure whether you guys spoke to but he also was a college -- he was also a college mate of kavanaugh's and he as you just heard said a few things as we played our introduction and he said further about his recollections. let's play them. >> i would tell the fbi that i knew debbie. that i knew her to be an honest person. i have that no memory of any kind of her ever misleading or lying. i would say that i saw brett kavanaugh drink to excess with frequency and that beyond that it would be conjecture.

my point is not to say that this happened that he's wrong and she's wrong. i can't know that. i wasn't there and the people that were there seem to be too afraid to come out or aligned with him in some way so i can't say that to the fbi honestly. what i can say is that he drank and he drank a lot and that is inconsistent with what he's saying now. >> so kate you were at that washington private school in that time and you have -- well, not in that time but off lot of contacts from there. what specifically were they telling you that you picked up on and how do you react to, for instance, what a james roche would have said. >> so i've heard similar accounts from classmates of judge kavanaugh's from georgetown prep ' '83 that it w a very much a heavy drinking

culture. you heard from are this from jamie roche, they're not putting themselves on pedestals relative to judge kavanaugh, they're saying we blacked out, a lot of us vomited at parties and engaged in excessive drink bug they're bothered because they feel as though judge kavanaugh hasn't been honest or wasn't during the senate judiciary committee hearing on these questions about the extent of his drinking. now, he did say he drank too much, he did say he sometimes cringed thinking back on his behavior but he ruled out the idea that he was a blackout drunk and that is at odds with what these classmates have said. they said it was a culture of going to jesuit school during the week, a rigorous jesuit catholic boys school and working very hard as kavanaugh indisputably did on academics and sports as well. he was captain of the basketball team, played varsity football among other things and on the weekends partying hard and i recall from my own era ten years

later what they have described from the early '80s, house parties, parents not in town, lots of alcohol. some underage drinking. in kavanaugh's class there was a mix, some were just old enough to be legally drinking beer, others not but in both decades there was underaged drinking and unsupervised activity and a lot of sexual activity that may or may not have been consensual. >> i want to, in fact, going back to that period you're investigating and you mentioned the yearbook, the copy of his yearbook that has the -- you mentioned before the renata alumnius remark. but there's a letter from him from 1983. "ps, it would probably be a good idea on saturday the 18th to warn the neighbors that we're loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers amongst us."

i mean, you know, that's from the horse's mouth. >> right. and this has been interesting to look at, the yearbook page he personally designed and wrote the text for with very limited faculty oversight from everything we understand and that handwritten letter which he acknowledges he wrote in 1983. to put that up against his testimony you see interesting contests, i'll talk about renata but maybe i'll save that for your next question. in terms of the drinking, when asked by the senate judiciary committee did you -- were you in the ralph club. was that a reference to you vomiting from excessive drinking he said i'm known to have a weak s stomach. i'm paraphrasing. i get affected by spicy food, by beer. it was a very round about way of confirming that he vomited regularly or on multiple occasions from excessive drinking. it wasn't really a confirmation but you couldn't argue it was a

complete untruth but in this case prolific phukers is the word. another thing you didn't mention there but is in there, the signature "ffff bart" is yet another point of controversy because he was nicknamed bart in high school. one of the elderly teachers at the school once garbled his name or maybe on more than one occasion garbled brett and bart came out and became attached to him as a nickname and that's been acknowledged in terms of the people i talked to. the ffff is yet another matter. it seems to be a reference to a friend of judge kavanaugh's in the class who had a stutter and it was apparent when he was trying to use the "f" word. this is what judge kavanaugh testified it to be. however, during that era it was also a vulgar sexual reference and not saying he was being dishonest but it may have been a

double double entendre. >> and robin, a lot of what b m people are saying is some of the sexual allegations, it could be he said/she said and it could be that they aren't gone to the kept of this of course i say he keeps denying it. but the math matter of the truthfulness is something the others have brought up. plain truth, whether it's drinking or allegation he is didn't tell the truth in other hearings and the matter of temperament. so from your reporting what are you hearing from people who came to you? what do they most want to get out? what do they want known in public? >> i think that's the key question, christiane. that all of the classmates i eke speaking to are not trying to arbitrate the degree of his drinking and the level of its appropriateness they all as kate said they too drank and

sometimes even more so at times. the question is about his veracity. many people were reluctant to speak because they didn't feel like they had something to contribute. what moved them off the dime was seeing brett sort of portray himself both in the fox interview with his wife where he was very much portraying himself as a choir boy and in the hearings itself they feel like he misrepresented himself, he wasn't honest and that goes to the core of his capacity and fitness to be a judge on the highest court and that is making them speak out and giving them outrage and motivating them aggressively and proactively try to get to the fbi with their version of the brett kavanaugh they remember. >> let us play a selection of soundbites from that famous opening statement and q&a with the senators during day of hearing exactly -- i think it

was exactly a week ago. let's listen to what he said about his drinking. >> i drank beer with my friends. almost everyone did. sometimes i had too many beers. i liked beer. i still like beer. but i do not drink beer to the point of blacking out. we drank beer, my friends and i. the boys and girls, yes, we drank beer, i liked beer, i still like beer. i like beer. i like beer. do you like beer, senator? what do you like to drink? >> next one is -- >> senator, what do you like to drink? >> i think he even challenged one senator and asked her whether she blacked out. he had to apologize for that afterwards. >> amy klobuchar. >> this sound has been dissected over and over again and i'm sure psychologists would have a field day, maybe even forensics but tell us from your reporting because this is quite important.

the fbi is going to be by the critics blamed for not doing a full and thorough job as everybody you're saying and others are saying they have not been contacted. what is the parameter of an fbi investigation in this case compared to in a criminal case? >> i think what's been difficult is nobody was entirely clear on what the brief was from the president and then we reported that it was only four people they are interviewing, there was considerable public outcry about that, they expected a thorough investigation. i think there is some dynamic of republicans in the senate feeling like the democrats will complain no matter what form this investigation takes but there was then presumably a little bit of a broader circle on the part of the fbi in terms of who they spoke to, all of the people i've spoken to have not heard from the fbi and to your point, christiane, what is also relevant and has motivated these

classmates is the issue of temperament, having seen how brett performed under pressure and criticism in the senate testimony that it was very unjudicial. you have a thousand attorneys out there who have now said they don't feel comfortable moving forward and that's a whole movement now that resonates with these classmates memory of him as an angry drunk. he was different when he was not inebriated but when he was they saw this side of kind of a belligerent brett kavanaugh and that is troubling. >> my understanding christiane in terms of the fbi investigation is that in a case und of what was essentially a background check, it's performed on the white house's behalf in order to help the white house vet and consider its own nominees to positions which is why you saw white house input in terms of people they might want to talk to and maybe even white house limitations on who they could talk to.

by sunday or monday white house officials like kellyanne conway and ultimately the president were saying the fbi should be able to talk to whomever they want but it seems they kept the focus narrow to the people they were said to be at the event that christine blasey ford described. a group of five known people and a sixth that is unknown in terms of identity and deborah ramirez and quite a small circle. not these additional people the likes of whom robin and i have spoken to who could corroborate the behavior at the time, went what went on socially, what kind of context judge kavanaugh was operating in back then, that input has not been sought to the best of our knowledge. >> robin, as briefly as you can, do you think once the -- i guess the fbi is not going to be made public. maybe it will be leaked more and more but once the vote happens depending on which way it goes will you keep reporting this story? >> that's a very good question.

we have very much felt like we're up against the clock in terms of trying to shake out every possible piece of information that might be relevant but there is the sinking feel nug ing that to so extent this is a fait accompli and the door has closed and i'm not sure barring more drastic revelation that this will just kind of fade in memory ultimately and it will be over. >> i smiled when you were asking the question, christiane, because robin and i were talking about that before we came on air. i think there's leads we'll continue to pursue. a lot depends on the next couple day days and what happens. we but this whole situation has been difficult for all sides. if there is an upside it's increased awareness about sexual assault and drinking and i'm sure there will be plenty of reporting to do on those topics

in the future. >> robin, kate, thank you so much for joining us. a remarkable moment. thank you very much. as we read the next bit of our report we want to put up this amazing strong picture from "time" magazine which has an image of christine blasey ford and the words of her testimony emblazoned across her face. you can look at it. so much of washington politics has become about competing narratives as we have just seen and that's more important than we might think because story telling might just be what separates us from the apes. these are the thoughts of yuval noah harari. when we met in new york, we spoke about his latest work, "21 lessons for 21st century" which shifts his fascinating focus to

the present day. so welcome yuval noah harari. you have made a career now out of charting our existence, the existence of our species. where do you come down? are we homo sapiens or -- >> i say it with the long a. >> how did our species, the sapiens, the title of your first book, how did we come to be dominant? >> we are the only social mammal that can cooperate in very, very large numbers and in flexible ways and this is the secret of our success. it's not something obstruction of justice the individual level, it's the collective level. if you look at any large scale human achievement whether it's flying to the moon or splitting the atom or building the pyramids this is the result of large-scale cooperation and we are the only mammals that can cooperate on a large scale

because we are the only ones that can create and believe in fictional stories. >> what do you mean? we are in this era of fact, fiction, fake. when you say our civilization and fiction and cooperation what do you mean by that? >> the most obvious example is religion. even religious people will agree that all religions except one are based on fictional stories. >> you mean except their own. >> except mine ask. a jew and christianity, this is fake news. asks ask a christian and they will say islam is fake news. and so this is true of all religions and nations. nations exist only in our own imagination and it's also true of money and cooperationcorpora only place google exists is in our stories that the sham mans

called lawyers spread around. i don't mean to belittle them. they are the most important thing in the world. if you can get millions of people to believe in the same fiction it becomes the most powerful thing in the world because it enables them to cooperate effectively. >> we live it seems in an era of increasing uncooperation. our politics are polarized in every country not just the usual suspect suspects. is that part of what will contribute to the demise of our species? >> that depends. we are now gaining divine abilities of creation. we are gaining the ability to reengineer and create life and the big question is what will we do with these immense powers? and the only effective way to regulate our immense new powers, especially artificial intelligence and bioengineering is through global cooperation. you cannot regulate ai or biotechnology on the level of a

single country. if you're afraid of some very dangerous potential, let's say the creation of autonomous weapons systems, killer robots, or of bioengineering human babies and you ban these technologies say in the u.s., it won't help if the chinese and russians and israelis are doing it. very soon the americans, too, will be tempted to break their own ban because they wouldn't like to stay behind. the only way to regulate our immense new powers is through global cooperation and if we don't have global cooperation then the future of humankind does not look very promising. >> we live in the era of global disruption. that is what president trump is doing. openly, overtly, that is his agenda, disruption and chaos. what happens to this cooperation you say is vital? >> it breaks down. >> but if it breaks down, what happens to our species?

>> we have three big problems as a species that we need to confront and now, not in some distant future. we need to confront nuclear war. we need to confront climate change and we need to confront the technological disruptions caused by ai and bioengineering. even if we prevent nuclear war and climate change, ai and bioengineering are going to completely disrupt the job market, the global economy, our bodies and brains are going to be disrupted and we need the global cooperation to deal with that. and with all the talk of nationalism and isolationism, nationalism has many good ideas about how to deal with the issues of a particular country. how to run the u.s., how the run russia, how to run india but the big question to ask any nationalist is how of your country by itself going to prevent nuclear war, stop climate change and regulate the

disruptive technology? and the obvious answer, you can't. >> so it's a little disheartening because wherever we look we don't see that kind of cooperation. we see the opposite. >> there's more cooperation than almost ever before. >> really? >> we live in the most connected world that ever existed. we live in the most peaceful world. i come from the middle east, i know this perfectly well. but compared to any previous time in history we are in a better situation. far more people die today from obesity than violence. >> is that true? >> yes. sugar is a greater danger to your life statistically than gun powder. not everything is lost. the global order has taken quite a few hits over the last few years but it's still in far better shape than 50 years ago in 1968 or 100 years ago in 1918. we can reinvent it. >> we're obviously living

through a disruptive dynamic regarding globalization, the liberal world order because too many people have felt left behind and you say and other economists say the obvious, that this can only work if there is sustained global economic growth and that is not a given. >> absolutely not. >> and that may peter out and the whole dream of the world that my children will do better than i'm doing may come crashing do down. >> maybe the bigger issue is one of inequality but not income inequality but future. the inequality of the future. that we tend to speak in terms of we but maybe there are no we. maybe homo sapiens, this one species that took over the world is in the process of splitting, is in the process of

spieciation. if you live in one part of the world, the best investment is to learn how to code. if you live in a different part of the world the best investment is to learn how to shoot a kalashnikov. there is no our future and this is true of particular countries like the u.s. one of the interpretations of what we are seeing with the rise of populism and trump is that in essence a lot of people are sensing correctly that they are being left behind. that the future doesn't include them, the future doesn't need them. the big struggle in the 21st century might be against irrelevant. in the 20th century the big conflict was about exploitation. some people exploiting other people but in the 21st century maybe the biggest conflict of all will be about irrelevance.

nobody is exploiting you, they just don't need you. >> creating an existential anxious on a massive level. >> and much harder to struggle against it. if you're exploited it means they need you but if you'rer, what do you do? >> this is something i try to get my head around often. we talk about what we just said, populism, anger, worry, fear, alienation, left behind, all of that. people point to globalization or this or that but they don't point to the thing you're talking about as kind of the savior, technology. so technology has disrupted people's jobs and their human relevance and you're saying, i think, that biotech and infotech and technology have to be harness harnessed to solve these problems. >> one things which absolutely crucial about technology, it's

never deterministic. you can use the same technology to create completely different kinds of societies. in the 20th century you could use radio and electricity and trains to be communist dictatorships or fascist regimes or liberal democracies. it was the same electricity, the same trains, people used them in different ways. and it's the same with ai and bioengineering. you can use them to create paradise on earth or the create a hell. that's true of every technology. >> where are we going? towards hell or paradise? >> at present we are midway. we're undecided and some parts of the world may become hell while other parts of the world may become paradise at the same time. >> you mentioned something called digital dictatorships. tell us what that means in terms of a north korea or russia or whatever. >> in essence it means we are reaching the point when you can hack human beings.

there was talk about hacking computers, e-mails, bank accounts, the real story is the ability to hack human beings. to hack a human being you need two things. you need a lot of data, especially biometric data, a good understanding of what's happening inside the body and you need computing power to make sense of the data until today in history, nobody had the biological understanding and nobody had the computing power necessary to hack humans so if you lived in the soviet union and the kgb followed you around 24 hours a day, still the kgb couldn't really understand what was happening inside you. >> it couldn't read your mind. >> it couldn't read your mind but in 20 years maybe they could. not the kgb, but somebody else. >> what will that look like in the world's biggest dictatorship, which is north korea? >> it means everybody has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day and if you go into a room and there is a pictureover

kim jong- -- picture of kim jong-un on the wall and there is anger rising in your body or brain, they know it and bull in the gulag tomorrow morning. so somebody has privileged access to your brain and it's not you that has that. take something simple but important like sexual orientation. i was 21 when i finally realized that i was gay but an algorithm could have told me this when i was 14 or 15 just by tracking my eye movements. >> eye movements? >> yeah. if you see -- if you walk on the beach in tel aviv and you see a shirtless guy and a shirtless girl walking together, whom are you focusing on? >> if you're focusing on the guy it's a dead giveaway? >> almost, yeah and this is the kind of power we are dealing with. people don't want to believe this is possible. they have this fantasy of free

will. nobody can understand me, nobody can manipulate me because i have three will, i have human spirit and this is unhackable but the easiest people to manipulate are the people who believe in free will and don't believe somebody can do it to them. >> you said? a mere two decades people have come to entrust the google search algorithm with one of the most important tasks of all -- searching for relevant and trustworthy information. as we increasingly rely on google, so our ability to search for information by ourselves diminishes. >> yes, we trust the algorithm more than we trust our own abilities and instincts and very often for a good reason. this is not all some big terrible conspiracy. in many cases, there is excellent reasons to trust google or amazon or the government or whatever to make better choices on our behalf but this is happening in more and more fields and this view of

human life as a big da dra dram decision making that you find in every novel, every hollywood come city about a big decision, the hero or heroine needs to make and it's the same in religion of which enough drama of what do i zmooz good or evil? but what happens if increasingly not just about buying things or finding your way around town but the big stuff, what to study in university, where to live? marry, whom to vote for? what happens if you learn by experience that google makes better decisions? on average, not always, makes mistakes but i always make mistakes. >> we're giving them a lot of credit in this time where the whole google facebook effect is being hauled over the coals and even inventors and investors in the original technology are saying what have we created? what have we done?

because they know that they've been moving and manipulating people's niebds a way none of us knew or gave permission for. not to mention data. >> but much of the story is that we are giving permission because we are making better choices. you have this basic science fiction dystopia that we created technology and it's terrible and evil and we have to fight against it. but the worst from some philosophical perspective, the worst scenario is that it is making better decisions than us. >> the world is becoming too complicated for our basic hunter gatherer brains. you seem to step off and step away for about 60 days per year, right? >> yes. >> you taken a absolute vacation somehow for 60 days a year. why do you do that? >> i go every year for a long

meditation retreat. i talk so much the rest of the year and i travel. it's a wonderful thing to be able to stop everything for two months and just be in the present moment without e-mails without computers, smartphones, anything and just focus on reality. you have this thousands of years of traditions of telling people know yourself, it's the most important thing in the world is to know yourself and to know yourself you need to observe yourself. if you outsource knowing dwrours -- yourself to an algorithm, you can just trust google to get to know you better but if you want to know yourself better, you have to spend time with your mind.but if you want to know yof

better, you have to spend time with your mind. it's an amazing experience and sometimes can be a shocking experience to just be there with your mind with no distractions. something comes up and you cannot run to the television, to the smartphone, to the computer, you just have to continue being there with whatever comes up in your mind and --. >> that's being human. >> that's being human. my worst worry about where technology is taking us is that we will change and upgrade. we'll try to upgrade homo sapiens before we really understood the full capacity of homo sapiens. we actually know so little joing

us. >> thank you. >> learning how to switch off and tune out. not for our next guest. it's not unusual for a british actor to go to hollywood and make it big but jameela jamil is not exactly your paint by numbers actress. a britt of pakistani descent, honest about her life from anorexia to sexual assault, nervous breakdown and even she got hit by a car. she remains incredibly optimistic throughout and she is starring in the hit sitcom "the good place." she spoke with alicia menendez about her unusual journey to the top. >> you have the type of story that if it were written as fiction would be unbelievable. you grow up without full hearing and become a radio dj. you accidentally become a host, you then accidentally become a

columnist, you have then achieved fame in the uk and decide it's time to move to the u.s. to pursue a career in writing and then somehow, although you're not pursuing acting, get cast in one of the most important sit cocoms happeg right now. who are you? >> i have no idea. i should be stopped. you've memorized my life. >> it's unbelieveable. >> when i was 17 i got hit by a car into another car, broke my back. that changed the rest of my life because it gave me this certainty that we can't have plans. there's no point really in having plans because one day buck walking across the road and that's it, your whole life changes and you can't walk again for a year or some people can never walk again so i think i stopped living my life with a particular direction and moved in the direction of happiness it makes me sound so disgustingly cheesy but it's true once you lose the ability to urinate alone for a year you start to take things less for granted so

i think it's left me open minded. some people can be quite tunnel visioned in this world and industry in particular, they have a certain idea of how everything is going to go so i've been malleable and open to things, i've been in the right place at the right time. luck plays a huge part in it. i have been willing to take risks and humiliate myself which i do quite frequently, i'm bad at things on their front of lots of people. but. >> because you're willing to try. >> i always jump into the deep end. i had no idea how to host and my first audition landed me one of the biggest hosting jobs in the united kingdom. i started out in radio and rather than giving me the one year training run i got given my own show and then made history to take over the official charts. i've never acted before and now i'm on "the good place" opposite ted danson. >> who would you say is the most famous person in your family? >> it's not about who you know. enlightenment comes with within.

the dalai lama texted me about that. >> the show "the good place" for its humor gets into dark, deep existential questions. what have you learned being on the show? >> i've learned that i need to pay more attention, be a better person and make sure my motivations aren't corrupt. i think there's a part of us that even without realizing do good things not for the sake of it but because it will make you feel like a person. we call it moral dessert on the show and i think also it is a great reminder at this time where it feels like everything is device so divisive in politics and in the news and we're all being turned against each other and fear-mongered about one another. this show is about four people who have nothing in common who come from very different places who have no choice but to work together in order to get to a better place which is a wonderful analogy for the rest of the world. divided we will be conquered and we are literally being conquered and if we were to be more like the show, the silly nbc network comedy, if we were to put aside our differences and work

together we could actually change the world. and so that's what i like about it. >> talk to me about why you decided to make that leap from your career in the uk to moving to l.a. >> well, england is amazing but england has kind of a -- a low ceiling for women still i think. there's very few of us who manage to continue to work after our 30s and there still isn't enough diversity. not as much as there should be. they're better but way behind america so i felt like my options for great content were sort of -- at that time, i think thing are change bug four years ago i felt like the walls were closing in on me.ing but four years ago i felt like the walls were closing in on me. and i had a health scare again. every decade i get a huge health care that makes me think about my life. >> a breast cancer scare? >> a breast cancer scare and it took a week for them to give me back my biopsy results which is

so long when it's happening to you. and i thought about everything i wish i would have done if it is cancer and if it isn't i'm going to do those things so i made a list and one was to book a one way ticket to los angeles and quit my job and quit my relationship, quit my life with no plan, no vie. contacts, nothing. no friends here. and i did it. >> they say of comedians that very often their humor comes from a dark place. even though you are not a comedian you are a comedic actor. is there a darkness you access in order to get to your comedy? >> i think normally -- i think normally humor comes from the noekt of feeling you don't have anything else to rely on to make people like you so for me that was being pakistani in a time where england was quite racist and i think it was being more overweight than society thought i should be and coming from a poor background and getting a scholarship to a very wealthy girls school where everyone was

thin, very few people were of any ethnicity. i was very much so an outsider my whole life and i don't have friends properly until i was 19 and i think that loneliness and spending my hours that i should have been spending with other people my age i spent watching comedy so i think comedy is my frie friend. loneliness and darkness and fatness is where my comedy comes from. >> you spent three years suffering from anorexia in which you did not eat one proper meal the entire three years. it's then that car accident that kicks you out of that. not everyone will be hit by a car and have that be the turning point. >> not everyone is as lucky as me. >> what a life altering experience. >> it was the best thing that ever happened to me. i highly recommend it. just a knock that reminds you that you are human and everything that you have can be

taken away from you. you're not special or privileged everything can happen. fluke occurrence cans happen all the time. you have to be careful. you have to respect your body and it taught me to respect my body because once these things i'd taken for granted like walking or bending or sitting up by myself were taken away i realized oh, my god, i've been treating my body so badly, we all do it we all say terrible things about our bodies to our bodies and now i started the i weigh movement and i myself have become so sick of the toxic language around the way we talk about our self-image i feel like i'm seeing it more than ever before. we have such self-hatred and i think that's the thing i most want to do with my platform. >> tell me about i weigh. >> i weigh is movement that i started. it's not a body positive movement, it's a life positive movement. there are enough people working within body positivity and i would like to focus myself on gettingaway from the body and looking at the whole picture.

we're so multifaceted and we do so many incredible things. and we are reduced to nothing more than a silhouette and normally aesthetically pleasing to a man, those are the confines in which we're give on the exist. we have to have big breasts and a small waist and big bottom but no arms and no cellulite and we have to never age ever, we have to look pre-pubescent and men are shot in hd and they get braised for getting older and salt-and-pepper hair. so we're so shamed and i decided i am tire of being valued by my weig weight. i don't want my worth to be represented on a weighing scale. i think i weigh the sum of my all my parts and i deserve the right to be acknowledged. i've live mid-whole life here. i'm not just a facade, just an outside.d my whole life here.

i'm not just a facade, just an outside. i want women to be proud of themselves. there are so many things that we do that are amazing. you don't need to look like a teenage sex doll to be valid in this world. if that's what you look like, that's great. but that shouldn't be the one requirement we're given. we're given one look and it changes every ten years. can you imagine a world in which we today men oh, you have to look like this now. if you don't, you're nothing. they would tell us to "f" word off. there's no way they would tolerate that from us. >> you have plenty of experience with air brush that is not of your choosing. you have been made to look both less ethnic, slimmer, how do you stop that? >> i stay it now. i was less okay with the word no

and for being strong lly opinionated. i think me too and times up has given me the sense that i've never had before where i'm like damn it, don't change my face. it's rude. it's crazy that without asking me someone changed the shape of my nose and the color of my skin and lengthened my body. that's a direct insult from the editor of the magazine and the photo shopper that i'm not good enough and then the young girl that doesn't look like me because i don't even look like me thinks she's not good enough. so i would like to move to change the laws on air brushing. if i could i would get rid of all of it and god help with us these photo shop apps. they are a night particular and i think they are increasing the numbers of surgery happening w now. you're always -- i think face tune is one of the apps. you're always photo shopping yourself, how can you ha b happy when you're looking at complete flawlessness and then you look in the mirror and see human

flaws and age and then you go out and have painful, expensive sometimes dangerous surgery. what are we doing? what kind of time is this we're spending on these things? it's fine to spend time on your looks. i bathed yesterday. >> brushed your hair. >> brushed my teeth. possibly also yesterday but i'm hire, make an effort, wear makeup. that's fine but it's one-tenth of who i am. i weigh is who you are not what you look like. >> you alluded to that we are in a moment of cultural reckoning and that was on full display as brett kavanaugh was considered for his nomination to the supreme court. you've spoken openly in the past about being a survivor of assault and so i wonder for you watching what has unfolded in the past few weeks how you process the disbelief that has been posed towards survivors that have come forward? >> as a victim of several

different cases of sexual assault i find it very triggering and pain to feel watch and so do a lot of my friends because we've been there, we've been given doubt and also i pointed out that in the same week in which a woman just speaking out about sexual assault and the way she's being treated in many different areas as someone to be suspicious of, to not believe, she's been villainized by other people and you have roman polanski and we're hearing he has a new film coming out. what is this gender imbalance that will a woman accusing someone of sexual assault his life is being torn apart and roman polanski is making movies hanging out with celebrities eating at the best restaurants living his life free. >> you tell me as a survivor what message does it send? >> it sends a message that we're not supposed to speak out and if we do we will be villainized and doubted and shamed. we don't have a part to play in

sexual assault we're just victims and all i could beg women to do because i buried so much of my sexual assault for so many years, each one took ten years for the date of the assault for me to ever tell anyone about them. you have to speak out. you have to say something. not just for the fact that maybe something can be done but it's very emancipating to release that shame and put it out into the world away from yourself. it's important to tell someone. it ate me alive and made me afraid of sex and people. i suggest you go and get help. i think emdr therapy, it's a special therapy for ptsd that is incredible and it helped me with overcoming my sexual assault. but you need to reach out to people and go to the law and keep fighting. i want's been so inspiring to see this going on and even that high up at a level where someone

could be quite well protected and people could be silent. we are listening to women. we need more and women need to know you have a right to speak out. it's not your fault you didn't deserve. >> it i'm envious of how unapologetic you are and i walked into this wondering if this that is innate or learned but i'm hearing it's been a process. >> yeah. i had huge anxiety and depression in my 20s. i had a nervous breakdown at 26 until i was about 27 i had to hide. i was still a live tv presenter. which is probably where my acting comes from, hiding a nervous breakdown but i was mad. >> is there something that triggered it? >> yes, but it's too personal to say. but it was a big event in my life within my personal life and it was the straw that broke the

campbe camel's back. >> the one through line that run us there the work that you have done is that you have been a public person and in the public eye for a very long time. no one and nothing can prepare you for that. what has the process of becoming a public person been for you. >> trial and error. so much error. i was not born to this industry at all and i don't think before i speak and i can act emotionally rather than intellectually sometimes which is a nightmare if you're on twitter and i say the wrong thing and my ignorance can be problematic and i'm trying to learn from it and the mass styx you've made are like a tattoo when you're famous and they never go away. all doing is learn and openly apologize and beg forgiveness for those i offend. but i hope people know i don't come from a place of malice, probably some internalized misogyny or my own pain pouring out. it's hard to live in an industry

where people want to invade your privacy as much as they do which is why i've become an open book because i'm tired of trying to hide everything all the time. i think my willingness to fail is the one thing that i hope will make me a good role model. that it's okay to fail as long as you keep trying. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> what a frank interview. tomorrow i'll speak with another great communicator in a very different field. tune in for my fascinating conversation with the astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson. he brings light to the unspoken alliance between his science and our military. for now, that's it for our program. thanks for watching "amanpour & company" on pbs and join us again tomorrow night. uniworld is a proud sponsor of amanpour and company.

when bea tolman founded a collection of boutique hotels she had bigger dreams and they were on the water. a river, specifically. multiple rivers that would one day be home to uniworld river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today, that dream sets sail in europe, area, india, egypt and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit uniworld.com. additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter. bernard and ie rrene schwartz. sue and edgar walkenheim the third. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

business report with sue herera and bill griffeth. market slides. stocks head lower as bond yields head higher with tech stocks taking the biggest had hit. >> help wanted. president unemployment level falls for the lowest level in 50 years at companies face a shortage of workers. swinging for the fences, the baseball bat business is dominated by a few big players but an entrepreneur with a bright idea found his way into the game. those stories and much more ton on nightly business report for friday, october the 5th. good evening, everyone and welcome. happy friday. stocks fell sharply the second straight day capping