hello and welcome to amanpour and company. here's what's coming up. after the french president blasted nationalism and the policy of putting, quote, our interests first, i speak with timothy snyder about that thinly veiled rebuke of president trump and resurgent nationalism. then on dr. leana wen's first day as the president of pld. i talked to her about america's women's health provider and a big political target.anned parenthood. i talked to her about america's women's health provider and a big political target. also, a prescription for changing gun policy.

and why kurt eichenwald is thinking of leaving the u.s. over insurance fears. >> uniworld is a proud spon or -- sponsor of amanpour and company. wh a river specifically. multiple rivers. it would one day be home to yuan world river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today, that dream set sail in europe, area, india, egypt and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit yuan world.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter, bernard and irene schwartz, suh and edgar wachenhaim iii and

viewers like you. thank you. welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour back in london. president donald trump was literally out of step with world leaders on sunday as his peers marched in solidarity to a world war i memorial at the ark detree i don't mean in paris. the first lady and the president were dropped off in their own car. then french president macron called out president trump and the european nationalist world view for helping to awaken the old demons of nativist conflict. >> translator: patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. nationalism is betrayal by saying our interests first, who cares about the other. we erase what holds a nation

dearest and what is the most important, its moral values. >> president macron's warning come as a growing wave of leaders tap into these us-first politics across the globe. in countries like hungary, the philippines, brazil, as well as donald trump's america. historian timothy schneider knows about the brutal consequences of authoritarianism. his books are stark warnings for today and timothy snyder joins me now from vienna, the heart of what was the old austro-hungarian empire. what went through your mind? i've laid out the books you've written, the warnings you

broadcast far and wide. what went through your mind we when you heard those warnings and the body language between the leaders at the memorial. >> it seems a sentencentenary, commemoration, is a good opportunity to renew an agreement about values. it's a great shame that we have to discuss the basic points that president emmanuel macron is trying to make. namely that putting yourself first is a way to disable order or that we should be remembering the past at all. so although we commemorate the past, we don't seem to take it seriously. >> let's talk about serious, this is 100 years since world war i. it's 70 plus years since world war ii. and these are the things that our forefathers died and gave their lives for so that, a, we

wouldn't forget and, b, we wouldn't repeat. how serious, in your view, is the threat of a repetition of the kind of authoritarianism, of fascism, nationalism that could severely constrict our democratic freedom. >> let's start with the basics. these wars were horrible. these were wars in a place which at the time was thought, at least by the people who live there, to be the leading civilization in the world. these are war which is brought tens of millions of casualties, one after the another. so when we're trying to remember these things, we're trying to remember what human beings who are not so very different from us can do to other human beings. the risk with history is not that it will repeat itself. the risk with history is that we forget why it was that we made

the good decisions that we did make in the past. we forget why we have arms control, we forget why we have international law. we forget why we have treaties. we forget why we have the habit of what winston churchill called jaw-jaw rather than war-war. so the risk today is that because we've set history aside, because we told ourselves these things couldn't happen again, we've forgotten why we have the institutions we two. big countries like america or brazil or russia can say "we come first." but as soon as you say our interests come first, you lose track of what those interests are. in order to think seriously about interests, you have to think about other people's points of view. >> so it's interesting pouring all over this. you as a historian, myself as a journalist, we're trying to make sense of this disruptive nature of what many of us believe to be

linear progress in democracy, in human rights, in lifting people out of poverty, opportunity in the like. what will you say that at times of maximum strength, the fittest survive, people go back to their basic instincts and it starts to potentially break down. calling itself democracy as these countries that i've mentioned do, but themselves attacking from within. rule of law and all the institution win institution wes hold so dear. >> i think the point you're defending is that liberalism and democracy don't defend themselves. liberalism and democracy -- that is to say freedom and the right to choose your leaders -- are things you have to care about. you have to value them time in wartime and peacetime. it's right they don't defend

themselves. every major wave of democratization in history has been met by a counterwave and we're in one of those counterwaves now. that just raises the question that president macron was raising about values. when he says that patriotism is different from nationalism because patriotism is about values, he's making a crucial point. if we want there to be freedom, if we want to have the right to vote and choose to our leaders, we have to care about those things, we have to make our nation by caring about these values and in turn our nation can make the world better by being concerned about values such as this so i think the crucial issue is that if you want things to go well you can't depend upon history. there is no historical inevitability. economic growth doesn't necessarily bring about democracy. if we want to have progress, we have to decide what progress means and bring about that progress ourselves. >> so macron did say a lot of things that go to what you're

speaking about right now. he talked about france and germany's role. angela merkel was there. the german president was here in great britain for -- the very first time for armistice day commemorations. germany is also fracture ago bit at the moment. there's a major threat to the stability of angela merkel's leadership. let me just play this little bit from president macron's speech. >> on our continent, this is represented by the ties of friendship between germany and france and the desire to build a bedrock of common goals. this hope is called european union, a union freely entered into, never before seen in history. a union that has freed us of our civil war. >> there new vienna, heart of the old austro-hungarian empire. the beginning of world war i you could trace from right there. what do you make of the threat

to the european project or the european unity right now which has staved off war for 70 years? >> i would -- i push the point even further. the big story is how to get from empire to integration. as you stand in vienna, vienna the capital of a small state called us a treeia. austria is problem prowse within this bigger unit called the european union. it was fairly prosperous with the older unit, austria hungary, the hapsburg monarchy. the tricky part is trying to be a small nation state. what europeans learned is that it's very difficult, in fact, impossible, for small nation states to make it on their own. what the european union succeeded in doing was bringing together a bunch of fragments of empires. empires that last overseas holdings like britain or the netherlands or france or where the soviet union fell apart into the largest economy in the

history of the world. into a very important zone of continuous democracies. the european union isn't just about france and germany coming togeth together, it's about finding a way to have order and prosperity of a whole lot of dispirit states without those states subordinating or dominating the other. that's an important lesson that goes beyond france and germany. >> let's talk about america first and bloump i suppose banks on what he thinks the american people want, which is not to overextend themselves around the world, maybe not to get involved too much around the world and certainly not to provide the kind of leadership support that would cost the u.s. more than it gets back. what do you make of europe and angela america until the wake of president trump's election has said, you know, we may not be able to count on the very

america who saved us in world war i and in world war ii? >> the two world wars are very interesting from an american point of view because, of course, despite what we might remember, we didn't win them alone, we won them as important but not the most important parts of larger coalitions and we went into both wars whether it was wilson or roosevelt with a post-war legal order which would make war less likely. that's worth remembering and that's what chancellor merkel is referring to when she talks about the american commitment to europe. our idea after the second world war was that by way of economic and legal and political means we woulding a to make sure things happen that were in the interest of both europeans and americans over the long run so war would be less likely. the traditional american position was that rules were good things because as a big w power you get to make the rules. america first says we are going

to withdraw into ourselves, not pull our weight in international relations and let other people make the rules or let the rules fall apart. this can be gratifying because you get to do what you feel like doing but it seems very unlikely that letting other people make the rules ends up this is your own interest. >> so it's banking on a proposition that the american people are isolationist and they don't want to get involved and certainly i've read that since 1992 every successful presidential candidate used that terminology. we will not go out and spread ourselves thin all over the world. the problem is that americans are not isolationist and there's a whole new poll done by the chicago global affairs council which says that by a large margin they want to still be involved with other countries and in a leadership role. so i think that's possibly very, very important to understand at this moment. don't you think? >> i think -- the good way that

americans can think about this is that an american leadership role would be americans thinking about what kind of world we want to have together with others and helping to establish rules that make sense for the 21st century. as we sometimes constructively did in the 20th century. you can't lead by saying "me first." if you say "me first," other people don't follow you. so it's encouraging americans want to be engaged in the world because american prosperity depends upon engagement in the world. there's a proud tradition of americans thinking sense ki and creatively about future international order and it's reasonable to hope at one point we'll return to that. >> let's go back and explore a couple of the terms being used. certainly popularized by the president of the united states. "fake news," "enemies of the people." you write, and you go all the way back to the 1930s when -- and i'm going to get it wrong -- that lugen press, lying press,

that was an accusation of germany in the 1930s and enemy of the people. the great modern deploy over that term was josef stalin. tell me about the importance of these two phrases being used in the most powerful democratic nation on earth. >> this is where president macron is right in his speech. he says the demons of the past are being awakened. he's referring to leaders such as mr. trump who use phrases from some of the worst regimes that we have ever seen. enemy of the people was a favorite of stalin and of stalinist regimes. we forget that, although we once thought we were against stall inism and against the soviet union. enemy of the people was used against various groups to set them outside the law so that they could be bullied, mistreated and very often separated completely from the law and exterminated.

l lugenpresse was used in the 1930s in the very similar circumstances. it means the lying press. it literally means fake news. that means to say germans or austrians today, when mr. trump says fake news, they understand it as luggenpress. that was used by hitler and goebbels to attack journalists trying to track down the news. it was an interesting a situation not so different from our's where the media was too centralized and the nazis tried to land a blow by talking about lugenpresse. so even a tactic from the most terrible moment of the 20th century has come back. we should notice this. the only reason we don't is we don't pay serious enough attention to the history. >> one person, a lot of people are paying serious attention,

including a french and german couple who were nazi hunters and the wife recently said hitler built hate against the jews, now it's against immigrants. and her husband said if we had died five years ago, we would have felt all of that was over. now that people live so long, we see the world change. so back to the cyclical nature of history and we see the hatred of the jew being replaced -- not even replaced -- but expanded to the hatred of immigrants right now. >> the dangerous point is when politics becomes about us and them where them can be the people who are part of a supposed conspiracy or them can be people who want to come to our country and take what we have.

the smartest nazi theorist said politics had to begin with us and them and when you do that you can do whatever you want. the other tradition, the tradition of law or the tradition of democracy says we don't start from us and them, we start from a contract, like a constitution. we start with a project of how things are going to be different in the future. this is the basic divide in politics now. >> fascinating. thank you so much professor timotti timothy snyder from vienna. president trump's europe trip came as tensions at home in the united states rise over a midterm election where votes are still being count ed. what is clear is that republicans took a drubbing in the house and that health care was a major driver of success and gains for the democrats. for ten years, planned parenthood has been a punching

bag to foes of both obama's affordable care act and roe v. wade. this despite the fact that the organization provides a whole range of health care to women of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds across america. today dr. le wen takes over for planned parenthood. dr. leana wen, welcome. >> thank you, it's wonderful to be here on my first day as the president of planned parenthood. >> you are the first doctor in half a century to run this organization. what does that mean to you and what might have mean for your role as head of planned parenthood? >> being here today is deeply personal to me. as a doctor, i am honored to lead an organization that's done more for women's health than any

other for the last 100 years. we provide life-saving medical dire 2.5 million people every year. it's deeply personal on another level, too. my mother was a patient of planned parenthood when we first immigrated to this country. i was a patient of planned parenthood, my sister was a patient of planned parenthood. just like one in five women in america. >> so dr. wen, lay that out for us because people might not fully understand what you mean by being a patient of because today planned parenthood for a lot of americans has become incredibly politicized and it just means reproductive health. it means contraception, abortion, those kinds of things. so i know your family turned to planned parenthood but in what capacity. >> so many of the patients we serve, we are their only source of health care. planned parenthood provides cancer screenings, breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, reproductive health services.

we do more every year to prevent unintended pregnant sis than any other organization in the u.s. and we provide life-saving, life-changing care. high blood pressure screenings, diabetes screenings. all these things that make people healthy and i think it's important for people to know that women, men, and all people are welcome to see us at our over 600 health center ins the u.s. that we provide life saving and life changing care. >> we've seen the trump administration want to reduce funding for all sorts of issues and you've taken a major stand on trying to prevent the reduction of funding on, for instance, preventing teen pregnancie pregnancies. tell me about that aspect. >> i recently finished my tenure as the health commissioner baltimore city where i oversaw health services for our city and the trump administration cut our teen pregnancy prevention

program which provides sex education, comprehensive sex education for youth, for young people. we've reduced infant mortality and teen birthrates in our cities to record lows as a result of our sex education and reproductive health service programs and to see a program like that being cut for no reason except politics was extremely shocking and disappointing so we sued the trump administration and we won and now we have our funding back for 20,000 youth who will continue to get services. >> okay, so that seems to me really, really important. because no matter what side of the abortion roe v. wade debate you land on, surely prevention is like the biggest thing a doctor could do and i'm confused as to what reasons they give for wanting to cut funding for the prevention of teen pregnancy because you mean preventing them getting pregnant in the first place, right? >> that's exactly right. we believe in providing

science-based medically accurate information so that people can make the best decisions for themselves. as a doctor, i trust my patients. i trust women and that's what planned parenthood does. over 90% of the work we do is prevention so if the goal is to reduce unintended pregnancies, we shouldn't be trying to cut funding to planned parenthood, we should be investing in the work that planned parenthood does. >> i want to play a soundbite from president trump on the issue of abortion and it happened last week after the midterm election. so let's play this and i want to read out a tweet that you responded. >> what am i going to do? i won't be able to explain that to you because it is an issue that is a very divisive, polarizing issue. but there is a solution, i think i have that solution and nobody else does. >> i'm not sure what his solution is. but you tweeted in response,

yesterday the american people overwhelmingly said that health care was their number one concern. not even 24 hours later trump is attacking our reproductive rights hoping that by denying birth control he can gut the aca, the affordable care act. we won't let him. and then a series of hashtags. so what is your plan, dr. wen somewhat can you do to maintain the provisions in the affordable care act and women's basic rights under established and precedent law. >> let's talk about what president trump did not even 24 hours after the midterm elections when women, particularly women of color, stood up and voted in favor of reproductive rights and access to health care. president trump issued new rules saying that employers are allowed to deny women birth control coverage. birth control coverage. it's 2018 and we're still debating birth control. imagine the outrage if there were anything. if we were now restricting access to vasectomies.

or preventing people from getting insulin for their diabetes. we're seeing that voters across this country are voting for more health care and not less. probably red states like utah, idaho, and nebraska voted to increase medicaid expansion. the people believe health care is a fundamental human right. >> so you have talked about having sued the trump administration in regards to the funding for prevention of teen pregnancy. now what do you think and how will you mobilize to protect women's health against a potential legal challenge to women's rights like roe v. wade. i'll play you what judge kavanaugh said about this issue during the appointment battle. >> under the religious freedom restoration act, the question was first was this a substantial burden on the religious exercise and it seemed to me it was in that case -- they said filling

out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were as a religious matter objecting to. >> so i don't know how you read that statement but what you think might happen given the evidence that there's so many challenges to roe v. wade, there's 13 cases or more pending right now at a state level, what do you think is a woman's fate regarding this crucial decision in the upcoming months and years? >> we are at a state of emergency for women's health in this country. we're facing a situation where in the supreme court we could seem roe v. wade overturned or further eroded. there have been 400 laws passed in the state that restrict a woman's right to her own body.

we don't want politicians in the exam rooms making our decisions about our personal health. this is what's happening. we're facing a situation where 25 million women, which is a third of women of reproductive age in this country could be living in states where abortion is banned or criminalized. we also are seeing in the u.s. that we are the only industrialized country where the rate of women dying in pregnancy, in childbirth, is increasing. that african-american women are four times more likely to die in childbirth and 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. these are profound health disparities and as a doctor i believe that it's my moral imperative. it's our moral imperative to provide health care to everyone, fight these disparities. that's what planned parenthood has been doing for over 100 years and why our country needs planned parenthood now more than

ever. >> i'm curious to know what if any influence the nature of your own country, where you came from, china, in this regard has on your thoughts as a position and when it comes to women's care. the laws that had forced abortions, forced sterilization s fetacide, infanticide in china was so draconian i wonder if that's spilled into your conscious and how you take that memory or knowledge into the job you do right now. >> very much so. i left china with my parents just before my eighth birthday. we have fortunate to be able to stay in the u.s. on political asylum. my father was jailed in china for being a political dissident and china has laws that deprive women of their bodily autonomy. the u.s. has laws that deprive women of their bodily autonomy

and this is what i will fight with every last breath. i believe all people should have the right to something as basic as our bodies and our health. you could have your own belief about what you want to do about your health but don't impose it on other people. i believe this deeply as a person, as an immigrant, as a woman, and as a doctor. >> when the opposition to roe v. wade talks about religious freedom being a reason for their opposition to abortion, what do you say to that? >> i say that we should all from the freedom to exercise our own choice, recognizing that that choice is predicated on privilege. that's why we need to move beyond these labels of quote/unquote pro choice or pro life. because pro choice implies that everyone has equal access to choice when we know that that's

not true. that wealthy people of privilege have been able to make choices while communities of color, communities that are low income faced systematic barriers to care and systematic racism and also reject the term of pro-life. i'm a doctor, i went to medical school. i trained to save lives. i'm pro-wife, i'm pro-family, i'm pro-patient and it's important for us to go beyond labels to talk about what it is that we want at the end of the day which is that we are as a society that trusts women. >> and let me make a quick switch to another big life issue and that is the right not to be mowed down by guns in your nightclubs or synagogues or churches or music festivals and schools. you have had to deal with the gun epidemic. what is your dmen tecommentary

that needs to be addressed? >> in the e.r. i've treated victims of gun violence. i've seen june kids die from stray bullet wounds and i nknow undeniably gun violence is a public health issue. that's what i know from being a doctor, a scientist and public health lead er. >> dr. leana wen, thank you for being here on your first day as president of planned parenthood. >> happy to join you, thank you. americas doctors are joining the gun debate in droves after another intervention by the national rifle association in the wake of the latest spate of mass shootings in the united states. one doctor who has gone public is forensic pathology dr. judy

melenek. so you do a lot of autopsy. what was your thinking when you in the last two weeks there was two mass shootings? >> it isn't just a mass shooting. we're seeing the carnage that occurs from gun violence so when the nra tweeted that doctors should stay in their lane, i was incensed. we have to counsel the grieving families. we are the ones who testify in court to the damage bullets do to the victims' bodies. it's completely inappropriate for the nra to tell doctors about gun violence. >> let me read you these tweets. they are extraordinary. the first one you refer to is

from the nra. someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. half of the articles in anales of internal medicine are -- anales of internal medicine are pushing for gun control. most upsetting, the medical community seems to have consulting no one but themselves. before ski you and read to your response tweet, i want to first ask you about this. "self-important anti-gun doctors." i know he said stay in your lane. but first and foremost. how do you respond to that? "self-important anti-gun?" >> it shows a complete ignorance of what physicians do in this country when it comes to gun violen violence. we are there to patch up the victims, hold the hands of those who are suffering when they lost a loved one and the tweet storm that erupted as a result of this is testament to that.

more importantly it shows they don't understand who the experts are in gun violence in the united states. they are qualified in court to testify to the injuries to the bodies and most importantly we have a role to play in recognizing that we can do research, we can do investigations to find out what the root cause is for all this violence. your previous guest, dr. wen, talked about the fact that this is a public health problem and just like doctors and scientists in the united states spoke out against the auto industry when they refused to put in seat belts, doctors can also speak out against the nra. many of my colleagues, many of my fellow forensic pathologists are gun owners, we want to see less death and that can be studied. >> they have an issue with the study, as you saw, because they think it's stacked against them, which is fascinating. but you also responded. you said do you have any idea

how many bullets i pull out of corpses weekly? this isn't just my lane, it's my effing highway. you were incensed and i can kind of understand it. >> i was angry. >> just give a description of what happens when you're performing an autopsy or as you say in the trenches in gun wounding situation. >> i've performed over 300 autopsies to date on gunshot victims. those include both homicides and suicide suicides. that's the other thing people don't recognize. suicides have to be part of the debate. risk protection orders can be used to take guns away from people who are actively speaking about harming themselves or others. there are ways of intervening without interfering with the legal rights of responsible mentally competent gun owners. >> and that what is what they

refuse to accept. that there are ways of having gun reform control or whatever you want to call it and people's legal rights to be respected. i want to ask you though. what do you see when it comes to ar-15 assault rifle wounds that -- compared to pistols and the kind of guns that may have been used in the past. and let me put this figure out, children are being more and more affected. between '06 and 2014 gunshot put children in the hospital every year, 40% shot unintentionally, 6% die in hospital. and let's point out while we're add it that in 2018, 49.5,000 gun-related incidents, more than 300 mass shootings, more than 12.5 thousand gun related deaths. those are the facts. what are the effects of the ar-15? >> the effect is when you're dealing with a high-powered

rifle there's more velocity going through the body and the velocity is imparting what we caulkin nll kinetic energy to t organs. there's much more damage. surgeons have a harder time saving patients who are shot with high velocity rifles as opposed to handguns. that said, even a small handgun can kill somebody if it hits the right spot, if it goes through the brain. so the issue we need to address is not just that of what types of weapons, whether it's an ar-15 handgun, it's access. any time you have a lot of guns around, day-to-day interaction, frustration, ang kerr escalate quickly into a lethal situation. even my colleagues in law enforcement tell me that they are concerned because they know how many guns are out there on the streets and so even though they are law abiding gun owners, many are members of the nra, they are not happy about the

situation with regards to easy access to guns in this country. >> so you said many of your colleagues or a good number of your colleagues, doctors, are members of the nra responsible gun owners? >> that is credibility. >> why is the nra treating them as enemies? >> i don't know. we'd be better off working together and there is an opportunity for bipartisan legislation. i implore our leadership to work together. i'm just in shock in -- now in the current century that i can't operate my iphone without my fingerprint unlocking it. it has a gps attached to it so i can find it anywhere in the city even if i lose it yet we're using ancient technology when it comes to our guns. we can fund research into changing things and i don't see

t them changing this but we have to wog together. >> there was a whole bunch of evidence over seat belts and other issues that changed. can you see how you doctors can try to change this without getting everybody's political nose out of joint? >> i think we have tremendous power with regards to social media. i have to say the that the fact that this storm erupted is a sign that we touched a nerve and it made me realize as a physician and scientist that we have a tool here to spread the word with regards to public health. social media is a way to spread nformation about public health and to coalesce people. if we look at how the students after the parkland massacre came together and started pushing for legislation, i think we doctors

can come together and help them as well. >> dr. melinek, thank you for joining us. turning now from doctor to patient, americans with pre-existing conditions whose protections are on the affordable care act chopping board as 20 states try to repeal them. and that would drastically affect our next guest, journalist and author kurt eichenwald was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was in college. his new book "a mind unravels" recounts his battle against the brain disorder, from discrimination and medical incompetence to being sexually abused after a seizure. he told harry sreenivasan that he's considering different remedies now. >> set this up, how did you find out you had epilepsy? >> i was in my first year of

college. i'd had symptoms as far back as i can remember but i didn't know what they were. i would have these staring spells where i would basically disconnect from everything that was happening. i. come back and having trouble remembering where i was or having been pilling at my shirt for some reason which is apparently common but i didn't understand what it was. i was in denial about it. then when i was in college i had a night where i woke up on the ground next to my bed. i'd been asleep. i hadn't just fallen out of bed. something had happened and i could tell something had happened. i was not completely coherent.

i was having trouble getting off the floor. i had injured my hand. and it's hard to explain a post-seizure what it feels like. it's called post dictal. a seizure is like the brain catching fire. everything is going off at once, all the neurons are firing and the brain has inhibitors, chemical s th chemicals that put the fire out. so when your brain is full of inhibitors, it's very hard to reconnect. it's very hard to speak. it's very hard to do a lot of things. but after i woke up on the ground next to the bed i called

home and i said something's wrong. the next day i called home and said something's wrong, i need to see a doctor and then came my first meeting with a neurologist and i got diagnosed that day. >> tell us how severe that was. you describe passages where you're having very, very frequencies yours and your friends are left to pick up the pieces. >> my roommates in college carl and franz, they were amazing. when the seizures got worse and worse i was having convulsions four or five times a week. i was having these drop attacks, which are far worse.

you drop like a ton of bricks without warn bug you don't lose consciousness. >> so you're walking down the streak and you collapse? >> yes. this is instantaneous. all the muscles release. and you drop. the problem with that is you're standing next to a piece of glass. you're walking down the stairs. you're -- anything. look around your life and think at any second i could hit anything. i hit a pot of boiling water and burned this part of my arm. it was terrifying and when i got that sick it was very, very difficult for my roommates because it had escalated to the point where the doctors didn't

know what they were doing. i hadn't found the doctor who saved me yet and they were dealing with all of this and they were in their 20s. >> you had several stories about doctors who not only misdiagnosed you but misprescribed medications that drove you almost inches away from death if you had continued following their advice. how did you tolerate and deal with the trauma that these are the people who are supposed to help you get better yet for viagra reaso varying reasons they were doing the opposite. >> i knew particularly the first doctor was doing a terrible job. my seizures were escalating. and it was when i met the doctor

who saved me, dr. alan narden, where i learned how a neurologist is supposed to be. i challenged him. i'd been told twice we'll top the seizures and i knew that wasn't right by then so when he said we'll do this and this and i just mark? ly -- snarkily said "and the seizures will stop, right?" and he said "i don't know. but we will keep working to get the best control you can get with the lowest side effects." >> you wrote a recent article and you wrote eloquently in the book about how you've a walking billboard for pre-existing conditions. your early employers, this was the crucial factor in whether and where you were going to work. >> that's the thing. when people talk about the pre-existing conditions issue they seem to have no understanding of what it means.

we have a system of private insurance. whatever you think of that, that's what we have. if you then turn around and say well, if you're not perfectly healthy when you're signing up for insurance you don't get private insurance. i'm a fortunate person. i grew up with a family militia my father was a doctor, we had means. college educated. but if i had no insurance i would be bankrupt overnight. >> are you concerned these protections are going to get stripped away, whether it's on a state by state basis or nationally? >> it's impossible not to be terrified by that. i t b the biggest reason to be terrified by that is there are people who are relentlessly trying to tear down the aca while simultaneously saying

"we're committed to keeping people with pre-existing conditions covered." well, what are their answers? the same things we were doing when i couldn't get insurance. these things didn't work and telling people like me next time they will, they won't. if the attempt to tear down the pre-existing conditions clauses goes through. my wife and i have decided for her to retire and for us not to have the risk, we're going to have to leave the united states and we're already looking at getting citizenship elsewhere because we have to. >> you've been a writer for a long time. you've tackled big messy subjects. how is this experience different? >> it's a lot different to write about yourself than to write about about other people's

experiences. i revealed basically my entire life. when my agent heard about this his first response was why didn't you ever tell me? because people did not know. >> what were the fears of you stepping up and saying that. >>? >> well, the fears when i was younger was not being able to have a job. not being able to stay in school pand and i revealed it and eigh weeks later i was thrown out of school and when i had a job within hours of them finding out i had epilepsy and i -- this was on my first day of work, i lost my job. and so you get sort of drilled into you be afraid. you don't know how people will

react. >> you also describe the worst-case scenario where you wake up once and it's doctors at a hospital telling you that -- bringing to light that you might have been raped. >> that -- obviously that's a little difficult to talk about. i woke up and i was bleeding and the bleeding was bad and i went to the hospital. it had been some time after a seizure. i didn't remember anything. well, i remembered -- i can't explain it. a mcdonald's sign, a bridge, something blue that was metal, somebody putting me in a car and

i ended up at the hospital and. that's -- they were inspecting what was causing the bleeding and that's when i was told that i had been raped. >> you talk publicly about the rape incident in the context of the kavanaugh hearings recently. why was it so difficult to report it then? what was stopping you at the time? >> i could have reported it i wanted it gone. i didn't want to think about it. i didn't want to deal with it and so even though people in the hospital were urging know call the police, the emotion al torment that was going on, i had

to get away from it. i couldn't face the fact that i was that vulnerable post-seizure. i knew it intellectually but emotionally i didn't want to deal with it. so when i sat there seeing these people who have never gone through this kind of experience using this sherlock holmes analysis of how people react to being sexually assaulted, there's a reason why i understa understand. i've been through it. and most of these people -- perhaps all of these people -- who think it's so simple, who think that, oh, why didn't she tell anybody right away -- have no idea what they're talking

about. >> is what dr. ford is reporting the truth? >> i don't know. based on my experience, based how i saw her behave when she talked about it, do i believe her? absolutely. and those who don't, those who make fun of her, those who have these simplistic ideas with what sexual assault victims go throu through, i pray they never experience this kind of horror. i know if they do, they'll be ashamed of themselves because then they will understand.

>> what has kept you going? what has this disease taught you? >> that we only have one life. that if we get ourselves wrapped up in the negative aspects of our life that we're just throwing time away. everything has to have a purpose. if you're pursuing a purpose, whatever it may be, your life is intensely rewarding. i don't want to lose that. i felt that i was reaching the end that i couldn't fight the fight anymore and yes, i did contemplate suicide. i had constant traumatic experiences.

and in the end it gave me strength. that's the message of the book. that confronting trauma can give you strength. you can only become a victim to the extent that you allow yourself. >> thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. such important insight into the often desperate nature of health care and insurance. and that's it for our program tonight. tomorrow join me for a frank and deeply personal conversation with paul simon, one of america's great singer/songwriters. now another yet another turning point in his enduring career. until then, thanks for watching "amanpour & company" on pbs and join us again tomorrow. yuuniworld is a proud spons of amanpour and company.

when bee tollman founded a collection of boutique hotels, she had bigger dreams and those dreams 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 set sail in europe, asia, india, egypt and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit yuan world.com. >> additional support has been provided by bernard and irene schwartz, sue and edgar wachenheim iii, the shirp and phillip milstein family, judy and josh weston and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [ theme music plays ]]

-♪ i think i'm home ♪ i think i'm home ♪ how nice to look at you again ♪ ♪ along the road ♪ along the road ♪ ♪ anytime you want me ♪ you can find me living right between your eyes, yeah ♪ ♪ oh, i think i'm home ♪ oh, i think i'm home ♪ -today on "cook's country," bridget and julia streamline a classic recipe for boneless rib roast with yorkshire pudding and jus... jack challenges julia to a tasting of black tea... and ashley makes bridget