Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Award-winning broadcaster best known for her war reporting from the world's most dangerous conflict zones.
On the island
Eight records
It puts me right back into my armoured and sometimes unarmoured car, wearing my flak jacket, crossing front lines between the Bosnian and the Serb side of Sarajevo.
Je t'aime, je t'aime et je t'aimerai
I loved, I love and I will love you forever. And I said that despite all this disaster, I feel very much full of love. And I love this because it was given to me amongst a whole group of CDs years and years ago in the middle of Bosnia when I was actually seeing a great French photographer.
I saw it on the Russell Hardy interview show in the early 1970s. And you have to imagine this conservative convent girl and this apparition, David Bowie, with the orange hair, the feathered dew, the chandelier earrings, the glittery suit, the platform boots. And I think just showed me the power of Western rock and roll and Western music and creativity.
This is all about the Iranian revolution, although it may seem weird when you hear this. Gloria Gaynor, I will survive. I heard it December 1978. That I will survive was, I will survive this revolution.
When I was a kid in Iran, I remember being sat down in probably in a school assembly or something, and the teacher played two pieces of music, Handel's Water Music and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. And I decided to choose for this Handel's Water Music.
Sisters Are Doin' It for ThemselvesFavourite
Eurythmics featuring Aretha Franklin
It was a great, empowering anthem.
Placido Domingo and the Vienna Boys Choir
I pick it because it was sung by a friend at our wedding. And also I love the Vienna Boys Choir and this contrast with the fantastic choir voices and Placido Domingo's voice.
It's for my son. The title speaks for itself. But also, it's my struggle with my son's independence. He's now 16 and a half. He's going to be, you know, moving on to his own independence, as is exactly how it should be. But of course, a mother, you know, never wants to let go. So these are all the words that I would maybe say to him. And Kat Stevens says it so much better.
In conversation
Presenter asks
6:04Do you yourself have a sort of a ritual, a procedure that you go through before you're about to encounter one of the biggies and sit down with them to do a one-to-one?
The ritual really is immersing myself as much as humanly possible into who they are and to trying to know more about them than they know about themselves. You know, you always have butterflies. I'm an ordinary human being who got somehow to sit in front of these extraordinary people and on behalf of viewers have to hold them accountable.
Presenter asks
6:33When has the biggest knot been in your stomach prior to one of these big one-to-ones? Who have you thought, oh, okay, I'm really, really having to gird myself for this one?
Well, Slobodan Milosevich. The, as we know, butcher of the Balkans. I asked him, you know, how he could sleep at night. And it's very difficult when you have the facts and you have been on the ground and you've seen the carnage and you've seen the destruction. When you go to then the leader and you bring them these facts and they just deny it. They just sit there and deny it. So your challenge is to constantly bring them back to the facts.
Presenter asks
7:57The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Really sort of emotive plays. I thought that would get me really emotional and ground me and all the rest. Then I thought maybe I'd learn all the words by heart and then perform all the characters and somehow occupy myself for an eternity.
The luxury
a guitar that I bid on and won at an auction for wounded heroes in the United States. And this was Bruce Springsteen's guitar. Wow. And he signed it to me, and I thought that I would take it with a lot of sheet music and learn how to play the guitar.
What do you remember about that first chunk of your life [in Tehran]?
I remember everything because even though I was born in London, my mom took me back to Iran after I was several weeks old. That was my fundamental foundation, was my life in Iran. … Everything. The flavour was fantastic. A lovely Persian-style house, quite modest, a tin roof. I used to lie on my parents' bed when it was pouring with rain and listen to the rain on the roof. I thought that was really cool. I learned to ride horses. That was my sport when I was five years old. And that, I believe, gave me the backbone, the courage, and the bravery, and the discipline that has carried me through my life. Because when you get on a big horse at five years old, and we're not talking ponies here, occasionally you fall off when you're learning to ride. And there was no surrender. You know, there was no ability to cry and walk into a corner. I had to go right back on. It taught me a life lesson.
Presenter asks
9:07Tell me about your mother.
A young English woman who, at the age of, I believe, about 21, took a huge adventure driving her father's friends, business friends who happened to be Iranian, back all the way from England to Tehran in 1956 or so. There, falling in with a wonderful group of fantastic friends who introduced her to my dad, who was a confirmed bachelor about 19, 20 years older than her, who saw my mother, fell in love, and that was that. My parents remained married until my dad died this past year at the age of 101. And my mother and my father taught me that you can be from East and West, you can have a tolerance of different ethnicities, different religions. My father was a Muslim, my mom a Catholic. You can live in these disparate environments and learn about tolerance and can-do. And my mum never, even though we lived in Persia, never ever intimated, nor did my father, that as a girl, any route was closed to me.
Presenter asks
15:03How did you two get along [with John F. Kennedy Jr.]?
Very well, actually. And because there was nothing between us except for a really deep friendship that began at university, we were at different universities, but in Rhode Island. And then I spent two years off campus in a house with him and three other friends. I had everybody, you know, sharing the shopping duties, the cooking duties, the cleaning, the bathroom duties, including John F. Kennedy Jr. And it was just fun. We had a great time. And because of his, you know, unique being, he also attracted a lot of interesting people. We kind of had a salon at home where people would come and talk and we'd debate things like nuclear Armageddon and nuclear arms control and apartheid in South Africa. I mean, this is the early 80s, right? And all these issues. Ronald Reagan was president. And it was just amazing to get that kind of education.
Presenter asks
23:11Is it true that you thought you'd never get married or have children?
Yes, frankly. I strongly believe that I couldn't, anyway, do the extreme experience of this particular profession if I was also concerned and worried about a husband, kids, at home. I knew that I couldn't do it. So it was only just before I sort of hit 40 that I thought, well, maybe, in fact, I tell you, it's pretty funny. I hope this doesn't sound self-aggrandizing, but I'd won a few awards. And one of my producers says, So, Christiane, what are you going to do? Hug your awards every night? And I thought, you know what? This is a clarifying moment.
“I never feared to talk about how I felt, although it was always very, very difficult to describe because people who haven't had that kind of experience glaze over, they're bored, they think you're telling war stories.”
“I believe that if you are neutral in those kinds of situations, you are an accomplice. And I will not be an accomplice to genocide or injustice.”
“I genuinely could not survive unless I was the most optimistic person I know, which I am. And I see light everywhere, not just darkness. In war, I see the light of human dignity and the spirit to survive and to keep going.”
“It's going to be really hard. I love talking. I love communicating. I love being talked to. I love all the experiences and the discourse. The discourse and just the beauty and the variety of life and always being engaged.”