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

Here's what's coming up.

- It's this dignity we find in people whose, are almost crushed by war.

- [Christiane] Over four years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and the war on women is more entrenched than ever.

Veteran correspondent, Lyse Doucet, tells me about the decades that led to this reality, and about witnessing the inspiring courage of those living there, then.

- I'm believed that belief is in short supply right now, and we need it.

- [Christiane] A mission to spread hope.

I ask Oscar winning actor Matthew McConaughey about trying his hand at poetry.

Also ahead, "Inherited Inequality."

Harvard sociologist Christina Cross speaks to Michel Martin about her new book, and challenging widely held beliefs about race.

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

Thank you.

- Welcome to the program everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

It's now been more than four years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and much of life there appears to have reverted back to what it was when they seized control the first time, particularly for women and girls.

Back in 1996, I asked the Taliban official about restricting their freedom.

The girls can't go to school.

We've been to schools here that are all closed.

- We have just told them that for the time being, they should not come to office and schools.

So till the time that we can come out with some sort of solution.

Some of these women who are working in government offices, they have just told them that the next, second order they should be sitting in their home and they'll be paid at their home.

- Today the persecution continues with Afghan women and girls barred from nearly all aspects of public life.

Despite the International Court of Justice issuing arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over this very issue, there's been growing acceptance of the group with Russia being the first to formally recognize them as the government of Afghanistan.

And China and the UAE and others accrediting their ambassadors.

So how did we get here?

Well, our first guest has been keeping a close eye on it all from the withdrawal of Soviet troops back in 1989 to the devastating fall of Kabul in 2021, International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet, has covered one conflict after another.

She was in Ukraine when Russia launched its full scale invasion in 2022.

She's walked in the camps of famine hit Sudan, and she's reported from the wreckage of an Israeli strike on Iran, but it was Afghanistan that became her second home.

Well, now Doucet is telling that story in an interesting way.

"The finest hotel in Kabul" chronicles 50 years of Afghan history as it unfolded within the walls of the Intercontinental Hotel.

And she joined me earlier this year to share those memories.

I think it's just fascinating.

We've crossed paths so many times, including- - So nice to be, it's so nice.

- Continental Hotel.

Why did you choose this device to write, essentially a memoir?

- I was looking, Christiane to do, to tell a story of Afghanistan through a prism, through a conceit, as they say in literature, that was familiar to people, even to people who don't know about Afghanistan, who don't want to know about Afghanistan.

And I thought, "Who doesn't like a luxury hotel?"

And I also wanted to try a different kind of storytelling that the kind that you and I do day in day out when we tell the news, what do we do?

We give people these snapshots.

They're true snapshots, but they're only, and in places which have been plunged into war all too many times, what are they?

People running to the hospital, people standing in the rubble of their homes.

People wailing, at the worst moments of people's lives.

But of course, as you know, whether they live in Afghanistan or Ukraine, or Sudan, Somalia, they all have to get up in the morning and find an everyday kind of courage, and try to live a day with hope.

And of course, as you and I both know from spending so much time, with humor and humanity.

And so the genre is called a narrative history, where it's a living history where the characters can come alive on the page.

And I'm really hoping that people who, when they read this book, they will go, they will find themselves being immersed into an Afghanistan, into the lives of people who draw them closer to the country.

- You do have a really born of experience and being there optimistic viewpoint, which you're expressing right now.

I just, you know, introduced you with the horrors that the Taliban 2.0 are inflicting on women and girls.

Again, it's this misogynistic reality that's now being accepted by the world.

So it is nice, actually, to go back and, and check into the reality there and the humanity, and as you say, the humor.

So just gonna read a few things in, in the book instead of warlords and presidents, you know, the book's heart belongs to the staff.

- People we know well.

- Yeah, Hazrat the housekeeper, she's been there since 1969.

Abida, the first female chef, lost her husband in a rocket attack.

Amanullah, the idealistic young engineer.

How did you earn their trust?

How did you focus on them?

Were they there, you know, in the times that you spent at the hotel?

- Well, I first arrived in Afghanistan it was in the grip of the harshest winter in more than a decade, it was 1988.

And as you know, it was in the depths of the Cold War.

And it was a time, it was a sort of, in a way, the Ukraine of our time.

There was a Soviet backed government in Kabul waging war against the western backed Mujahideen.

And I suddenly found, got myself a visa to a rare visa for, you know, you're smiling gold dust, we've got a visa.

Yes, it's Christmas day, but I've got a visa.

And, and I was there to cover the momentous with, with pull out of Soviet troops after a decade long invasion.

And some of the people, and, and that's it.

I talk about, I begin the book by, you know, any hotel in the world, "How long will you be staying Madam?"

And I thought I had this, I was gripped by this panic, like, is it six days, six weeks, six months?

I stayed nearly a year in this, in this hotel.

And so some of the people who worked there became friends.

And so Amanullah you mentioned, who became the engineer, chief engineer, was the room service cashier.

And there's a picture of me and him in the book.

And you'll see that he found, and Afghans as you know have this wicked sense of humor.

He ended up doing cartoons of all the journalists who stayed in the hotel and depicting their competitive streaks and going after, going after the news.

So when I went, when I decided to write a book and went back to the hotel in 2020, I think, I met some of these characters again.

And they have such an amazing memory.

And I said, you know, you know, very said, "I'm thinking about writing a book.

It will take a long time."

I have to say that a few people said no, because they were worried about the Taliban.

They came from neighboring provinces where the Taliban were strong.

But Hazrat, you know, the housekeeper was very, very proud.

And what I really liked Christiane was, it's this dignity we find in people whose, are almost crushed by war, but they still find, in the case of the Intercontinent, show up to work in their black, in a little frayed black jackets and their white shirts.

And when I first had a conversation with Hazrat, he actually mimicked the wealthy tourists in the 19, early 1970s.

The wealthy tourists who would come to Afghanistan, they'd glide across the gleaning marble floor, fling the white towel and go down to the swimming pool.

And of course that, that was a life of ease and privilege.

And he was just a 20 something, you know?

You know, all wide-eyed.

And he still, well he's had to leave recently, but he, and he still had that pride.

And there's a certain way of doing things.

- You know, it reminds me of the so-called Holiday Inn that we all stayed in.

- Yeah, in Sarajevo, yes.

There's always a difficulty task.

No matter how awful and how, you know, you know, poverty stricken and lack of food, and the siege, and the bombing, and this and that, they stayed there in their uniforms.

And it became a journalist hotel.

So I think the concept of hotels.

- You know the concept, "What is there for breakfast?"

"Oh, Christiane, there's only one egg left."

- That's right, and a kind of maybe stale piece of bread.

In any event, they did their best under the worst of circumstances.

So I want you to read from, from the preface, actually.

You sort of set it up beautifully.

- And of course, what I, before we begin, is that the hotel itself is the character in this 'cause it's still standing.

It's a very Afghan hotel.

"History, good, bad, and bloody was made within its walls.

It became home to fashion shows and beauty pageants, bikinis by the pool, vodka soaked Soviet perceptions, warlord rockets, a guest named Osama bin Laden, American election observers, Afghan female MPs, and Taliban suicide bombers.

Its doors stayed open to every kind of political system, a peaceable kingdom, Soviet backed communism, warlordism, Islamism, and a would be democracy bankrolled by the west.

Politics, like hotel guests, checked in and out."

- So I, it's beautiful.

It's firstly, it's beautifully written and secondly, you just immediately can picture it.

So well done.

How do you, it's a hard historical question, but can you sum it up in like 30 seconds, what took this nation from then to this completely failed state that it is now?

- Yeah, Afghanistan was cursed by geography.

Going back to the days when Imperial Britain and Imperial Russia fought over Afghanistan to get access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

And then the Soviets then saw it as a prize and the, those heated days of the, of the Cold War.

And then, as you'll remember in the Cold War, all, all of the Americans and the Brits and others focus on was the defeating this, the evil Soviet empire.

And Islamism rose up, they backed the Islamist, Osama bin Laden rose, and there it became a kind of a Petri dish for the kind of, well, it ended up in September 11th attacks in the United States.

And out of that also came the Taliban.

And then the West again intervened in 2000 were not learning the lessons of history.

And I think, Christiane, you talked about that this is possibly the darkest, most difficult, most painful time, most of all for the young Afghan girls and women who find themselves being pushed into the corners of their home, and not being able to live a life worth living.

But this time it will have to come from within Afghanistan and most all within the Taliban itself.

I was really struck one time when, when my last trip that a founding member of the Taliban said to me, "Lyse, 95% of the Taliban don't agree with these harshest of these acts."

But as you know, they say that the unity of the Taliban matters more than anything else.

- [Christiane] It's a cop out, if these are the people- - Yes.

- Who are the most powerful, I know who's saying that.

- Well, you met, you met Haqqani, and you know.

- Yes.

- Haqqani, he has the biggest militia.

- Yes.

He could, but just for want of unity, they condemn their nation, 95% of them to this kind of horror.

And it's a tragedy.

It really is.

But what I wanna ask you and congratulate you is this "Finest Hotel In Kabul" your book, it's been long listed for the, tell me if I'm getting it right.

- Baillie Gifford.

- Yeah, Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction, you are many times awarded for your television journalism, but here you are being shortlisted for a literary work.

But also I noted what you said about, you know, people are fed up with the news, so you're trying to tell the real story of the world, but in a way that doesn't turn, you know, people into their glazed look.

- Mm.

You know, one of the highest compliments was when a friend of mine, actually, your American viewers will know her well.

Her name is Louise Penny.

She's a mega, mega that's selling author.

She writes crime stories, writes fiction.

And she wrote a book.

- Know with Hillary Clinton.

- Yes, yes, yes.

Louise Penny, yeah, she's a Canadian.

And she said she never, she never hardly read nonfiction books.

'cause she's a that kind of writer.

And she read the book and she came back and she said, "Lyse, when I used to hear news about Afghanistan, I just thought about the news.

You know, the card called facts.

But when I, after I read your book, when I heard news about Afghanistan, I thought about Hazrat and Abida and Mohamed Aqa."

And that is the, the biggest, and I don't say it to toot my horn, but you and I, aside from being in the same business of journalism, I think, if I can be bold to say, we're in the same business of trying to make people care about stories.

And when you commented how people, that the world has accepted, they're not doing enough about the girls and women in Afghanistan.

- No, at all.

At all.

- And how can any of us accept that we live in this kind, this kind of a world?

And I know you, you often raise these issues.

- I do.

And I'm also like you, I mean, I believe in the humanity of individuals rather than tarring them all with a collective, you know, guilt of whatever governments who are ruling over them.

On journalism, you've said that we're fighting for trust in journalism.

We know that audiences are dropping off mainstream platforms, there's a huge assault from the United States to illiberal democracies as we know, you know, dictatorships and authoritarian against us journalists.

How do you think we can regain trust?

If we, if you think we've lost it.

- We do, I think it's often when I speak to journalism students, let's say from a few years ago, I would say to the young journalism students that independent journalism will live or die in your generation, and you wanna become a journalist, but you're gonna have to fight, not just to become a journalist, but for journalism itself.

Because as you say, not only are we fighting for trust, we're fighting for the truth.

As David Miliband likes to say, "Everyone can have their own opinions, but not, not their own facts."

And I- - He's president of the IRC.

- The IRC, former, former British Foreign Secretary.

But the, I just think every day we have to get up and just do better.

What is our job?

Our job is asking questions.

We have to keep asking questions of as many people as possible.

And trying as best as we can to get closer to the truth.

And it's getting harder and harder.

But if we give up on it, we give up on a fundamental pillar of our democracy.

And if anything is clear from the time in which we're living, the values we hold dear, that we have to keep fighting for them.

- So again, we are living now in a world in which, whatever we say about certain world events could get us canceled, it's just happening everywhere.

- The whole discussion about free speech.

- It's that, but let's just talk about, let's just talk about Israel, Gaza.

- Mm.

- Incredibly difficult to actually tell the whole story without incurring backlash.

And not only that, independent outside journalists are not able to join our heroic Palestinian colleagues in helping them cover what's happening in Gaza.

How do we, what do we, what, what do we say about that?

How do we live with that?

- You know this is, they have this expression, and I'm sure you've heard of it a lot, even used it a lot, that they say the arc of history bends toward justice.

And I keep wondering whether the arc of history will bend to we return to a place where there is in our system, not just rules, but rules that are observed and that there are, when there are rule makers that they are not also rule breakers.

And now you and I and many others in our journalistic tribe talk about how rules are now being broken on an industrial scale.

You know, I've often said that we, we are in this Dickensian time, the best of times and the worst of times.

Never have our institutions, our understanding of international law, our understanding of war and the brutality of war been so strong, but never has also impunity been so flagrant, so blatant.

I mean, look at the UN Secretary General, how many days he has to use his pulpit to talk, to condemn what's happening in so many wars the world over.

And I think it is a very trouble.

It is a, it is a really, it's an urgent time for those of us who try to keep telling the stories, keep asking the questions, and keep searching for truth.

That's all we can do, Christiane, that's our job.

- I, I agree with you.

- Yeah.

- And we have to keep fighting no matter the obstacles.

And there have always been obstacles.

It just seems right now it's really intense and everybody's being careful about what they say, or at least a lot of people, so, back to- - It takes leadership.

We're journalists, we're journalists, - Yes.

- And of course it's the, you know, it's the world leaders who have to take leadership on these issues too.

- And as our own leaders.

- Yes, hold them to account, hold them to account.

- Exactly.

We are the foot soldiers are doing our best.

But in any event, back to, you know, the greatest hotel in the world, I have to tell you, the last time I was there was 2001.

- [Lyse] That was probably the worst hotel in the world.

- Oh my goodness.

It was ugly.

- Do you remember those days having to walk up seven flights of stairs to go on the roof?

- To get to the roof to broadcast the fall of Kabul- - Yes.

Yes.

- from the Taliban, the victory of the Allies getting rid of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, et cetera.

What gives you hope about, let's just say Afghanistan?

- If there's, one of the many threads in this book, and Afghans know it well, is that in Afghanistan, nothing lasts forever.

That there is always a rupture, a change.

Sadly, for Afghans, it often went from bad to even worse.

But there were moments, brief moments, there were moments of hope.

And when I speak with Afghans now, they can't allow themselves, even though they will sometimes blurt it out to believe that there is not any hope.

How can any of us live in darkness?

And for us as just people who have been privileged to go there, who have benefited from, we used to always say about Afghanistan, hospitality over ideology.

Even with the Taliban.

Even with the Taliban.

And we can only hope for them, the many.

I mean, that moment when so many had to flee, leaving so much of themselves behind.

Dreams shattered and fearing they might even lose their country.

They, they don't want to give up on that.

- It is amazing.

You see the same in Gaza.

- Yeah.

- People won't leave, people are not gonna leave Israel.

Peoples are gonna stay where they call home.

And they have to resolve these differences.

The leadership really does.

Yeah.

- It's not just a piece of land, it's about who they are.

- Indeed.

Lyse Doucet, thank you so much.

- It's such a privilege to be with you, Christiane.

And a pleasure.

- Now, he's the Oscar winning actor who's mastered the art of reinvention on and off screen.

First known as one of Hollywood's favorite romantic leads, Matthew McConaughey traded romcoms for heavy hitting dramas like "Interstellar" and "True Detective."

But it was his portrayal of a dying AIDS patient in "Dallas Buyers Club" that won him the Academy Award.

Since then, he's become a bestselling author with his smash hit memoir "Greenlights."

And even teased to run for Texas governor.

Well, this past fall, McConaughey also turned his hand to poetry, and he told me how a lifetime of faith influenced his book, poems, and prayers.

Matthew McConaughey, welcome back to our program.

- Good to be back, Christiane.

- You are becoming a prolific author.

Certainly "Greenlights" are your last one, became a bestseller.

What is, is, is that kind of what led you to write a new one, this current one?

- Well, I enjoyed the writing process of "Greenlights" so much, and I didn't have the confidence to write before then, and it was my wife who helped me write that because when I had told her, I said, "Look, I have this treasure chest full of all these journals and hey, when I die, do you, do you mind looking at that and seeing anything's worth sharing?"

And she very graciously just gave me the middle finger and said, "You do it.

I ain't doing it."

So she kicked me out of the house and I went off away with those journals and for about three weeks alone.

And found some themes and some, some ways that I've been thinking the same way since I was 15 years old at 50.

And I started to write, I started to enjoy it.

And I started to enjoy the Socratic dialogue and learning who I was and, and then putting it on the page in a way that translated and having people come up and go, "It did translate.

I was able to see myself in your stories."

I knew I wanted to continue writing, and I did.

- What was it that you were thinking about since you were 15?

- Oh, well, the early, you know, 15 to 25 are the big existential young questions.

Why, you know?

Who am I in this world?

Why does the world work this way?

Why do I exist?

What's the meaning of life?

Is there a God?

Does it matter what we do now to what happens to us tomorrow?

How do I deal with forgiveness?

How do I deal with guilt?

How do I deal with grace?

Where do I say the buck stops here?

Who am I gonna be?

Who can I be?

How much are my hands on the wheel?

How much is at faith?

All those wonderful questions.

Who am I, you know?

I've always been interested in trying to get to know myself as well as possible and get to know my own monologue, which I think is necessary for any of us if we wanna go have a dialogue with others and the rest of the world.

The poem and prayers came along because I found myself a couple years ago, Christiane, I'm getting a little bit cynical, too cynical for my taste.

And I'm looking around at the evidence, I'm looking at the facts of the world, and I'm turning on the news and I'm going, "Man, I don't, I'm not seeing people and things happening to believe in."

- Yeah.

- And so I started to objectify, started to get at people and things and not give people the benefit of the doubt.

And I started to do that with myself as well.

So I got kind of first scared and then angry with myself.

And I said, "All right, if we're not seeing evidence in the world and finding belief in that, let's go to dreams and ideals and the pursuits of divinity.

And try to make dreams a reality.

Let's go to poems and prayers and, and believe in that and not forget or forgive or say, 'No, those aren't attainable.'"

And let's try and bring those down and make those a reality in my own life.

And then so many people I've talked to that they're looking for the, the same thing.

They're looking around the world and going, "I'm not seeing a reason to believe around me."

And I think, obviously, if doubt wins, we all lose.

- So just to be clear, you are a person of faith, you are a believer.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

And, and spirituality.

- Well, I would say religious.

I'd go one step further.

I believe in God.

Now, and I'm working on this and I want to strengthen my relationship in that faith.

But this book and what I'm writing about is not exclusive to only people that believe in God or not.

I believe anyone out there who believes in their better self or their transcendent self or believes in their kids, or believes in the future, or believes in their past, any philosophy that is, that as long as it's not tyrannical and harming a bunch of people, oh, please believe in that more.

Double down on that, triple down on that, please.

And I think if enough of us do that, that's a real way to make a step forward, as collectively, as humanity.

- So I, I want to ask you, because we've got a couple of poems.

I mean, obviously the book is full of poems and prayers, but there are a couple that we'd like you to read from.

The first one would be "Doubt Faith."

If you wouldn't mind reading that one.

- Sure.

"Doubt Faith" I think that's on 144.

(Matthew singing in scales) "Doubt Faith."

Yeah.

"In this life, in our mind, through our eyes and on each day, doubt is logical and reasonable.

Faith is not.

Faith does not rid doubt.

Rather it carries us through it.

May our faith outshine our doubt."

- Yeah, I mean, it, it's a bit of a manifesto, right?

Would you say that pretty much sums up what you're thinking throughout this whole book?

- I believe that belief is in short supply right now, and we need it, it's necessary for our own survival.

And if we let the doubt win, we all lose as far as I can tell that math adds up.

So, let's find those things that we value in our life, the things we care about, the people we care about.

And you know what we, people that say, "I don't know what to believe in."

A great place to start is go, "Well, who would you die for?

Who would you die for?"

Start there.

And most everyone has something there.

Start there, double down on that.

Believe in that more.

Make that part of what you're living for and, and we can get out of, we can get it out of whatever rut we're in.

- Okay, so let me ask you, because clearly we are speaking at a time when a lot of people all over the world, from your country to mine, to further east and west, feel like they're in ruts, feel a lot of doubt, feel a lot of being disconnected, this, frankly existential issues.

And you know, religion also is a place where people can find purpose, find community, get out of their, their heads, if you like, of what's coming at them down the road.

Do you, do you feel that that's, I mean, do you, do you see that?

And do you feel that that's- - I do.

- Yeah.

- I do, and again, even if you don't believe in God, there are plenty of wonderful ethics that come from religious text that any agnostic would go, "I wanna follow that."

I do believe it is a north star where we can lean more into and dissect.

What we have to, you know, watch out for, is we like to, we like to slam the author.

Meaning, you know, whether the 10 Commandments should be in schools or not, I'm not gonna say, but does anyone disagree with any of them?

Now, they're saying no because the author do, do, do, there's plenty of things in the Koran that we could all look at and go, "Yes, I subscribe."

And I may be a Christian or I may be a non-believer.

There are plenty of things in many religious texts that I think we should put up, but religion, we, mankind is bashed as religion along the way.

I always like to bring this up.

You know, the Latin root of religion is Ligare, which means to bind together, and Re, which means again.

Now, a lot of people that I call, that I talk to, that say, "No, I'm merely spiritual.

I'm not religious."

That's exactly what they're for.

So person kind, mankind, civilization, we bastardized religion.

What we've done to it is not what I believe God was saying, "That's what I want you to do with it."

So let's not throw the baby out with the bath water on this.

There's a wonderful, there's a bunch of wonderful things that we can get from religion.

And I personally think life is religious.

Now, that's me.

If you wanna call yourself spiritual or agnostic, fine.

But you do have something you believe in.

I bet you do have something you'd die for.

You do have something that you pursue that's of value to you.

And if you can double down on that, amen.

- So, you know, there are obviously a lot of religious people in the world.

Some of them are hucksters, as we know, some of them prey on vulnerable people.

- Yeah.

- Others are wearing their religion on their hearts and, you know, using politic, religion to justify their politics.

But you, you know, you are religious as you've told me, and you are best known for being an actor.

I just wondered what, what it's like on set?

Do you, do you communicate your religious beliefs, feelings, or this kind of really interesting conversation to fellow actors, or do you separate the two?

- No, I talk openly.

And I'm also not out.

I'm not, I'm not out pursuing conversion.

I have these conversations and have many conversations with many friends of mine who would call themselves agnostic.

We do not disagree on, on certain principles, and the ways and rules of engagement in life with ourselves and others.

I may get to the end and go, "And therefore God exists."

But like when I heard Carl Sagan break down the universe for three hours, he did it.

I opened my mind up, I listened and at the very end, my line was, I was gonna go, "And therefore God exists."

But what he said was, "And therefore God doesn't exist."

We didn't agree on, we didn't disagree on anything in the first three hours.

And what he did was built my faith up.

But he, his point was, "And therefore God doesn't exist."

We had a wonderful laugh at that because we were so, we were, it was beautiful how we got there.

So I have conversations on set with friends all the time.

We say, I say grace with many of my agnostic, even atheist friends at the table who can find something to be thankful for in their life.

I may start it off with, "Thank you God.

They may just say, "Thank you."

Fine.

- Yep, yep.

No, I get it.

Now, you have a new film out, of course it's called "The Lost Bus."

Your real life mother is in it with you.

What was it like, and also your son?

I mean, three generations of McConaughey's.

What was that like?

- Well, it was, it was, it was wonderful.

I never thought of that, never dreamed of it, never hoped it would happened, never tried to really make it happen.

It was our director, Paul Greengrass.

- Yeah.

- Who said, who cast my son, even though I, when I pulled his last name off the, that the tell the read that he had on camera, he got it on his own without his last name.

And then my mother, who Paul needed to cast someone for my mother, and he goes, "What about your mom?"

I said, "What?"

"Aren't she 93?

She actually just fell, busted her tailbone.

She's in a wheelchair, that'd be perfect for the part" I said, "Well, let me get her in front of you first."

And he goes, "Yeah, give me something on camera."

I said, "Mom, gimme a minute on why you love being a mother."

She sends an eight minute video.

He looked at it, he goes, "That's great.

She did.

That's who I want."

So all of a sudden I'm on set with my mom and my son.

And the other night, I must say we had a, we premiered the Toronto Film Festival.

To be between those two as a father to my son on the right, and a son to my mother on the left, who's 93.

And to see them beaming, one just getting started, one feeling great relevance in doing this in her life was a wonderful bridge and place to be for myself.

- And do both those generation sandwiching you, are both of them religious, your mother and, and did your son have the same feelings as you?

- Well, my son has a, is the most considerate young man I've ever met.

Where does that consideration come from?

Partially who he is and who he was when he was born.

But also I'd like to say that Camila and I have, can take some credit for how we have, what we learned in our household of how to be individuals and have, understand who you are and also stand up for things, but have compassion for yourself and how you treat yourself and how you should treat others and, and vice versa.

I think they're conscientious young children.

I'm not gonna go so far to say for my son, "Oh, he's religious."

I'm letting him navigate the definition of that for himself.

I'm pretty, it feels nice as a parent when your kids go out of the house and come back into the world and people that they engaged with when you weren't there, come back and tell you great things about how they were, how they behaved, how they were kind, and they were considered how they were leader, da da da da.

You go, "Oh, okay, it seems to be working."

Now, my mom, we grew up on, you know, you know, she's, no one forgives themself quicker than her.

She says, every night, I said, "Mom, what's the secret to be a 93 and so happy?"

She goes, "I go to bed with a 20, list of 25 things that I regret every night.

The best thing is I wake up in the morning and I forgot them all."

(both laughing) - That is good.

That is the advantage of age.

I like that.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Listen, you also have some other, you know, issues in your book, you talk about disinformation, and here's one idea that stood out.

"In our age of politics," you write, "AI, plastic surgery and high-frequency fix-it-in-post deepfake deceptions, I often find myself walking away from all the knowledge and reality more confused, more frustrated, and less well-advised than I was before I consumed it."

It is actually hard these days to find your, you know, your true north, your sort of guiding star.

- Yeah, I was talking to a friend yesterday and he said he believes we're in the age of disorientation.

You know, and to orient ourselves in this changing world and to open up to news and see what AI's doing and the human jobs that it's taking, and the human jobs that it's promised to create.

But we're still saying, "Okay, which ones are those gonna be?"

It seems to be, we're definitely in the time of the history, even maybe more so than the internet, that in the industrial revolution that we are about to redefine how we engage in life.

And so how do we orient ourselves in that, you know?

And how do, where you don't know if something's real or not, if you, if the the questions of what's truth or what's a fact are more up in the air now than ever.

So that can be, that can be painful, it can be confusing.

And we have to wonder, "Where's my place in it?

And, and and, and what do I rely on?

What is real?

If you give a damn about reality, that's another question.

Is something that's virtual just as real?

Those are more questions that we gotta answer.

So, you know, what can we trust in, you know?

And again, I'll go back to that thing, If it's hard and it is hard, ask yourself who or what you'd die for.

Look at that.

Double down on that.

Nourish that, tend that garden a little bit more.

And that can help us at least keep a compass that's a good north star no matter where the world goes.

And then where we find orientation in it.

- Yeah, some people would say, you know, they would maybe not die for, but somehow do everything for the American Dream.

And you talk about that too in the book.

And you cover, you know, that with a lot of, a lot of big issues.

You talk about patriotism and about the American Dream you say, "So, whether you think it's a dream or an illusion, if nothing else, it's the best nightmare available."

What do you mean by, "Best nightmare?"

- (laughs) I heard that term I believe from a friend of mine in Europe about 15 years ago, "Wow, at least it's the best nightmare going."

And I was like, "Ah, what an interesting way to think about it."

And it's a base, it's an indirect sort of baseline compliment.

But for, for those of us and myself included, when we start going, "Oh, it's all BS.

There's no system.

The capitalism doesn't work.

Socialism doesn't work, comedy doesn't work, it's all politics is all (beep), you know, every country does.

That slippery slope that can start to take away all belief.

I go, "Well, you know what?"

And I talk about this in point of America yet, about America as an idea.

It's a constant pursuit that will never be achieved.

We just have to stay in the race and stay in the chase to progress in the right way.

Best nightmare going, it's a bit of a tongue in cheek going, "Well, if you look around, I'm gonna say they're all nightmares, pick the best nightmares."

It's kind of like saying, "Well, if you don't believe in heaven, at least make a move to get further from hell."

- Unfortunately, we are living in a bit of a nightmare scenario, you know, right now all over the world.

I want you to read for me, if you wouldn't mind, from "Regulations" the other poem we've chosen.

- Sure.

"Regulations."

"Listen to yourself, hear yourself, learn yourself and mind.

Measure yourself, train yourself, referee yourself in kind.

Negotiate yourself, invest yourself.

Multiply yourself in scale.

Administer yourself, accomplish yourself.

Dare yourself from hell.

Own yourself.

Exchange yourself.

Pay yourself back."

Yeah.

- So I wanna ask you, because we started by you at 15 asking all those existential questions, including, "Who am I?"

Do you know who you are now?

- Oh, (laughs) what, that's a really fun question.

Do I know who I am now?

I'm doing the best to wake up and every day and feed the things that do seem to satisfy me for longer periods of time.

I have found and built a life where I have investments that are non-negotiable, starting with family.

And you know, I still have to watch over leveraging myself.

Get too many campfires.

I think we all do.

You get too many campfires now there's some of the, get rid of some campfires and put more wood on some of the original fires that really mean a lot to us.

I know what, what things mean to me in life.

I have a lot of meaning in my life.

I have a pretty good threshold when I feel like I'm getting away with it and I'm skirting on the edges.

I need to pull myself back, but I still wanna take risks and I look forward to getting up each day, even if I've got a host of problems I've gotta solve in front of it.

And it's easier to know who you're not than who you are, but I have a pretty good sense when I look around me of reflections of tell me who I am.

- Well that's a wonderful place to be.

Matthew McConaughey, thank you very much indeed.

- I enjoyed that.

And look forward to the next time Christiane.

- Me too.

Good luck and I look forward to seeing "Lost Bus."

- Thank you.

- Next, rethinking widely held beliefs about racial inequality.

For decades, scholars have drawn a strong link between high rates of single parent households and the disadvantages faced by Black Americans.

Well, our next guest is challenging that idea.

It's all in her recent book, "Inherited Inequality."

Harvard Sociologist Christina Cross joins Michel Martin to explain how viewing systemic disparities through a different lens will help these disadvantaged Black communities.

- Thanks Christiane.

Professor Christina Cross, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here.

- You know, your book is kind of a, a myth buster, I guess, if I could call it that because you really challenge some of the things that we have just sort of come to accept as part of kind of social policy or family policy.

You say that, you know, you open the book by reflecting on your own childhood in Milwaukee where the two parent family was kind of held up as the antidote to all manner of ills like, you know, poverty and crime and so on.

And one of the reasons that that struck me just to begin with is that I think there's a sort of a, an attitude that African Americans don't talk about issues like this among themselves.

Like this is sort of an outside in conversation.

And so the first thing that I noticed was you say that this was kind of a commonly discussed theme in your childhood, you know, at church, in your family members.

Can you just talk about that very briefly?

- Yes, so I, like you mentioned am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I grew up in a working class community there.

And many times I would hear folks at church, at school, within my neighborhood sort of trying to grapple with many of the challenges that we were facing, and trying to understand what really was driving some of the issues within my community.

And often, family structure in particular, single parent families came up as part of the narrative.

And a lot of times the story was that our community was better off when we had higher rates of two parent households.

And that unfortunately, there had been a change with an increase in single parent families, which was, among other things a really important factor in, in driving some of the challenges we were facing.

- But here's where your book is, takes an interesting turn.

You write that, "Americans have great faith in the power of the family.

And in particular the power of the two-parent family.

We imagined this domestic idol to be a haven from the harsh realities of the outside world.

And the way we wax rhapsodic, it's easy to assume that most Americans see the two-parent family as a Great Equalizer."

And you say you were raised to believe in this, and, "Growing up the adults regularly invoked this family structure as a solution to a host of problems facing our low income, African American communities."

So that's the first thing you say that, look, there's a reason that so many of continue to hold fast to that, the idea that, you know, two parent families are advantageous.

It's true, I mean, it's a common sense.

But one of the central findings here is that, "The negative effect of single motherhood on child outcomes is weaker for African American children than for white children, and the wellbeing of Black youth from two parent families is substantially lower than that of their white peers."

When is the first time that that, that that finding became clear to you?

- Well, it was about a decade ago for me, when I was working on my dissertation research.

Like any good graduate student, I wanted to explore what we already knew about the topic of family structure before designing a project of my own.

And one of the things that I found relatively hidden in the data was this striking finding.

I had found that several researchers had uncovered that the negative impact of living with a single mother was smaller for African American children.

And of course I was really struck by that, given the conversations that I had been hearing since I was a child.

But also what I knew more generally, 80% of white Americans, and 70% of Hispanic Americans, and 60% of African Americans all agreed that African Americans have a harder time getting ahead because of differences in family upbringing, specifically family structure.

So this is a consensus or a widely held idea that was at odds with what I was finding in the data, which made me explore more.

That finding was about single motherhood.

And I began to wonder about the flip side of the coin.

What is it like for African American children when they grow up in two parent families?

Do they reap the same rewards?

- Do they reap the same reward?

So do you wanna take, can we take those sort of separately, what's your theory is, why is it that growing up in a single parent household is, is more damaging to white kids than to Black kids?

- Well.

- Why do you think that is?

- That actually became the focus of my dissertation research and I began to test some theories that had already been put out in the world, but they were at that point speculation.

There were two in particular that I decided to test.

One of them focused on extended families.

So we know that in general, African Americans tend to be more deeply embedded in their extended family networks.

They're much more likely to live with extended kin or to live close to them.

And they engage in, engage in significant amounts of support exchange.

And one of the theories suggested that African Americans more deeply embedded this in this extended family actually served as a protective factor.

It sort of buffers against some of the negative consequences of single motherhood.

- I think kind of anecdotally a lot of us have seen that, you know what I mean?

And it also explains the way that sort of legal structures kind of work against Black families.

Like for example, this whole business of people registering their kids in out of boundary schools, like schools where they don't live but maybe their grandparents live.

And then you look more closely at it and you think, "Oh, wait a minute, the grandparents function as another set of parents."

Like the grandparents might have the kids Monday through Friday and the parent has the kids on the weekends because that's a better school.

And then people look at that and think, "Oh, you're doing something illegal."

But for them it makes sense.

It's normal, right?

- Yes, and actually that's one of the things that I have explored in other areas of my research.

How some groups just do family differently.

And it's much more common for African Americans to involve extended relatives in routine child rearing tasks, and even to share households some of the time or all of the time with these extended relatives.

But if we focus so much on the nuclear family, we will miss that and we can make it actually much harder to support these families.

- And you're saying that contrary to that is that white family that's less common?

It's less common, like the focus really is very much sort of the nuclear family and that if, if a single parent doesn't have that, a single white parent doesn't have that, it becomes much harder?

- Well, they're much more likely to live further apart from other relatives.

And actually, in my study I found that many single parent, white single parents reported less satisfaction with the amount of support they were receiving from their extended relatives.

- Interesting.

Okay, so then let's take it the other way, which is to say that Black kids who live with two parents don't seem to reap the same benefit as white kids who live with two parents.

Why is that?

- Well, to understand this, I think it's important to understand why living with a, in a two-parent family is generally beneficial for children in the first place.

And it's because parents have more monitoring and time to spend supervising children, but they also have more money on average.

So in general, children in two-parent families have access to more resources.

Well, unfortunately, one of the things that I found in my data is that Black children who grew up in two parent families have drastically fewer resources, in particular economic resources than white children who grew up in this same type of family.

Their household incomes are about 60% of that of white two-parent households, and their family wealth is just a quarter, 25%.

- Why does that matter?

Why does that matter that the gap in wealth and assets, the money that exists because of, you know, your house or your investments and things like that, why does that gap matter so much in your opinion?

- Well, wealth matters so much for being able to give people a sense of economic security at any point, but especially during moments of downturn, right?

You mentioned a recession earlier.

Having wealth can make all the difference in being able to keep your home or not.

And it being able to afford to send your children to a quality school, and being able to provide children other advantages as they try to establish their own independent household.

There are many parents who offer their children help with down payments to own homes, which of course allowed for a greater and earlier accumulation of more wealth, so you can sort of see this compounding advantage from having access to more assets and having higher levels of wealth.

- Are any of these findings surprising to you?

- Well, yes, actually.

It was already concerning to find that Black children from two parent families had drastically lower academic and labor market opportunities than their white peers.

But what I was really struck by, and what I did not expect to find is that Black children in two parent families had outcomes that were more similar to their white peers who lived in a single parent family than to their white peers who grew up with both parents.

- Why is that?

- Well, it goes back to these resource disparities that I mentioned before in large part, but actually I found that for some outcomes, economic resources had less to do with what was going on, but things outside the home also come into play.

So one thing that I found is that Black children in two parent families were two to four times more likely to be suspended or expelled from schools than their white peers and they had very high suspension rates compared to any group.

Well, economic resources only explained a small fraction of what was going on there.

But what I also found is that, when it comes to their behaviors, they were not different with respect to how they showed up in the classroom.

But there's been a ton of research to show that Black children's behaviors are often perceived to be more negative and disruptive in the classroom.

And so then we think about how perception really plays a role in driving these disparities in school discipline.

- So, you point out that Black two parents families are almost invisible in academic literature, even though they make up nearly half of Black families today.

Why do you think that is?

- That's correct.

Well, for so long the conversation about Black families has been about single parent families.

There's been such a concern with trying to figure out why African Americans have a harder time getting ahead on life.

And so then this conversation and the attention has been on these single mother families.

And so, even though there has been a rise in Black two parent families, that's not where we have been focused on for so long.

Narratives are incredibly powerful in sort of directing our attention and shaping the way that we think about issues.

And so because it's been just such a longstanding narrative, the narrative about Black single parenthood, I think it has made it difficult for us to really imagine and think about Black two-parent families.

- So what do you think has been lost by not spending more time thinking about this Black two-parent family experience?

- It leads us to some pretty false assumptions about what's really driving inequality in outcomes for Black children, but also what we can be doing to level the playing field.

Because we haven't focused on Black two-parent families, we haven't known how drastic the opportunity gaps are for this group compared to their white peers.

It has allowed us to believe for so long that the two parent family is this great equalizer, which has actually shown up in the way that we craft policy.

- What are some of the things that would, that would actually in your, based on your findings, actually make a difference for families?

- So it is true that when Black children grow up with both parents, they tend to experience advantages, and they do tend to have improved outcomes.

It is also true, unfortunately, that they still lag behind their white peers in the same family structure.

And my findings indicate that much of that has to do with these wide gaps in economic resources.

And so, if we really wanna turn the tide, we need to be thinking about how to bolster family resources instead of making cuts to key social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP, and Children's health insurance program.

We could be thinking about ways to help families to stay afloat during these challenging times by increasing that amount of aid.

Another thing that people are really surprised to find out is that TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which we just commonly refer to as welfare, its budget has not increased since it was created in 1996, so nearly 30 years ago.

And when we think about inflation since that time, we really start to see that this program is falling behind in the amount of support that it is providing to families and what we thought was adequate even 30 years ago.

So even just thinking about trying to make sure that that funding keeps up with inflation.

There's also been different strategies that we've seen that were effective recently that we could have continued.

I think about the expansion of the child tax credit during the COVID-19 pandemic and how that lifted tens of millions of children out of poverty and it really made a difference in increasing economic resources for families.

Why can't we continue to do that?

We see that it works.

- So, so the bottom line is, you're just saying that living in a two-parent family has significant advantages for white kids.

It has advantages for all kids.

It particularly advantages white kids.

It really doesn't advantage Black kids that much.

So it, if people are, are not willing to see that, what does that say?

If they're not willing to sort of adjust for the difference, what does that say?

- Well, if we continue to assume that the benefits of this family structure are universal, we're not going to be able to close these gaps that we say that we care so much about.

It will lead to us perpetuating inequalities between children of different races as they have gone on for decades.

One of the reasons why I call my book "Inherited Inequality" is because I wanna highlight this unequal access to opportunity that has persisted in the US across generations, and we don't want to continue to pass that on to the next generation.

- I'm imagining that some might look at your findings and say that this takes people off the hook, that people should exercise personal responsibility, and that sort of blaming outside forces for your kids' lack of success in school and things of that sort just doesn't is, is unhelpful and kind of perpetuates that sort of a, a lack of sense of personal responsibility.

What would you say to, to somebody who made that argument?

- Well, the thing about my book is that I'm looking at people who've done it quote unquote the right way.

They've done what society said we should do in order to guarantee our children's success, and yet they have not found their children in a position to actualize those same dreams of success.

Unfortunately, their children don't have access to the same opportunities.

So this goes beyond the individual.

These are parents who have managed to stay together for decades.

I follow children from birth or young adulthood, and they provided a stable home for their children.

And after doing what they were told was supposed to guarantee them a bright future for their children, they still have to endure additional barriers.

This is not simply about individual responsibility.

Individuals of course have choice and agency, but they're also facing significant constraints.

- Professor Christina Cross, thank you so much for talking with us.

- Thank you for having me.

- And that's it for our program tonight.

If you want to find out what's coming up on the show every night, sign up for our newsletter at PBS.org/Amanpour.

Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.

(gentle music)