(logo whooshing) (dramatic music) - Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour & Company."

Here's what's coming up.

- We refuse to let the Taliban deprive girls of their future.

- [Bianna] A call to action after 1,000 days since the Taliban banned Afghan girls from going to school, I speak to Nobel Laureate, Malala Yousafzai, and.

- When terrorists are shooting at you, you just leave everything behind.

- [Bianna] Remembering Nova, founder of the music festival, Ofir Amir, tells me about surviving Hamas's attack and his new exhibit documenting that day.

Then.

- It was a shockingly different time.

The past is a foreign country.

- [Bianna] "The Year of Living Constitutionally."

Hari Sreenivasan talks to author A.J.

Jacobs, who spent 12 months living like it's the 1700s.

(inspirational dramatic music) (dramatic music) (gentle dramatic music) - [Announcer] "Amanpour & Company" is made possible by: the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Atwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Family Foundation of Leila and Mickey Strauss, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

Additional support provided by these funders and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.

A grim milestone in Afghanistan this week as the country marks 1,000 days since girls were banned from attending secondary school.

This as the Taliban continue to tighten their grip on the country, despite promising moderation after taking power in August of 2021.

It is now once more a desperate place for women who, for public parks to jobs, find themselves fading away.

And it's a reality Malala Yousafzai calls gender apartheid, the term she calls on world leaders to recognize as a crime against humanity.

Malala, of course, is a survivor of that violence against girls, shot by a Pakistani Taliban, by the Pakistani Taliban on her way home from school when she was just 15 years old.

She has since become the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner and a fierce advocate for the rights of girls and women around the world.

Today, her foundation, the Malala Fund, is announcing another $1.5 million to keep girls' education alive in Afghanistan.

And she joins me now from New York.

Malala Yousafzai, thank you so much for joining us on this program, on this really grim milestone marking 1,000 days since girls in Afghanistan have been deprived of what should be something every child is entitled to, and that, obviously, is an education.

Just talk to us personally about what this moment means for you.

- It has been three years that Afghan girls have not seen their classrooms.

It has been more than 1,000 days that Afghan girls have not seen the opportunity to learn, and that is making girlhood illegal in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are denying women and girls their human rights and this should shock us.

This should put us into action.

That's why I think it's so important for us to call it a systematic oppression imposed by the Taliban on the women of Afghanistan, which is limiting them from education, from learning, from work, and from a public life.

And that is why Afghan women activists are calling it a gender apartheid, which means it is a systematic oppression by those who are in power, who are meant to actually protect them.

There is no place for Afghan women to go to.

They have currently no future.

- Are you satisfied, and I would assume the answer is no, with the attention and focus this specific issue is getting from around the world and the pressure being put on the Taliban to bring this up time and time again, the real abuse, emotional, mental, psychological, and even physical that women have had to endure since they came back into power?

- I have been doing this activism since the fall of Kabul in 2021.

And I remember at that time the outrage that Afghan women and girls were showing that we cannot trust the Taliban.

But some people said that we need to give them a bit more time and we need to trust the Taliban on their promises.

But the women, the Afghan women, knew it.

Now it has been more than three years.

What is the excuse now?

It is so important that those who are negotiating and talking to the Taliban prioritize women's rights and girls' education, that women's rights and girls' education is a non-negotiable condition on the table.

And those women have to be in those rooms where decisions about their future are made.

And there are meetings happening the end of this month as well, so I do push leaders, I do push the UN officials as well that they have to ensure that there is no compromise on the rights of women and girls.

We cannot live in a society where we all claim, our leaders claim that we care about gender equity and equality, while we are putting all of that at risk in Afghanistan.

We are not even reacting that girls' education right now is banned, is prohibited for girls.

- A reminder of the false promises made and perhaps the naive trust or hope that was given to this new Taliban, as they called it, 2.0, when they came back to power.

This has been an issue that we have focused a lot of time on here at CNN, Christiane Amanpour specifically, as you know.

And she brought this question up with the deputy leader of the Taliban at the time in 2022, and asked him about girls' rights.

Here's what he had to say.

(Sirajuddin speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] What I am saying is that the international community is raising the issue of women's rights a lot.

Here in Afghanistan there are Islamic national, cultural, and traditional principles.

Within the limit of those principles, we are working to provide them with opportunities to work and that is our goal.

- Malala, how do you respond to that?

What are these quote, unquote "opportunities" within the limits of the parameters he set?

- There are a dozen of Muslim countries in the world and in none of those Muslim countries do you see girls prohibited from education or women prohibited from work.

It's not a crime for girls to have rights in those countries.

At the same time, we know that culture and religion are often used as an excuse by the Taliban, and by other extremists as well, to limit women, to protect their misogyny.

There is no solid basis for that at all.

Islam actually encourages education for all children, for everybody, and in Islam it is your responsibility to get education.

I don't know what sort of system, what sort of ideology they're talking about, but the culture that, you know, I come from, and the religion that I know, it encourages education and I think the Taliban need to... We also, like, at this point I would say we need more Muslim leaders and more Muslim countries to step forward and actually challenge the Taliban to say that in Islam there is no justification for a ban on girls' education and for preventing women from work in the Islamic context.

- We should note that this isn't just a human right that's being deprived of women, it's a right that's really hurting the Afghan economy as well, where so many women that are just not allowed to contribute.

You are though contributing though through your fund, $1.5 million, as we noted.

Explain to us how you and your fund through this money are able to help in any way you can specifically.

What are you doing?

- When I think about the future of Afghanistan, it's still the women and girls who give me hope.

They are protesting on the streets every day for their right to an education, to work, to political representation, and to a public life.

That's why we are supporting Afghan activists on the ground.

Malala fund is announcing $1.5 million additional funding to organizations, 13 organizations in Afghanistan who are working on the frontline to advocate for girls' right to an education.

And we are also at the same time supporting the campaign and the movement led by Afghan women to end, to recognize gender apartheid and to end it, and to hold the Taliban to account for committing these crimes and to push leaders and to hold them account as well to ensure that they also take steps.

- It was in 2013, some 11 years ago, when you were 16, that you spoke before the UN and here's what you said.

You said, "Peace is necessary for education."

You said, "There's way too much suffering and war happening."

Right now, as we speak, there are two big hot wars in Ukraine and in Gaza there, and I know that you have recently announced a new graduate program and scholarship for Palestinians at Oxford University.

Just talk to us about this mission for you and the hope that you would like to give Palestinian women, children, in terms of their efforts to go to school, to go back to school, because obviously that can't happen right now.

- First of all, I think we need to remind all of us that what is happening in Gaza to Palestinian people, to Palestinian children, is horrifying.

More than 80% of the schools have been damaged.

Almost all universities have been bombed in this bombing by Israel.

So when I think about any war, any crisis in the world, I think about children.

These wars take away their dreams, their future.

I want girls to be in a classroom, I want children to be studying, to be dreaming about their future, to be playing outside on their streets.

War and conflicts and oppression takes all of that away from children.

We are seeing that happening in Afghanistan.

We are seeing these things happening in Sudan and in Gaza.

This has to stop.

And again, I want our leaders to think about the children, to think about humanity, and to take a brave step towards peace.

And the same I'm hoping for Afghanistan as well, that it has been 1,000 days.

I cannot imagine that it's 2,000 days, 3,000 days.

We cannot keep Afghan girls waiting.

And I want to reiterate that it's so important for us to stand with Afghan women and girls.

They are at the forefront of this campaign.

So I'm here to share my empathy and to share my solidarity with them, to all the activists in the world who are speaking about peace, of justice.

- Yes, Malala, I can't think of a better spokesperson for this issue and your bravery and your continued fight for this very, very important mission; educating women, educating girls, giving them the rights that they deserve.

Malala Yousafzai, thank you so much for joining the program today.

- Thank you.

- And freedom remains also elusive for the many hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas.

Some of them are from the Nova Music Festival, where an event dedicated to peace and love became the scene of a massacre by Hamas militants on October 7th.

Now an exhibition in New York aims to take viewers through what happened that day, presenting them with remains salvaged from the festival grounds.

Ofir Amir is a survivor of that attack.

He's also one of the founders of the festival and has helped produce this exhibition.

In the wake of protests this week outside the exhibit, including people calling for Intifada, Ofir gave me a tour and explained the importance of remembering.

One of the most powerful parts of this exhibit are just the belongings that no one came to claim, from hats and bags as you see here, soccer balls, water bottles, to clothing items, and then ultimately the shoes.

I think for so many people it's very reminiscent of what they see at the Holocaust Museum.

And just, it gives you a sense of the scope of what was lost that day.

How did this come about?

- Well, you know, everything that you see here, from all the belongings and the tents and the chairs and well, with the help of the police, we managed to gather all of these belongings and, well, when you see the shoes it's clear, it's reminding us exactly of what happened to us a hundred years ago at the Holocaust, and people were running away and left everything behind, even their shoes.

And I was one of the last people to leave the festival area and we saw the tents broken, and we saw all their belongings and bags, and I was asking myself, how could someone run away without their bag?

But when terrorists are shooting at you, you just leave everything behind.

- How many of the survivors have been here?

- We had, I'd say, over 50 of the survivors coming here and being part of the team and telling their story.

- [Bianna] And you've really encompassed a multi-sensory feeling and exhibit here.

- This is exactly the feeling that we wanted to give everyone that goes through this journey, the feel, the smell.

And we also explain everyone that is entering this exhibition, it's not like a museum where you cannot touch anything.

You want people to touch the tents and the belongings to get the sense of what we went through.

- And this is the wall honoring all the victims.

- [Ofir] Yeah.

- [Bianna] How many in total?

300 and?

- 401.

- 401.

- Including the police and the security guards and, yeah, too many, I know too many faces here.

This was a really good friend of mine.

Mattan.

- And I know, where was he?

I just saw him.

This is a real hero.

- Nathaniel, he's a hero.

His parents were also here in the first two weeks.

- [Bianna] How are you feeling today?

Physically?

- Well, physically it's getting better every day.

I've been working really hard on recovering.

I was shot in both of my legs and my right leg was paralyzed for a few weeks.

My mission was always like to get better as fast as I can 'cause my daughter was born four weeks after.

- You were one of the founders of the Nova Festival.

You were there on October 7th where sadly over 350 party goers, concert goers, music attendees lost their lives, were slaughtered.

You're one of the lucky ones to be alive.

Your wife was nine months pregnant, so she wasn't there with you.

Walk us through that day.

- Well, 6:29 is when the rockets started.

I remember the first moment we were looking at the sky and it was like hundreds of rockets, and the first feeling was okay...

I was standing, next to me was another producer standing next to me and we were looking at each other and you don't want to believe that it's happening.

There's like this feeling of hope that, "Okay, we have the Iron Dome."

Unfortunately when you live in Israel, you know rockets, and I'm telling him, "We have Iron Dome, no, they will not shot us down."

And.

- You wanted the concert to still go.

You didn't understand the scope and the magnitude of the attack.

- We had no idea.

We had no idea.

And at around eight o'clock in the morning, this is when, this when, yeah, this when the first time we understood, "Okay, it's real."

We saw them coming with their pickup trucks, like four pickup trucks.

- [Bianna] The Hamas terrorists, yeah.

- And we understand that they're surrounding us and they came with a pickup trucks and heavy machine guns and then they start shooting into the crowd.

The bullets are hitting next to us, and you can hear them, you can feel them going next to your head.

And so this is the first moment when we understand, "Okay, this is real."

- How long after the rockets started were you shot?

How many hours later?

- I was shot at around, a little bit before 10 o'clock in the morning.

So it's about three and a half hours.

- And how long until you were rescued?

- Another four hours.

After I got shot we managed to, I don't know how, but we managed to escape the terrorist three times, 'cause they shot us and then they shot us again.

- And this exhibit now, which has extended its stay twice in New York City, was initially literally a lost and found for those survivors, for those family members of the loved ones, to come and claim their clothing, their belongings.

How did that evolve into what it is today?

- We recreated the festival, the main stage of the festival in Tel Aviv.

So the idea was for the memorial, it evolved to, again, for the memorial.

And once we opened the doors in Tel Aviv, we understood after a few days that it's not only for the memorial, we have such a strong tool in our hand to show the world what happened.

There's so much denial on social media and so much hate.

- Did that denial and hate for music lovers who were simply coming to a peaceful concert, did that surprise you?

- Yes, yes, it surprises me 'cause a music festival, the dance floor, it's supposed to be the safest place on Earth.

It's a place with so much joy and everyone who comes there can be whoever they want to be.

It's a place of love and freedom and peace.

We were disappointed that we didn't get the support of the music industry, of even the, we are part of the global trance music community and even from some, the major trance music festivals, they didn't support us.

And it's disappointing 'cause this exhibition, this festival, it has nothing to do with religion or politics or... 'Cause we believe that no matter where you, when you're on the dance floor and we listen to the same music, we are the same.

- Why do you think that silence exists, that lack of support?

- I wish I could answer this.

I wish I had an answer for this.

- Earlier this week there were mass protests right outside this exhibit here on Wall Street.

Some of, just the unadulterated antisemitism what was quite shocking.

People were chanting, "Long live the Intifada, Israel go to hell!"

In one video, a man declares, "I wish Hitler was still here.

He would've wiped you Jewish people all out."

Something a lot of people have spoken out against, the mayor of New York City called it despicable.

What was going through your minds when you heard those chants outside?

- Well, I'm not surprised they came here to demonstrate 'cause I've been here in New York for the past two months and I hear in the news and see these demonstrations at colleges and what's going on all over the United States.

There's so much lack of education and I feel, sometimes I feel sorry for them 'cause when you ask them one question, "Where is Israel?"

They don't even know where Israel is.

'Cause we've been talking to some protesters before, there were a group of five or a group of two in the last weeks and we approached them and told them, "Listen, come and look for yourself.

Come look inside what you're protesting against."

And there's no interest of communication from their side.

And well, in some kind of way it breaks my heart that there's so much hate out there, 'cause we are exactly the opposite.

I say we, the festival producers and the Nova founders, but also as an Israeli and as a Jew, we don't hate, we don't want this hate, we don't hate back.

- We're now over eight months into this horrific war.

There's been so much tragedy and innocent life lost obviously in Israel, and subsequently in Gaza amongst civilians there.

I'm just wondering for you, as someone who embraces peace, how have the past eight months been for you?

- Well, it's, we're dealing with so much in the last eight months since October 7th.

I almost got murdered.

We focus on the good, we focus on the light.

It's not easy to live in Israel.

It's not easy that you hear in the news every few days more soldiers that have been killed, or Palestinians that died out of the consequences.

This is not what we want.

Well, we are not politicians or anything, but it's easy, give back the hostages and it will be over.

- Four of them, as you know, were thankfully rescued alive this past weekend.

But even, and they were Nova music fans, they were attending the Nova Music Festival.

And yet you also hear from top military officials that there's no way they can replicate these types of hostage rescues.

How important is it for you that an end to this war comes, that a ceasefire deal be reached?

- Well, I can tell you last Saturday, when the four, when we got the news of the four hostages, well, I was surprised that the feeling that went through my body and I was, like the whole country was crying and so emotional and so happy that they came back, and then you have these thoughts, what they've been through in the last eight months.

It's unthinkable.

And of course we want the war and the ceasefire to happen as fast and as soon as possible.

It helps no one, this war.

- Can't put to words the emotions you feel when you walk through this.

You really replicated that night at the festival.

It's really breathtaking in some of the most horrific ways imaginable.

And finally, you end up here, in what you call the healing room.

Why was it important for you to end this tour on a positive note?

- It's 'cause this is part of our journey.

The exhibition is telling our story.

It's from the light to the darkness and then to the light again.

And this is what this healing room is all about.

The day after, like I mentioned, we opened our healing facility and since then we opened the foundation that is dealing with the survivors, with the families of the victims.

And this became our purpose in life right now.

We are doing everything in our power to heal our community.

And this sentence "We will dance again."

I promise you that we will dance again.

- And we should note the exhibition has now been extended until June 22nd in New York, and is going to Los Angeles next.

Well, we turn to India now, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is coming to terms with his shock election result, having lost his majority in parliament.

Unrivaled for a decade, he's now been forced into a coalition with regional parties who are opposed to the caste system, a notorious social hierarchy that has for centuries allowed for rampant discrimination.

Dalits, once known as untouchables, the very lowest and most oppressed, decided Modi had not done enough to ease their poverty-stricken lives.

To understand just how bad things are for them, we turn to Christiane's report from 25 years ago when the seeds of this political awakening were sown.

And a warning, some of this report is extremely difficult to watch.

- Sometimes the smallest detail can reveal the whole picture.

These untouchable villagers are taking their shoes off, not because they want to, but because they have to.

They're about to pass their upper caste neighbors sitting here in the shade.

It's a daily ritual of petty humiliation.

The untouchables can only wear their shoes again when they reach their own part of town.

Why are you guys always taking off your shoes and putting them back on again?

(villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] If we don't take our shoes off, we'll be fired from our jobs.

(villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] We'd like to stand up to them, but we know we don't have a chance.

- Have you ever been punished for anything here?

(villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] They've punished us several times.

(villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] We have to fall at their feet two or three times.

(villagers speaking in foreign language) - [Christiane] They have to fall at their feet?

- [Interpreter] We have to lie on the ground and beg forgiveness.

- [Christiane] Oh my goodness.

(bell ringing) And the discrimination continues at prayer.

Untouchables aren't allowed to enter the Hindu temple in this village, so the priest blesses them outside.

(villager speaks in foreign language) - [Christiane] In tea houses all over India untouchables have to drink from separate glasses.

(villagers speaks in foreign language) - [Christiane] And they have to wait until someone comes to serve them outside.

Even access to clean water is determined according to caste.

Untouchables can't use this public well because even their touch would pollute the water, says this upper caste villager.

(villager speaks in foreign language) - [Interpreter] These customs have been practiced forever, and if the government passed new laws against it nothing would change.

And I personally don't believe it should.

- This is where Rangama, an untouchable woman, was forced to get her water, a muddy pond polluted by animal feces.

Rangama's encounter with a pig proved just how dirty this water is.

(pig grunting) Do a lot of people get sick from drinking the bad water?

(Rangama speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] Yes, and when our children became sick, the doctors blamed us, saying, "You people are unclean."

(Rangama speaking in foreign language) - [Christiane] After enduring years of this kind of discrimination, Rangama and her friends took up the fight.

It began with a small act of defiance.

One day they decided to take clean water from the public well, but they were stopped by infuriated upper caste villagers.

And even worse, their own husbands were too afraid to support their cause.

(Rangama speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] All the women in the village, we decided that if our men didn't help us get clean water, we wouldn't cook for them.

And so, four days later they joined our fight.

(Rangama speaking in foreign language) - [Christiane] Rangama and her friends created such an uproar that eventually the upper caste in this village were forced to back down.

(Rangama speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] Now we have clean water and water is life.

(bright upbeat music) (birds chirping) (villagers singing in foreign language) - [Christiane] The caste system is as old as the stones that built this temple.

India's segregation is cemented in nearly 3,000 years of religion, not law.

- It's one of the most complicated, sophisticated systems of social hierarchy and oppression that the world has ever, that human beings have ever devised, which is- - [Christiane] Professor Sunil Khilnani teaches politics at the University of London.

He's the author of an acclaimed book on contemporary India and the complex legacy of the caste system.

It's a system that ranks every Hindu from the highest to the lowest according to the work they and their caste perform.

- Purity is an extremely important facet of religious observance.

For example, the use of fire, which is very common in Hindu rituals, or the use of water.

There's a very strong sense of certain objects, certain things being taboo that you don't come into contact with them.

(villager speaks in foreign language) - [Christiane] For instance, the dead.

Traditionally, it's the untouchables who prepare the corpses for cremation.

- [Sunil] They were those castes who performed the work that no one else in the society would do, such as dealing with the bodies of the dead, et cetera.

This was seen as work that somehow was profaning, that was impure.

(bell ringing) - The untouchables are considered so unclean that traditionally not even their shadows were supposed to defile these temples.

And today, they are still relegated to the very worst that life has to offer.

Like Narayanamma, she's been using her bare hands to clean public toilets for the past 19 years.

(Narayanamma speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] They look down at me and it hurts my soul.

- [Christiane] Narayanamma's family has been assigned this filthy job for generations, and for generations it's made them physically ill.

In big cities they may escape the abuses they endured in the small villages, but often their only choice will be to settle in slums, where no one else would even think of living.

Henri Tiphagne is a local human rights worker.

Oh, good lord, is this the toilet river?

- [Henri] You see the man walking across it?

- [Christiane] Yeah, he's walking basically through an open sewer.

- [Henri] Oh, open sewer.

This is all open sewer.

- [Christiane] Kids are playing in this sewer!

- [Henri] That's normal.

That's normal.

- That's normal?

- That's normal here.

- [Christiane] That's normal for an untouchable?

- Yes.

And these are the sanitary workers of the town.

- The sanitary workers of the town?

What, the people who clean the latrines and things?

- Who clean the latrines, who clean the streets.

- Now that, that is truly disgusting, the latrine business.

I mean, how people can accept to clean public toilets with their hands is beyond me.

(crowd yelling and whistling) And increasingly, India's 200 million untouchables are resisting through the power of the ballot and political protest.

And it's changing the face of India.

- Caste as a form of social imprisonment is beginning to break down, I think.

It's beginning to break down.

People are beginning to assert their rights.

They are beginning to say, "Well, look, constitutionally, this is illegitimate.

These are my rights as an Indian citizen.

(militaristic music) - [Christiane] They are rights that were enshrined in India's constitution, which banned discrimination against untouchables.

Progress has been difficult, but now, for the first time in history, an untouchable has managed, through his own efforts, to become president of India, though the office is largely symbolic.

(crowd cheering) But it's the local untouchable leaders, like Dr. Krishna Swamy, who are really shaking up the system by building a political movement on centuries of pent-up anger.

Is India a democracy for all?

- No.

It is a fake democracy.

We are fighting for our self-respect.

- Some local officials have been killed.

Are you not afraid?

- There are thousands and thousands of people ready for this fight.

- [Christiane] Almost every time untouchables assert their rights, it provokes violence in the cities, and especially in the countryside, where upper caste landlords still reign over their untouchable laborers.

(birds chirping) (villager speaks in foreign language) - That's what happened in the village of Bate one night.

More than 200 upper caste men, armed with guns and knives, attacked this village.

They went from hut to hut, killing anyone they could find, even children.

And all these villagers had been asking for was what they considered a fair wage.

One dollar's worth of rice a day for their work in the fields.

This is what they got for their trouble, unspeakable horror.

The bodies of 58 villagers haphazardly sprawled where their killers found them.

Whole families were murdered, including Parwati Devi's son and his wife.

Only her grandson survived, hidden in his dead mother's dress.

(Parwati speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] There was no reason to kill my son.

He never argued with anyone.

Like all of us, he just worked in the fields for his daily wage.

- [Christiane] A pittance of a wage, paid by the landlords who own these fields, and who now are accused of leading the slaughter.

Mohan Chaudhary is the upper caste village priest.

(Mohan speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] We never start the violence.

It's the untouchables who pick the fight.

And the landlords just retaliate.

(group chattering) - [Christiane] So in this part of India, untouchables are arming themselves.

Only women are allowed in this militia.

They're being trained to shoot because they are most at risk.

(gunfire bangs) (villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] Nobody else will protect us.

That's why I carry my own gun.

(villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] Recently, a young girl was kidnapped and raped by the landlords.

(villager speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] There's more violence every day, and the police don't help us.

(Suda speaking in foreign language) - [Christiane] Sister Suda is trying to help, but she uses the law.

She's an attorney and a Catholic nun who chooses to live with and defend the very lowest castes.

When you see untouchables, men or women, cleaning human excrement with their hands, being forced to drink from separate cups in tea rooms, having to take off their shoes when they walk past an upper caste, is there a sense of outrage?

- For sure.

It's really a curse on humanity, the whole caste system.

- Is there any escape?

- Impossible.

See, in India, everyone knows he's caste.

- So no matter how well you do in life, you'll always be considered untouchable?

- Yes.

- Unclean?

- Yes.

- And less than human?

- Right.

- [Christiane] The untouchable's burden has been carried from generation to generation.

Now, Narayanamma, the toilet cleaner, pleads that it not be passed on any further.

(Narayanamma speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] All I'm begging for is that my children don't inherit this job.

It should end with me.

- It should end with me.

An important reflection back there from Christiane.

Well, now decades later, still fighting for self-respect, the Dalit vote helped change the fate of India.

Turning to our next story, how would you feel about reverting back to a lifestyle of the late 18th century?

Well, that's exactly what our next guest A.J.

Jacobs did, as he documents in his new book, "The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meeting," and he joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what he learned from his experience.

- A.J.

Jacobs, thanks so much for joining us.

Your new book is called "The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning."

Why do this?

Why now?

- Well, first, thanks for having me, and good morrow.

I decided to do this because I wanted to explore what the Constitution actually says and how should we interpret it?

And as you probably know, in the last couple of years, the Supreme Court, the conservative majority, has embraced something called originalism, which says the most important thing, when interpreting the Constitution, is what did it mean when it was written 230 years ago.

- Okay, so how does an author get themself into the mindset of the writers of the Constitution in the 1700s?

- Well, I did everything from, to express my Second Amendment rights, I bore a musket around New York City, an 18th century musket, and I got some strange looks to- - Is that legal by the way?

Wasn't there a law that actually went out to the courts on whether or not it's legal for you to be carrying a firearm?

- It's a gray area.

It's a bit of a gray area.

Yeah, luckily I wasn't arrested.

In addition to the musket, I wanted to express my First Amendment rights, so I got off social media and I wrote pamphlets with a quill pen.

So the idea was to go back to the origins and express my rights the way that they were written using the technology and mindset of the founding fathers.

And it was fascinating.

It was an entertaining and fascinating year, but I hope it had some serious points as well.

- Yes, so tell me, I mean, were you kind of a constitutional nerd before this?

Were you trying to kind of lay out and prove a point in the first place?

- Well, I was actually embarrassingly ignorant of the Constitution.

I learned that 60% of Americans have never read the Constitution from start to finish.

And I was one of those 60%.

But it has such a massive impact on how we live our lives, with the Supreme Court ruling on women's rights and gay rights and gun policy, I thought I need to understand this Constitution, so I talked to dozens of actual constitutional nerds and law scholars from all over the political spectrum, but I also wanted to live it.

And that's what I did for a previous book that you and I talked about a long time ago called "The Year of Living Biblically."

I find that walking the walk and talking the talk, and wearing the tricorn hat and eating the mutton, actually helps me to understand and get in the mindset.

So that was part of the goal as well.

- Okay, so what were, I guess, the parts of the Constitution that leapt out at you in terms of how much they have changed in how we live with them today versus how the authors intended them to be at the time?

- Such a great question, and that's sort of the heart of the book.

And it was a shockingly different time.

The past is a foreign country.

And I'll give you just two quick examples, the First and the Second Amendment.

So the First Amendment, back then was much more constrained.

I love the First Amendment.

Free speech, I'm a big fan, but I'm a fan of modern free speech.

Back at the founding, it wasn't quite Stalinist Russia, but there were laws against obscenity, against blasphemy, sedition was much more cracked down upon.

And we don't wanna go back to that original meaning of the First Amendment, neither conservatives nor progressives, because the First Amendment would not allow for political contributions, unlimited political contributions to candidates.

So that's an example of one that's very different.

And the Second Amendment, the technology was so vastly different.

I mean, I went and I shot a musket and it is 15 steps to shoot a musket.

It is, you got to take out the ramrod, pour in the gunpowder, put back the ramrod.

(musket bangs) It's like building a desk from Ikea, it takes a while.

So it is a vastly different machine.

And the question is, should there be regulations that are different because it is so different?

And it's not something, a musket would be very hard to do a mass shooting with a musket because it takes so long to load.

- You know, this idea of updating with the times, I mean, we see that tension being played out pretty much every time there's a verdict from the Supreme Court, we have people arguing on the losing side, "This is not what the Constitution was for."

- Right, and it is, it continues to be at the heart of the controversy.

And the question is, how much should you update?

Even originalists would say, for instance, that the law, the rule against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Originally, that meant the constable banging down the door to search your papers, but now they say, yes, it does apply to the internet and iPhones, but it's inconsistent.

When do you update and when do you not?

So a hardcore originalist like Clarence Thomas would say that the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection and due process, when that was written after the Civil War, it did not apply to gay people or gay marriage, so he would argue, that does not cover the constitutional right.

Whereas those who are on the other side, often called living constitutionalists or pragmatists, would say no, you have to update the morals as well.

With the times, the morals change and gay people should be protected by the 14th Amendment.

- One of the concerns that you have with the side that says, go ahead and interpret this document and keep evolving it, is where does that slide stop?

The experts that you've spoken to, how do they figure out how to modify that level of change so it's still consistent to what should be the values of our country?

- Right.

It is.

That is a huge issue and a tough one.

And I don't have a simple answer.

One idea is that the founders would be shocked that these Supreme Court justices have so much power.

That was not their vision.

Most of them, they thought that the Supreme Court should weigh in on judicial review, but not what's called judicial supremacy, where they have the final word.

And in the past, the president and Congress would also weigh in on what is constitutional.

So in that case, you wouldn't have this extreme power with just these nine unelected justices.

And I like that.

Another issue is that it's so hard to change the Constitution.

The founders did not anticipate it would be this hard to change.

They wanted it hard to change, but they didn't see this static two-party system coming when it is impossible to get 60% or 66% of the Congress to agree on the color of the sky.

The key is pluralism, which is like a very founding father's idea.

So you balance the original meaning with the consequences, with the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and their reputation, you have all these factors when you make a decision.

- One of the things that you did in your constitutional year of life, you've exercised your right to redress to petition.

What were you petitioning for?

- Well, this was interesting.

Yes.

Petitions, first of all, First Amendment right, they're often overlooked and I thought I need to do it the old way.

I'm not gonna do it the slacktivism way on the internet.

So I got out a roll of, a big roll of paper and had people sign with a quill pen.

Now, my petition was, because I'm concerned about the president.

Both Democrat and Republican presidents have way too much power.

The founders would be shocked by the war powers and trade powers.

So I went back to an idea from the founding fathers.

During the constitutional convention, when someone brought up the idea of a single president, several of the delegates said, "Are you jesting?

That's a terrible idea.

We just fought to get rid of a king.

Why would we want a single president?

Let's have three presidents, three co-presidents.

Let's have 12 presidents."

Ben Franklin wanted a council of 12 presidents.

And I thought this is an interesting idea.

So I brought a petition to Congress, to Senator Ron Wyden in Washington.

I was wearing my tricorn hat, my regimental coat, buckled shoes, the whole thing, but he said he would consider it, which I think he meant he would consider it for five seconds.

But he did agree with my general thesis, which is the president is too powerful.

And we have in the future possible presidents who are going to be more authoritarian, so we do need to constrain the president.

I don't actually think three presidents.

I don't know if Biden, Trump, and RFK Jr. co-working in the Oval Office is a great idea.

But there are ways to constrain the president that we need to look into and give power back to the Congress, which is what the founders wanted.

- You know, you did take a couple of opportunities here to try and make this exploration a little positive and fun.

Tell us about election cakes.

- Well, this was my favorite part of the book, and it's a through line of the book.

We don't wanna go back to the 18th century voting, of course.

It was sexist and racist.

But there are elements of 18th century life that are worth looking at again.

And one of them is the idea that elections, for the privileged few who were allowed to vote, were festive.

They were this new right that was awe inspiring.

So it was, there were parades, there was music, there was a lot of rum punch.

It wasn't quite Coachella or Burning Man, but it was exciting, this election day.

And it reminded people of the awesome power of democracy.

So I thought this is lovely.

I'll try to restart this appreciation of election day as something festive.

And one of the traditions was election cake.

People would bake election cakes, sometimes huge.

One recipe calls for 14 pounds of butter and 10 pounds of sugar.

So I didn't do that, but I made a big election cake and I went on Facebook, which I know is not 18th century, although it is one of the older platforms, and I got people from all over America to bake election cakes and bring them to the polls and give them out to remind people our catchphrase was Democracy is sweet.

And I loved that because it was, it's such a unrelentingly negative time in politics, to have this one positive moment.

And there is evidence, there are studies that say having a festive election day increases voter turnout.

Australia has something called the democracy sausage where they have big barbecues.

So I love the election cake.

It's not the end.

We also have to fix gerrymandering and voter suppression, but let's start with election cakes and get people excited again about the right to vote.

And I'm doing it again in November.

- What did this project teach you about yourself?

Especially, you know, we have had so many different conversations on this program about digital detoxing and slowing down, and I imagine it has to do something to your brain when you are writing in such a slow format with a quill and ink.

- Exactly.

That was one of my favorite parts is I wrote much of the book with a quill.

And what I found is it changed the way I thought, which was fascinating, because there were no pings and dings or temptations from the internet, and I could actually focus.

And I think that, I don't think everyone needs to go back to quills, but I think writing and thinking offline is so crucial, and it allowed me to, I think, see the world in a more subtle way.

And one of the big, the other big takeaway for me was that it allowed me to see the other side a little more.

I think we are nowadays so stuck in our opinions, so intransigent and unwilling to look at the evidence and see the other side.

And this is not a patriotic way of looking at the world.

The founders were very cognitively flexible.

Ben Franklin said that the older he gets, the less certain he is of his opinions.

- And what's the ripple effect on the people around you, your family that has to live with a guy who's, I don't know, writing with a quill and doing, you know, things by candlelight and waking up early in the morning, trying to be back in the 1700s?

So how do your kids feel about that?

- That, there is, they are split.

There is some, one of them actually likes it, the other two are so embarrassed they walk 40 feet in front of me.

My wife, parts of it she likes, she loves history.

She did not like the smell of beef tallow candles, which smell like rotten meatloaf in her opinion.

Also there are some very awkward, if you're following 18th century law, it's very sexist.

So there are, married women, for instance, were not allowed to sign contracts.

And my wife owns an event business where she signs several contracts a day.

And I said, "Well, while I'm doing this experiment, maybe I should take over the signing."

At first she said, "Great, I hate signing these contracts."

I was so bad at it she fired me after an hour.

So that did not work out for either of us.

- You point out that this is the oldest Constitution that's around.

So I wonder what should we be thinking about in terms of, I guess, just surveying the landscape and seeing what's out there, what could be better, what, you know, what we do right, what could we improve on 2.0, 3.0?

- Right.

Well, I love that.

And I think it's fascinating because ours was the first modern Constitution and we didn't have a lot of data of what works and what doesn't.

And I think part, some Americans think that it's almost unpatriotic to look at other democracies and how they have structured it and what works for them and what doesn't.

Others, like Justice Breyer, who retired, he was very interested in how foreign democracies worked.

And I think I agree with Justice Breyer, let's look at what is working and what is not.

One thing that I don't think is working for us is the two-party system and I don't think the founders wanted a two-party system.

But you look at many European democracies, and they have six or eight parties.

There seems to be a Goldilocks zone of about, I think it's about four to eight parties is the best.

Because, yes, now we have such polarization that it's so hard to get anything passed.

We were the first and we can be proud of that, but we also were at a disadvantage because we didn't know, we didn't have data on what works and what doesn't.

- Are you concerned for our democracy in 2024 today as we're having this conversation after you have engaged in this year-long experiment of living constitutionally?

- Well, yes, but I'm more optimistic than I was when I started.

Part of the whole project was to figure out can we save democracy, because it does seem endangered around the world.

And several things gave me hope.

I'll just give you two of them.

One is, just reading about the history, the founders faced unbelievable odds that they were going against the strongest army in the world, the British, and that they somehow were able to make a break and be independent, that's astounding.

So we have terrible odds against us now, huge problems, but they're not insurmountable.

The second part is that we have made progress.

If you look at the Constitution itself, you can see the progress in the amendments.

So Black people got the vote, women got the vote, indigenous people got the vote, 18-year-olds got the vote.

So we are, the arc does point towards justice.

And there is backsliding and there's, it's not a straight line, but I do believe that if we roll up our sleeves, democracy won't save itself, but I do believe if we roll up our sleeves and make some of these reforms, that democracy can continue to thrive.

- A.J.

Jacobs, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

It was a delight.

- And that is it for now.

Thank you so much for watching, and goodbye from New York.