It was such a brutal authoritarian dictatorship. Millions of people disappeared, tortured, [music] secret prisons. In Syria, the first trials are beginning of allies and associates of former President Basha al-Assad.
[music] Relatives of people who were killed over 15 years ago are following the proceedings in court. But [music] going in there and then just like really being gas lit on a mass level because everyone's [music] just like everything's great, everything is awesome. [music] Believe it or not, we are actually in Syria.
Obviously, you can't really expect anything else. They're living in an authoritarian dictatorship. There are consequences to saying anything else to a journalist with a camera in your face.
Why did you stop us from filming? Have you read 1984? Are you saying this is 1984?
This is Big Brother Smith. [music] Shane Smith, how are you? I'm good.
How you doing? I'm very good. Thank you for doing this.
Yeah, it's so nice to see you. It's been too long. I've been watching your podcasts and loving it.
Oh, thank you. How you doing, Tim? I'm doing well.
Thank you for joining us. Yeah, for people who don't know, Tim was the the the showrunner and and cut most of the the beautiful pieces that we did. I was starting to watch um the things that uh Tim sent over and it just brought back so much.
Oh my lord. It was the bad news bear. It was the best of times.
It was the worst of times, but we'll talk about the best of times. [laughter] Good. So, on that note, let's begin.
Excellent. I remember the first time Tim came out to Vegas and said, "We have to give these uh two correspondents a chance for HBO," which was you and Gianna. And then I was on family vacation and Jake came to join cuz he's part of the extended family.
[music] And he had just been living with you on some island, Madagascar. Yeah, Madagascar. and he was like, "She's amazing and she's fearless and so smart and so great.
" What I remember from that is that you were hanging out right next to fishermen who blew up fish with dynamite. And none of them had fingers. How did you lose your fingers?
Because you're kind of scaring me. But other than uh that and swimming with sharks, what do you remember from your from your first HBO piece? I remember being on a [music] coast guard boat for 72 hours that stunk a fish and throwing up for about 71 hours of that.
That is just one of hundreds and hundreds of industrial sail ship roaming these Madagascar ocean. Just having [music] to talk to Cameron and being like green in the face of tuna. The boat itself had this like tuna slide.
They were catching tuna and then they would like slide the tuna down into the like storage part of the boat and it was just I just stank of fish [music] for about two weeks. You know, I love when people are better than me at something, but sometimes it's hard uh to admit it. And I remember in my mind your most famous interview in Afghanistan.
What laws that you've helped pass or not pass are [music] you particularly proud of? You have more questions? Yeah, [music] I'm going to ask them one by one.
Maybe you can answer first and then I can. He was a member of parliament who had a lot of power. We were interviewing him because he was [music] adamantly against introducing a violence against women law.
What if a husband rapes [music] his wife? If he forces sex upon his wife, I think we both know what rape is. I'm glad we kind of sat there for a while because it does kind of, you know, he showed his true colors.
Do you think that women should be allowed? Incredible interview and you were incredible in it. Um, and yeah, that how it ended was absolutely terrifying.
I think the quintessential Vice piece that I love the most and I know uh Tim feels very strong and but uh I loved Syria. We've just got to the city [music] of Aleppo which has had several hundred mortars falling over the last couple of days. The government has tried to [music] take a major supply road of the rebels and the rebels have retaliated by sending hundreds of mortars.
So no neighborhood is very safe. The whole of Aleppo is essentially a front line. People forget, you know, Syria was in a state of civil war.
Assad was being propped up by the Russians and it was kind of like Vietnam. Like you're in the front lines tearing the bombs, seeing the people living in rubble. It's just kids wandering around here.
God, this place gives me the freaks. This is so scary. And then all of a sudden, you go to this sort of Soviet protected beach.
[music] Believe it or not, we are actually in Syria. Everyone's [music] on jet skis and suntanning and drinking beer and having the best time. And I'm like, this is so crazy.
And you did such a great job. Tell us about the difference that you had between going to these sort of ongoing war zones. We're hearing several mortars [music] very close to this area.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, this is Go, go, go and then going to the sort of weird Lakia Russian protection zone. I mean, it was so surreal.
The whole trip was bizarre because obviously, you know, you read about [music] the humanitarian catastrophe playing out in, you know, rebel health Syria and what Assad was at the time was doing to so many civilians living there. And it was really hard to get a proper glimpse and to lift the veil in terms of what was going on in government held [music] Syria. Is it a little bit strange at all that all these people are here on the Mediterranean and at the same time we've got Russian fighter jets flying over us and [music] there's fighting going on around the rest of the country?
Obviously, you can't really expect anything else. They're living in an authoritarian dictatorship. There are consequences to saying anything else to a journalist with a camera in your face.
In the western media, all we hear is 400,000 people have been killed, millions of people displaced across the country. Do you think that Assad has any responsibility in that? None of us is an angel.
Everybody makes mistakes, but in some threshold, it's acceptable. But it's really surreal. I remember, and now we can talk about this because there was this um government minder that we had.
His job was obviously to follow us at all times, make sure that we weren't saying anything bad about the regime, spy on us, report back to the regime about exactly what we were doing. And at the same time, he was confiding in us that he absolutely hated the regime and everything they were doing. Wow.
And so it was really bizarre. And at some point I asked him like, "What is this for you? " And he was like, "This is 1984 and and I'm Winston Smith.
" Why did you stop us from filming? Have you read 1984? Are you saying this is 1984?
This is Big Brother Smith. You realize his whole job is to rewrite history and that's what he's doing in his role, but he can't stand it. But that's kind of the only choice.
And he since left Syria, so we were able to use his voice. We didn't show who he was. I've actually kept in touch with him.
He since gone back to Syria because he says, you know, the devil is now dead. Um, and he can free Syria. So, yeah, it was it was insane.
Well, Shane has to hear me talk about this piece a lot because it's my favorite piece we ever did. And the reason it's my favorite piece is because by the time this was made, we had done a lot of war reporting and the news division had expanded. Like, we're in season 5.
We're going into season 5. And we have more war correspondents that have joined Vice News. And everybody was fighting over who got to go to Syria because it was the humanitarian crisis going on in the world.
But all anybody was pitching was death and destruction until Isabelle Young and her producer Alex Waterfield who did some of the best pieces that Vice ever made. You guys pitched such a creative different approach to doing the story. We're in the Christian neighborhood of Damascus and to be honest, it feels like we could be in so many different parts of the world right now, but definitely not Syria.
Oh, they've just uh brought a poster of Assad to put on the front of the wedding vehicle. I really appreciated you as well for pushing us to do those kind of stories because as a reporter you often get kind of stuck in the worst of humanity in a lot of ways and you forget that a way to get people to care about a situation is to show these other sides of a um in this case a conflict or it's other sides of a country or these other sides of people and I think that's like a really important element of reporting and what you pushed us to do really well the TV show the morning TV show where you kept kept asking them questions and they wouldn't answer you. It's like being unanswered.
Good morning, [music] Isabelle and welcome to Syria. Thank you and welcome to our beloved Syria. Thanks.
When you came to Syria, you had ideas to put in your movie. What was your main goals? Um the main thing is to come in from the government perspective and to see what you guys see.
One thing I was surprised about is the number of posters and the the level of um supposed loyalty here that President Assad has. I don't know um what you guys think about that as well. Okay, I cringed so much watching that back because it really was that and it was live TV and you have the producer from the TV show in your ear being like, "Stop, stop, stop that right now.
Stop. What are you doing? " But obviously like [music] you know my goal was to show [laughter] that we weren't just able to report freely and that [music] was the problem.
To be honest, we have a government minder with us the whole time. we have um a lot of people uh ensuring that there's a lot of permissions that we need to get through every single layer. And so I don't know if that's partly because of the restrictions that are in place for media.
Maybe you guys could tell me about that. Are you able to answer any of my questions? Yeah, for sure.
I just remember you being on air and this is how different we are cuz I would have never have done this. You were like, "Are you going to answer any of my questions? " [laughter] And I was like, "Wow, it's painful to watch back.
" It was painful at the time and it's painful to watch back and what happened when the cameras were [music] cut. Oh god, we just we we ran out of there. My producer, Alex Waterfield, he was like, "We got to go.
We've just got to go. We got to go now. We got to go now.
" [laughter] Well, you're a seasoned journalist now. You've been to, [music] I think, literally every conflict zone I can think of uh from the last decade. When you look back on it now, do you see it [music] differently than when you did it then?
I mean, I cringe when I look back at a lot of my own footage, but [music] that one as well, because, you know, that was the first time I'd been to um an area of intense conflict, but they lived in relative very surreal [music] sort of safety compared to what was going on with this like complete humanitarian catastrophe over the other side where they were getting obliterated by the Assad regime. But also like there's sniper fire. Why am I running down the middle of the road?
I should be like running to the side of it and hugging the wall. I feel a bit silly being sat here in my flat jacket, my body armor, and you guys just chilling like it's a normal day. I can hear explosions going off every few seconds.
Are you guys scared? Obviously, this has gone on for went on for so long and now it's sort of gone quiet. What do you hear out of there now?
and and and what do you think's going on? Freedom, which you know, you can't really underestimate, and all these horrific details about what it was like under the Assad regime and [music] still so many people missing, so many people not knowing the exact stories of their loved ones during that time. Humanitarian situation is pretty horrific still.
Now, the new rulers obviously is very different to the Assad [music] regime. President Trump welcomed the president of Syria at the White House today and announced a new partnership with the country. Akmed al-Shar is a former member of al-Qaeda, but has since denounced the group.
But, you know, minorities have been targeted. The Drws, the Alawites, the Christians, people who were seen as part of the Assad regime. And so now the tables have turned.
A lot of those minorities have been really violently attacked. We had uh an attack in Syria and we had three great patriots terminated. President Donald Trump blamed terror group ISIS.
It's a difficult situation which as you said you don't really hear much about these days. This is a question for both of you guys. I mean most war correspondents I find to be kind of cold and a bit detached.
I think it's like a psychological thing where maybe after a while they can only feel things if it's like so heightened. But both of you guys I think have like a vulnerability to your work. So is it hard to stay vulnerable while you're in such dangerous places?
To be honest, at the beginning of my vice career, I was way too vulnerable. You know, I'd like keep in touch with everyone. Every one of the subjects I interviewed, I'd like keep in touch with catch up on, you know, see how they were doing.
ers. Yeah. Everything like too much.
And obviously these are people who are like [snorts] going through difficult times and you end up like taking on all of that trauma [laughter] and then you kind of get so used to like talking to people in really horrendous circumstances and at some point you become a bit numb to it, I think. And then it's also really dangerous because then you just don't you're not good at your job because I think you need to have that empathy to be good at your job. You need to have that vulnerability and show it because otherwise it shows if you don't care.
I mean, I literally watched a baby dying. He breathing. Is he breathing?
He needs to go down. I've never seen that happen before. I was midway through an interview with the grandmother [music] and I turned around.
I was like, he's stopped breathing. He's just gone. And you [music] just see him disappear in front of your eyes.
And it's just really struck home because he was the exact same age as my kid. Well, I'm not sure how we get out of this without balling. I uh had the exact same experience after I had my kids.
I interviewed child suicide bombers and they were talking about blowing themselves up and they're the same age as my kids and I just like I started crying on camera. Couldn't help myself. I remember that.
Yeah. Yesterday I was interviewing suicide bombers and they were kids, you know, they were shaking. They were so nervous.
And then when you see the result of what they do, young children dead, families destroyed, and nobody knows for what reason. And you know, as a father, it's it changes you though when you have a kid. It does.
Yeah, it does. It changes everything because when you're in country as well, like your emotions are there, you know, you're you're you're not sleeping and you're feeling these things and you're with your, you know, people, you know, that you care about and you're you're driving through the dark and there's this everpresent feeling of danger. Yeah.
And I I remember one of the lititness tests when I'd sit with Tim in the rooms when the footage would come back is does it make you cry with pride that you know that we're making this stuff and your stuff always did. And I really appreciated that you guys let us keep that in as well because it felt like we were able to convey you know the emotions of it and it didn't have to be kind of we came to this place and that we saw someone die. It was, you know, we you were able to kind of live through it again.
And that kind of also obviously helps with the processing and the healing of it. It's hard to explain. It's a it's a it's an addiction that you feel you never want to do.
It's, you know, it's like it's apocalypse now. He's like, "Fuck Saigon. " Um, I'm still in Saigon.
I was begging for a mission and when and when they gave me this mission to find I would never want another one. That's kind of how I felt. Every time I would get back to Dubai, I'm like, I'm never going back.
And then six months later, [music] you'd be like, okay, let's go back. Let's get back. Let's get back there.
And I think for me, the quintessential absurdity, the modern condition is Izz is he on Syrian TV saying, "Are you going to answer my questions? " That's peak [music] vice. That's going into like really the Do you ever get scared?
Never and ever. I will not because we are believing in God. Does that happen a lot?
The electricity just This is definitely not easy conditions to work under. And I really felt like I wanted to try and bring empathy to these stories and try and you know connect people [music] and realize that you know everyone goes through similar things just to more extremes because if you're away also from your family and from everything you want to come back and feel like you [music] have done it justice and that you have got a story that matters. Speaking of doing things justice, [music] we had the hardest working team in documentaries.
And Izzy coming in in season 3 and immediately becoming a star, I think is one of the things that allowed us to [music] keep that band together for 6 years. Well, I just remember at one of the vice offices anyways, we had a big massive picture of you and I was like, "Boy, Izzy is a superstar. She makes even wholesale cattle slaughter [music] look amazing.
" So, the biggest star on Vice, the biggest star on CNN. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
Let's do some more of these cuz we didn't even scratch the surface. Yeah, of course. I'd love to.
That was so nice. That [music] was so fun. I nearly cried three times in this interview.
