Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 492 - Who really took the "Napalm Girl" photo? - Carl Robinson

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492 - Who really took the "Napalm Girl" photo? - Carl Robinson · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
0:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Today I have Carl Robinson on with me.
0:04
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an interview that I have waited for a long time.
0:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you and I have come in contact with each other several times.
0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are a big component of the movie, The Stranger, directed by Bung Wind.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Now on Netflix, I really advise encourage everybody to go watch The Stranger.
0:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an amazing documentary.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Carl, you're here because your involvement with the stringer, but we have a lot more to talk about beyond it because it's just a tiny chapter in your life, but I do want to know how has it changed your life after the release of the stringer?
0:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the stringer is about the famous Naepong girl photo of the Vietnam War in Cung Bang in 1972 that went around the world and is credited with ending the war.
0:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I think the war was winding down at that stage anyway, but I was in, but that was an AP photo, and I was And I was ordered by my boss to put Nikot Nikot's name.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got the me's AP photographer's name on and I I carried that burden with me for ages.
1:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I didn't argue with my boss.
1:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a wife and two kids to worry about and all that and so on
1:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I picture never went away, right?
1:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Every generation since 1972 has seen that picture, you know?
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And even if you don't know who took out or whatever.
1:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the end, especially when Americans, the journalism world loves anniversary, right?
1:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're 50 that anniversary in 2022.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: It all came back again.
1:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, gosh, I really can't fight this celebrity machine.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even went to see the Pope here in Kim Pro.
1:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, but I've really got to find the photographer who did this.
1:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I'd share that story over the years.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: They were who took it.
1:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, what was the scarier?
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt almost ashamed of myself.
2:01
[SPEAKER_02]: All I had was like a name.
2:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was like turmeric, right?
2:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And no way, whole or anything.
2:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Only that he had been in the selfie of the Meaz army and photographer or cameraman.
2:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he had left his wife and gone back to get a year back, you know, the second wife.
2:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And he had not had no idea where he was, and so I was back after COVID and spending a trip and I, and I, and I, and I, I met a Vietnamese who had a lot of YouTube, sorry, Facebook followers.
2:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, I asked him to help me out.
2:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I put this picture that I had found when I finally went back and looked at all the photos.
2:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And I never wanted to look back at it, but I, it was a real,
2:42
[SPEAKER_02]: mental thing.
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And within 48 hours, we found a guy.
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: He was down in Vittalong, in Tonguey, and he was a, and that's the whole story.
2:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, then, I mean, I had not been so happy, maybe, and I could say, in my, at least my later life, right?
3:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been carrying this burden of being ordered to put somebody else's name on it.
3:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And that person becoming famous and well-known, everything.
3:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt ready,
3:12
[SPEAKER_02]: on top of the world, right?
3:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Just totally happy.
3:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when the 24 hours later you had a stroke and almost died, you know, that's the elation of the bang.
3:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was praying to the quantum to, you know, please help me out.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And then 24 hours later he woke up and he could play him at this two minutes mouth and he was moving and then then the film crew was coming back they had already interviewed me they were coming back and they would don't go see him yet so then the first time I met in the game was in the hospital it's in the dark from interview there and that
3:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that was, I mean, he was, you know, he was, he was crying, you know, his daughter who'd come down from California was, you know, really, hysterical in the next room is really quite.
3:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, that was, you know, it's like, it's like meeting a mirror of myself, my wife to tell me all these years to forget about it and move on.
4:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and his family, it's the only of this, they've been, we're like mirrors and the meat.
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, of course, to the darker people, that's when their work started.
4:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So we just, in a lot of ways, went into the background.
4:16
[SPEAKER_02]: While they backed up our story, we were both convinced that we were right.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it took until the Sunday and film festival January last year for it to come out.
4:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And then,
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: most of 2025 for it to a bit be picked up by Netflix where it is now.
4:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and by the way, it just received four Emmy nominations a few days ago.
4:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So congratulations to Baldwin and the team at Netflix and, you know, for you bringing to this story to light.
4:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it's one of those things where
4:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it changed my life at that moment, but then the drama of the next two three years of putting that together.
4:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And then of course, once, I mean, they even tried to stop it from being shown at Sundance, or just last year we just pull up controversies.
5:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So whatever joy I had.
5:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, April, April and April three years ago already, this, this, but that I'm many.
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, we're all up and down feelings, but I, you know, to answer your questions here.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it really, you know, it was one of the satisfying things of my life to finally at the age of 80 something to get that off my conscience and get the truth out there.
5:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But Carl, I do have a question about that, though.
5:39
[SPEAKER_01]: As I'm reading and researching about the moment where your boss, a real powerful person at the AP says to you, in whispers in your ear, blends over in whispers in your ear, I need you to put Nick Ooty's name on that role for the submission.
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: If when you look back 50 something years later, would you have done it differently?
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think so, I mean, I don't call it a lack of self-confidence, lack of courage or whatever, but maybe I shouldn't just stood right up and said, no, I'm not going to do that, right?
6:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I have, I have thought of that, you know, increasingly that I should have been more brave at the time.
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But when we're that young, without that many life experiences, we have a wife, we have kids, we have a job, we want to stay in country, we want to do things that provide a sense of sort of like a future for our life.
6:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's no way that you could at that moment do the calculus to stand up to a powerful boss and say, you know, I'm not doing that and lose everything in your life.
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, one of this come up since that is, you know, is how often this happened?
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that honest answer has never happened before, right?
7:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was like the shock of it.
7:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We heard the very end of the caption, and you know, and horse-fast Lee Zim and it says, Nikut, make it Nikut.
7:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's like poking a knife in you, right?
7:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't like it was a habitual thing.
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we weren't stealing violence left and right there.
7:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was just,
7:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was really, I was very, very upset immediately.
7:33
[SPEAKER_02]: We had to get the photo at the radio photo and Tokyo and all that sort of thing.
7:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just, I just make sure Tokyo got that picture and hour later than I went home.
7:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was really so, so pissed off if you're part of my Aussie.
7:50
[SPEAKER_02]: My wife remembered a moment.
7:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I really shared.
7:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I really shared my work with her.
7:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just happy to get home with her today.
7:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't know that she remembered until I saw the documentary in fact.
8:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's no other magical thing there.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I hear your journey and I think about like how we
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: No nothing about what happens behind curtains of journalist working.
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And you recently started a sub-stack.
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You started posting in sub-stack last August, 2025.
8:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And you write a lot about different things about Vietnam.
8:32
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we, I want to know from your point of view,
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the media landscape is very chaotic now with the new administration, with Trump.
8:45
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we know who to believe when we're reading the papers now?
8:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're reading news or watching news.
8:55
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you get your, how do you get dialed into who's telling the truth?
9:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, for one thing, I never believe the first thing I hear.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And you, yeah, and actually the subside has been up to the August of 2024, actually.
9:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's been up for 18 months or so to under to something post so far.
9:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, as an old journalist, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't really, the only paper I've really subscribed to is my local paper in what I'm going to pack it all straight and where I've been living since, you know, since just after the war.
9:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I get I have a variety I just mainstream media.
9:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I just can't even watch it, right?
9:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And to say nothing of that true female voice that's new screeners have these days really, really rings in the air.
9:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a variety of, you want to talk about Vietnam specifically here, yep, I think as soon it was interesting, I set up the subject so that when the trigger came out I would have a platform to tell the background of the story and I was also running excerpts from my memoir which I published in 2020 about my years in Vietnam from 1964 to
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: to 75.
10:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I saw a ran out, the book finally ran, ran it, of course, and I was thinking of things to write about.
10:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I started paying more attention to Vietnam, especially with the ascension of Tolam, as the new Communist Party boss, and what he was doing.
10:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I visited Vietnam all the time, you know, we have one of those cute pieces.
10:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And at least once a year, some kind of twice.
10:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And the leadership of Vietnam was always pretty amorphous, right?
10:44
[SPEAKER_02]: They all look to say, he had sort of an answer.
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Who's who here?
10:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Whether you're the three or four pillars of the day, I did never knew who was which pillar.
10:53
[SPEAKER_02]: But you did have some, one of the prime minister, you know, is quite, you know, he was the senator.
10:59
[SPEAKER_02]: who really, really shook things up with the, with the economy.
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And then with this guy, when this fellow, I started paying attention.
11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And my, and there were a couple of things that happened that really got me stuck into it.
11:18
[SPEAKER_02]: When we were, this is, when, when, when,
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: When after the springer came out, I was interviewed by a journalist, a female journalist with BBC Vietnamese in Bangkok, and we got to know each other, and we did FaceTime, and then there were a lot of texting back and forth, you know, about her life in Bangkok.
11:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And then she disappeared and I wanted to get in touch with her and say, look, it might be showing it the foreign correspondent's club of Bangkok.
11:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, are you there?
11:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had to go through her boss and she's out of touch.
11:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I finally heard from her and she had gone back to renew her passport and all her right, the passport and everything was taken away.
11:58
[SPEAKER_02]: This was like somebody I knew personally, right?
12:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So sort of it really hit home.
12:03
[SPEAKER_02]: No, when that happened to her.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And we did get in touch, but she'd been banned basically.
12:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And we took her ID card, and she can't even travel.
12:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was really quite seven old.
12:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And we brought home personally in a way and reading headlines and all that about another person who had spoken out too much and sent an exile or sent a sentence to imprisonment in Vietnam.
12:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But this read brother home when I really started paying more attention.
12:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And the funny thing was, okay, so I'm going to start writing about Vietnam now.
12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: The Facebook algorithm suddenly throwing all these Vietnamese Facebookers at me, right, from the diaspora mostly, but also in Vietnam.
12:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Just the way the algorithm works.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly I found this whole world open up to me.
12:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually wrote a subject about how this happened.
12:57
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all like with those floods last year and all this stuff came again.
13:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So it gave me material and of course you've got a judge it, right?
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You know that real bias, you know, if you're reading something from Vetton or wherever.
13:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But you get a collection of these people and you just read them all and you can come to your own balance depending and see what's happening there.
13:19
[SPEAKER_02]: now on the ground and then just also just a gut feeling about it and I do try to be fair I mean, I I wrote what I thought was quite a fair piece about in my first piece about told I mean, what did he just loosen up man?
13:35
[SPEAKER_02]: But just I think a lot of people were hopeful that he would he would loosen up Vietnam, right?
13:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But they don't quite the contrary, unfortunately,
13:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But as far as news in general is concerned, I tend to use...
13:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Telegram, which was later banned and Vietnam for a lot of my news like I'm where I've already started sowing on the objectivity of news was with the Ukraine War, frankly, 2022.
14:04
[SPEAKER_02]: This has just been sound quite right and I started looking around for more balanced sources out there and some stack.
14:14
[SPEAKER_02]: When my first contact with some stack was writing there
14:21
[SPEAKER_02]: on what was happening there.
14:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But my sources of news, because I'm not in a hurry to write something new during our days.
14:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I look at a variety of sources, telegram and some stack and you know, face bookers and people like that.
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I sort of balance them up and then my own, I think.
14:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I'm quite balanced in what I say in the top of it.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do we know what we're reading, whether it's through telegram or citizen journalists, how do we gauge
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: we sell the truth because the algorithms make us exist in echo chamber if we're conservative we start getting shown a lot of conservative journalists and if we're liberal and progressive we start to see more of that.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you start to kind of like whittle down what makes sense and what doesn't to you?
15:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you I think you come down to some trust in
15:19
[SPEAKER_02]: is a trusted handful of people, you know, on both sides, no, on the conservative end, the more liberal side.
15:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And you trust their judgment, but you can spot, you know, for AI, I started stuff out there.
15:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And you could also spot the propaganda.
15:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we don't realize how propaganda is, we are.
15:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's coming very, I think, I think thanks to social media, the world is now seeing back in the Vietnam War, we all believe well-precranquite, but as we well-precranquite, we're necessarily right.
15:58
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, we've learned a question everything.
16:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're smart, you're looking at several sources.
16:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You said, okay, well, that kind of funny.
16:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But you've got to get at least two or the other two or three other people saying that.
16:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe a government spokesman or, you know, you've got to fish around a lot more.
16:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know how junkie people are about news anymore, you know, I like to, I like that I can graze all day through new stuff.
16:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think a lot of the danger is a lot of people just get that one source of news and they only want it.
16:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a danger.
16:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I only watch news that I agree with.
16:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think the danger is that people only will only grab one source, or even on cable news, like, you know, they only watch Fox or they only watch CNBC or wherever they are.
16:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really watch them.
16:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But you've really got a very resources, right?
16:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
16:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've never been a big fan of the Establishment New York Times of Washington Post.
17:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's like a red flag there.
17:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You're fine.
17:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what, so there's some, it's the, my taking on the New York Times report I was out of Vietnam, I saw his sub-stacks.
17:15
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you will have a, you know, that goes way back to the war days for, you know, if they had a story, we didn't have it to AP, we got rockets from New York, right, so we had to match them.
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You have such a long history with Vietnam.
17:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that you spent obviously you're an American.
17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You grew up as an American and then you lived in Vietnam during the war and married a Vietnamese woman.
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you live in Australia.
17:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And often when I read your subject, I often think about like, where do you get your news?
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: about Vietnam because it's filled with a lot of details that seem to be coming from sources within Vietnam.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder, are you reading state-published new sources or are you in touch with
18:21
[SPEAKER_02]: friends who have contacts inside Vietnam to get a sense of the sense of the place.
18:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've used, just to get a feeling for how things are.
18:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also find, I think my mind is very Vietnamese.
18:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I can send something for me.
18:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, and I often send something and write it past the body, yes, you're right.
18:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You've figured that out.
18:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'd like to tell your viewers a bit about my story in Vietnam.
19:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in exchange during the Hong Kong in 16364, and that was just after the... Well, that was as the Nodding Kim anti the month burning, and all that was going on.
19:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was studying international relations and during the one month Chinese New Year 1964, I decided to go down to South Vietnam to have a look as one time magazine guy in Hong Kong said see it before it falls.
19:35
[SPEAKER_02]: This is after the coup.
19:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I went down there and I fell immediately and love with the place.
19:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we came down by ship and it was all French speaking.
19:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd go up in the
19:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I felt totally at home, like the tropics again, and I was hosted by Vietnamese students who had taken part in the anti-GM protests.
19:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And I stayed with them.
20:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a poor student.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't staying in a hotel.
20:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I also met a lot of the journalists who had covered the, covered the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, you know, and in fact, David Albert stands Peter Arnett or it's fast all these guys I met them.
20:17
[SPEAKER_02]: in those already days, you know, she and, and so on.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and I love you.
20:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm right away.
20:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, and I, and I, I mean, I had my first ball of fun, you know, that, the, the, the morning after I got there after the street, I still remember where I did that.
20:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I stayed there a whole month and I was, I got a trip down to Kentucky, just to have a look around.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I was hosted and taken out to some strategic Hamlet, which had been destroyed by the people after the, after the coup.
20:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm in an IVS volunteer in the National Voluntary Services.
20:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That was like the Peace Corps, private Peace Corps.
20:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was always going to join the Peace Corps.
20:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That was my idea then, being a JFK idealist.
21:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And this IVS said, oh, I hear that you sound, which is the predecessor of USAID, is looking for number two's in the provinces.
21:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So just before I left the flight.
21:10
[SPEAKER_02]: The long-term.
21:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I went into the use of office and asked to speak to somebody about, you know, the American for people.
21:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I literally walked in off the street.
21:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a way of qualifications that I said, well, I grew up in the Congo and I speak French.
21:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So the whole interview was in French with this American official.
21:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I got back to Hong Kong, a couple months later, I get this big vanilla envelope open as a contract between the United States government and Carl Robinson.
21:40
[SPEAKER_02]: For years contracts, I went back to Vietnam, I took a year off university and went back to Vietnam.
21:51
[SPEAKER_02]: where I later met my wife many several years later.
21:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was the pacification program, but it was like it was really, there were not many American advisors there.
22:03
[SPEAKER_02]: There were only two civilians and just a handful of military advisors, and it was really, and that's when the war already exploded.
22:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The Gulf of Tom Kennedy and all that sort of stuff, the 64 president's election.
22:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And,
22:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was working and working with the villagers and the hamlets and so on and it was all about economic development, you know, building, building schools and bridges and all that.
22:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was, it was already grass roots, rice roots, Vietnam that I knew or I had to get my feet muddy and everything.
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was my Vietnam and I was drinking beer, beer lottery with ice.
22:41
[SPEAKER_02]: picking the flies out of it, and so that was my introduction to Vietnam was working in the Meekong Delta, and then I went back to Finnish Union and couldn't get into grad school and went back again with USAID, and Gokong was open again and I went back there.
23:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So I ended up resigning in protest over the way the war was going after the Ted offensive, and then I had met Kim Jong and wanted to
23:10
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of job with the AP as a Capron rider.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, I don't know.
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And how long were you with the AP for?
23:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So 68, so I was there until 75, so seven years, right?
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a long time.
23:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Four months I got.
23:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they brought me back to New York for two years.
23:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And then,
23:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to go to Africa which is growing up then they set me up to the first vacancy which was Australia What Australia So I ended up down there and after not even a year they fired me so I said okay stuff And I'm gonna stay here It was wow easy That first year I mean it was all the first
23:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, post Vietnam depression, her father ended up in a re-education camp because I couldn't get them out.
24:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really, at least Australia, we could send letters and mail and letters and packages and so on.
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was, it was, I decided to just start my life again frankly in Australia.
24:19
[SPEAKER_02]: with my wife and our then three kids.
24:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So what, why did you get let go after you're in Australia?
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to, that's, even the AP when they were countering the, what the, the contentions of the springer, that a big ol' 90s six page report, and even they couldn't determine what that was fired.
24:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But that is just, I mean,
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
24:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, I've never got a proper explanation.
24:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I, I think it would have been good to have that explanation or some kind.
24:59
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it was, it was even for the best, you know, I think, I mean, I wasn't, I like to say it wasn't AP enough and I wasn't wire service enough.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But wait, we call, what does that even mean?
25:13
[SPEAKER_01]: you weren't AP or wire service enough.
25:15
[SPEAKER_01]: What does that mean?
25:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, for one thing, I've been on business a local hire, right?
25:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was hired as a photo editor in by 75.
25:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a writer.
25:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was all on on the job training, right?
25:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was also covering Laos and Cambodia, where my French was really useful.
25:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And so by 75, by the last couple of years of the war after the 73 cease fire, I was a writer, and then they didn't know what to do with me in New York.
25:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I put me on the desk, but I didn't come up through the AP State System, right?
25:46
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you work for a vocal paper and then stay capital and then you move up the feeling chain.
25:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that was part of it.
25:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've never, you know, it was,
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not being told.
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been the most annoying thing, but I don't regret it.
26:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Just gave me a new start, gave me a new start to life.
26:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that showed some bravery.
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you end up doing after you were let go?
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: After that period, were you getting into?
26:27
[SPEAKER_02]: because the president, the president, AP president, visit and stomach, royally, snubby, royally.
26:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, we figure out how you can buy a business.
26:38
[SPEAKER_02]: This is, we open a little what they call takeaway food shop.
26:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Isn't it?
26:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Take away, or to go in North America.
26:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So we left AP and we started, there's no takeaway food shop.
26:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, we were illegal, because that lost my work visa.
26:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So I applied for Perna residency, and they told me, no.
26:58
[SPEAKER_02]: He got to go back to America and applies as they're all pleased, let us stay, and it took a while, but they did end up letting me.
27:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I said, we open this, we call it GoCon, take away, and Kim Young was always a great chef.
27:12
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how she won my heart really.
27:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We started selling Vietnamese, spring rolls, and stuff like that.
27:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was ours, so we went from news to running a little grocery store,
27:27
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, where the residents were right behind it, and it's just what we needed, and now I'm getting a job with the Look, so the Sunday paper, which was great.
27:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So it finally getting some experience chasing ambulances and using the phone.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Tom, you couldn't use the phone.
27:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You didn't want to use the phone to talk to people.
27:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and then the Newsweek magazine came along and was looking for a springer.
27:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and I, okay, I would like you to be our springer.
27:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So I, that was my great breaks.
27:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So through the 80s, I ended up working from Newsweek, magazine, covering, covering Australia, New Zealand, and the whole South Pacific, and Antarctica, and Michael Nusher.
28:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we just what I needed.
28:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I was, I think I was too angry and bitter about,
28:19
[SPEAKER_02]: about everything to come back and live in the States.
28:22
[SPEAKER_02]: There was my decision to stay in Australia was also very, you know, I would say political, you know, that I was very angry at how that, how the war ended.
28:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very bitter about it.
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
28:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Is she doing?
28:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Carl, when you think about writing all these pieces
28:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you self-sensor to make it safe for yourself to go back and forth, go into Vietnam, come out of Vietnam, and not have any issues?
29:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm sort of, I am conscious of that, but I wouldn't say I'm self-centered.
29:17
[SPEAKER_02]: self-sensor, no, I just, no, I, I, I, what I, what I write is really common sense.
29:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really just pointing stuff out.
29:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, people have been putting people being put in jail for pointing out comments.
29:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
29:34
[SPEAKER_02]: One of my sub-stacks, you know, I followed one Facebook woman from Hanoi all the way to, you know, he's writing incredible stuff.
29:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all making sense or what about what the says of the Constitution of blah, blah, blah, blah.
29:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And then one day, she's, you know, the police show up and then there are heard from again.
29:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I, in real time, I, you know, I, I, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I wasn't worried about writing that it was just something that happened, right?
30:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I, I don't really worry that much about it, frankly, because I, if they do want to do, if they do want to do something, I guess I can't help it, but I'll also.
30:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty philosophical about going back to Vietnam.
30:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it changed so much since we were back in 1995, 20 years after the fall, we went back, and we've been back going back, but Vietnam has changed so much.
30:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're younger and when did you go back to Vietnam in the first place?
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It started 2000, okay.
30:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So the 25 years, 26 years ago?
30:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's good.
30:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, now with, you know, masterism coming in, now everyone's going up the has on now.
30:55
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a pretty tourist giving whiteners of, and I didn't motors, I could prepare all over Vietnam and, you know, and got to know that I've really enjoyed getting to know the North and to be North.
31:11
[SPEAKER_02]: There's that's where the history of Vietnam is right I mean like going to the Baghdad River and you know where where the where the the battle of the two battles took place in low quins and the front of the battle
31:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And then going even a trying that was a village and not then, right?
31:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And we showed up and then with all the descendants of his family, having a festival.
31:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And we ran tourists, we've got not actually through the early 2000s for Australia and Vietnam veterans.
31:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Vietnam's changed so much now.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what is master is, and the way they do tourism and Vietnam really puts me off.
31:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't disagree at enacted.
31:56
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a little world, but it's just if I have to say goodbye to dead now, I guess I will, but I've got great memories of the whole experience.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Carl, you just brought up the North as the enemy, you know, and I think that lives in our conscious as a child of the South government, myself, that was often the frame of the North is the enemy or the evil sort of like, but things are changing.
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they change in your mind, has this narrative of the enemy been reframed in your heart and mind because of your time, your distance away from being a product of the South as
33:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, that's, uh, I, I'm really, I'm really out of our time, uh, reconciling myself to, to, uh, to the, to the, to the guys who won the war in, in, in 1975.
33:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, I mean, I, and, and I do, I do, I do want to say this.
33:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I, and, uh,
33:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I was a conscientious objector actually, and I didn't have to go in the military.
33:34
[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't try to draft things and get them home to do my alternative service like with IVS.
33:40
[SPEAKER_02]: But my perspective on Vietnam was always that it needed to be neutralized, right?
33:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It needed to be
33:48
[SPEAKER_02]: The 1962 Degold made a famous speech in Nolpann about how Vietnam should be neutralized and they didn't neutralize loused, but they just turned into a secret war.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: But that was always my, this was like, you know, big men who stayed the 63 coup was a stop by the Americas because he was tending to a neutralism, you know, and let's talk to the North list, work out as solution.
34:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I saw the whole thing transpired where they brought in wind can and all those right wingers ended up with two and key in that mob.
34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was always, I never had much time for the for the for the self-indemies, you know, that we were, that we put in there, right?
34:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the self-indemies.
34:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the self-indemies that I was hanging out with, but God same as so poorly served.
34:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so poor, he served by their own government, where the North was was more of an abstraction, right?
34:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But they were the ones who, I, and I, you know, I, I, I, I, the they're the ones who really started the war as far as I'm concerned.
34:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, in, in my southern sort of perspective, they're the ones who want to have a war in the America, they're quite willing to, to play it, you know.
34:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, I mean, I blame, I mean, even my reporting with the AP, I didn't do much war.
35:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't call me a war correspondent, but all my reporting for the AP in Saigon was about people's stories, and also internal politics, and I became quite close to the third force.
35:23
[SPEAKER_02]: the neutralists around big men who was still hanging out there and doing it up being the president for like two days in the end, right?
35:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But my friends, right?
35:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Or again, French speaking, right?
35:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So my hopes in the end in 75 were, okay, the people were tired of the war, war wearing us and the communists were promising that it would be a time of peace
35:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't opportunity in the Paris peace agreement for a coalition sort of government.
35:58
[SPEAKER_02]: The Americans and two, it's in a custom often or I gotta do that.
36:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But I had hopes for better things from them after 75.
36:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And I...
36:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and like like Kim Young's own father, he was he was over that neutralist disposition.
36:19
[SPEAKER_02]: They've come in, it's not going to, you know, okay, we are going to have peace.
36:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody wanted peace so badly, they believed were the Communists were saying, you know, that you can say the smarter ones were already out, right?
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: The ones, especially the ones who had fled south in 54, no, you know, they were out of their quits form.
36:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when they did take over, or came to the family couldn't get out, he ends up in a re-education camp, and he wasn't even in the government or in the military, right?
36:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of, but there were a lot of sellers who believe that story, that things would be all peace and reconciliation, well, gosh, it still hasn't happened, really.
37:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, they've admitted that they were too mean after 75.
37:08
[SPEAKER_02]: They've done that.
37:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, they haven't really, they still need to take that step of okay, you know, you know, there was a southern side, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, they stopped using, they stopped calling you me way, you know, whatever, yeah, me way is traders, maybe, you know, they still need to take that step frankly.
37:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, just getting back there were a lot of sellers and then when they saw what they reality, that's when we got to both people, you know, coming out, pouring out and grossed.
37:44
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of, you know, a lot of, everyone gave them the benefit of the doubt, but I've met, I've met, you know, just going around having coffee, I've met one, what is very rare, they actually meet someone who was a vet com, right?
37:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Meet lots of ex-arvin everywhere.
38:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
38:03
[SPEAKER_02]: and he told me that his father was the father was whether it'd come and that first thing he didn't 75 was still the kids to get out.
38:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But he is the oldest one stayed and he's done okay.
38:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's funny.
38:20
[SPEAKER_02]: No, they still need to go that far.
38:22
[SPEAKER_02]: They still don't have
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And we even told him at the 50s anniversary thing last year.
38:28
[SPEAKER_02]: He said, we are now mature enough to look back.
38:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, okay.
38:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've used that quote in my substrate.
38:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
38:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
38:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it.
38:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Folks.
38:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me ask you something.
38:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, I remind the audience a child of the South.
38:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to see things from all angles.
38:53
[SPEAKER_01]: the incentive of Tholum or the North to make a proclamation that the South existed.
39:07
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the reason that they should do it?
39:11
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the incentive that they should do it?
39:21
[SPEAKER_01]: from making that proclamation.
39:25
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I think you've answered your own question.
39:28
[SPEAKER_02]: They're of course it's all about, it's all about, you know, you're the dairy power.
39:32
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't like to have a power.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's no real incentive for them.
39:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but like that, okay, sorry.
39:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna push back there.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna push back strategically if they did,
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: acknowledge the South.
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you think that they would have win the hearts and minds of four million people overseas and would it really damage internal politics in country?
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm asking this in a very,
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe I'm I'm it's wishful thinking for for me to say hey Dolom should make a proclamation that the South existed two fighting you know civil rights civil civil war two factions fighting each other internally in country
40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: We acknowledge the self-existent, and that would be an incentive for all these millions of overseas Vietnamese to come back and go bravo.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it finally came out.
40:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Wouldn't it be a good thing for the for the government to do that?
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it really decided of unitary and the cross in the line if they make that proclamation and had pissed a lot of people
41:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't see him doing it, you know, I was I think a lot of people were hopeful when he came in that they were okay, maybe not a proclamation, but at least more acknowledgment what more acknowledgment, but I think it's become increasingly clear.
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, where's where's to a lot of spending not just overnight trip to Beijing, he's getting they're ready laying on for him with four day trip He's already done two high speed train rides
41:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, I regret that it's going the other way, you know?
41:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But he has mentioned in that speech when he came up a year or two ago, he did acknowledge that there is a diaspora that we welcome the diaspora home, and we, you know, we consider all Vietnamese globally part of Vietnam.
41:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's all on their terms, unfortunately, and I think they need to take that extra step.
42:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the real problem with Vietnam is, and this is quite bold to say, but there's lack of confidence there.
42:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you know, it's still all sort of derivity of everything.
42:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, including that there's system of government, they really need to come up with something.
42:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, something is like there has certainly been group Italian villagers on foodwalk.
42:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're in there.
42:27
[SPEAKER_02]: They're in there.
42:28
[SPEAKER_02]: They're in there.
42:28
[SPEAKER_02]: They're getting amazing architecture you can do.
42:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, right, right.
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, right.
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Hoppies of copies, yeah.
42:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think that, I think because of the war, they've lost that self, that self pride.
42:41
[SPEAKER_02]: They need to have that self pride again.
42:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that really, I mean, what the, what the system brought in after the war has been every person for himself, you know?
42:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just been us, there's no unitary feeling they can come up with these celebrations like around the 50th.
42:58
[SPEAKER_02]: and the 50s in Saigon, or Jim in the city, and the 80th in Hanoi where everyone's wavered flags and they're doing public marches and you know I mean football shot for anything right, but I think they need to get more substance there, especially if they want to bring the very rich diaspora and I don't mean just money-wise, but intellectually, yeah.
43:19
[SPEAKER_02]: to come back.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I don't know how, I don't know how it's going to happen.
43:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It still has to happen somehow.
43:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But right now the trend is unfortunately the other way around.
43:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe toll on would eventually, you know, now that these two positions would be able to say, okay, now we're going to
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it's a it's a it's a power dynamic and a ratio that you have to make a calculation if you're in in power.
43:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I think honestly I think that it's understandable that the calculus would be how much power do I give up versus How much flowers I'm going to give to the diaspora, because if I give too much flowers to the diaspora
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: the power gets shifted a little bit and that is a problem if you're in power.
44:17
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want it to shift too much, right?
44:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to find this balances.
44:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, come home, come home and hang out with us, you know, you are us and us as you, you know, that kind of like that soft line is like, yeah, we are all alike.
44:33
[SPEAKER_01]: but deep down inside the engine of identity, is there's a clear line in the sand that we have to address.
44:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that by saying that the other side, the south at one point was a real thing.
44:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard because then you shift the power dynamic.
44:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that's a very real thing for the government of the alum.
45:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also one of those situations that I did address this with the phony reality that they paint.
45:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody knows what the truth is.
45:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, please go ahead and speak to a few grandpa's in the north as I have, right?
45:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, sitting by the lake and some, I mean, an NBA, right?
45:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
45:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And we talk to the same language, right?
45:26
[SPEAKER_02]: We all been screwed, all got screwed on both sides.
45:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:29
[SPEAKER_02]: The ones who fought the war, the ones who got screwed, in the end.
45:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even the way even the guys who won the war got screwed.
45:37
[SPEAKER_02]: they're out there.
45:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's one of the things everybody knows what the truth is.
45:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can talk about it around coffee and stuff like that.
45:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But then it's just sort of funny reality later over the top of it.
45:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a balloon.
45:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You just want to stick your finger in.
45:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's what I'm doing with my substrate.
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, just popping the balloon.
45:58
[SPEAKER_02]: No, bring them the reality here.
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like, if you, it was an announcement as soon as
46:06
[SPEAKER_02]: As soon as the day after the toll on became both present as well as the party, the Communist Party boss, he announced that there's going to be an amnesty for the 30th of April.
46:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not going to include people who were taking down by the three, three, one and one other one, right?
46:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, if he really wants to do it, I think it could start with a gesture like, you know, some of these, some of the, especially the best known ones.
46:35
[SPEAKER_02]: There was one fellow who, who, who, who we do, I think is his name, who, who was a, who was a name and fellow and wrote through two.
46:43
[SPEAKER_02]: hot selling books in Vietnam about the post war period don't lie and he had two books that didn't really well and then they ended up putting him in jet putting him in jet arresting him put him in jail because the question they growing power of the of the of the of the of the of the world the internal police right the but I mean this is the sort of just symbolically just let these people go
47:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And let them go back like this woman I was talking about.
47:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Now let her go.
47:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Now let her go back to her kids.
47:16
[SPEAKER_02]: She had an autistic kids.
47:19
[SPEAKER_02]: She got a sad, you know, that had to leave with whoever.
47:23
[SPEAKER_02]: But just do some symbolic stuff.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, it's going the other way.
47:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately,
47:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now we're moving into some hot water with all of that because, you know, you have the work of, you know, civil rights, you know, humanitarian sort of freedom of speech, you know, where do you draw the line with all of this stuff, you know, and podcasts was like me or journalists like you who, you know,
48:01
[SPEAKER_01]: then we lose, you know, our ability to go in and out, you know, we, we, we lose our access to a place that we love so much, you know, so I think about this a lot, Carl, I don't want to piss anybody off, just, you know, I, I want to go back to Vietnam as much as I can.
48:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to live there one day, but change happens, there is, there is a lot of creativity there.
48:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're obviously involved in that, but even they have to, as you know, as you know, personally, you know, drinking coffee with them, you know, what their boundaries are.
48:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think, I think you've got to work, I think, I think, you know, for my experience being in Vietnam and knowing the Vietnamese world, they're, they're okay, they're a state and
49:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how could you be brave?
49:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's still a lot you can do within the parameters that you have.
49:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Really?
49:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Not doing it.
49:08
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just serving time until they're 65 and they can retire.
49:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but nobody wants to store up the pot.
49:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
49:16
[SPEAKER_02]: To each other.
49:17
[SPEAKER_02]: To do a lot of good human interstories about people without, without, you know, without, you know, not political nothing.
49:26
[SPEAKER_02]: but they don't, there's a laziness there.
49:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there are a lot of other creatives who are out there pouring more mostly freelancing, right?
49:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:35
[SPEAKER_02]: But then, if you see the moving mood all,
49:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I have it.
49:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to watch it.
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have to watch it.
49:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I only saw the only sort of controversy about it.
49:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, and for it, let me let me let the audience know for everybody for anybody who's listening to this, uh, wondering what Mooda is red rain.
49:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's, uh, now streaming on YouTube, uh, this, it's a state backed movie that did like, um,
50:03
[SPEAKER_01]: bananas.
50:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It just did really high numbers at the box office.
50:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like the record box office.
50:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's 30 something million in ticket sales and the government said, all right, enough, we've made enough money.
50:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to put it out on YouTube and let it run publicly and you can watch it.
50:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a war piece that people say it's a really good movie.
50:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to check it out, Carl.
50:28
[SPEAKER_02]: But there was a lot of compulsion about it as well.
50:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, you had the end of it.
50:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And you weren't allowed to criticize it.
50:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But what was remarkable was that this was about the Battle of Quam Chi, right?
50:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The 72, the same year as the Naipong girl, when the South Vietnamese took it back.
50:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um,
50:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And it does, it portrays the remarkable thing I've heard about is it portrays the south in a bit, you know, a bit kindly.
50:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, there's a mean solid.
51:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, it's really bad.
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But the other one that shows, in fact, that ends with a brotherly theme or something like that, I'm told.
51:07
[SPEAKER_02]: What was interesting was that some NVA came out and said, look, the south end means weren't that mean.
51:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so there was a conversation and then, and you're right, it was like a, you're like I'm, what do you call it, you know, blockbuster right now heavily funded and, you know, I guess the South, the North Vietnamese army, right, if you get lots of extras than that one, but it's a sort of thing that, you know, it was good to see.
51:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, mountain in sorrow of war was, you know, was, was making in the news because he was, some people were complaining that he was taken off the list of the 100 most important, this was in the communist, you know, the, the, the, the, the other side of people from the creative industry.
51:57
[SPEAKER_02]: and some people complain so now they're only ninety nine now they're only ninety nine famous writers and poets and things like that Carl how do we find your sub stack i'm not ending yet but i we don't want to remind the audience where do we find your sub stack writing
52:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, people are bit confused about sub-stack.
52:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You download an app and then you go to Carl Robinson and then you subscribe.
52:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Now it's free.
52:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna do this for money, but if you'd like to pay, I've actually asked, I've had a few people who paid.
52:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But uh, and that's how used and then you subscribe and then as a free subscriber, you get an email notification that that I put up another story.
52:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But all you want to run some stack, you can start exploring.
52:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, whatever you want, you know, geopolitics, wars around the world or.
52:47
[SPEAKER_02]: or entertainment news, or literature, or poetry, whatever you want.
52:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's as a huge list of interest that you put down there, and then you get notified by sub-stack on notes of what stories are out there, not just here.
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a great, it's a great long-form sort of journalism stuff.
53:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So occasionally 2000 words stories so very you know what you call long read, but they're quick.
53:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like four to four to six minute reads.
53:24
[SPEAKER_02]: That's considered long and it's and it's totally your own work.
53:28
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no editor in the way or anything.
53:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and you just put it up and and and
53:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not the sort of thing where you even get that many likes.
53:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I'm not even for the likes, but I've been at more for just the building up my viewership.
53:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm glad that I'm glad that I'm
53:49
[SPEAKER_02]: a lot of my, a lot of my new subscribers have, I mean, these names, that's amazing.
53:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it's cool what you're doing because, you know, you, you really get on the inside of like the the mechanics of like how the government is operating.
54:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it's, I feel like you don't propaganda is one way or another.
54:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just putting things out there.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to ask you this though.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think makes a good journalist?
54:19
[SPEAKER_02]: as a self-taught, accidental journalist.
54:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you've got to have that curiosity, you know, about the, well, first of all, you've got to follow the news.
54:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you need to have a curiosity about you.
54:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's certain it's spontaneity about it, you know, and also,
54:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, the ability to express yourself.
54:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people can be writers and not know it.
54:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I used to joke that I used to be a great writer and then I went to work from Newsweek.
55:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to end it in my stuff.
55:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But I feel like my writing now has never been better in my whole life, right?
55:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, because the AP you're writing to a style and even newsweek, it's a certain style.
55:15
[SPEAKER_02]: But now with all these platforms out there, like Substack, you can start your own Substack and just start putting up whatever you want to talk about.
55:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's just the variety of stories out there.
55:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, from Rudy Serious to just really personal stuff.
55:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, there are not many Vietnamese voices there, or I didn't find one this morning who was talking about or mother or strict mother.
55:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm so close to getting on that platform.
55:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's an amazing tool to get our thoughts out.
55:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that everybody who is on Instagram or a person I should get a substact
55:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Right regularly.
56:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a good exercise for our modern brains.
56:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I think AI is Becoming, you know, so popular and inherently needed in our Ability to put our thoughts out there, but I think it's making us it's Creating harm for our thinking brains and I think that writing something on sub-stack
56:26
[SPEAKER_01]: not even to make a public but just like writing it so we can keep records of it and then one day being strong enough and confident enough, I'm speaking for myself, to make a public.
56:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can, you can use some stacks for like, I mean, I don't, they're, they're a lot of, a lot of stories.
56:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, every Vietnamese is a story.
56:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm going to be a problem
56:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you just need to tell it and get it out and what you're doing with your project.
57:00
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, just write it down and then to be one story, you can write it out.
57:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, whatever was like, you know, going to a French school and Sagan and going out or something and take your life from there.
57:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think the memories, I think you're doing an oral history, right?
57:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
57:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think people should be encouraged to write it.
57:20
[SPEAKER_02]: and put it up on Substack, or maybe he sent it to you to put up on your Substack, right?
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are a lot of memories out there.
57:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I've been hanging out, of course, with I live in the hanging out in the dials, but everyone's a story.
57:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like that fellow who
57:45
[SPEAKER_02]: that I looked up and I was in Southern California who's who's grandson and seen a sub-stack and he said, are you the Carl Robinson?
57:54
[SPEAKER_02]: My grandfather's always talking about.
57:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I made it important to go on to see him when I was staying with him for a couple of days.
58:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you see, you know, you're on dementia.
58:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a problem in our race.
58:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
58:06
[SPEAKER_02]: He was so, I didn't know I was that important to his life.
58:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, if you didn't like a normal guy, Carl, I've been reading your sub stack and I'm like, you're in your 80s and the writing is still so lucid and the thoughts and, you know, the way you put everything down is I'm so impressed and inspired by the work that you do at your age.
58:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the ward off now.
58:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
58:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and that's, I think is important and exercise to ward off dementia, Alzheimer's, any mental issue, I think if we're conditioning our brain to think critically and put it in writing and then you're editing it and you're watching it and you're looking at the words.
58:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it creates a sort of buffer for mental health problems in terms of declining ability to think.
58:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly this and there's nothing like
59:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I get, I get a lot of joy when I hit that send button.
59:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I often go and have been even greater joy reading at the next morning.
59:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, man, that's probably too bad.
59:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I do that.
59:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it builds your confidence, right?
59:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
59:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
59:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, I mean, I,
59:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's also when you're writing to make a living, it's different from what I'm doing.
59:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I can have an opinion.
59:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the beauty of what we do today.
59:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I think journalists should not be allowed to have opinions.
59:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It should be rule number one.
59:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You just got a report.
59:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if doctors and many people as you can, but I, I think journalism sort of suited my personality a lot of ways.
59:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I never spend much time with just hanging out and talking people very long.
59:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good quote.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
1:00:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I, uh, I really encourage our listeners to, um, check out your sub stack Carl Robinson.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, uh, an insight peak into what's happening in Vietnam.
1:00:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, um, it's safe enough.
1:00:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And dangerous enough at the same time to keep you really engaged as a reader because I think that the reporting and the your ideas are fair.
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's a highly encouraged everybody to check you out in Carl.
1:00:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for coming on today.
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a pleasure.
1:00:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that we stay in touch in the next 10, 15 years of you coming back on with more stories about Vietnam.
1:00:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, one after me didn't get out.
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know when I'm back.
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I very rarely come back to America to the US.
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would love to take my kids to Australia.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've got, I think Vietnam is my real way home.
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You're real way home.
1:01:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Carl, thank you so much.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, my pleasure.
1:01:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You're the chat.
1:01:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie and Crystal Tran.
1:01:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.