the white house has to get the senate moving quickly? nick: the juice is the same in all cases. there is a political imperative to get this done in the senate, to try and get some version of it done, to pass it put the , stamp on and say, we repealed obamacare and replaced it with something better. but there is also a reality of the legislative calendar. members going back home for session will be an interruption. if they can't get it done in a few weeks, they have to wait longer. that is why saw senator mcconnell appoint members to work on their counterproposal. this house bill is not going to get very far. jeff: there's going to be a wide gap between what house republicans passed yesterday and what the senate brings back. nick: correct. the house republican bill was designed for the conservatives in the caucus with enough extra things in it to get a few of the moderates on board to support it. there was more money for these high-risk pools for some states. a few billion dollars. not the $100 million or more -- $100 billion and more that analysts think is required. the senate is going to want a different kind of bill that protects moderate members, and there are one or two republicans in the senate who are not going to go near anything like this house bill. jeff: 52-48 is the split. republicans and democrats. you are not dealing with a real big margin of error. nick: it's a small margin of error. we know senator rand paul from kentucky, from the right, is against the on procedural grounds. he didn't like how the bill was put together. the harder question is on substantive grounds. on questions of coverage and access do the moderate members , in the senate on the republican side seek bigger changes that can't get reconciled back with the house version again? jeff: the cbo numbers are going to play into this. what is the timing in terms of when we think we might get those and what the senate does with those? nick: this is really interesting. the cbo will act on its own timetable and move as fast as they can. the house voted for this bill not knowing what it costs or what its full impact was going to be. of course, a lot of house members hadn't read it. by the time the senate gets to work on this, it is likely we will have some kind of cbo score on the house version, but the senate version is going to be totally different. that will have to be scored. jeff: the number on the previous version of the bill that never was brought to a vote, 24 million people losing coverage. how is that affected under this bill? nick: that is what is so crazy. we still don't know the answer to that question. they still pass the bill. there are lots of reasons to think the number could be higher. we are not totally sure. it could be higher than the previous version. some subsidies might bring some of those votes back in, but the big thing this bill does, it enables governors to pull out of the medicaid expansion and change the medicaid program, which could result in a lot of people being pushed off the program. it's a big question mark. that is what makes it so much more be risky to have passed this in the first place. jeff: both sides have talked about -- some of the issues that obamacare has, but regardless, at this point, a lot of this is seven years later and is part of the system. nick: the big lesson of health care reform over several attempts is that people were more afraid of losing the care they have been any benefits promised under a new bill. it's always the inertia that makes it hard for a party to pass a big change. guess what? obamacare is no longer obamacare. president obama is gone. now it is just care, and people are afraid of losing what they have, even if there are people who find premiums are too high and they struggled to pay them. there are ways to fix that. i'm not sure that this bill is going to hit those cylinders and prevent premiums from rising for it not be a political problem. jeff: it is trumpcare. that is what people are calling it. i'm not sure how the president feels about that. initially, it was called ryan care in the previous version that never came to vote. nick: it is the republicans health care policy right now. they didn't bring it to the store, but they are about to knock it over and break it. they own it. even if they don't change it, they still own it. that's what is so troublesome for the republicans. they are now the custodians of our national health care policy. they control both ends of pennsylvania avenue. it is up to them. they aren't going to be able to blame it on democrats if it goes south. jeff: one of the most fascinating parts is not just when the senate takes it up, but also, what they returned to the house. nick: correct. the senate does their own bill and if it is actually different, which it will be, they have to reconcile the bills and pass it through both chambers. does the senate poll their version of the bill back to the left? does that make it harder to pass in the house? there will not be a single democrat in either house will vote for this if it looks anything like the house bill. jeff: we are in this era of a weird set of political alignments. nick: the democrats need this bill to be as bad as they think --is to actually read any reap any benefits politically from it in 2018. if it never actually passes in this form, all of the things that nancy pelosi is saying about how bad it is going to be for republicans won't come true. there is a weird alignment. republicans don't want to pass this as is, but republicans are hoping the senate makes modular -- major modifications. jeff: what is the general idea or suspension about what gets lost or adjusted in the senate? nick: the pre-existing conditions is the most important or politically potent part of this whole debate. what the house bill does that is a little weird is it doesn't actually get rid of those protections, but it does get rid of community rating. the insurers can't charge you more than your neighbor if they have this condition and you don't. your insurance might not lapse, but you might not be able to afford your insurance if you had cancer before. jeff: so it is going to lapse. nick: i think that's what people will focus on in a big way. look, there is also a loophole in the house bill that could threaten employer health insurance. that's not what we think about with obamacare. there are a lot of things we are going to see more and more of as the bill gets read and digested. jeff: the president said yesterday that premiums are going to go down, and deductibles are going to go down. you typically see those things in opposite directions, when you are picking coverage, at least. i'm confused about how those both go down at the same time. nick: it's not going to happen. it's not going to happen at all. there isn't a free lunch in health care. if you want to cover people, you have to spend more money. someone has to pay for that. the way obamacare does it is that it charges and taxes insurers and healthy people to -- wealthy people provide that care. there is not a magic way to make health care cheaper and bring premiums down and expand coverage. the money has to come from somewhere. what republicans are doing is getting rid of revenue sources that power and fund the expansion in the first place. jeff: this is such a partisan issue. when it passed obamacare at first. it is now completely partisan as , trumpcare. is there any scenario in which you see it becoming a bipartisan solution to what may be some problems in obamacare, but away from what house republicans passed yesterday? nick: i think the scenario is if republicans lose control of one or both chambers in 2018. that is the scenario. the second scenario possibly is, i think democrats have won the intellectual war on this issue. they won it when republicans decided, or many republicans decided, that it was part of their responsibility to broaden coverage and make insurance possible. that was an intellectual leap for the republican party. now they are looking for ways to pay for it and make it work, and there's not really a good way to do that without having revenue raises and taxes and expanding government programs. the question is, what does the program look like in a 5-10 years? jeff: nick confessore of "the new york times," thank you. nick: thank you. ♪ ♪ charley: syria's civil war is considered the greatest geopolitical crisis of the 21st century. images of thehs, conflict have permeated western media, but how are journalists actually connecting the new s and video feeds, what are the risks, to syrian journalists, and how can people in the west support their work? how do women's voices play into this narrative? joining me are three syrian women who have been involved in efforts to distribute news about the war. our first guest is a civil rights activist and independent development consultant for several syrian civil society organizations. another guest is the cofounder of a syrian humanitarian organization. our last guest is a journalist and syrian coordinator for the institute for war and peace reporting. she was listed among the most powerful arab women in 2016 by "era business" and one of the unsung heros of 2016 by "thomson reuters." i am pleased to have them all here. tell me exactly about aleppo being on the front lines. >> i was in aleppo before the siege. i haven't seen the worst. charlie: you were not there. where were you during the siege? >> i was in turkey. i was one of the lucky ones who haven't the city when it was under siege. even before that, daily life was suffering. some basic issues, it's not newsworthy for journalists, but it will occupy your whole life. someone was killed by shrapnel in the streets. it's not newsworthy, but for you, it might be the friend you have been spending the last two or three months with. it might be the source you have been dealing with for the last year. this issue of sources and keeping distance with the source, it's pretty striking for me. it seems like all of this value i have learned, impartiality, keeping distance from sources, i was pretty much inside the story, and i was pretty much afraid, i'm going to be the story someday. i might be on breaking news that the syrian project leader was killed in an airstrike. that might even not make it too many international media, but maybe the syrian ones. charlie: how did you handle that? >> hardly, but i think the syrians found their way around to adapt with what is going on. somehow, you live moment by moment. you expect to be killed at any second. this is the life. on the other hand, you actually start to live more. you feel that this might be your last moment. you let it go. you do things that you wouldn't do if you were strategically planning for the future. you love more. you have more friends, more powerful relationships, and you try to do your best. report as much as you can, write all of the things, because you might not be able to do it tomorrow. it has pros and cons. charlie: how did you become an activist? >> i was born in damascus, and i moved to the states when i was 15. initially, i worked for muslim civil rights organizations in a chicago and minnesota. in 2013 and post-conflict, i relocated to turkey, and i cofounded a civil society organization called the syrian forum. basically, it's a consortium of institutions that tries to serve the syrian conflict across the spectrum, from media, training and development, job placement , humanitarian, for refugees in turkey. i became an activist because i was concerned about the human rights violations that were happening in syria. we have a regime of 50 years old that was deeply rooted, and it was basically arbitrarily killing civilians and detaining people who rose up and were calling for freedom and democracy, the basic rights of any developed country. since then, i have been very involved. charlie: you are here for what reason? >> we are here because we want to talk to the public. we want to change that perception that has been going on in the mainstream media. that perception, that the syrian conflict is either assad or isis. we want to tell the public that we exist. syrian civil society has emerged post-conflict, and they are the ones considered to be the boots on the ground delivering humanitarian aid. they are the ones doing peace building among communities. they are the ones who are fighting terrorism. women are on the front lines of fighting terrorism. they are combating child recruitment by violent extremist groups, and we want to highlight this in this conflict. this is a bottom-up approach. in the future when the assad regime falls down, the syrian civil society will be responsible for the power vacuum, and we will be responsible for the peace process. charlie: when do you think the assad regime will fall down? >> when the international community takes a serious role accountable.ssad charlie: what means a serious role? >> that brings us to the u.s. strikes that were recently launched against the assad regime. there's a lot of concern that the strikes were a pr propaganda tool for the government. this is the first time the regime was held accountable in the international community ever since the chemical attack that happened in august of 2013 and when the previous administration drew a redline saying, if you commit more atrocities or use chemical weapons, we will take actions. no action was taken, which basically was a green light to the assad regime and russia. the u.s. strikes were a message to deter assad and russia from committing more chemical weapons attacks. this is what we were cheering for. we were not cheering for the intervention specifically, but we were supportive of this action. we want to basically deter assad and russia from committing these crimes, as well as forcing them to come back to the negotiating table. charlie: why do you think the administration did it? to deter? havedon't know, but i just one point to add. when we were speaking about this earlier, it's pretty sad, but i would hold assad accountable, specifically in pushing syrians to the stage where we are actually cheering for another country bombing our lands. in 2011 when there was a survey, do you support the international intervention in syria more than , 80% said no, completely were against any international intervention. in 2011 when the uprising started. suddenly, all of the syrians who voted no, they would support that attack. assad pushed us to this level. i also want to add something. this is not the first u.s. strike on syria. strikes have been going on for the last three years. more than 4000 strikes have hit syrians, many of them killing civilians while killing isis. charlie: they were directed against isis but also killed civilians. >> yes. seven --h, they killed 70 people in raqqa and aleppo. that is the only strike that happened this year where knows one was killed. it actually killed a source that was going out from that air base. charlie: what does your organization do? >> we are an organization mostly concerned with development, education, and relief. our model is based on community centers. we set up community centers in the most underprivileged communities in the neighboring countries, and what we do is, we are responsive to these communities and their needs. we have schools, education, small grants women empowerment , programs, etc. charlie: you are training people everyday? >> yes. charlie: you live in jordan? >> yes. charlie: you go back-and-forth? >> yes. charlie: what do you want the united states to do? how can the united states do more to help the syrian people? >> it's a difficult question. i think they've already been involved in the military phase of the problem or conflict. sadly, we are only focused on the consequences of assad's existence in the past three years. which is isis. we all know that isis exists because of assad. only exists because of the regime. in when the uprising started, 2012, assad released most of the leaders who are leading isis and extremist groups. they were inside other prisons. charlie: and he wanted to accomplish what? build up an organization? >> he built it up. in 2011 when the demonstrations were peaceful, he started spreading propaganda that we are fighting terrorists, and at that time, we were laughing at that propaganda. all of those who hit the streets were either women, university students, pretty much regular syrians demanding basic rights, finishing -- charlie: this was in the wave of protests after the arab spring began. >> exactly. the way the regime started that propaganda that we were laughing at, it turned out to be true. they were planning towards this. the release of extremists from the assad prisons, and suddenly how could they hold this arm? in syria, we don't buy arms from shops, unlike u.s. getting arms easily happen for a reason. charlie: some would argue that the united states should focus more than isis. as you have said assad is a , recruiting tool for isis. correct? >> correct. charlie: would you like to see the u.s. focused more on assad or both at the same time? >> i recently published research done by a syrian human rights group. it showed that 96% of syrians who have been killed since the beginning of the uprising were killed by assad forces, unlike what the international media is reporting. i think isis is definitely killing more syrians and iraqis than any other foreigner. we are the ones in the international community saying we are fighting isis because they are terrorizing us more than anyone else. despite that, assad has killed 96% of the syrians. for most of the syrians still inside, assad is a problem. charlie: should he be the primary focus? our secretary of state said not long ago that our principal strategy now is to attack isis until we have simply run them out of raqqa. that is the wrong strategy? >> i think they are still leaving with the symptoms and leaving the illness alone. as long as assad will be in power, maybe we won't have isis, but we will have a different kind of group functioning the same, which is terrorizing not only syrians but the world. charlie: if in fact the united states did support all of the free syrian forces and all of those syrians opposed to assad, is that enough, with the support of the united states and other arab countries, to overthrow assad? or not? has he stabilized with russian support his own place so that it will now be, unlike 2011, very, very difficult to overthrow him and change the regime? >> it's the only way for someone to have power over a city, to forcibly displace all the inhabitants of the area. if the only way for this person to be in power is to bomb his destroyed the infrastructure of his own country, how can you call this power?in i don't care how many bombs come down from the sky. you have to have legitimacy with your own people. the legitimacy is gone. charlie: assad has no legitimacy with his own people. >> no. the amount of blood that has been shed! if i have to put in detention more than 200,000 of my own people in order to keep them quiet, if i have to drive out millions of people out of my country, most of the activists inside the country are now outside and working in the neighboring countries. why? why do we have to do that? charlie: do it because you cannot survive inside. >> no, you cannot. i cannot go back to syria. i cannot even go by the border. if i tried to cross the border, i would be detained. probably no one would ever see me again. most of the people who work with me even though i'm not a , politically outspoken person, i am somebody who works in humanitarian aid. this is all i have done. this is the biggest mistake i have done in the last six years, and yet, i have to pay the price. this is my land as much as their land. it is my right to live in my land, to go back to my city. i cannot go back. charlie: how do you feel about the west's reaction to what is going on in syria? do you feel like you have been ignored? >> we have been doing this work for the past six years so far. i had a tour in the u.s. in 2015. i have spoken to officials in the state department. u.s. ig all these entities , involved, i found myself saying the same thing i said a couple years ago. the west, i don't want to see say that the west have turned their back on syrians. they are trying to support syrians in a way. yet, they are not -- sanctions are not enough to pressure assad. charlie: you are all brave to do what you do, but i would be remiss not to say that there are a lot of brave journalists from america and around the world, and many of them women, to tell the story in syria. >> yes, i know you have met clarissa. i may her in syria. -- i met her in syria. i met her in the house of my friend when she was reporting early in 2012. my point, and clarissa would agree with me, what is said that if i ask you to name two syrian journalists who have been kidnapped by isis, you would not be able to. charlie: you are absolutely right. >> where as if i ask you to name 10 foreign journalists who have been harassed by isis, you can do that. charlie: or beheaded. >> the syrian victims in general are underreported. because they are syrian. i think this is also very sad, because they are the ones who are doing most of the job. they are the main sources for information, and despite the at, just because they are syrians, they are being rejected. my friend has been kidnapped. sure he would not be granted a visa if he applied. although he suffered and thought isis ideologically more than any citizen. charlie: thank you for being here. it's a pleasure to have you. thank you for joining us. ♪ charlie: oslo is a new play at the vivian beaumont theater. it charts the months of secret nine negotiation in the norwegian capital that led to the historic courts between israel and the palestinian liberation organization. ben brantley of the new york times calls the play as expensive and ambitious as any recent in broadway history. oslo has been nominated for 720 awards including best play, best direction of a play, and best performance by an actress in a leading role. here is a look at the play. in europe, they are calling art nazis. in europe, every day, more and more of the world turns against us but all we do is sit at the negotiating table. >> it is fundamentally flawed. it is rigid, personal. >> i agree completely, but this is what the americans want to do. >> so you must do it, but also establish a second channel to build on the exact opposite model, not grand pronouncements between governments, but intimate discussions between people. you are held somewhere isolated totally where you and the plo can meet alone and talk. this model, i can oversee. this place, i can arrange. >> how? >> the resources of my institution. my expertise, all at your disposal, discretion guaranteed. charlie: joining me now is the playwright, j. t. rogers, and jennifer ely, who plays the wife. i am pleased to have them at my table. welcome. >> thank you. charlie: did you have a lot of film directors beating their path to your doorway saying there is a great play, a great movie about this? >> i think it is a great play, though it does not portray exactly what happened. it is not a documentary, history, but it captures very much the spirit of what happened in oslo in 1993, so i think j.t. has done a great job. it is awkward for me to sit here beside my wife. [laughter] a great jobso doing as portraying the role of my wife. caroline: what was the charlie: what is the spirit? >> the spirit of "oslo" is hope. one of the reasons why i believe there is a full house every day now is at this day in time, where we have chaos and anarchy, gangland across the world i think it portrays a message of hope that it is possible to do the impossible, namely to bring adversaries together to create friendship and to actually reach an agreement. that was done in 1993. charlie: in today's world, we can do that? >> i think so. sometimes, it is easier to do to -- possible than two i think that is what we did in 1993. charlie: for the record, whose idea was it to make a play? j.t.: bart's idea. >> through my daughter. they were in school and i would go to soccer matches and he would tell me these crazy things. and introduce him to jt and i got along well. >> bart was very savvy and we had a relationship working together. he knew if he said to me that there might be a play here, my first response would be "don't tell me what to write about." he introduced us without saying that, which was wise on your part. she came to see my last play, "blood and gifts," which is about spies and diplomats in the 1980's. we went out for drinks. as we talked -- i knew the vaguest outline. there had been a back channel for the also accords, but i embarrassed to say in hindsight am that i would give -- i would have given all the credit to the clinton administration, 97% of american audiences, and so as we were talking over drinks a stone's throw from the theater, i realized there was an entire floor underneath the floor secret i did not know, and he, , a to his credit, really did not want to talk about what he had done. he wanted to talk about the extraordinary efforts of the israelis and palestinians to secretly meet. as a storyteller, you think, "is that really --" m jewell as well. even more so, she did not want to talk about herself. as a storyteller, you are always looking -- i am always looking for stories about the gripping personal stories against the larger historical/political backdrop. to discover even nascent me as we talked to my think it was a scotch we had, to realize there were had been secret meetings, scotch, and castles in norway, and people risking their lives, you think, "my lord, this is my wheelhouse as a playwright." charlie: jennifer, what we you trying to capture? >> i think one of the most important things for the woman in the play is that she is very cautious. she is a diplomat. she is very much an animal of diplomacy and she chooses when she speaks. very carefully. she chooses when she chooses to speak very carefully. there are only a few times when she actually does speak up and speak her mind. otherwise, she is there facilitating and balancing. charlie: is she the only woman in the room? jennifer: yes. charlie: was that interesting? charlie: is that interesting? >> to have a woman in difficult negotiations between adversaries, which are at each other's throats is very important because it has -- the man, and it is usually men, they are much more careful, much more polite, much more inviting, much more accommodating, when there is a woman in the room. and i think the story of oslo actually exemplifies how important it is to have a woman center stage of difficult international negotiations. charlie: my impression is -- and we do a lot of programs about diplomacy, as you know -- people are always trying to find some back channel way, but what happened here was different in terms that you got the people who normally don't speak to each other in the room. how did you convince them that this was important? >> i mean it was kind of wild, as many things in life. it was incidental. i got to know israelis and palestinians. i met with yasser arafat and convinced him to try to sit directly with israelis and vice versa. at the time, it was forbidden by law in the u.s. and in israel to have contacts with the plo. it was branded by law as a terrorist organization. but then, it is so important to do the unorthodox thing, to -- as i said earlier -- to look at what everybody or most people think is impossible, so it is easier to do the impossible than to do what people think it's possible. at this time of day, that this is the main challenge in the middle east today. you can go to yemen, to libya, to iraq, to syria -- charlie: especially syria. terje: yes, and there are possibilities. charlie: they are trying right now. terje: we'll see. charlie: when you went from lincoln center to broadway, to the david beaumont, bradley said you found a stage for an expensive play. what did he mean? >> we were in a small 300 seat theater and we went up to an 1100 seat theater. what is great about the beaumont is that it is a space for language, ideas. it is a sprawling place, covering 64 scenes. strangely having done many musicals in the vivian and beaumont, this was harder than any of the musicals i had to be there. it changes so quickly, such a fast momentum, that what we wanted to make was an international thriller to take the historic events, which take deliberative slow-paced to do, and draw audiences into the intellectual excitement of coming to a conclusion and give them the experience in a theatrical way of the possibility of things working out, so that was exciting and very different doing it in june and then after the election. we find now that it is more about republicans than democrats, then it is about palestinians and israelis. audiences have a greater longing for hope now than they did when we did in june. they seem to be struggling and hoping for it. >> you can feel them sitting in the audience like a collective thought balloon post-brexit, post our presidential election. the second with round of elections in france and you feel this collective sense of, oh, my goodness, are there people in washington sitting somewhere with a bottle of wild turkey? are they sitting there talking about their children?" please, lord, i hope they are so that there is something happening behind -- what real diplomats do and what interests me as a writer for film and television is the double chess game where there is a conversation we are seeing but actually it is the conversation underneath the conversation. charlie: what role did she play? jennifer: i would like to hear you answer that actually. [laughter] jennifer: i know what role she plays in the play, but i would love to hear -- >> i think in a way, jt, your play catches that kind of division of roles between mona and myself, so i am the kind of guy who had the wild ideas come whoshe is the sober person rains it in and makes it realistic, makes it doable. to move it from fantasy into realism. charlie: does that work in marriages, too? >> i think you should talk to her about that. [laughter] charlie: so you have had staging and you said that this play had been harder than any other production had ever done before? >> in the beaumont, yes. because it looks incredibly simple, but they are changing so quickly over three hours and moving so fast from one scene to the next, and i wantin between scenes, so the minute one sentence ends in one place, you are certainly in tel aviv so you get the feel of what it feels like in a film where you can jump cut quickly, but you want to be able to sustain the moment, the tension of what each thing is doing. he has developed this beautiful fromture of up grading small negotiation to a higher level and a higher level so that you feel this thing melting, and before you know it, you have come to an agreement and then you start to deal with the consequences of it, but i want to tighten the screws theatrically as much as possible so the audience has no idea what could happen next, and even though they think they know the history, and this is essentially like a shakespearean history play, they are not convinced of what they think they knew about it, so they find themselves -- the suspense it delivers the ideas. you allow them to balance. charlie: where do you take that dramatic license as necessary? j.t.: for me, writing the play, you have a balance where you are trying to tell the story of all what actually happened, both because it is so fantastical and because you have an intellectual responsibility, let's say, not to put characters on stage name for real people saying opposite of what they actually believe. so you have those rules you set for yourself. but then you have the ruthless needs of narrative and play writing. when you say i'm not a journalist, i'm here to use your comment and thank you for it, to capture the spirit of what happened. so timelines were condensed and moved around. there are people in the play who play a small role in the theatrical fiction of it. basically the question that gripped me as a dramatist as i thought, what would it be like to sit across from people who are your sworn enemy to have the courage to do that and to see them as real human beings? and then unexpectedly or perhaps more profoundly to realize you are the one that has changed by that viewing, and that is the sort of question that the theater is built to make. a journalist has to tell you that this is have a did it, this is why they did it. the theater says everyone on the stages as a human being and you get to decide. >> the hope comes from watching people transform. when you watch any kind of television or news reporting, you only see the events and you are making all the decisions. you do not want people go through changes or watch them to come to new places. that is what theater does. it allows you to transfer and the hope comes from the experience of an actual compliment as opposed to the reporting of an accomplishment. charlie: you are going to make a movie of this? j.t.: yes, we are. charlie: and you said you will be a will to put in a lot of what you had to take out. j.t.: some of that, it is funny because the has been an extraordinary experience, lincoln center is such an extraordinary place to work, and they give you not only the facilities, but the protection and support, so from the first performance to our opening night 3.5 weeks later, i cut 34 minutes of material out of the play, which might be a record. in hindsight, a lot of what i cut in collaboration with bart were things that i think will be centerpieces in the film that did not need to be in the verbal driven arena of a stage, and there is simply -- it is going to be a gift to get through this same story from a different angle, so to speak, as a movie compared to a play. charlie: how did you and your wife differ in terms of a worldview? >> that is a very hard question. i think actually, it actually -- i mean, the real "oslo" story started by us visiting gaza for the first time. my wife was a norwegian diplomat based in cairo and we went to israel for the first time into gaza and the west bank and we saw during the first intifada clashes between israeli soldiers and palestinian youngsters, what we saw in the eyes of the soldiers and the palestinians, youngsters, was the same angst. they were afraid. both of them. we thought, this is meaningless. you have 18-year-old, 19-year-old palestinians and israelis standing with guns and stones and slings to each other. this is meaningless. this became a main motivation for both of us. we have to do something to resolve this issue, so again, it is personal. it is very simple. it is emotions. it is people to people. charlie: and the belief that it is not impossible? >> yeah, i mean, probably. everybody, if they knew what we were trying to do, they thought we were crazy, two young norwegians trying to resolve the arab-israeli-palestinian issue. it was kind of megalomaniac. but we did it. and i think it exemplifies come again as i said, sometimes it is easier to do the impossible than to do the possible. i think the play gives a ray of hope in our time that indeed it is possible to resolve issues of the day. charlie: this is the first clip. you will see jefferson mays, who plays you begging you -- playing mona -- to talk about this secret. here it is. >> i mean look at the world, my love. the old order is falling away. the unthinkable has become the thinkable. this is our chance to make a difference. >> go ahead and try. >> i cannot do this without you. after all, who am i? you, my darling are mona, the jewel of the norwegian foreign service. you possess the most beautiful, powerful rolodex. let us try, my love, together. >> tell me you would have said no? [laughter] charlie: that resembled a conversation that might have taken place? >> i actually have to tell you that our daughter saw the play. she is 16, and mona, my wife, was not entirely happy with the portrayal, but my daughter turned to me and whispers and says "this is exactly the way you are interacting." [laughter] >> well, i'm glad to hear that. charlie: what was the most challenging thing for the both of you in terms of mounting this? >> for me, the challenge was on my own to find a way to sculpt into something manageable for the audience, to take nine and shape iturs into an evening, and then in a way, the great thing about having a longtime collaborator is you know their gifts, so i knew how bart could choreograph bodies in space in speed, and the lightness of touch. there is no one in the theater who can do things like this. j.t.: for me, i challenged myself and i challenged him to see how far we could do with this, and be careful what you wish for, because once we got on our feet, we realized this is a monster. so it was just to find a way to make it seem -- you know, i think you would probably agree -- one of the things i'm most proud of is the audience will see the play and think it is elegant and simple, when in fact, we are still making changes one year later because it is so not simple. we just want that to be hidden. >> yeah, for me, it is a lot about the actors. when he talks about the double game and one thing i love about the story is actors of subtext. getting actors you can play this on the surface and this below the surface, and really capturing the nature of negotiation, which is so bluff-oriented and layered about how you are behaving with each other, not only the personal ones, but to embody the level of hatred and watch them go through transformation, it was a gift to have such a great acting company to elevate to a challenge to make audiences, when they come in, they feel like they are saying israelis and palestinians and norwegians fight something out in real time. that is a harder task. charlie: engaged and participating in their own mind in the conversation. >> and they never know what side they are on. that is a testament to the actors in terms of how they play the layers and obstacles they have in there, and that is what makes it so -- charlie: remember that mona was a diplomat. here is her talking about her experience in palestine. here it is. >> one million palestinians, most without regular electricity or water, crammed into an area 25 miles long, but only a few miles wide. its population exploding with no place to explode. we were in a back alley when we walked into it. a crowd seething. soldiers rushing. behind an upturned car, bodies fell. and then we saw it, two boys facing each other, one in uniform, one in jeans, weapons in hand, hate flowing between them, but their faces, and we both see this, their faces are exactly the same. the same fear, the same desperate desire to be anywhere but here, to not be doing this to this other boy. there in that moment, for us, it began. charlie: j.t., why do you think it will begin for some people to see this beyond the sheer enjoyment of theater? what might they walk away with an insight in terms of conflict in this world? j.t.: it is always dangerous as an author to think that you have the ability to teach her audience anything because they are so collectively smarter than you, but my hope, my hope is that in essence, the political act of this play is not choosing sides, it is not saying someone is right and the other is wrong. the political act is to expand the kinds of voices in people we see on the stage, and i think the people on all divides of this intractable political problem, the thing that is moving to me is to be contacted by strangers around the world, finding a way to contact me and say "i came to see this play, i felt very strongly about it, about one side, and by watching the play, i may not have changed my mind, but i recognized the validity of the other side." and that is a very moving thing. to watch 1000 people be silent and hear the plo speak their grievances and the israeli government speak their grievances, and have both sides say "ok, now what are we going to do?" it is quite thrilling, as the author. >> divisive times, like we are living now, where we cannot tell which side is on which side and people are at each other other's throats, even in america, that is what we find audience is responding to. they want people to find a way to actually listen to the other side and figure out what that means and see where it goes, because it is not easy. charlie: what happened to "oslo?" >> "oslo" is many things. it is an ideology, a two state solution, which i think now is more or less internationally, universally accepted as the only way, though it hasn't materialized, but it is also the palestinian authority, which is the quasi-state they have as a result of oslo, and also a dialogue in the peace process, which has stalled, but seeing the palestinian leader with president trump in washington yesterday, and it gives hope revived and be continue. and i do very strongly believe that the vision of oslo, which is a state of palestine and a state of israel living peacefully side-by-side is the only way out of the conflict. in the middle east, which at its core is the palestinian/israeli -- charlie: a1 state solution is good for no one? >> i do not think the one state solution is good for the palestinians. i do not think it is good for the israelis. i think it is the only viable solution, the two state solution. i think the majority of palestinians and the majority of israelis will agree to what i just said. charlie: thank you for coming. pleasure to have you. great to see you again. thank you. thank you, j.t. "oslo" is running at the vivian beaumont theater until sunday, june 18. nominated for seven tony awards , including best play, best director for play, best direction of the play, and best performance by an actress in a leading role. all of that. go see it. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪ ♪ >> i am alisa parenti from washington. former acting attorney general sally yates has told a senate committee that she alerted the trump white house that michael flynn "essentially could be blackmailed by the russians." yates and james klapper testified about russian interference and last year's presidential election. despite uncertainties about whether the united states would remain committed to the paris climate accord, envoys have convened toxin germany on implementing the details of the deal to combat global warming. officials will try to