Free Tibet!

One of the performances that stands out the most in my entire life is when Tribe Called Quest played.

And I was standing next to our head of production, taking it all in, looking out at the crowd, and then I saw, way back in the distance, I saw one of our perimeter fences get overrun with kids who were breaking through.

And I looked at him and I was like, "Uh, should we do something about that?" And he was like, "Ah, no." Like, kind of just shook his head like, "No, there's nothing we can do." I remember the mayor of San Francisco showing up at our concert.

Now, remember, we were in a public park in San Francisco.

The city had to give us permission to be there, and the mayor's name at that time was Willie Brown, and he shows up right when Rage Against the Machine is singing, "[beep] you, I won't do what you tell me." And he wants to go on stage, and it's, like, this insane anti-authority song with the crowd just going wild, and I'm like, "Of course he comes right at this moment." [laughs]

And I think that was probably, you know, one of the more emotional moments from the concert.

When the music was done, we all just kind of, like, gravitated towards our production trailer.

... was the one who got you interested in traveling to that part of the world.

Yeah.

Um, my senior year, I was taking an anthropology class with him, and he wanted to go on a, a field trip to sort of learn how to be anthropologists and do field studies.

He was suggesting that we go to Pennsylvania and live with the Amish 'cause it was very close, and I, of course, blurted out, "Hey, let's go to Nepal to that Tibetan refugee camp you talk about." Everybody laughed because it was a ridiculous idea, but we ended up being able to go.

And part of the trip to Nepal was staying in the Tibetan refugee camp, um, and that really made Tibet, um, much more real and personal for me, that experience, you know, living in a, in a home with a Tibetan family who, um, I still consider my Tibetan family.

We're gonna take a listen, and we'll be right back.

There were kids on our trip who had never been on an airplane, and then they were getting on a very long airplane and going to a very different culture, and we landed in another world.

I mean, as different from where we were from as possible.

We're going to take a listen and we'll be right back.

There were kids on our trip who had never been on an airplane.

And they were getting on a very long airplane and going to a very different culture.

and we landed in another world.

I mean, as different from where we were from as possible.

There were cows and motorcycles and rickshaws and trucks and smog and the most gorgeous mountains I've ever seen.

And there's a couple of pockets of Tibetan communities in Kathmandu.

And then two of them get chance to borrow tip recorder.

How did you two meet? And what was it that you saw that alerted you to this problem?

Well, I was living in Nepal, studying Tibetan language and wanting to become a human rights advocate.

I had been involved in the Tibet movement for a number of years already.

And that started because of my favorite band when I was a teenager was U2.

And U2, of course, is known for political activism across the spectrum of issues.

But particularly in the 80s, they were very known for human rights activism.

And they performed at the Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope concert.

I mean, how much of it is specifically about revisiting, telling the story of these shows, how much of it, Aaron, about all the stuff you've gone on to do, and more broadly, what you hope to point the way towards for activists or inspiration moving ahead?