And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, the Axviles, with your

host, David Axelrod.

She's one of the great, trailblazing broadcast journalists of our time, and it's clear

to see why when you listen to Cristiana Mampor's story.

I sat down with her in London last week.

Here's that conversation.

Cristiana Mampor, you are one of the world's great storytellers, but now I want to hear yours

because it's a great story in and of itself.

Tell me about your growing up here in England where we're visiting with you and in Iran.

Yes, so I was born in England.

My mother is English, my father was Iranian, and they met on a really romantic, adventurous

journey that I, you know, only had learned about way later, my mom drove a car, a brand

new car for clients of her father who wanted to go to Tehran, and she drove them.

She was 21 years old or younger, in 1956 or around there.

Young British women didn't do that kind of stuff, so she was a real adventurer.

And she drove over there through the bad lands of, you know, the Turkish sort of mountains

and across to the border, having gone through France and not gone on a boat and, you know,

Lebanon the whole lot and finally ends up in Tehran, where she then goes to a party and meets

my dad who's a confirmed bachelor, 20 years older than her, and they fall in love.

And then he chases her all the way back to London and asks for my mom's hand in marriage

for my grandfather who said to me, said to him, sir, you seem to be close to an age to

me than to my daughter.

...