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00:05The war with Iran hinges on three letters, H-E-U, and it's believed Iran has enough
00:12of it underground to eventually make 10 nuclear bombs. What would it take for the U.S. to secure
00:18that highly enriched uranium? Tonight, you'll hear about a covert mission that took place 32 years
00:24ago and why a similar operation in Iran would be so difficult. Would an operation like this be worth
00:31risking American lives? In my opinion, yes.
00:42It's mama. Tonight, the story of a mother who would not give up on her son after he was taken
00:49hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023. I was always saying, I love you, stay strong, survive. I love
00:57you, stay strong, survive. I love you, stay strong, survive. Was it a command to you as well? Yes.
01:04If you're a rock fan, you already know Stuart Copeland, acclaimed drummer for the police.
01:11What you may not know is who or what he's making music with now.
01:15That's a kookaburra. Hundreds of animals turned into something wild.
01:22You put an instrument with them and those animals become Pavarotti.
01:31I'm Leslie Stahl.
01:33I'm Scott Pelley.
01:35I'm Bill Whitaker.
01:36I'm Sharon Alfonsi.
01:37I'm John Wertheim.
01:39I'm Cecilia Vega.
01:40I'm Anderson Cooper.
01:41Those stories and in our last minute, Chef Jose Andres with some food for thought tonight on 60 Minutes.
01:56The fate of the war between Iran and America hangs on just three letters, H-E-U, highly enriched
02:03uranium, an essential ingredient for nuclear weapons.
02:06It's believed Iran currently has enough H-E-U to eventually make 10 atomic bombs, but international
02:14inspectors have not been allowed to verify Iran's stockpile since last June, when the
02:19U.S. and Israel struck three nuclear sites.
02:22Over the last seven weeks of war, President Trump has insisted the U.S. will take whatever
02:28is left, whether with boots on the ground fighting their way in or striking a deal with
02:33the Iranian regime, to allow scientists to safely secure the stockpile and bring it back
02:39to the United States.
02:40What you may not know, that option has been done before, in a high-stakes mission that
02:46could become the blueprint for how to get H-E-U out of Iran.
02:51It was a crazy time after the Soviet Union fell apart, and we knew that Iran was pursuing nuclear
03:01materials throughout the region.
03:04In 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Andrew Weber was a young Foreign Service officer
03:11in the newly minted country of Kazakhstan, which held the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the
03:17world. Left behind by the Soviets, part of it was sitting inside a factory.
03:23We knew about the factory. We knew it had a purpose in the nuclear power sector. What we
03:31didn't know was that they had a cache of highly enriched uranium that was weapons usable.
03:37It took several months, but using good old-fashioned diplomacy and a moose hunting trip,
03:42Weber built trust with the factory director. And one day, it paid off in the form of a note.
03:49And I remember it was one of the first snows that day. And so we're walking in the courtyard,
03:54and he said, Andy, I have a message from Vitaly. And he passed me this little note.
04:02Let's see. This tiny little piece of paper he hands you. And it says, U-235, 90 percent,
04:10600 kilograms. And that means what to you?
04:14Dozens of nuclear weapons.
04:18Uranium enriched to 90 percent is ready to be made into a bomb. The revelation made it all the
04:25way up to President Bill Clinton. Soon, both countries came to an agreement. The U.S. would take the
04:31stockpile to prevent countries like Iran and North Korea from getting a hold of it.
04:37They could have just bought the 90 percent enriched uranium metal, and they would have
04:42been able to fabricate bombs very quickly out of it. Weber became the point person for the operation
04:48codenamed Project Sapphire. He took these pictures with his own camera, showing canisters holding more
04:55than 1,300 pounds of the bomb-grade uranium. The only thing protecting them was a militia
05:02woman with a sidearm and... It was protected by a good padlock, sort of the kind you see in an
05:09antique shop. Project Sapphire was the first of its kind. Three massive C-5 Galaxy cargo planes were
05:18dispatched to Kazakhstan, carrying 31 specialists from the Departments of Defense and Energy.
05:25The teams brought 450 drums built to transport nuclear cargo, strong enough to survive a plane crash.
05:33And the whole thing was covert, under the cover of a humanitarian mission.
05:39It was all done in utmost secrecy. A team of over 30 people working for about five or six weeks
05:48to
05:48finish this packaging operation. It didn't leak, and nobody knew they were even there.
05:54Every gram of HEU was secured and loaded onto rickety Soviet-era trucks.
06:01And that night, there was black ice on the roads, and the trucks were sliding.
06:06That's when the material was most vulnerable. We didn't want the Iranians or organized criminal
06:14groups to know that the material was being transported. It was very important that nobody
06:22knew that we were going to be moving the material that snowy, cold night.
06:30The planes were loaded up and the HEU was flown back to the United States,
06:35taken to a Department of Energy complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for safekeeping. Weber went on
06:42to become an assistant secretary of defense responsible for nuclear deterrence.
06:47From touchdown to takeoff, Project SAFIRE took six weeks to remove more than 1,300 pounds of bomb-grade
06:56uranium from Kazakhstan. Would the same mission be possible today in Iran?
07:02In Iran, we couldn't send a team in to do this unilaterally without great risk. You would need
07:12to set up, in the middle of the country, a secure perimeter. It would probably take
07:17thousands of U.S. troops to secure the facility while our experts excavated the HEU that's located
07:29inside deep tunnels at a place called Isfahan.
07:32This is the Isfahan nuclear facility, deep in Iran's desert. Under this mountain, international
07:40inspectors say most of Iran's HEU is stored in scuba tank-sized containers. It's believed those
07:48containers are in tunnels so far below ground, America's bunker-busting bombs may not be able
07:55to reach them. Satellite images show in the weeks leading up to this current war,
08:00the Iranians blocked the tunnel entrances with dirt. Two weeks ago, images showed roadblocks.
08:08Nuclear analysts say it suggests Tehran is concerned about a U.S. or Israeli raid on the facility.
08:15It's not like Iran hasn't thought about the possibility that we might do this,
08:19but U.S. Special Forces have been training for deep underground facilities of one kind or another
08:26for a long, long, long time. Dr. Matthew Bunn is a former White House nuclear advisor
08:32who has spent decades trying to prevent nuclear material from falling into the wrong hands.
08:38From his perch at Harvard's Belfer Center, he monitors Iran's nuclear activity as best he can.
08:46So what you can see from a satellite is what's going on on the surface, right? But what you can't
08:52see
08:52is anything going on inside buildings, anything going on in other underground facilities.
09:00President Trump has said repeatedly that Iran's nuclear program was completely obliterated
09:07after the strikes last June. Yeah, that statement is just not true.
09:12You can't say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is
09:18obliterated, unfortunately. There's no doubt that the combination of the strikes in June of last year
09:26and the ongoing war have seriously set back Iran's capabilities. But the remaining capabilities are
09:36substantial. You can't bomb away their knowledge. UN inspectors believe Iran has close to 1,000 pounds
09:43of uranium enriched to 60 percent, nearly ready to be used in a nuclear weapon.
09:50970 pounds of 60 percent highly enriched uranium. What can you do with that?
09:56So that is enough material for, if you enrich it just a little bit more, for 10 to 11 nuclear
10:04bombs.
10:05Nuclear analysts have become increasingly concerned about another site in Iran known as Pickaxe Mountain.
10:12Satellite images from February show an entrance to what's believed to be a massive nuclear facility
10:18deep under solid rock. Can you bomb your way to Iran's stockpile and get it and remove it?
10:26I don't think that there is a lasting, durable solution to Iran's nuclear program through military means.
10:32Scott Roker was a top official in the NNSA, a 24 billion dollar agency buried inside the
10:39Department of Energy. He left in 2021. If there was a deal between the United States and Iran for
10:46the United States to take possession of that material, it would be the National Nuclear Security
10:51Administration that would lead that effort. Roker used lessons learned from Project Sapphire to remove
10:57nuclear material from countries around the world and ship it to the U.S. for safekeeping. So far,
11:03the NNSA has removed more than 16,000 pounds of HEU. There was agreement in place with the countries,
11:11and so that's a really key fact here. You want to have a willing partner who's working with you
11:16hand in hand. Cooperation. Exactly. Can it be done without that? I've never seen it done without that.
11:23Never in my experience have I seen that. If your phone rang tomorrow and your former colleague said,
11:28hey, come back, we're going into Isfahan to package this up and get it out of the country, would you
11:34go?
11:37I would go in a heartbeat. This past week, President Trump said Iran agreed to hand over its stockpile,
11:45what he calls nuclear dust, as part of a deal to end the war. Hours later, the Iranians insisted their
11:53HEU was not going anywhere. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and we're going to get the dust
12:00back. We'll get it back either. We'll get it back from them or we'll take it. Would an operation like
12:05this be worth risking American lives? In my opinion, yes. Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward is a former
12:14Navy SEAL and Deputy Director of U.S. Central Command. He led elite special operations in the Middle East
12:21and says an operation in Iran could take many weeks and require a large footprint involving all
12:28the branches of the military. It's high risk. You have to occupy territory. You have to confront.
12:36You have to force your way in. So all those risks are inherent in that operation, but we can do
12:44it.
12:44It's been said troops would have to secure a full perimeter around any facility they'd enter. They might
12:50have to bring in their own bulldozers to clear rubble, maybe even build their own landing strip in
12:56order to pull this off as a successful operation. That's what our military does. When we went into
13:02Afghanistan, we built a runway in the desert and we brought in C-17s. What does concern Vice Admiral
13:10Harward is the weapons still available to Iran on today's battlefield. The most prevalent threat is their
13:18abilities then to respond with drones, kinetic drones, maybe whatever's left in their inventory of
13:26missiles. That's your real threat to your time on the ground and the force. Would you expect casualties
13:32in an operation like this? Sure. You have to plan for that. The fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and
13:42Iran
13:42is set to expire on Wednesday. Dr. Matthew Bond says any nuclear agreement should not be based on trust,
13:51but verification. Iran has been lying about its nuclear weapons effort for over 20 years now. They
14:00have always claimed our program was 100 percent peaceful. We were never pursuing nuclear weapons.
14:06That's a lie. And then once the international inspectors got in and started finding some things
14:13out, the Iranians kept lying to them. What specifically does the United States need
14:20Iran to commit to to deal with its nuclear capabilities once and for all? I think the most
14:27important thing is no highly enriched uranium and some in-depth monitoring, international monitoring.
14:34That's what's most essential. And it's going to be very difficult now,
14:39given all of the distrust following this war, following Trump pulling out of talks repeatedly to
14:48launch more strikes. You don't sound very optimistic. I'm not very optimistic. I think we're going to be
14:56dealing with Iran's nuclear program with very few realistic tools available to us for a long time
15:04to come.
15:12Since Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel two and a half years ago when the war in Gaza began,
15:18far too many mothers, Palestinian and Israeli, have lost children. This is One Mother's Story.
15:25Her name is Rachel Goldberg-Pollett. She's an American-Israeli who moved to Jerusalem 18 years ago with her
15:32husband John and their three children. Her only son Hirsch was badly wounded and taken hostage by
15:38Hamas on October 7th. Rachel and John worked tirelessly to bring Hirsch and the other hostages
15:44home. But on the 328th day of his captivity, Hirsch was executed in a tunnel in Gaza. Now, like so
15:53many
15:53others, Rachel Goldberg-Pollett is trying to figure out how to live after her child has died.
15:59To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused, is maimed. And that's
16:10an excruciating form of suffering. And then what's so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us
16:20that Hirsch had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part because
16:30he was alive. And now I'm in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I
16:39walk through
16:41this place without a piece of me here? Have you figured that out yet? I'm trying to
16:49re-understand what it means to be in this world. There are millions of us right now
16:55who have buried children. There's nothing unique about me, but it creates light for me to try to
17:03give words to the pain. What was Hirsch like? Easy. Easy. The universe really knew what it was doing
17:14when it said, Rachel's going to have one son, so this is the one for her. I was really blessed.
17:24Hirsch and his best friend, Aneur Shapira, were at the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border
17:31on the morning of October 7th when Hamas terrorists attacked. They slaughtered 378 people
17:38and wounded hundreds more. What do you remember about the morning, October 7th?
17:45The siren started and I went and turned on my phone. And at 8 11, two messages had come in
17:52from
17:52Hirsch. The first one said, I love you. And the second one said, I'm sorry. And that was it.
17:59Everything that had ever happened in my life from the day I was born until that second was over.
18:07Hirsch sent those texts from inside this bomb shelter crammed with more than two dozen people.
18:13That's Hirsch against the wall and Aneur near the entrance. Hamas came to the doorway and was
18:19throwing in hand grenades. Aneur was picking them up and throwing them out. Picking them up and throwing
18:25them out. According to survivors, Aneur threw back at least 10 grenades.
18:35When he was killed, others took his place. In all, 16 people were killed in the shelter.
18:43Hirsch survived but was seriously wounded by a grenade. There were four young men who were not able to hide
18:49under bodies. They were all wounded and they were taken outside and put on a pickup truck and driven
18:57into Gaza. And that footage we saw for the first time when we talked with you.
19:03We spoke on October 16, Avancina and you and John. Our son, by all accounts of the witnesses, had his
19:11left arm blown off. When John said that, I realized I'd seen their son being kidnapped.
19:17Four days earlier at the Nova festival site, Israeli soldiers showed me this gruesome video recovered
19:23from a terrorist cell phone. That's Hirsch with the bones sticking out of his left forearm,
19:29being forced into a pickup truck. As soon as we got off, I said, I need to call you. Um,
19:37but I still
19:37to this day, I'm, I am sorry that that is how you found out that I was the one to
19:47tell you that
19:48there's this video. But we were so thankful and it made us know that he was taken alive,
19:54that he walked on his own two feet. And we also were really grateful that you did it in such
20:00a human
20:01way. In this sideways world, when we had the proof that he was kidnapped, that was actually good.
20:12The time is running out to save them. The time is running out to save all of us.
20:20Rachel became for many the face of the hostage crisis, meeting the Pope, world leaders and giving
20:27hundreds of interviews. We want to save Hirsch's life. We want to save all of those hostages.
20:33Every day, she wore a piece of tape on it. She'd written the number of days since Hirsch and the
20:38other 250 hostages were taken. I was always saying, I love you, stay strong, survive. I love you,
20:45stay strong, survive. I love you, stay strong, survive. Was it a command to you as well? Yes,
20:49because there were times when I would just get seized with
20:56emotional and psychological and physical pain and I would keel over onto John
21:04and I would just say, how much longer, how much longer, how much longer?
21:11On the 201st day, Hamas posted this video of Hirsch.
21:16And we see the stump of his arm. It was a propaganda video.
21:19Yes. And that gave us another bolt of adrenaline. Keep going, keep going. This child needs you.
21:31Hirsch! Hirsch!
21:35It's mama.
21:37On the 328th day, Rachel and John joined other hostage families,
21:42screaming their loved ones' names into a microphone towards Gaza.
21:47I need both! I need both!
21:51Rachel didn't know it then, but that was the day her son was murdered by Hamas.
21:57We ended up finding out they killed him that day. And so I wonder, did he hear me?
22:05Do you think he did? I think there are other ways
22:09that you can hear your parents screaming for you, even if you don't hear them.
22:14It was in this underground tunnel in Rafa on August 31st, 2024, Israeli soldiers found Hirsch's body.
22:22He and five other hostages had been executed. Hirsch was shot six times at close range.
22:29When his body was brought back to Israel, thousands lined the streets and attended his funeral.
22:36Finally, my sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally, you're free!
22:42Rachel and John continued to advocate for the remaining hostages,
22:46but they were desperate for details about the last year of their son's life.
22:51Then, in February 2025, something remarkable happened. A hostage named Orr Levy was released
22:59by Hamas along with two others. When Orr was reunited with his family and three-year-old son,
23:07he learned his wife, Enav, was killed on October 7th. He was also told Hirsch had been murdered.
23:14It broke me, and I told my parents right away, I want to meet their parents.
23:21It turned out Orr had spent three days with Hirsch in a tunnel, and he says something
23:26Hirsch told him saved his life. Seeing this guy without a hand,
23:34and you know what he did? He laughed about it. About his hand?
23:38Yeah. He laughed about everything, and he smiled the entire time.
23:41He wasn't broken. No, he wasn't.
23:44Hirsch kept repeating this mantra, he who has a why can bear any how.
23:48He who has a why can bear any how is a mantra Hirsch got from this book, Man's Search for
23:55Meaning,
23:56a 1946 concentration camp memoir by a survivor, Viktor Frankl, who'd adapted a similar saying by Friedrich Nietzsche.
24:05It became our mantra. Everybody there. Everybody there.
24:08That idea that if you have a why, you can survive. You can do anything.
24:15Soon after, he was freed. Orr got Hirsch's mantra tattooed on his arm.
24:20My son, he asked me, what does it say? He doesn't speak English. And I just left, and I said,
24:26your name.
24:27Your name. Because that's your why.
24:30This is my why. The only reason why I survived was him.
24:35What was Hirsch's why?
24:36I asked Orr that, and he said, he went like this. You.
24:42It was this shocking, life-affirming CPR from beyond to have Hirsch through Orr telling us,
24:55what's your why going to be? Because you can bear this, even this, even losing me, you could do it.
25:02And so part of what I'm trying so hard to do now is to figure out what is my why.
25:08Rachel was told something else by Orr that gave her tremendous comfort.
25:13He said, it's important that you know that he told me that my mother spoke to
25:20the Secretary of State in the U.S.
25:22Hershey told him that.
25:24Yeah. And I said, he heard on the news I had spoken to the Secretary of State. And he said,
25:28no, he heard you on the news. And it was like, all of a sudden, thank God.
25:38First of all, that he heard my voice.
25:43And that he knew we are nobodies. We are absolute nobodies.
25:48I even say the equivalent of John Doe in the Jewish world is Rachel Goldberg.
25:56But we tried so hard. And he knew.
26:00When we met Rachel in Jerusalem in February, days before the new war with Iran,
26:06she'd recently finished writing a book called When We See You Again, which comes out this week.
26:12You write in the book, people want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing.
26:18They want thriving and rising from the ashes like the phoenix from the days of yore.
26:22But the pain is chronic, ever-present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear.
26:29That's how it feels.
26:31That's how it feels now.
26:36I'm open to it feeling different.
26:38Have you noticed a change?
26:40I think my understanding of grief has changed. I was dreading and uncomfortable with grief.
26:49And recently, I had this whole different thought of maybe grief is actually just this precious badge
26:59of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.
27:09When the body of the last hostage was returned this past January,
27:13it had been 843 days since the October 7th attack.
27:18Rachel and John finally took down the pieces of tape their family had worn and stuck on a wall in
27:24their apartment.
27:26That's the day we buried her.
27:27So many lives, so many innocent lives on both sides, lost.
27:36Rachel has kept Hirsch's room as he left it.
27:40And that's the tape that we took here.
27:42Oh my gosh, it's extraordinary to see all the pain and everything that is in that ball.
27:47You know, it's like these symbols of failure.
27:50What we were fighting for did happen.
27:53We got all of these people home, not as we wanted.
27:56We wanted them home alive, but they had come home.
28:00You said it's these are all symbols of failure.
28:03Do you think you fail?
28:04Yeah.
28:05You did more than anybody could possibly do.
28:09It's true.
28:10And sometimes a hundred percent is not enough.
28:28If you're a rock and roll fan, you already know Stuart Copeland.
28:32Drumming legend Copeland, Andy Summers, and a guy named Sting romped to global stardom as the police in the 1970s.
28:41So we were intrigued to learn that Copeland had teamed up with celebrated naturalist Martin Stewart for a pioneering album,
28:49sharing the limelight, not with Sting, but with hyenas, owls, and howler monkeys.
28:55Called Wild Concerto, the album is based on Martin Stewart's life work, an extraordinary collection of audio recordings of the
29:04world's living creatures.
29:05Some are now extinct or endangered, making Wild Concerto as much a manifesto as a music album.
29:13We had to hear more.
29:20There's really only one way to start the day at the world's most famous recording studio.
29:28Martin, in the flesh at last.
29:32How are you, Stuart?
29:32It's so great to see you.
29:33We've been so deep into our mission here.
29:35Martin Stewart, Stewart Copeland, this unlikely pair, the quiet naturalist and the intrepid rock star,
29:43I hope you have fun with this music.
29:45We're here at Abbey Road to turn animal sounds into a concerto, here in the same studio the Fab Four
29:53made famous.
29:54No pressure.
30:00Unbelievable, the history in here is just...
30:03Imagine McCartney running up and down those stairs.
30:06This almost makes us Beatles.
30:09But today, it's the animal kingdom that gets its shot at stardom.
30:22It's superstar time for the wrens, bears, frogs and hundreds more.
30:29That's the kookaburra.
30:31While the humans play backup.
30:36That's the wonga pigeon.
30:39Even better, we're good.
30:41Brilliant.
30:42Let's move on.
30:45Wild Concerto is a groundbreaking album based on the unmatched audio archive of Martin Stewart.
30:53He's crisscrossed the planet for decades, collecting nearly 100,000 recordings of its wild inhabitants.
31:02Stewart Copeland wrote the music.
31:05When you send me your original raw samples.
31:07All he had to do was wade through 30,000 hours of field recordings to choose which animals would get
31:15the star treatment.
31:16The screaming pia was a natural.
31:21There's the bird in question.
31:23Here is the orchestral version of that bird.
31:33It's just brilliant.
31:35Copeland told us it was the raw sounds of the animals themselves that dictated what instruments he chose.
31:41Take this tune by some Arctic wolves.
31:44First of all, we have the wolves on their own.
31:51Beautiful, right?
31:52Still makes my hair stand no matter.
31:55Okay, let's hear that with the orchestra.
32:11That's a trombone with the walls.
32:16They're not actual notes, but you put an instrument with them and those animals become Pavarotti.
32:27In the recording studio, the wolves howled into the musicians' headsets.
32:42Yep, we got it.
32:43I'm going to come out there, kiss and hug every single one of you, so pucker up, babies.
32:49Thank you so much, everybody.
32:52You rock!
32:58Copeland should know.
32:59You may remember his rock star days when he wielded drumsticks as if they were lethal weapons.
33:05As one-third of the police, Copeland banged his way to the upper reaches of pop stardom.
33:11Every breath you take
33:13The police sold more than 75 million records.
33:18Every fire you take
33:19Singing along yet?
33:21Rock the sand
33:24By 1986, the party was over.
33:27The police were busted.
33:29You don't ever want to see me again.
33:32But it didn't take long before Copeland's propulsive drumming
33:35landed him a new gig and put him on a glide path to becoming a composer.
33:41How did that happen?
33:43I blame Francis Coppola.
33:45It's his fault.
33:46You blame him.
33:46Yes, yes.
33:47His thing is to find the talent and give him rope.
33:51And he got a drummer from a rock band and hired me to score his movie because his concept was
33:58it's all about rhythm.
33:59This is Rumblefish?
34:00This is Rumblefish.
34:03Copeland told us he knew nothing about film scores, but he knew rhythm.
34:09So he arranged barking dogs, clacking billiard balls, and pile drivers in rhythmic loops,
34:17making music for what he called found sound.
34:23For horror films, this here is very useful.
34:26More movies followed.
34:30Then he started writing classical music.
34:34This here is an opera that I did with the Deutsch National Theater in Germany.
34:37Copeland told us he'd found a new love.
34:40Because the main thing you want to do as a composer is create parts that are fun to play.
34:47As he showed us around his Los Angeles studio stuffed with instruments.
34:53He says he noodles around on them all when he's composing.
34:58The drummer, who had never followed a sheet of music, had become a maestro.
35:03You loved the drums right from the start.
35:06The power.
35:06The power.
35:07What is it about the orchestra you love so much?
35:10It's the beauty.
35:11You know, my daddy raised me to be a jazz musician.
35:14Meanwhile, just quietly, my mother was playing Stravinsky, Ravel, WC.
35:19And that hit me emotionally.
35:21Now I've got, dun-dun-dun-wah!
35:24I've got like, in one ear, I've got Jimi Hendrix, in the other ear, I've got Igor Stravinsky.
35:29And so they've always both kind of been there, interacting in my brain.
35:33We will hear these sounds in Wild Concerto.
35:35Yeah, as well as all these.
35:39And these.
35:42A world away, different music was pouring into the ears of Martin Stewart.
35:47He's been eavesdropping on nature now for more than 60 years.
35:51It started when he was 11.
35:53Armed with a tape recorder,
35:54he'd escaped to the Bluebell Woods near his home in Middle England.
36:00His first recordings?
36:01This Eurasian blackbird.
36:05What started as a boyhood lark became a career with a mission.
36:13I always believe the reason I'm on this planet is to fight for the animals and the environment.
36:19And it's kind of my rent for being here.
36:22I feel empowered to kind of give that message.
36:25And what is that message?
36:27We're losing some of the most precious species on Earth.
36:32I can go back to places that have been monitored over a period of 20 years.
36:37And the change is significant.
36:40And audio has done that.
36:41Audio is the barometer of the planet.
36:43If you want to know the health of the stream or the river, the dipper will tell you.
36:48The frog will tell you the health of the marsh.
36:51And the birds will tell you the health of the planet.
36:56At home in Florida, Stewart told us he still takes his microphone out every day,
37:02like a doctor with a stethoscope.
37:05Watch the spiders, Bill.
37:06He listens to the rhythms of the natural world.
37:09I hear that white noise of the ocean, the cicada.
37:18These days, he's deeply worried about a catastrophic decline in wildlife populations around the world.
37:27Stewart has the last known recording of the golden Panamanian frog here in its digital form.
37:37The northern white rhino is also extinct in the wild.
37:44Other recordings give no hint of the danger he overcame to get them.
37:49Here's a howler monkey spoiling for a fight.
37:54And the crocodile that swallowed one of his microphones.
38:01We have the hyenas here.
38:02Stewart Copeland told us his favorite animal was the hyena.
38:07A rare recording from the skeleton coast in Namibia.
38:11Well, they have a very wide vocabulary.
38:15They make loving sounds. They make aggressive sounds.
38:18How does the loving sound sound like?
38:21That's interesting.
38:23In fact, I'll share with you that my wife and I have adopted the hyena love sounds
38:30as a part of our relationship.
38:32A little kinky, but it works.
38:37And then they have the laughing hyena.
38:39They actually do.
38:42No surprise, the hyenas got their own cut on wild concerto.
38:53How did you come up with a composition that enhanced the sound of the hyenas?
38:59I have asked the Lord above that question many times.
39:02And what did he say?
39:03He said, I don't know, just see if you can make a living out of it.
39:06Just be you.
39:07This is just magic. It's magical.
39:10Martin Stewart told us working at Abbey Road was a revelation.
39:14He's used to being alone in wild spaces at the ends of the earth.
39:19So we wondered what had made Stewart share his life work with a rock star.
39:25What made you decide to do that?
39:28I'm living with cancer.
39:32It's hard to talk about that stuff, Bill.
39:35But I got ill.
39:40My niece, Amanda, who works at the BBC, and she said,
39:45we have to preserve your archive.
39:48You need people to see what you have.
39:52Stewart told us his illness is not the only crisis he's dealing with.
39:56He fears more animals are facing extinction as the world keeps growing.
40:01Part of his audio archive has become a mausoleum to past lives.
40:07If we keep stealing from nature, then the inevitable is going to happen.
40:12We're going to lose a lot more.
40:14What is the inevitable?
40:16Mass extinction.
40:18When you think about what we've lost in my lifetime, there's no change.
40:24It's not slowing down.
40:26And I don't know how to slow it down.
40:29But if you show people the beauty of something and get them to fall in love with that,
40:34maybe we can tip something.
40:37He says he hopes wild concerto will draw in those who wouldn't otherwise listen to a screaming pia or a
40:45go-away bird.
40:47Count Copeland among the converted.
40:50Okay, what's the walla, walla, walla, walla?
40:52Here we go.
40:57What's that?
40:58Walla, walla, walla.
40:59Which is the marbled frogmouth.
41:01Marbled frogmouth.
41:02I remember that.
41:06Copeland told us he hopes wild concerto will immortalize those animal songs.
41:11A human tribute, a heartfelt elegy to Mother Nature's orchestra.
41:33Take a tour through Stuart Copeland's studio.
41:36Sting gave me this little guitar here.
41:38At 60MinutesOvertime.com
41:47The last minute of 60 Minutes is sponsored by UnitedHealthcare.
41:52Coverage you can count on for your whole life ahead.
41:58Chef Jose Andres was born in Spain and became an American citizen in 2014.
42:03His relief organization, World Central Kitchen, has served 600 million meals to people in need.
42:10We asked Jose Andres, how does food fit into America's story?
42:16America is a food nation, founded as a land of longer tables, where everybody is welcome.
42:23But food is more than our traditions.
42:26It is also our future.
42:28The strength of America depends on how we feed ourselves, but also how we feed the world.
42:37How we care for the people who grow, harvest, and cook our food.
42:43And how we make sure no child goes hungry.
42:47It's our responsibility as the richest nation in history to feed the hungry and care for the poor.
42:56It's our legacy.
42:58It's our destiny.
43:01In our worst moments, the best of America shows up at our long table and reminds us who we are.
43:11We the people.
43:14Only then, food becomes hope.
43:18I'm Anderson Cooper.
43:20We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
43:23Let's wait.
43:23Let's do it.
43:24Let's do it.
43:26I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
43:30I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
43:33I'm sorry.
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