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60 Minutes - Season 58 - Episode 07: The Family Farm; Collateral Damage; The Indomitable Margaret Atwood
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00:06American farmers have long struggled with high costs and low prices for their crops.
00:11But this year, amid trade wars and tariffs, there is even greater uncertainty in the fields.
00:18I hear it's affecting your health.
00:20Yes. Four blood pressure pills a day. Three different medicines. Two years ago, none.
00:25What do you think about when you go to bed at night?
00:27What's going to be left in a year?
00:30Am I the one that broke what started in the late 1800s?
00:38So this is your lab.
00:40Tonight, inside the labs, where scientists are conducting life-saving research,
00:45they worry will become collateral damage in a political war between the White House and the nation's elite universities, including
00:52Harvard.
00:53The attack on universities is a tragic blunder.
00:56For all the foibles of universities, and there are many universities, research makes life better, massively so.
01:04Why would you want to cripple it?
01:10Here she is taking a flamethrower to her own book.
01:13Margaret Atwood was firing back at would-be book burners.
01:18Her books have been banned for content deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, anti-Christian.
01:24The government put out an edict to all school boards saying that they couldn't have any books in the library
01:30that had either direct or indirect sex.
01:33What is indirect sex?
01:39I'm Leslie Stahl.
01:40I'm Scott Pelley.
01:42I'm Bill Whitaker.
01:43I'm Anderson Cooper.
01:44I'm Sharon Alfonsi.
01:46I'm John Wertheim.
01:47I'm Cecilia Vega.
01:48Those stories and in the last minute, what viewers thought about our interview with President Trump, tonight on 60 Minutes.
02:04American farmers have long struggled with high costs and low prices for their crops.
02:09But this year, there is even greater uncertainty in the fields.
02:12China stopped buying all U.S. soybeans in May, retaliation for President Trump's tariffs.
02:19Many American farmers were left without their largest export market.
02:23President Trump and China's President Xi Jinping came to a temporary truce.
02:28But farmers told us that whatever happens next with tariffs, the problems on their farms continue to run deep.
02:35We went to rural Tennessee and Missouri and met soybean and cotton farmers who told us they feared they could
02:42be the generation to lose the family farm.
02:46Welcome to the 170th Annual West Tennessee State Fair in Henderson, Tennessee.
02:53Since 1855, the West Tennessee State Fair has been the place where farmers from across the state come to show
03:00off their prized livestock and crops.
03:03It's where we met Jeffrey Daniels and Franklin Carmack, friends since high school.
03:09They grow cotton, soybeans and corn on their family farms.
03:13As far back as I've been able to trace, my great-granddaddy's daddy was a sharecropper and then just got
03:22passed down through the generations.
03:24I guess you could say you've got farming in your blood.
03:26Yes.
03:26Yes, ma'am.
03:27And it's got to be in your blood nowadays to keep doing it.
03:30Both of us are fifth-generation farmers.
03:32Instead of showing crops at the fair this year, like other farmers, they are selling T-shirts made from the
03:38cotton they grow to offset their losses in the fields.
03:42They sold about 250 shirts.
03:45At $35 a piece, it was hardly enough.
03:49This year combined, they expect to lose nearly $800,000, leaving them in the red like many farmers across the
03:58country.
03:59Major row crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat, have not been profitable since at least 2022.
04:07You know, we're selling our commodities at the same price that we were selling them for and that our grandparents
04:15were selling them for in the 70s.
04:18So, you know, if you think about that, what can you go buy today that costs the same as it
04:25did in the 70s?
04:26Nothing.
04:27Nothing.
04:28Times are especially tough now because of what are called input costs, everything a farmer needs to pull income from
04:36the ground,
04:36such as seed, equipment parts and fertilizer.
04:40Those costs have increased by more than 30 percent in the last five years, in part due to inflation and
04:48rising interest rates.
04:50The morale in the farming industry, not just farmers, is the lowest I've ever seen.
04:56Everybody's on edge.
04:58In the first six months of 2025, there were 57 percent more farm bankruptcies than the same period last year.
05:08Daniels and Carmack say tariffs have made this year even harder.
05:12Every time we go buy something now, you know, the tariffs, what I've seen, the tariffs pass down to the
05:20consumer.
05:21So if you have to go buy a new sprayer, like the one behind you.
05:25Anything that comes from China that's on that sprayer, there's a tariff and they're just going to pass it directly
05:30to us.
05:31So the tariffs are hitting you more on the purchasing end than they are on the crop sales end.
05:36China primarily uses soybeans to feed its massive livestock industry, grinding the beans into powder for feed.
05:45Soybeans have long been the largest U.S. export crop worth nearly $25 billion last year, until sales ground to
05:54a halt this past May.
05:56This weighs around 5,000 pounds.
05:58Wow.
05:58It's not just the soybean market.
06:01Cotton farmers have struggled with dwindling prices and decreased global demand as clothing manufacturers use more synthetic fabrics.
06:10Daniels and Carmack have had to take on second and third jobs, not just selling T-shirts, but driving trucks
06:17and repairing boats when they are not in their fields.
06:20You've said you have almost no equity left.
06:23It's getting down.
06:23It's getting down.
06:24It's getting low.
06:25You think you can make it another year?
06:27I don't know.
06:30I don't know.
06:32Do you just keep going, rolling the dice, hoping things will turn?
06:38I mean, it's not looking good.
06:42President Trump has promised a new bailout for American farmers, as much as $13 billion that he said would be
06:50paid for by the tariffs.
06:52We're going to take some of that tariff money that we made.
06:54We're going to give it to our farmers, who are, for a little while, going to be hurt until it
07:00kicks in.
07:01The tariffs kick into their benefit.
07:03Like most farmers we spoke to, Daniels and Carmack say they'd rather work their fields than rely on taxpayer money.
07:10It will help pay some bills, but that's not fixing the problem.
07:14It's a band-aid when we need stitches.
07:17Can you wait?
07:18Can you wait this out?
07:19Farm families can't wait.
07:21I hear it's affecting your health.
07:23Yes.
07:24Four blood pressure pills a day.
07:26Three different medicines.
07:28Two years ago, none.
07:31What do you think about when you go to bed at night?
07:38What's going to be left in a year, two years?
07:42Am I the one that broke what started in the late 1800s?
07:49Nearly all U.S. farms are family-owned, and farmers told us one of the greatest pressures they face today
07:57is maintaining that legacy, keeping their farms and the family in the face of mounting debts.
08:03We were surprised by how often our conversations turned to the issue of farmers taking their own lives, something that
08:11has plagued farming communities for generations.
08:15But farmers we spoke to told us concerns for their neighbors rise when crop sales drop.
08:21This is really odd for me.
08:23This video went viral in the agriculture community last year.
08:27Soybean farmer Alex Kerr showed a grim reality in Illinois, where he also sells used farm equipment.
08:34There are three tractors up here that I bought on auction.
08:39I'm not going to tell you which ones, but they came off of suicide.
08:47The reason that the farmers are no longer there, the reason I've got the tractors.
08:52The suicide rate among agriculture workers is three times higher than the general working population, according to the CDC's most
09:01recent data in 2021.
09:04Our reporting shows that many rural mental health groups are now seeing increased crisis calls to their hotlines.
09:12Do you feel like something's different right now?
09:14I do.
09:15And to put my finger on it, it's just, it's really hard.
09:18But I know the numbers are going up.
09:20I know more people are affected.
09:22I know the prices of everything get higher and higher.
09:25And the stresses are added to it.
09:28Jolie Foreman runs Shelby County Cares, a nonprofit focused on the high number of suicides among farmers.
09:35The organization is named after her eastern Missouri county, where there are no stoplights and one therapist for 6,000
09:43people.
09:44When you first started, you were seeing how many people take their own lives?
09:47So back in 22, if you calculated it out, it was averaging out to about a life every three months.
09:54And it was like, this has to stop.
09:56Though it's difficult to know how many lives have been saved, Foreman believes her program is working.
10:03Shelby County had the highest rate of suicide per capita in the state of Missouri.
10:08Suicide is so hard.
10:09We cannot really determine our success.
10:12We only can calculate the losses.
10:14But we do know that the numbers here had started to trend down.
10:20But in neighboring Macon County, Missouri, just a few miles away, there were two confirmed farm suicides this year.
10:28Research shows that for every suicide, 130 people are affected.
10:32Are you worried you could see an increase because of the situation?
10:35Yeah, and just knowing that the counties around us have had increased deaths by suicide, that's, I think, why the
10:43communities came together so well.
10:46Shelby County Cares connects farmers with therapists, either in person or remotely.
10:51Foreman said walk-ins and calls to her office have increased since the beginning of the year.
10:56She's learned the best way to get farmers who are traditionally stoic and fiercely independent to talk is through their
11:04wives and their stomachs.
11:06Today, we're going to make taco soup and crockpot ranch pork chops and pulled barbecue chicken.
11:13Her way in is a regular gathering of farmers' wives and friends, where we met as they prepared meal kits.
11:19How many of you have been touched by suicide in your lives or your communities?
11:26Almost everybody at this table.
11:28They isolate.
11:29They bottle things up.
11:31They think they need to solve their own problems.
11:33And they're afraid to reach out and they're afraid to lean on people.
11:36So they may feel that there's no other way or that somebody's going to be better off without them.
11:42It's very much this perception of you have to be strong, you have to be tough.
11:48You know, the weight of the world is ultimately on your shoulders.
11:52Do you know farmers personally who have taken their own lives?
11:56I do.
11:56I do.
11:58I mean, in my own family, we've definitely had tragedy and have lost some very, you know, important people in
12:05our own family.
12:06Come on, girl!
12:06Since the 1970s, Jolie's father-in-law, Brent Foreman, has lost three relatives, all farmers, to suicide.
12:15Two neighbors of the family farm also recently took their own lives.
12:19I've always had a fear for my kids and now my grandkids that we sure don't want history to repeat
12:27itself.
12:28You know, no matter how bad things get, things always have a way of working out.
12:32They'll always get better.
12:34Brent and his son, Gerald, grow more than 1,000 acres of soybeans and 650 acres of corn on a
12:42farm they manage themselves.
12:43They also raise more than 200 head of cattle, which means they are not reliant on soybeans as their sole
12:50source of income
12:51and can afford to wait for details on President Trump's new trade deal.
12:56I have a lot of faith in him and a lot of trust in him.
12:59And I think he's trying to make us the best deal he can for the whole country, but for the
13:05American farmer, for the long term.
13:09Nearly 80 percent of voters in what are called farming-dependent counties voted for President Trump in the last election.
13:16I feel like a lot of American farmers, cattle people, it's a lot, a lot of people probably feel let
13:25down currently.
13:26Now, maybe there's a method to the madness, you know, that's still to be seen.
13:31Many are now taking their frustrations directly to Republican lawmakers at town halls across the country.
13:38I'm about ready to lose my farm. I am pissed and I'm pissed at you.
13:43This fall, the White House promised a $40 billion bailout of Argentina and its president, Javier Millet, President Trump's political
13:53ally.
13:54Argentina also grows soybeans and is considered a competitor.
13:58During the trade war, China had purchased soybeans from Argentina instead of buying them from the U.S.
14:04The bailout enraged many American farmers who felt betrayed.
14:08President Trump said, Argentina has got no money, they have no anything, they're fighting so hard to survive.
14:16Come to the farm. Come walk in my shoes.
14:22What would you show the president if he took you up on your offer to come and see the farm?
14:27I'd show him the daily life that I do, from cleaning equipment, running equipment, dispatching trucks, and then I'd hand
14:35him a stack of bills.
14:38And then I would show him the receipts, what I'm getting from my crop, and he's a smart man.
14:42I'm not going to take that away from him.
14:44And it won't take him to five minutes to say, this isn't going to work.
14:57For generations, federal research funding to universities has fueled breakthroughs in medicine, technology, and national defense.
15:05Now, the White House is using that support as leverage, pressuring a dozen elite universities to align with President Trump's
15:13political agenda or risk losing funding.
15:16The government has used the power of the purse before to shape higher education, but President Trump's effort is unprecedented
15:24in scale.
15:24He's accused universities of anti-Semitism and liberal bias, demanding they do more to safeguard conservative voices.
15:33Some universities have cut deals to protect their funding, but Harvard, the nation's oldest university and the president's most prominent
15:41target, has refused, citing academic freedom.
15:44The threat has disrupted hundreds of Harvard research labs, forcing scientists to halt projects, lose staff,
15:52and fear their work is becoming collateral damage in a political fight that could jeopardize the future of American discovery
16:00itself.
16:02If you were talking to the American public, what would your research do for them?
16:08My research has the potential to prevent their daughters and their wives and their cousins from developing breast cancer.
16:17And I don't think any taxpayer would want to interfere with progress on a project like that.
16:23Joan Brugge is director of the Ludwig Cancer Center at Harvard Medical School.
16:28For 50 years, she has applied for and won competitive federal grants that helped uncover how tumors form and resist
16:36treatment and discovered innovative therapies.
16:39Did I send you that note about that?
16:41When her million-dollar annual funding was canceled last spring, she was leading a team that had identified the earliest
16:48precursors of breast cancer.
16:50The ultimate goal is to find a treatment that will eliminate those cells that carry the mutations.
16:56And in effect, prevent the cancer.
16:59Yes, prevent the cancer.
17:01Last spring, you got an email.
17:04What did it say?
17:05It listed two grants from the National Institute of Health and said that they were terminated.
17:11Terminated.
17:12Terminated.
17:13What went through your mind?
17:14It was just like a gut punch.
17:17My knees buckled and I had to sit down because I just never imagined that research focused on a disease
17:25like cancer would be canceled for a reason that was unrelated to the quality of the research or the progress
17:31of the research.
17:32But this was across the board for issues relating to diversity and anti-Semitism at Harvard.
17:39Accusations of anti-Semitism at Harvard stem from student protests over the Gaza War that often were hostile to Israel.
17:47Harvard tightened rules around protests and commissioned reports on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
17:53A survey on campus found that 40 percent of Jewish staff, faculty and students who responded said they felt discriminated
18:02against because of their views.
18:04Seventy-one percent of Muslim respondents said the same.
18:08President Trump has focused on anti-Semitism at Harvard.
18:12I think Harvard's a disgrace.
18:13I think what they did was a disgrace.
18:15They're obviously anti-Semitic.
18:17The president broadened his criticism and called for dismantling DEI and for audits on hiring, admissions, and academic programs.
18:27When Harvard refused federal oversight, the Trump administration froze more than $2 billion in grants, mostly for scientific and medical
18:37research.
18:38So has your progress been stalled?
18:41So our progress has been significantly affected.
18:43Now, I'm spending most of my time ringing doorbells to find alternate funding so that we can keep the lab
18:51going.
18:51This past April, Harvard sued the government to regain its funding.
18:56And in September, a federal judge sided with Harvard and ruled the funding freeze unlawful, saying the Trump administration used
19:06anti-Semitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault
19:12and ordered all the money restored.
19:14The funds have started to flow again, at least for now.
19:18But researchers say much damage has been done.
19:22And the Trump administration has vowed to appeal the judge's ruling and block Harvard from receiving future grants.
19:29There's now this existential threat that this could happen again.
19:33What does that mean for science, that uncertainty?
19:36It will eventually draw people away from the United States to carry out research where that kind of threat and
19:43that kind of insecurity doesn't exist.
19:46You're this whole building?
19:48Bioengineer Don Ingber is founding director of the Wyss Institute at Harvard.
19:53Like the university's medical and public health schools, it is not on Harvard's main campus in Cambridge where protests erupted.
20:00It's in Boston, three miles away across the Charles River.
20:05Did things get out of control at all these universities?
20:08Yes, I think they did.
20:10Have universities, including Harvard, made amends and made things better?
20:14The answer is yes.
20:15The Trump administration has accused Harvard of discrimination and says the federal government doesn't have to give money to the
20:25university.
20:26What do you say to that?
20:28The money that's given to the university for scientific research and medical research is not just given.
20:35We have to compete for it.
20:36And we are doing a service for the United States because they've identified needs that need to be met.
20:43This is your lab.
20:44Yes, this is where we do the organ chip cultures.
20:47Ingber relies largely on federal funding for his work identifying new therapies using what he calls organs on chips.
20:56This breakthrough technology, tiny tissue-line devices, can replace animal testing.
21:02So what does that allow you to do?
21:04We can study how the body normally works.
21:07We study response to drugs, response to toxins, drug delivery systems.
21:12Federal grants have made up almost half the university's research funding.
21:18Ingber and other scientists told us government support of university research, now under threat,
21:24is what has powered America's scientific supremacy in the world.
21:29We are truly putting the brakes on scientific innovation in this country at a time where our
21:36ostensible adversary, China, is just going faster and faster and faster.
21:41You have said that we are handing our future to China.
21:47On a silver platter, absolutely.
21:49If we can't be the leader, we're going to be the follower.
21:53Harvard and the federal government have been in settlement talks for months.
21:57And in a statement, the Department of Education told us the Trump administration is actively working
22:04toward a deal with Harvard that holds them accountable for egregious civil rights violations
22:09and discrimination on campus, while restoring generous taxpayer dollar support to the institution.
22:16Harvard, in turn, says it's working to improve existing programs promoting ideological diversity.
22:24Harvard has not done enough to ensure a wide range of opinions being represented on campus.
22:29Harvard psychology professor Stephen Pinker has been a member of the faculty for 22 years
22:35and has been outspoken about what he says is liberal bias on campus.
22:41In your estimation, where has Harvard gone wrong?
22:45I think there have been too many incidents in which someone has expressed a controversial opinion
22:49and has been shamed or canceled.
22:52He points to biology lecturer Carol Hooven, who says she felt ostracized on campus
22:59after her remarks on Fox News in 2021 sparked controversy.
23:04And the facts are that there are, in fact, two sexes.
23:07There are male and female.
23:09She has said the criticism and pushback on campus drove her to resign.
23:14President Trump has described Harvard as a liberal mess, that it has been hiring almost all woke,
23:22radical, left idiots and bird brains.
23:25Yes.
23:26The language is a bit harsh, but does he have a point here?
23:30Not there, no.
23:31I do not agree with that.
23:33I think there's a grain of truth in that.
23:35What's the grain of truth?
23:36I think there should be more voices on the right at Harvard.
23:40I don't want Donald Trump to decide who those people are going to be or how many we should have.
23:45You do have the president, and you have lots of supporters of the president who say,
23:49we don't like what they're doing there at Harvard.
23:51So why should my tax dollars go to support its research?
23:56Do you want Alzheimer's to be cured?
23:58Do you want cancer treatments for kids?
24:00Do you want treatments for people with paralysis?
24:05Consider Harvard chemist and molecular biologist David Liu,
24:08a winner of this year's Breakthrough Prize, often called the Oscars of Science.
24:14To inject into the mice.
24:15He says the instability of federal funding is making it difficult for him to retain and attract researchers.
24:22The funding is restored. Does that fix the problem?
24:26Science research, at the cutting edge especially, is a slow-moving process.
24:32When you disrupt that process, it can take years to, you have to hire those people back,
24:38you have to generate those samples, many of which are perishable.
24:42David Liu and his team invented gene editing tools that can correct and rewrite defective genes.
24:50Here's a small segment of the human genome.
24:53You have six billion of these letters.
24:54This sequence causes brain disease.
24:58It's caused by these four extra letters.
25:00So a prime editor finds that sequence and then replaces it.
25:05And you get to type in the sequence that you want to replace it with.
25:09Just fix it.
25:10Fix it at the root cause.
25:11Gene editing technologies invented in David Liu's labs at Harvard and here at the non-profit Broad Institute
25:19could one day help hundreds of millions worldwide with genetic diseases like sickle cell and muscular dystrophy.
25:27This is a tube of the DNA instructions that finds a DNA sequence of our choosing.
25:35Just that unassuming clear liquid.
25:38That's right.
25:38We can fix the mutation, fix the disease, and hopefully never have to treat the patient again.
25:44It was this tiny little syringe.
25:47And it was just one injection of this little vial.
25:51Just one injection of this tiny little vial.
25:56And that was it.
25:58Alyssa Tapley, who lives outside London, was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.
26:05She endured a year of failed treatments, chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, and her doctors ran out of options.
26:13I was 13 when I was told that I was going to die.
26:17And they're talking about end-of-life care?
26:20Yeah.
26:20And I said, please don't give up on me because I haven't done anything with my life.
26:25I'm just going to be this kid who died because of cancer.
26:29Her doctor read about Professor Liu's novel gene editing research and thought it might, just might, help Alyssa.
26:38Ready for yourself?
26:39She became the first human to try the experimental treatment made possible by U.S. federal funding.
26:46I knew if I did it, even if it didn't end up working, it would end up making a difference
26:52to somebody else's life.
26:54Definitely.
26:55Now 16, she vividly remembers the day her doctor told her the experimental treatment had worked.
27:02After thinking for so long that this was it and, you know, there was nothing left and I would never
27:08be able to grow up,
27:09I finally had this future again that no one could take away from me.
27:15Cancer-free?
27:17Yep.
27:19All from that little vial?
27:20It's astounding what research can do and what people can do with the resources that they're given.
27:28Research works.
27:29If you want to freeze society where it is, then cripple the research enterprise.
27:34Is that whole idea being lost in the harsh rhetoric by the administration?
27:40The attack on universities is a tragic blunder.
27:47For all the foibles of universities, and there are many, and I've pointed them out,
27:52universities' research makes life better massively so.
27:56Why would you want to cripple it?
27:58It's something that the United States does really, really well.
28:12You're an 85-year-old titan of literature.
28:15Have been for a half century now.
28:17You're Canada's best-known author, 64 books and counting.
28:21And increasingly, you find your work on lists of banned books,
28:25scrubbed from 135 American school districts.
28:28Yes, that includes your breakthrough work, the dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.
28:33But you've also been censored for work like The Testaments and The Blind Assassin,
28:38both of which won the Booker Prize, the top award for English-language fiction.
28:43What to do?
28:44Sure, you take to the keyboard and write sternly worded opinion pieces.
28:48But if you're the indomitable Margaret Atwood, you don't stop there.
28:55Here she is taking a flamethrower to her own book.
28:59Atwood was firing back at would-be book burners by torching an unburnable edition.
29:05It was all promotion for a charity auction to benefit Pan America,
29:09a nonprofit that champions free speech.
29:13Atwood's books have been banned for content deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, anti-Christian.
29:19She told us she was particularly peeved when a recent ban came from Edmonton, Alberta, in her own country.
29:26The government put out an edict to all school boards saying that they couldn't have any books in the library
29:31that had either direct or indirect sex.
29:35What is indirect sex?
29:37No, I don't know what it would be.
29:39You've had any indirect sex lately?
29:42Second wave feminism here.
29:44Atwood speaks as she writes, with a mix of wisdom and deadpan wit.
29:49Last month, she invited us into her Toronto home.
29:52Do you know offhand how many languages your books have been translated in?
29:55Well, we say over 50 for everything.
29:58How old are you?
29:59Over 50?
30:00How many books have you written?
30:02Over 50?
30:03How many awards have you won?
30:04Over 50.
30:05I thought so.
30:07Under his eye.
30:08Under his eye.
30:09Published in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale depicts a near-future America overtaken by religious dictatorship,
30:16where a dwindling number of fertile women are forced to cloak themselves in red
30:21and bear children for the elite.
30:23Give me children or else I die.
30:27The book would sell more than 10 million copies and spawn an Emmy-winning Hulu series.
30:32Beyond that, its scarlet costume would become a uniform of real-life protest and resistance.
30:38Shame! Shame!
30:40Handmaid's Tale is your magnum opus.
30:42You think?
30:43You're Great Gatsby.
30:44How are you with that?
30:45Well, I would question the premise.
30:49You would?
30:50Yeah.
30:51It's not due to me or the excellence of the book.
30:54It's partly the twists and turns of history.
30:57With the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights and the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022,
31:04The Handmaid's Tale began, for many readers, to feel eerily prescient.
31:09Had it been so that none of this ever got enacted,
31:13then it would probably be sitting on a shelf somewhere and people would be saying,
31:17oh, jolly good yarn, but it didn't happen.
31:20Or didn't it?
31:21In 2003's Oryx and Crake, for instance, Atwood wrote of environmental collapse and a global pandemic.
31:28Pick a catastrophe, any catastrophe.
31:30Before the real world did its thing, she warned about it in her fiction.
31:34It wasn't, you know, this is going to happen without a doubt.
31:39This could happen.
31:41This might happen.
31:43So you should be on the watch for it.
31:45What is your relationship with this idea that you're the prophet of doom,
31:49this Cassandra, the forecaster of dystopia?
31:52I think I'm very positive.
31:54I didn't kill everybody off at the end.
31:57You know, some people do.
31:59These are rare books.
32:00A lot of them are pretty obscure.
32:02If Atwood can see around corners, it's because her visions have historical precedent.
32:07They come rooted in actual events.
32:10At the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto,
32:13Atwood has archived stacks of her research.
32:16That is, the hundreds of news clippings that substantiate her plots.
32:20So this is folder upon folder of your research for Handmaid's Tale.
32:27Oh, yeah, lots of it.
32:28She writes by a strict rule.
32:30If it didn't happen somewhere at some time,
32:33it doesn't make it into the pages of her fiction.
32:35Women forced to have babies.
32:37Mm-hmm.
32:38Communists are making women have babies.
32:41Persistent non-pregnancy will be considered a crime against the state.
32:45It's not all doom and gloom.
32:47Atwood showed us the cover she designed for her first volume of poetry.
32:52She writes short stories and children's books.
32:56For her new book, a new genre.
32:58Her memoir, Book of Lives, published this past week,
33:02takes the full sweep of her life,
33:04starting with a free-range childhood spent in the deep wilderness of Quebec.
33:08She was homeschooled until the age of 12 while her father did field work on insects as an entomologist.
33:14You wrote, some family stopped for ice cream on the side of the road.
33:19You stopped for infestation.
33:20We stopped for infestation.
33:22So what was that like?
33:23You screeched to a halt.
33:26Father would get out of the car with his tarpaulin and his axe,
33:30and he would go to the infestation.
33:32He would spread the tarp out under the tree and hit the trunk with an axe,
33:36and then the things would fall out, and he would collect them.
33:40And you're in the back seat thinking what?
33:42Oh, no.
33:43We were usually out of the car watching him do it.
33:45What did you learn watching him go to work?
33:48I think probably growing up with the biologist makes you quite particular about details,
33:54because you're not saying, that's a butterfly.
33:57You're saying, what kind of butterfly?
33:59You're not saying, that's a tree.
34:01You usually know what kind of tree.
34:03That's what draws people to reading.
34:06Intent on spinning details into prose and becoming a writer,
34:10Atwood enrolled at Victoria College at the University of Toronto.
34:14Well, poetry was the big form in Canada in the 60s.
34:18A young poet, she hit the reading circuit
34:21and performed in student plays and reviews here at Hart House,
34:24one of Canada's oldest theaters.
34:26No, I'm not. I'm just a show-off.
34:29And when Margaret Atwood wants to show off, you surrender the stage.
34:33You have to stand over there. Hold my purse.
34:37Here's not just any curtsy, but she informed us the 17th-century Jacobean court curtsy
34:43she learned for a college production.
34:45We told you she's a stickler for detail.
34:48How do I respond to that?
34:50Oh, you bow.
34:52You remember that?
34:53Why are you so surprised that I remember that?
34:56That was very...
34:56Before we left the theater, Atwood showed us another party trick.
35:00I'm not getting vibes, okay?
35:03You're not getting vibes from me?
35:04No. We're doing the classic Renaissance hand-reading.
35:09Yes, she reads poms, another mode for investigation.
35:13People might think that you're just a very reasonable, sort of rational person,
35:19but in fact you have this other...
35:22Oh, dear.
35:22...this intuition.
35:24So some people stop there, and they're very logical, and that's it.
35:27You were not one of those people.
35:29And we can see that you will never be a murderous dictator, for which we are pleased.
35:35I got that going for me.
35:38Back to our protagonist, when she graduated in 1961,
35:42Canadian writers were encouraged to pursue careers outside the country.
35:47Give us a sense of the Canadian lit scene when you were in college.
35:51What Canadian lit scene?
35:54Still, Atwood stayed, and helped found the country's now-thriving literary institutions.
36:00Along the way, she met another writer, the late Graham Gibson, who would become her longtime partner.
36:06So quintessentially Canadian, their courtship peaked with a canoe trip.
36:12We were both the kinds of people that, if the canoe trip hadn't worked out, that would have been it.
36:18Good barometer for a relationship.
36:20Yeah.
36:21If you can deal with the canoe trip, you can probably deal with lots of other things, too.
36:26And they did.
36:27Gibson came to the relationship with some baggage.
36:30A, quote, undivorced wife and two kids.
36:33In her memoir, Atwood confronts the complications of the blended family.
36:38Could I ask you to read a bit for us?
36:41Yes.
36:41There are several letters in this book from me to my inner advice columnist.
36:46Everybody has one.
36:48Dear inner advice columnist, sorry to bother you.
36:52Atwood uses the columnist device to confess that though she and Graham have a daughter of their own,
36:57she wants more children.
36:58We are back at the farm after Scotland, and I've brought up the subject of a second child.
37:04I would like one, but Graham has said that a total of three is enough for him.
37:09I feel deprived, resentful, and disrespected.
37:13If that sounds harsh, listen to the columnist's response, the advice she gave herself.
37:18Oh, for heaven's sakes, count your blessings.
37:22Some people don't know when they're well off.
37:24Many would give the shirt off their back to have your luck in men.
37:28Suck it up.
37:29Cherish your child.
37:31Get another cat.
37:32Your inner advice columnist.
37:36You can see he's rather severe.
37:39That's a very get-over-yourself advice you gave yourself.
37:41Very get-over-yourself advice, but Canadians are pretty get-over-yourself people.
37:46The Handmaid's Tale!
37:49Humility aside, Canada's leading literary figure has become something of a cult figure and a leading voice on all things
37:56Canadian.
37:57We asked her about the recent chill between her country and the United States as President Trump raises tariffs and
38:03threatens to turn our northern neighbors into a 51st state.
38:07Atwood says the Canadian response is best summed up by one phrase.
38:11It's a hockey thing, and it was this character called Gordie Howe, who is a very revered hockey player.
38:19Elbows up is when somebody gets you into the corner and you block them by putting your elbow up.
38:25And it means, don't mess with me.
38:27And for those who speak of the 51st state, I do point out that it wouldn't be just one state.
38:34What do you mean?
38:35It's very big.
38:36You can't make the whole thing just one state.
38:38And anyway, Quebec would never stand for it.
38:41You think you're going to make them part of a unilingual big entity?
38:45Think again.
38:46Atwood is a student of government, power, and the overreaches of both.
38:51She wrote much of The Handmaid's Tale on a rented typewriter in 1984 West Berlin.
38:55She recalls hearing sonic booms from the other side of the wall.
38:59In her ventures to the Eastern Bloc, she witnessed policing, paranoia, and the absence of freedom.
39:05In her memoir, too, she addresses the erosion of democracy.
39:09You say the overriding ordinary civil liberties is one of the signposts on the road to dictatorship.
39:15Do you see the U.S. on that road right now?
39:17I don't think I would be wrong if I said it's concerning.
39:21There are certain things that totalitarian coups always do.
39:24Like what?
39:26One of them is trying to get control of the media.
39:29But the other thing is making the judicial arm part of the executive.
39:36In other words, judges just do what the chief guide tells them to.
39:40If you're saying the signposts, the signifiers of totalitarian society are...
39:45There's some warning lights flashing for sure.
39:49Amid the warning lights, a series based on the Testaments, her sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, will begin streaming on
39:56Hulu next year.
39:57But just when you think you can predict on which side of the political divide outward falls, she confounds by
40:03saying something like this.
40:05Just for the record, I've always been attacked more from the left than I have from the right.
40:10Why's that?
40:11Well, I think the right thinks I'm irrelevant.
40:15And the left thinks that I should have been preaching their sermon, whatever it may happen to be.
40:21And that I am therefore a traitor for not having done that which they themselves would do.
40:26And what's your response to that?
40:27It's, um, unprintable.
40:31It involves a finger.
40:35Do I see a little blush?
40:36Do I see a little bit of a blush?
40:38She may turn us red.
40:40She did not turn us to stone.
40:42I'm paraphrasing here, but in your memoir you say you sometimes cut this Medusa-like figure with a Medusa-like
40:49stare with interviewers.
40:50I feel like we're doing okay.
40:52The earlier me.
40:53Yeah.
40:54The earlier me.
40:55Now I'm a nice old lady, so you don't have to be worried.
40:58Why the pivot?
40:59I've gotten older.
41:02I became a blonde.
41:03This was my way of saying I enjoyed this conversation.
41:07Oh, is that your way of saying it?
41:08What, uh...
41:09So why aren't you a scary old witch?
41:11Is that your way of saying it?
41:19What inspired the signature red cloaks from The Handmaid's Tale?
41:23Yes, well, if you have a cult, you have to have outfits.
41:27At 60minutesovertime.com.
41:34The last minute of 60 Minutes is sponsored by UnitedHealthcare.
41:40Coverage you can count on for your whole life ahead.
41:46In the mail, we received hundreds of notes about our interview with President Trump.
41:51The country may be politically divided, but the criticism we got from viewers was bipartisan.
41:57Instead of interviewing him, it appeared as an attack.
42:00You should have more respect than what you showed.
42:04Others complained we were too deferential to the president.
42:08You wanted to show Trump in the best possible light.
42:11There were no hard questions, no meaningful pushback.
42:15And there was this.
42:17Donald Trump gets lots and lots of time on TV as president.
42:21He has power, and so do I.
42:23When I saw that he was being interviewed on last Sunday's show,
42:27I used my power and turned it off immediately.
42:32I'm Cecilia Vega.
42:33We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
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42:45Experience thought-provoking.
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