War Veteran, Squash, Mass Shootings

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Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC, member FINRA and SIPC. In March 2020, a family on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana got shocking news about their loved one. Christy wouldn't die. My daughter came and notified me that Christy was run over and I said, is she okay? And she's like, no, she died.

I was like, what? Missing Justice from CBS News takes you inside what really happened that night and the federal investigation that followed. Listen to Missing Justice from CBS News on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning.

I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. It stands to reason that Andrea Bocelli's children might inherit more than a little musical talent. Seth Doan is visiting the Bocelli family to give us an early start on Christmas. It's not your typical family sing-along when you're at the Bocelli household. This is the first time you've recorded an album together? This is the first album I've been into. And it can be also the last one because I'm becoming old.

Oh, don't say that. The Italian tenor and family ahead this Sunday morning. For all the devastation Russia has caused in Ukraine, the human cost of that war is surely the greatest. David Martin, this morning, has an inspiring story of courage in the face of adversity. Before the war started, Alexander Chaika made his living dancing, tumbling, and teaching. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he joined the army and was rushed to the front. There was no thought on my part that I wouldn't join. And do the right thing by my country. Did the doctors tell you they were going to have to amputate your leg?

I was already unconscious at this time. Later on Sunday morning, back on two feet, with help from friends in America. In the wake of last week's horrific gun violence, Martha Teichner will show us how tragedy is changing the American landscape.

John Blackstone catches up with Grateful Dead founding member Bob Weir. Allison Aubrey will be serving up a new take on a holiday side dish, Honey Nut Squash, a story from Steve Hartman, and we'll get the latest from Josh Seftel's mom. And more this Sunday morning for the 27th of November, 2022.

We'll be back after this. Modern medicine can save countless warriors who'd likely have died on the battlefield in wars past. But survival has its price, especially for amputees. David Martin shows us how some are rebuilding their lives with an assist from those who well understand the challenges ahead. I have two choices. One was to sit at home and feel sorry for myself.

And the other was to do something with the life that I got. Wounded American veteran and Senator Tammy Duckworth talking heart to heart with wounded Ukrainian veteran Alexander Tchaikov. I wear the shorts like you do, but I have padding. She lost both legs 18 years ago in Iraq and knows what lies ahead for him. This is what happens with amputees.

You always compare. Oh yeah, you're like me. Traveling with his wife Anna and Olena Nikolayenko of the charitable organization Future for Ukraine, Alex arrived in the US last month to be fitted for a new leg. Come to our office in the morning and we start.

I'm Mike Corcoran walking next week. He fitted Duckworth with her prosthetic limbs and is now volunteering to do the same for amputees from Ukraine. We have committed to this project half a million dollars of our services because you have to support these people that are fighting for democracy. Before the war started, Alex made his living dancing, tumbling and teaching. But once Russia invaded Ukraine, he joined the army and was rushed to the front. The country was in danger.

There was no thought on my part that I wouldn't join and do the right thing by my country. Last April, a Russian shell cost him his right leg all the way up to the hip. They told me at the hospital that I was close to dying. Did the doctors tell you they were going to have to amputate your leg? I was already unconscious at this time, so I was not aware that they would amputate my leg. In Ukraine, hospitals are inundated with the wounded, both military and civilian and medical personnel have not yet developed the expertise to handle extreme amputations. They didn't have the knowledge or the capability of taking care of someone with Alexander's level of injury. When Alex's first full day in America, he reports to Corcoran's prosthetic clinic to be fitted for a socket for his new leg.

Let's keep it just at the top. A procedure made more difficult because the amputation is so high up and the cut was not a clean one. Six days later, he sees his $100,000 leg for the first time. He hasn't stood on two legs since he was wounded. Alex, how does it feel?

He told that it's magic. He can imagine that he has this leg. The next day, he starts learning to walk again.

His physical fitness gives him an advantage starting over. That's a B plus. All the parts are designed to make walking as easy as possible, but it's still a lot of effort. There we go. This is high tech as it comes. It's a microprocessor knee. It's a hydraulic hip joint and it is exactly what our wounded warriors over here would be receiving. So my technology is a little bit older than what he's got.

He's got more modern stuff than I do. But no matter how state-of-the-art the technology, amputees all live with phantom pain in their missing limbs. For me, most of the time, it feels like someone is taking a big nail and hammering it into the bones in my toes with electricity going through it. But he feels as if somebody is smashing his foot, tightening it in a vice, and then after that it's like knocking the hammer. The skin on Alex's stump is already beginning to break down and will need further surgery. This is a process that goes for years. His muscles will atrophy a little and then at some point you have to make a new socket.

The components will last three to five years, but we could do a new socket in a year. Duckworth has already learned the hard truth of losing a limb in combat. The wounds from war, both the physical ones and the mental ones and the hidden ones, will be with you for the rest of your life. He says you're the bee's knees. He says everything that you've been through, you're so inspiring. Attitude is everything.

If you have the desire, we give you the tools. What do you think of his attitude? Fantastic. Alex and Anna fell in love before the war, married as soon as he came out of intensive care, and planned to have a family in what she shyly calls the nearest time. Are you pregnant now? Congratulations to both of you.

The baby is due in April, one year after Alex lost his leg. His last name, Chaika, means seagull in Ukrainian, and he looks ready to take off into his new life. Is he happy? Yes, of course.

That's the most important thing, right? Alex arrived back in Ukraine a week ago. Now there are three more amputees at Mike Corcoran's clinic being fitted for new legs. There are a lot of lingering questions, but the main one is, are there more victims? Two young women, two unsolved murders. They were both killed the same night. Matching socks found at two different crime scenes. The mystery of what happened to these two beautiful young women would haunt their families and investigators for years. Now, can DNA from a fast food bag finally catch the killer? It was like gold.

Follow and listen to the 48 Hours podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. What happened to her, Mario? How could she simply disappear after she was with you?

How could she simply disappear after she was with you? I will never say that I'm a cold-blooded killer. I will never say I'm a murderer.

And the people they took from. My son died running, running for his life. This season, follow the evidence with Erin. Beyond the speculation, including in the death of boxing legend Arturo Gotti. My gut says I don't think he would take his life. I know my husband killed himself.

Listen to My Life of Crime from 48 Hours on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. What a long, strange trip it's been for Bob Weir, co-founder of the Grateful Dead. With John Blackstone, we're off to the latest stop on a musical journey. We're looking for miracles.

I need a miracle for Saturday. At Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center this past month, black tie met tie-dye. As the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Stephen Reinike shared the spotlight. Please welcome to the stage the Wolf Bros and Bobby Weir. With Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir and his band Wolf Bros. It's a collaboration more than a decade in the making where Grateful Dead classics. Are reimagined as classical music.

In preparation, Weir and his core band, Don Wuss, Jay Lane, and Jeff Gamente, spent weeks rehearsing in California. Who's going to be more intimidated going into this thing, the band or the symphony orchestra? That's an excellent question.

I don't know. I'm not sure that the orchestral players know what they're walking into. Boy, this is going to be interesting.

And so it was. For four nights, the audience was on its feet, to the consternation of ushers unfamiliar with jam band etiquette. A triumph for orchestra and band.

This project, I think it's probably going to go on for the rest of my lifetime. And it was a triumph for the music professor who brought culture and counterculture together. Giancarlo Aquilante, an Italian composer at Stanford University, had never paid much attention to the Grateful Dead before meeting Bob Weir in 2009. But working with Weir, he's now as dedicated to the music as any deadhead. The music of the Grateful Dead, there's so much materials that somehow, once you get into it, when you get deeper into that, understanding how they work musically, counterpoint, harmony, rhythm, I found that it translates into the orchestra in a very natural way. Somehow it feels like it's faster than usual, but it might be too much coffee for me this morning.

We could certainly slow it down. I have nothing against that. Aquilante studied the improvisation that was part of every Grateful Dead show. And he saw the influence of Weir's longtime partner, Jerry Garcia. In the Grateful Dead, he sang his songs, you sang your songs, you now sing his songs as well. Yeah, I can't sing them his way, and I'm not even going to try. But yeah, those songs need to live, and they need to live and breathe and grow. A song is a living critter. If I may wax hippie metaphysical for you, the characters in those songs are real. They live in some other world, and they come and visit us through the musicians, through the artists who have dedicated their lives to being that medium and inviting those critters from other worlds to come and visit our world and entertain the folks because that's all they want to do is they just want to, they want to meet us and we meet them.

That's what we do. Jerry Garcia met Weir in 1963 in Palo Alto, California. Weir was 16, struggling in school, but showing promise on the guitar. The Grateful Dead grew into a touring powerhouse, playing for an army of loyal fans. A trip that seemed to end when Garcia died in 1995 at the age of 53.

Is any of this at all related to the fact that Jerry left so soon? Well, he left some unfinished business. We were partners. I'm going to do my best to tidy some stuff up for him.

That's what you do for your friends. Composer Giancarlo Aquilante. I have some recordings of Jerry Garcia playing these guitars, and it took me days, months, sometimes to get one section to say this is it. So for me, it was like getting the soul of this man and revisited him and giving him an opportunity to be alive again into these orchestrations. Giancarlo has managed to put on a page what it was that we were reaching for because we all always had this philharmonic notion of what we were up to.

That was always going on. I was thinking this is a horn line and Jerry would hear it that way, but now we can actually assign it to horns. Understand you don't read music, right? You have to remember everything. You know, I put some work into this. I have to because I'm dyslexic in the extreme and I have to commit all this to memory. Forgive me, but I can say this as a fellow man in his 70s, your memory may be fine, but it takes a little bit more time to recall sometimes. So I have to get it in my bones.

It's not a matter of memory so much as a matter of feeling it. Why do you want to work so hard these days when you could be just outside enjoying the hiking? Well, you know, I love doing what I do and it keeps me nose to the ground stone. Weir and his wife Natasha have two daughters, Monet and Chloe, both now in their 20s. To keep up with them, Weir is an avid fitness buff, something he shares on social media. These workouts keep him road ready for a concert schedule that includes next summer's final tour with Dead in Company. In collaboration with guitarist John Mayer, it's been one of the top grossing acts in the nation. Weir is also releasing live albums with Wolf Bros and this coming February, they'll join the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for another three nights of truly classic rock. For Bob Weir, it seems keeping the music of the dead alive is nothing less than his life's work. Is it one of your hopes from all this that the songs your music is going to live long after you're not here? My major consideration is what are people going to say about what I'm doing in 300 years because a lot more doors are open to me now and I'll be stir-fried if I'm just going to walk past that.

If you've worked for your entire life to be able to work with a symphony orchestra on a meaningful level, how can you pass that up? Thanksgiving is a beloved holiday that brings family and friends together. Sadly, in the wake of last week's horrific gun violence, we're coming together for quite different reasons.

As Martha Teichner shows us, memorials to these tragedies are now part of the American landscape. Club Q, active shooter, all units respond. It's all so sickeningly repetitive. Another gay nightclub, five dead, at least 18 wounded in Colorado Springs. Three days later, another Walmart, seven dead, including the gunman in Chesapeake, Virginia. Mass shooting number 607 this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive. But believe it or not, there were at least eight others last week. And when the vigils have stopped and the makeshift shrines are bedraggled, what then?

How does the story of what happened get told and who gets to tell it? Those who perished and their families will not be forgotten. In El Paso, Texas, a pillar of light with 22 beams shines out from the parking lot of that other Walmart, where 22 people were gunned down on August 3, 2019.

Walmart moved fast. The Grand Candela, as it's called, went up in three and a half months and was dedicated before a 23rd victim died. Six years and counting after 49 people were killed here at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the other LGBTQ bar. You can still see bullet holes in the building, which remains a temporary memorial.

The fight over what a permanent memorial should look like makes clear just how messy and contentious memorializing mass shootings can be. Barbara is a powerful force in this community, and for some people, a lightning rod. Deborah Bowie is the executive director of the One Pulse Foundation, hired recently after criticism of Barbara Poma, co-owner of the nightclub. It is our responsibility to make sure that everyone knows what happened at Pulse. Poma established the foundation.

Its purpose? To raise the tens of millions of dollars needed to build an entire Pulse campus, incorporating the club, a memorial, and a separate museum several blocks away. I miss Pulse.

The foundation now calls Poma the keeper of the story. We want control over the Pulse name, the Pulse physical location, the building, so that we can control our own tragedy. We own, it's our tragedy.

It's not Barbara Poma's tragedy. Christine Linen and son Christopher and his boyfriend Juan Ramon Guerrero died in the Pulse shooting. It's painful. It never ends. Christopher was the light of my life, and the light's gone.

That's Juan, Christopher. Linen is one of dozens of survivors and victims' family members who have sued club owners Poma and her husband, claiming they were negligent at the site and contributed to the loss of life, a claim they deny. Linen then considers the museum exploitation, and once it stopped. Twenty years from now, 30 years from now, people aren't going to remember the shooting. Is there a need to tell the story of what happened? Well, maybe if you could trust the storytellers.

There is no trust. The museum is not to monetize or exploit tragedy. The museum will be part of the entire Pulse experience. We engage with the families frequently. The family members tell the story.

And what is that story? There are six words that came out of the initial survey that have become part of our vision, right, our value statement, and they are love, hope, unity, acceptance, courage, and strength. Nine white ribbons were placed outside the Emanuel AME church in tribute to the victims. We have no room for hate, so we have to forgive. Forgiveness was the word that loved ones of the Charleston Nine chose. After a white supremacist opened fire during an evening prayer service at Mother Emanuel AME church in 2015, the watching world was amazed at the response. How important was forgiveness in creating the type of memorial that you've chosen to have? It was very important.

Some people have the thought process to say, oh, because they forgave so quickly, it was easy for them. No. Oh, no, definitely not.

It still causes pain to this day. The Reverend Eric Manning's predecessor, a senior pastor, the Reverend Clemente Pinckney, was killed in the shooting. So this is pretty much where the fellowship benches will be. Here and here?

Yes. Seven years later, the $20 million memorial Mother Emanuel is planning will be about remembering the dead on one side of the church and celebrating the survivors on the other. There is no righteous indignation. There is no anger. But should there be? Memorials to mass shootings have become the expensive public art versions of condolence cards for a society in pain. Most omit any imagery suggesting that heinous acts of gun violence are the reason they exist.

When you see the calls for the competitions, like there's a new one that just came out and we talked about this in our studio, we're not going to go after it. I am more interested in the articulation of the real issue for these, which is the violence. And yet it was to bring comfort to grieving families that landscape architect Walter Hood designed San Bernardino, California's graceful, undulating curtain of courage. Fourteen personalized alcoves for the 14 people killed by terrorists here in 2015. Among the dead, Damien Minds. Does it help with the healing process? I think it helps to remember. But for mother and daughter, Trenna and Tina Minds though, building memorial after memorial is not enough. It doesn't help in the sense that there are still shootings after shootings after shootings after shootings. I think these memorials should memorialize the people that lost their lives. I think it should also at the same time be a call to action, a reminder that this could happen anywhere to anyone and it shouldn't have to. It shouldn't have to and it doesn't have to.

It doesn't have to. With Steve Hartman this morning, time to strike up the band. He was only in third grade, but Henry Boyer already knew what he wanted to be. As we first reported a few years ago, Henry discovered his passion after attending a University of Michigan football game. They were that good? My mind was blown of how good they played.

But it wasn't the football that he fell for. It was the marching band. He even wrote a letter to the band saying how he'd love to sign up someday.

Let's go blue. And in response, the band sent him a bunch of swag and a card inviting him to audition when he's older. What were you feeling in that moment? Surprised and heart warmed. What did they say? They said they were going to accept me in a few years. Into what? Into the marching band. Are you excited? Yes, I'm really excited. After that, Henry asked his mom if he could double up on piano lessons and started taking drums too.

Like the card said, practice hard and I will practice hard. So you can get there someday? Yes, I just have a really good feeling that I'm going to be in the marching band. If all goes as planned, Henry will join the band in the fall of 2029. But we thought and the school agreed that's an awfully long time to wait for a dream to come.

Henry was worried that's an awfully long time to wait for a dream to come true. So we set up a little surprise right behind this door. No way. Henry, this is your Michigan marching band.

No way. We're so excited to have you here with us, Henry. I can't believe I'm here. The Michigan marching band wrote out a single note and just look at the symphony that followed.

You got it. A masterpiece of kindness and inspiration that struck a major chord in this young man's life and continues to resonate to this very day. Last weekend, the band invited him back. Henry, who's now 11, got to lead the march to Michigan Stadium. And when the time came for his favorite song at his favorite venue, Henry Boyer was front and center. Yeah, that even made me want to join the band even more.

But no matter where his music career takes him, hopefully Henry will continue to follow the lead set by this marching band and play it forward. Nice job. I can't wait to join. Oh yeah, it'll come soon. Hey, I'm Jen Landon, and I play Teeter on the Paramount Network original series, Yellowstone. Yellowstone is back for season five, and so is the official Yellowstone podcast. This isn't just your typical recap podcast. Every week, you'll get exclusive access to cast and crew members who will take you behind the scenes of season five in a way that no other podcast can. Saddle up for all new episodes of the official Yellowstone podcast available wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jordan Klepper, Fingers the Conspiracy, an all new limited series podcast from The Daily Show.

We're going way down the rabbit hole. Like, did you know that Osama bin Laden is a guy named Tim? Yeah, we're doing a whole episode on that one. JFK Jr., coming back from the dead, that's an episode. The Deep State, that too.

Listen to Jordan Klepper, Fingers the Conspiracy, wherever you get your podcasts. It's Sunday morning on CBS, and here again is Jane Pauley. Superstar singer Celine Dion once observed, if God has a singing voice, it must sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli. Seth Doan travels to Bocelli's home in Tuscany, where it turns out singing is a family affair. Soulful, soaring, transcended.

Any number of adjectives cannot quite describe that voice. There's a reason Andrea Bocelli sold more than 90 million albums. And there's not just one Bocelli who sings.

There's his daughter, Virginia, and his son, Matteo. Now, for the first time, they've recorded an album together for Christmas. We met the Bocellis at home as they were doing a photo shoot for the cover. Why did you want to do a Christmas album together? I think it's an amazing opportunity, because we can spend time together. It's a privilege, I think. It's a privilege the kids have grown up with. Not every budding musician gets to accompany a world-famous tenor. As you can imagine, since I was in my mom's belly, I was listening to music. I just think, I mean, I've got to do it as well if I love it, but maybe I have to express myself to everyone when I feel more secure of myself. That's the same for me, because sometimes I'm shy, like singing in front of my dad. Not now.

Now it's finished. You're still a little nervous? Yeah, because you know, like, he's pretty good, and so... He is pretty good, one of the best-selling classical music artists of all time.

At lunch we met the rest of the family, eldest son Amos, an aerospace engineer, and Andrea's wife, Veronica Berti, who manages much of his career and their charity efforts, a foundation in Italy and music program in Haiti. To you. Merry Christmas in July! Exactly. Yes, we met in July. Outside it was a beach day in this ritzy town on the Tuscan coast where the Bocellis have a home.

It was dressed up for Christmas for the shoot. And in between takes we kept seeing Bocelli gravitate toward his instruments. Because music is part of my life. I knew that my destiny was music, because since when I was a child, when I arrived in my house, the relatives, friends, everyone asked me to sing. Come on, sing something for us. Amazing grace... And it's still that way, but singing for presidents, popes, and queens.

And during Italy's Covid lockdown, he sang for the world at Milan's empty cathedral. Though singing was not his original career path, Bocelli, who lost his sight as a boy, had been studying to be a lawyer. You were putting yourself through school by playing in piano bars. I began also to play in the piano bar just to get some money, because it was important for me to buy my instruments, and also above all to meet some beautiful girl.

Virginia is covering her eyes, by the way. I should cover my ears from now on. The Italian tenor is so often seen on the world's grand stages, so it was special to see him in this much smaller venue, at home, playfully teased by his 10-year-old. He listens to opera a lot, so sometimes I wake up in the morning and he's listening to Caruso, and I'm like, God, let's have him in the morning, go back to bed. I think that music has always been part of our life, no? Sometimes my dad gets frustrated because I listen to pop music, and dad's like, what is this noise?

But Bocelli himself has embraced pop music, teaming up with some of the industry's biggest stars, here with Ed Sheeran, bringing opera to new audiences. How do you learn new music? I study a lot. What are the mechanics of learning? Is there a braille for learning music?

Like everyone. It's another language, but the result is the same. The technique of the braille is a little bit different, compared to the classical five lines. It's like to say something in English and Italian. At the end, the concept is the same.

Bocelli will be touring the world with Virginia and Matteo, performing in the U.S. starting next month. He's eager to share his spotlight. While it provides clear advantages for his kids, there is that added pressure. Part of this, of being the son of, is that you cannot really make mistakes. I was quite shy when I was little, so I was singing more in front of my mom and less in front of my father, and then I had, at 18, this beautiful chance to make a duet with my father, and that's where I realized that this passion was something bigger. They recorded this duet, Fall On Me, in 2018. You've sung a lot of duets with very famous musicians, singers. How different is it for you to sing with your kids? I think it's a good thing to be international, to be able to sing with your kids. You can lie.

No, it's a completely different experience. I answer for him and say that from us, there's nothing to learn. But for sure, there's a good connection.

We got to see that connection this past summer, a passion for music and performing that's been passed down to a new generation. Two years ago, on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana, Kristi Wooden Thigh's family rushed to her home after receiving shocking news. On March 6th, my daughter came and notified me that Kristi was run over. I said, is she okay? And she's like, no, she died.

I was like, what? But when they arrived, there were no police. Where's the cops, first of all? Why is there no cops here?

Because it's a crime scene, you know, like, there should have been yellow tape. Missing Justice from CBS News takes you inside what really happened that night and the federal investigation that followed. We kind of had confidence in the police, hoping they'd arrest him. And then we just, like, it was just silence. Like, nobody came and let us know anything. And how, for years, a family fought for justice. Listen to Missing Justice from CBS News on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. It's been a while since our last visit with contributor Josh Seftel and his mom. And for good reason, she's had some challenging times, but she's back and on a roll.

I wouldn't mind being in televisions, on television or the radio. You know what your chances of that are? No.

However, you never know. Several years ago, after my dad died, I bought my mom an iPad and started FaceTiming with her. Can you see me? I can't see.

Oh, now I can. We recorded more than 100 conversations. Hello. Wait, wait. Several for this show. There I am.

And she's always brought a fresh perspective to every topic. I want to talk with you about vaping. I actually think I saw somebody doing it in Mexico. Yeah. In the nightclub.

Self-driving cars. Ah, I don't like that. Even twerking. What was it called? Turkey or twerky or twerking?

Is that what it is? But earlier this summer, we had to put our conversations on hold. After emergency surgery and almost a month in the hospital, with some touch and go moments, I'm happy to announce she's back home and up for her first interview in a while. Can you make me look thin?

Hello. What have you been through in the last two months? I went for heart tests and I flunked them. They had to do a quadruple bypass. I was in shock.

I thought I had indigestion. Being 85 years old and going through a big surgery, a lot of stuff could happen. What role did family play in helping you with your recovery? Well, probably the biggest.

They came from all over. Somebody always being there with me. Beautiful flowers where a nice car can do a lot more than a pill to help you get better. What breakthroughs have you had? Well, that I can walk again.

How do you like using the cane? It's not new. Oh, yesterday I put on makeup for the first time. You always look better when you have a little makeup. Cheered me up. You look much younger.

That would be the day. Oh, today I went to the grocery store and I used one of those carts for the first time. It was fun.

I liked it. Very grateful I didn't hurt anybody. Yesterday I saw you dancing in the pharmacy.

I don't know if you'd call it dancing. There was music on and I was shaking my tush. What's the best thing you bought at the grocery store? A clairs.

A clairs. When are you going to eat them? As soon as possible. I'm getting better, guys. What have you learned from this experience? Just to appreciate everything and stop taking everything for granted. Be positive.

Think positive in whatever it is that you're going through. So there's something I wanted to show you. You ready? Yeah. Hi, Pat. This is from everybody.

Oh my goodness. We're just checking up on you and want to remind you that we're pulling for your quick recovery. Pretty soon it's going to be time for another chat with Josh.

So you need to get better because we're all waiting to hear from you once again. What do you think? That's so nice.

Makes you feel like you really want to get better fast. You made my day. Oh my god, I can't believe it. Do you want to see it again? Sure.

I'll probably listen to it all day. It's a vegetable that gets no respect. Squash. Even the name could use some work.

But NPR's Alison Aubrey tells us help is on the way. Two cannelloni, two chicken, ending two pork. A renowned chef has a secret to share. It turns out he's not really the creator of all the delicious flavor he serves up. Increasingly, the flavor is created here. We are standing in the middle of the row seven trial farm in the Berkshires, western Massachusetts. We're surrounded by rows of squash and not the kind you need to smother in marshmallows.

Chef Dan Barber has teamed up with Michael Mazurek, a plant breeder at Cornell University. People want delicious flavorful fruits and vegetables, but the system isn't designed to deliver that to them. Their new enterprise, Row Seven Seed Company, aims to overhaul the taste of vegetables. And they're doing it the traditional way. A la Gregor Mendel, the 19th century monk, who showed how genetic traits can pass from generation to generation. Through a cross-pollination, we're marrying those traits and then we can select for the best of the best generation after generation.

And is that what you've done here? It is, and it's all around us. I meet a lot of people that might tell me they don't like squash, but then when they try one of these, they're hooked. They're hooked. Mazurek says people don't realize that most produce is bred to look perfect on the shelf.

But taste, he says, has become an afterthought. The American food culture is hungry for things that taste good. One example, honey nut squash, bred at Cornell, is now sold in supermarkets and farmers markets all over the country.

Customers are thrilled about it. Farmer Steven Berez in Woodbury, Connecticut, says the honey nut squash is good for his business and his fields. The yields are very good. Disease tolerance is also excellent, so it makes it easier for us to grow.

And the yield makes it more profitable for us to grow so we can afford to keep doing it. And this, this beauty. Oh wow, look at that. Yeah.

Looks, it's very vibrant orange. Right. You see how tiny they've bred the honey nut squash to be? Well, this concentrates all of the flavor, the color, and all of the nutrients.

So what we did here to be as scientific as possible, I added nothing. I just want you to see that. Nothing in here except squash.

Squash unplugged. Bite for a bite. That's crazy, right? There's something else in here too. I mean, it's sort of... Love. Creamy. Oh, it's love.

Okay, I got it. That's the magic ingredient. Row 7 has launched a beat that tastes melon-like, and a potato called the Upstate Abundance that's bred to taste creamy without adding butter. It's just salt and water.

Hi guys. Barber partnered with the Brownsville Community Culinary Center in Brooklyn, where some kids gave it a try. The potato was bomb. These things right here, these is the moneymaker's. And that's Barber's goal, to win over a new generation of eaters with flavors from the field. And this is how we serve at the restaurant, just like that, with a little salt. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.