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Okay.
Now streaming. When everything's on the lot and real heroes rise to the occasion, TV's hottest show is fire country. We're firefighters, we're gonna find a way to get you out of here. We take the hits together. We're on the same team.
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Jane Polly is off this weekend. I'm Tracy Smith. And this is Sunday morning. You may have heard of the Las Vegas Sphere, the music and entertainment spot that opened not long ago. With its wraparound screen, intense sensory effects, and high-tech audio, Sphere offers audiences an immersive experience like none other.
and now showing a movie like none other. Ben Mankowitz will take us down the Yellow Brick Road. The twister that took Dorothy to Kansas is touching down in Las Vegas. You never seen Judy Garland like this before. You've never seen Ray Bolcher dance like this.
On a screen taller than the Statue of Liberty, with effects that put you in the film. What do you want the audience to take away from it? I want them to feel like they were standing on the set in 1938 as this movie was filmed. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere ahead on Sunday morning. The future of late night TV has been very much in the national conversation these past few days.
But this morning, our Jim Axelrod is looking back to a time when one man was must-see television. Yeah. Here's Johnny! For 30 years, Johnny Carson ruled late nights in America. What was going on there?
You will never know. Smooth as silk on camera. It could be quite another story. Off. Did you ever see any of the Cold aloof Carson?
Oh yeah. Twenty years after his death, Why Johnny Carson still matters. Coming up. On Sunday morning. Award-winning actor Kristen Scott Thomas has been gracing movie screens for years now.
But in her latest film, she not only acts, but also writes, produces, and directs. She'll be talking with Lee Cowan. You can't it's it's it. And it's happening right now in front of your eyes. For an actor who had played live on many a British stage, perhaps it's no surprise that Kristen Scott Thomas's first screenplay has some pretty Shakespearean elements.
Well, they always say, you know, write what you know or talk about what you know.
So, this subject I did know. Would you like to know how? Yes. Find out just how and why later. on Sunday morning.
I can't say style. David Pogue this morning pages through the Great American Songbook with the very talented Michael Feinstein. With Erin Moriarty, we'll investigate the devastating impact a false positive drug test can have for pregnant women and new mothers. Plus, a story from Steve Hartman and more on this final Sunday morning of the month, July 27, 2025. We'll be back.
after this.
Somewhere over the rainbow skies all The mythical, mystical land of Oz. For decades, we've seen it depicted in books, on screens large and small, even on stage.
Now, Dorothy and friends are getting a high-tech new look. With Ben Mankowitz, we're off to see the wizard, as you've never seen him before. You've likely been off to see the Wizard of Oz, but never like this. On a screen larger than four football fields, sound from 167,000 speakers. And in 16K, the highest quality resolution ever for a film.
Beautiful, isn't it? It's an immersive experience, putting the audience inside the movie. including the twister that carries Dorothy From the heartland to Munchkin Land. I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. No, Dorothy, you're in Vegas now.
reimagined its sphere, the enormous orb-shaped venue just off the strip. How many people you got more or less working on this? Oh, probably 2,000. Yeah. Be a long credits list afterwards.
Jim Dolan, best known as the owner of the New York Nixon Rangers, is Sphere's creator and its CEO. You've never seen Judy Garland like this before. You've never seen Ray Bolcher dance like this. And the connection between the audience and the performance is what I'm really looking for. Does it hurt you?
Oh no, I just keep picking it up and putting it back in again. standard on this was not to modify the film at all. but to try and bring you into the film as if you were in the studio when it was shot. That's kind of what you're going to see. When Dolan and his collaborator, producer Jane Rosenthal, decided to bring a classic film to Sphere, they agreed on, according to the Library of Congress, the most watched movie of all time.
Everybody loves it, no matter how old you are and how young it makes you feel. And it was also a movie that pushed itself in terms of its technology and its vision of what it could do for the industry.
So what happened? The obstacle for us wasn't that we were going to take something that we loved, that was a classic legendary film that we both love. It was how are you going to put it on a screen this wide? And like, how are you going to do that when you have a small, you know, traditional frame? Right, it was in a box.
It was in a box. And it was also a box office failure when released in 1939. In 1956, its fortunes changed when CBS aired it on TV. generations have now watched it at least once a year. But turning that into this.
requires state-of-the-art technology, including artificial intelligence. We wanted to make sure we captured the original details. Ravi Rajamani is Managing Director of AI for Google Cloud. We built a custom-built and AI model. That understood how Judy Garland looks.
And then was able to generate the super-resolution images of that.
So a grainy close-up of Dorothy becomes richly detailed. And then, through a process called out-painting, though it seems like magic, We see the rest of the Scarecrow, the Yellow Brick Road, and the Mountains of Oz. This is the original movie, and you can see the camera panning back and forth. And then, when we get to Uncle Henry's performance, you can see how we create all the variations here. Ben Grossman is the visual effects supervisor.
But on a screen this wide, Dorothy's uncle Henry needed to stay in the picture.
So AI created a brand new performance out of actor Charlie Grapewine.
So you can see that Uncle Henry's walking over. and rejoining The original cinematography. Those are performances that were prompted based on the context of the script and what the director has done and what their performances would be. It's easy to be dazzled by all this advanced technology. But there's an old-fashioned low-tech component to this Wizard of Oz.
AI is not your business. We work in the physical world here. Yeah, we are here to ensure that everybody gets a great experience of feeling like they're in the Wizard of Oz, and that includes sight, touch, sound, and smell. Yeah. Uh Those are 4D effects.
Glenn Derry is the Oscar-winning technical wizard tasked with having audiences feel Dorothy and Toto's journey to Oz. How do you make the tornado? How do you make the audience feel the tornado? Yeah, well it starts with a base layer, right?
So we do it in layers, kind of like an orchestration, right? We have different wind effects we're going to bring in, we're going to bring in different fog effects, we're going to bring in wind and leaves and different kinds of particulate in the atmosphere, and you kind of layer it layer by layer.
So we have these big devices that are behind us called the GMIPS. They're kind of our floor base layer of wind. Yeah, now you can definitely feel it. See, I'm the wind. We have an epoch of wind now.
Then we add to that giant fans and it all kind of layers and layers and layers and then eventually you get this lovely vortex. of wind. and then we're going to continue to build upon that until we land in Oz. We really want the audience to feel like they're there. We want them to feel the magic of being in a place that they cannot be.
And I want them to be there with all their friends and family. Speaking of family.
So it always took her back. to being a child. And having that as her first starring role alone and to know that everybody took care of her. Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's daughter. says her mom would approve.
And I think that she would really think how how wonderful that that this is is happening. And I'm sure that she would love the audience reaction. That's funny. Wasn't he pointing the other way? Of course people do go both ways.
Why, you did say something, didn't you? This Wizard of Oz opens August 28th. Jim Dolan and Jane Rosenthal are clicking their heels, hoping the reaction meets the effort. What do you want people to take away? from this when they see the Wizard of Oz at the sphere.
There's no place like home. There's no There's no actress like Judy Garland. and that performance. A performance Lorna Luft hopes exposes new fans to her mother's singular talent. And that's what I think is just remarkable.
Is that They've been able to take this classic, unbelievable, joyous movie that means so much to everyone and put it in a new format. That A whole new generation and generations of people will be able to see. On the case, on the earth or the sky.
Now streaming. Hi again! TV's quirkiest crime solver. I'm Elsbeth Tassioni. I work with the police.
Is on the case. I like my outlandish theories with a heavy dose of evidence. And ready to go toe-to-toe with a cavalcade of guest stars. Are you saying that this is now a murder investigation? It's starting to look that way.
Don't miss a moment of the critically acclaimed hit Elsbeth, all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and return CBS Fall. That sounds like fun. Obviously, murder's not fun. The first season of CBS's new hit, NCIS Origins. is now streaming.
NIS? The hell's that? Naval Investigative Service. We go where the evidence takes us. We got this.
88% fresh on rotten tomatoes. You don't see folks trying to affect change, but here you are. Ready, go ready. Got a body waiting for us. Yes.
Welcome to the team. NCIS Origins Season 1, now streaming on Paramount Plus. When were you most happy?
Now By the way, you leave. Yeah. Kristen Scott Thomas earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the English Patient, one of the many star turns she's taken in her celebrated career. Lee Cowan has our Sunday profile. She may be dame, Kristen Scott Thomas.
but you're just as likely to find her living in Paris as you might in London. My blood is English. But my culture is French, so... We met up in Chelsea at London's oldest botanical garden. It's been blooming here on the banks of the Thames since 1673.
We are in the thick of it, because you can hear the traffic going over down there. Yeah, but you'd never know it. But it's so beautiful.
So, what's your connection? I used to live around the corner. There is a duality about her. Let them see your true qualities: your courage, my poor judging, your lack of vanity, your sense of humour. Ho, ho, ho.
She can be as heartwarming in English.
Now go. And she can be heart-wrenching in French. Many of those foreign films have been showcased here. at the Sine Elumiere, a French art house in London. Yeah, a little slice of Paris.
It's convenient now that she's back here in London, playing the deputy director of MI5. Oh, so this is an interrogation. I thought it was just an unannounced office drink. That chilly, stiff upper lip. has often been a calling car.
Too stiff, she admits early on. And I think it was Sidney Pollock. Or it might have been Robert Redford. Take your pick. Either one.
Either one, it's a good story. One of them said to me, you know, you have to be generous. Forget what you're trying to defend, forget trying to hide. Be more generous. And I'm not sure I really understood what he meant by that.
He just planted a seed and then I was able to kind of unzip a bit more. And she's about to unzip even more. creatively digging into something intensely personal, In her past. When I was five, my father was killed and my mother remarried. And tragically, he was killed five years later.
And I know that a lot of the time when I was a younger woman, I had this feeling of something missing. This piece of my puzzle missing. having grown up with only one parent. both had been pilots in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. Both were lost in remarkably similar training accidents, and both left a hole, that had her climbing out into her own imagination.
You used to write stories about other people. Yes. When you were. Mr. and Mrs.
Pavitri or something, I call them. With drawings. Yeah. Yeah. It was a mummy and a daddy and two children.
Really? And what kind of stories were you writing? They just sort of did ordinary things, like actually making me really, really emotional. Yeah, just doing ordinary things, like going away on holiday and things like that, you know. a family experience.
She never knew. The memories of her dad were incomplete. fuzzy, like sketches she played out in her head. But those images became the seeds for what grew into a screenplay and then came to life. as the first movie she's ever directed.
My mother's wedding. Mommy, tonight is your last night as a Munson. What? You're not gonna change your name again. Mrs.
Jeffrey Love Club. It garnered an all-star cast. Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beacham. I don't care for my husband shaking half of London. Tomorrow's Mum's Day and we can't ruin it.
They each play her daughters struggling with the loss of a father or a stepfather in different ways, just as their mother, played by Kristen Scott Thomas, Is preparing to marry yet again. I know you all think Jeff is dull, but he is the man I love. He makes me happy. She's already done movie weddings, of course. Four weddings, in fact.
And a funeral. Do you do weddings? No, no, not yet. I will, though, of course. Jolly nerve-wracking.
That's it. They're rather less methodical and far less call for condoms. Early on, she had a sarcastic confidence about her. She didn't have the most lines in four weddings and a funeral, but in brevity, She was brilliant. The deed is done.
I've been loving the same break for ages. Have you? Who's that? You, Charlie. That demeanor might have been a surprise to those who knew her when she was bouncing around Royal Naval bases as a bit of a wallflower as a child, even into adulthood.
I was excruciatingly shy. I don't know when it changed, to be honest. But she was rarely shy on screen. We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years, and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes.
The fing menopause comes. But what makes somebody who's so. Shy growing up, want to want to do this, yeah.
Well, it's because you want to keep yourself very much in the background and not really be seen. Do anything but be yourself. Do anything but be yourself. Perhaps it's fitting then that she was discovered by another admittedly shy success story: Prince.
Now you'd think that would make her a pretty cool mom. She has three children with her first husband. Turns out, not so much. I haven't watched it with them, but as I was leaving my teenage children alone one evening and they were having pizza and a friend round, I said, watch Under the Cherry Moon, it's on the telly. Go on, it'll be fun.
And when I got back, They weren't actually very polite about it, but anyway. She has more than made up for it. Later, starring opposite Robert Redford. Dances no. I haven't even heard the question yet.
Harrison 4. Are you investigating something? They were sitting together. 3A and B. Your husband.
My wife. And Tom Cruise. Aboard. Repeat. Abort.
I'm so proud to be in Mission Impossible, I cannot even get over it. I'm in this thing. which is this enormous monster. And, you know, these kids, they have no idea about Gosford Park. They have no idea about four weddings.
But they've all seen Mission Impossible. And they have no idea I speak French or do all these other kind of slightly murkier films in France. And then of course. There was the English patient. I wouldn't want to die here.
I don't want to die in the desert. Promise me you'll come back for me. I promise. I'll come back for you. It's quite moving actually when you see yourself at sort of Thirty.
Acting your socks off. Another place she acted her socks off is here, the Royal Court, just off Sloane Square. where she won an Olivier Award for her performance in The Seagull. A role she later took to Broadway. New Yorker audiences, when they are enjoying themselves, it's electric, you know, you can really, really feel it.
We are much more kind of. Passive, perhaps, and reserved. Of course we are. But even here, she found herself thinking about her film. As intimate as the stage may be, for her, this project is more so.
I'd love. Working in the stage, as I think you can probably tell. Yes, I really, really love it, but the joy and satisfaction. And exhaustion that comes from filmmaking when you are being the director, that is not far off. It's pretty good.
It's it's just extraordinary. I thought you were still married.
So you want my permission for my daughter to become your official mistress? At sixty five and now a grandmother, she's working as hard as ever. Not taking a lot of time to smell the roses per se, but She'll surely stop for someone who has a kind word or two. A lady came up to me the other day and said, I know you hate this, but I just wanted to say, I said, I don't hate it at all. Keep it coming.
Regal, reserved. And recognized Kristen Scott Thomas, truly a citizen of cinema. There oh, yeah, it's there, and then I when they begin the baking. It's possible no one in music today is more associated with classic tunes from the Great American Songbook than Michael Feinstein. David Pogue is all ears.
Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia? For most of his 50-year career. Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away. Michael Feinstein has shown his love for the great American songs. Uh Strive a broad way.
by performing them. There was something I connected to with the harmonic invention of the songs, the melodic ideas. They express fundamental emotions in a very eloquent way that people can still relate to. He got his start early as a little boy in Columbus, Ohio. When I was five, my father said, let's get a piano.
I sat down and started playing Dore Me from the sound of music with both hands. My mother came in from the kitchen and said, who taught you that? And I said, nobody. And she sent me to my room for lying. He was playing by ear.
At five years old. And before we leave your childhood, childhood.
So what? We're trying to leave it as soon as possible, Philip. No, why? Why? Oh, I don't know.
I I always felt weird. I always felt uh Different than everybody else. I was a lonely kid. I didn't have many friends. The first classical record I bought was the Rock Moninoff Second Piano Concerto while my friends were all listening to Elton John and Carol King and Carly Simon.
I swore then and there. Uh permanent. But his unpopular hobby soon made him a popular entertainer. For 12 years, he played in piano bars, five or six hours a night. And it was mainly gay bars because those are the places where I could play show tunes without Anybody complaining about it.
He didn't go to college, but he did get an amazing education. I learned that I had to program What I was doing as if I was programming a show with an emotional arc. I learned what to say between the songs, then I learned. patter and jokes and shtick and things that keep people engaged. Feinstein moved to LA when he was 20, where he met one of his idols, 80-year-old Ira Gershwin.
George Gershwin's lyric writing brother. Ira was so impressed by the young man's encyclopedic knowledge of Gershwin material that he gave him a job. Was only supposed to be there for a couple of weeks to catalog the phonograph records, but he ended up spending six years as Ira's musical companion and amenuensis, which is a nice word for stooge. And it was an incredible time, the most exciting time of my life. There's something in the air that you can sense.
In 1986, Finstein got the invitation that changed his life to perform in the Oak Room at New York's Algonquin Hotel. And from that, everything started popping. At 29 years old, his career was launched. Decades of glory days lay ahead. On stage, on theater.
On PBS. on his 86 albums. and in his lifelong friendship with Liza Minelli. It's very Yeah. Hmm.
It so clear I love this. Here the state He's collaborating with her on her new memoir. Oh. I hear. I have scores that belong to the composer.
But he didn't just want to sing the great American songs. He also wanted to collect them. This is a vault that belonged to the original owner was Mrs. Cravens, Mildred Cravens, and her husband John, and this was her refrigerated fur vault. Oh, okay.
But now it's owned by a vegan. He's amassed a vast collection of memorabilia, recordings, and scores. The first printing of Rhapsody and Blue.
Some publishers were known for having beautiful covers. and lousy songs. People would buy them because they liked the covers, you know. This is a new collection of 63 boxes of sheet music that I just got last week. You just got these?
Yes. Hey, hypnotized! Never heard of this song that puts gold to shame. That puts gold to shame. In recent years, Feinstein has become increasingly dedicated to passing his love of the great songs to the next generation.
I'm carrying the weight of the responsibility to present these songs in a way that hopefully will appeal to them. Every time these songs are introduced to a younger person, It's like planting a seed. Because it becomes part of them and it goes on. In that spirit, he's established the Great American Songbook Foundation in Carmel, Indiana. An extraordinary collection of musical artifacts that relate to many different songwriters and performers.
There's a museum of songwriter artifacts. This is the piano upon which Harold Arlen composed Over the Rainbow. A performing arts center. And a week-long songbook academy. 40 selected kids from all over the United States come and intensively learn about interpreting this music.
And it's right alongside Taylor Swift or Adele or whoever else they're listening to. For Feinstein, the Great American Songbook isn't just music from before 1950. They think that Carol King and Billy Joel and Neil Sedaka and Elton John, they're all part of the American songbook. It's not just the teens and the 20s and the 30s. It is evolving.
Every man would say the world was his friend. There'd be happiness that no man could end. Michael Feinstein still performs live all over the country, including a concert of Tony Bennett classics, which you can watch on the streaming service Carnegie Hall Plus on August 3rd. to dream of Because maybe the best way of all to keep the classics alive? is to keep singing them.
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Get ready to laugh until it hurts. You're gonna love this. Novocaine is now streaming on Paramount Plus. I've got this condition. I don't feel pain.
You're a superhero. It's an adrenaline rush of fun. This is the best. And a bloody good time. Almost got the best car.
It's the first great action comedy of the year. Let the magic happen. That's good. Looking forward to it. Novocaine, rated R, now streaming on Paramount Plus.
With Steve Hartman, a birthday party like no other. It's the one time of year it's okay to be selfish. When it's your birthday, it's all about you. And kids have been basking in that blessing for as long as we've had candles. But for nine-year-old Grant Mullen of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, His last party struck a very different tone.
Grant's dad. I mean, Mark. Absolutely, yeah. We asked him, what would you like to do for your birthday? Who do you want to invite?
You know, what do you want? Yeah, it it just couldn't have been better than than than what he said. What he said in a moment. The most perfect answer ever. But first, how he came to it.
Last year, Mark began volunteering at SNR, a recreation center for people with special needs. And not long after he started, he got grant to volunteer as well. It's so important to get your children involved at a young age. It really makes a huge difference. Exhibit A?
GRANT'S WISH To invite everyone at SNR. to his birthday party. Why? Cause they don't get invited to birthdays.
Sometimes people don't get as much love. And sad. It's nice to see your change in that. Thank you. Hey, Crystal?
His party was last September. But they all stop by again on this day at our request. Would you like something to drink? We have root beer, sprite, and water. The parents confirmed that a lot of their kids don't get invited to birthday parties.
But as they mingled, it became clear. That Grant wasn't just being kind when he sent out those invitations. He truly wanted them here. Any time you can just call my mom and you can come.
Okay, I'll do that.
Okay.
They are nicer, kinder, they don't get mad all the time. That feeling is mutual. He's my best friend. I just love him. He's my brother.
Grant is an amazing friend. And with friends like these. Who needs presence? Do you even need to ask him what he wants to do for his 10th birthday? Probably not.
Bye, Mitch. I bid you a very heartfelt good night. May of 1992, Johnny Carson's final good night on The Tonight Show. 55 million viewers tuned in to say goodbye. With so much talk about the future of late-night TV shows just now, we thought it was the perfect time for Jim Axelrod to take a look back to a time when late night was the place to be and ruled by a most singular man.
It may not look like much now. But once upon a time This was where the King of Comedy Held court. HEEEEEE Here's Johnny. Addressing his subjects at the end of each day. I think it's time we got off the president's back.
I think everybody's entitled to make five to nine mistakes in a row. Yeah. As Johnny Carson presided over not just late night, but American popular culture. Why were you late again? Not Tarzan's fault.
Find controller strike. It's amazing to be in here. You can almost hear. The sounds. Author Mike Thomas's recent book.
is Carson the Magnificent. A biography of Carson, his late friend Bill Zamies started. Benny Carson was the biggest star in America. Movie stars, rock stars, I don't think anybody was bigger than Johnny because he was on night after night after night. everybody who was anybody.
appeared on The Tonight Show. and seventeen million Americans tuned in. Many. From their beds. It was Johnny Carson versus Sleep, and Sleep usually lost.
I think Johnny brought a lot of people. peace at the end of the day. People love to laugh. But I think he gave them hope that the world would go on the next day, no matter what was happening. His audience, more than triple the size of all three current network late-night shows combined, made him the national agenda setter of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.
Johnny would say things and do things that became water cooler conversation the next morning. It also made Johnny the preeminent Hollywood talent broker for several generations. He's one of the most important. people in my life. And we were not Personal friends, 57 years after comedian Robert Klein made the first of his 97 tonight show appearances.
Do you realize in this age of this kind of dishonesty what that man could have made from being the first man on the moon? I mean a little backstage deal, and he sets himself up for 26 lifetimes, puts his foot in the moon, and goes, COCA, CO! He is still grateful for the rocket fuel career boost. Carson's imprimater provided. How important was Johnny Carson?
Johnny was the most important. Appearances on that show were everything. I am a creature of the Tonight Show. That was the vertebra of my career. Would you welcome George Wallace?
Comedian George Wallace knew what was on the line when he did Carson. If you did the tonight showing, you got applause, and people were laughing. Oh, your confidence, oh my God. In front of Johnny, and a freak came up to me last week in Central Park and put a gun right to my head. He says, who are you for?
Reagan or Carter? I thought about it for a minute. I said, go ahead and shoot. Tonight's show with Johnny Carson? Are you kidding me?
If you're a comedian, You need that bullet point on your resume. I did the tonight show. Say it again. I did the dimension. That's it for me.
Thank you, Vernon. Each appearance was a climb-up comedy's efforts. when the routine would end. Comedians would look nervously at the desk. And waiting to see if Johnny gave him the okay.
Always got that. Always got that. Were you looking for it? Hell yeah, I was looking for it. But what I was looking for was Did you get that?
I didn't get to. 40 years later, this big-time comedy headliner still feels he didn't quite make the Tonight Show summit. Getting called over to the couch. What did that mean to get called over? That meant that you're in You're in.
You got called over. You're in the club.
So would have it been possible for you to go out. on the tonight show stage and kill Still not get called over, and as you were driving away from. The studio feeling like What happened? That uh that kind of hurts today. That kind of hurts today.
All that power rested in the hands of a complicated man. Master Connector at work. cold and aloof. at home. Were there two Johnnies?
Yeah, I think there were two Johnnies to a certain degree. On-screen, impossibly cool guy. But there was also this side to Johnny that was introverted off-screen. I think some of the aloofness may have been introversion. In Mike Wallace's classic 1979 60 Minutes profile, Carson acknowledged the dichotomy.
If I pull up my old high school annual book and read some of the things, Uh People might say, oh, he's conceited, he's aloof. Actually that was more shy. See, when I'm in front of an audience, it's a different thing. Life with no audience was challenging for Carson. He was married.
four times. Johnny needed to be married for some reason. He needed to be with.
Someone. He didn't need to stay married. He didn't need to stay married, and they would fall out. Johnny's behavior would. We'll try them apart.
They just never lasted. Aloof and cold? Never. Warm, open, willing. But actress Diane Cannon has a different story to tell.
I've never known anyone like him. I've never known anyone like Shawnee. And this is a woman who was married to Carrie Grant. Carrie was more of an enigma, more of a Oh, can I approach him or can't I? But people would approach Johnny as if he was family.
So he was a different kind of star. There was nobody as big a star as Johnny. The merger of an on-screen and off-screen relationship. This is from October. of 1985.
Would you welcome, please, Diane Cannon? seemed to fluster the normally unflappable Carson just a bit. In this memorable exchange. Ha, sure, sweetheart, now. I mean, we'd gone out of.
Couple of times? Why should we get married and change anything? Because I think if you've gone through divorce once, I don't know how people go through it more than once. I really What was going on there?
Well You will never know. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You will Never, never know. You gotta give me a little something here. Oh, no, I don't.
To hear her tell it. This was not a man who had trouble understanding women. How do I describe a relationship where you're so intimate with somebody and yet you haven't been intimate physically. We were closer than that. Would you describe it as a love affair?
Yes, absolutely, a love affair. Absolutely. Real love. Physically we were never together. But Spiritually we were.
In some ways, it sounds like you're describing the love of your life. Isn't that interesting? Wow. Hope you're hearing this, Johnny. Wow.
Maybe Carson was just like so many of us. full of contradictions. only ours aren't examined by millions under the brightest lights our culture has to offer. Whoever Johnny Carson was, Safe to say, in our deeply fragmented culture, There will never be another. We're all siloed.
We're all watching things that either confirm our own biases or that are attuned to our own specific sense of humor. There will never be that. Communal experience again, where people watch the show at the same time and then talk about the show the next day. Communal experience. He had a national community.
That was part of the magic of Carson community. For months now, Sunday Morning has been working with our reporting partners at the Marshall Project, investigating the impact a false-positive drug test can have on pregnant women and new mothers. Suffice it to say, that sort of error can be devastating, as Erin Moriarty explains. How important are your children? They are everything to me.
Hey Dow. Hi. Spend any time with Katie in her Huntsville, Alabama home, and it's immediately clear what matters most to her. You don't put this on my lap? Yeah.
It's hard to even remember life before I had children because they really are the thing that I wake up and I care about. And that's why what happened to this mother and thousands of others like her is so troubling. Last spring, Katie, she asked that we use only her first name, went into a hospital to give birth to her second child. She came out with a very real fear that her newborn could be taken away. It blew my mind not only that it happened, but the extent that it was taken once it did happen.
All because of the results of one urine drug test. I didn't even take any over-the-counter medicine. I didn't take Tylenol.
So I had nothing to hide. But later, a nurse came in with startling news. She told me that my drug screen tested positive for opioids, for morphine specifically. Katie says the test results didn't make sense. She had never taken any opiates or illicit drugs.
But that day before coming to the hospital, she did have an everything bagel, and that bagel contained poppy seeds. Poppy seeds come from the same plant that produces opiates like morphine and codeine. and the fact that they can trigger a false positive test result. is well known and documented. The website for the U.S.
Department of Defense specifically warns service members not to eat the same kind of bagel Katie ate. My husband went and bought the receipt for the bagel with a time stamp. He offered to get the camera footage of me physically eating the bagel inside the shop. But the hospital still reported Katie's presumptive positive drug test to Alabama child welfare officials. And just hours after Katie gave birth, A state social worker came to her room and asked her to sign a safety plan.
She said that until I was investigated and made sure that I didn't have drug issues, it was for the safety of the children. I asked her what would happen if I did not sign that safety plan, and she said they would be taking both children right then. Oh, there's just so much wrong there.
So much wrong.
So much wrong.
It is the most beautiful thing to be a part of in medicine. Dr. Kelly Butler is a family medicine doctor in San Diego, California. There was someone who ordered the test who was wrong. There was someone who interpreted the test who was wrong.
There's someone who made the call to CPS that was wrong. The policy of drug tests in pregnant women, says Dr. Butler, often without their knowledge or consent. Dates back to the 1980s, during what was called the crack epidemic, and in more recent years, the opioid epidemic. But Dr.
Butler says universally testing pregnant women was bad policy then, and it is bad policy now. Because let's also be clear. One positive urine toxicology does not equal a substance use disorder. All it says is this person was exposed to something that made this test positive. And not necessarily drugs.
Hello. As is the case of this everything bagel, which probably had poppy siege, which often can be a false positive for opiates. That's entirely unfair. The problem is that urine drug tests are notoriously unreliable. A joint Sunday morning Marshall Project investigation reveals that they are easily misinterpreted and often wrong, with false positives as high as 50%.
And it's not just poppy seed, says Dr. Butler, that can lead to faulty test results. There are a whole suite of medications, foods and exposures that are perfectly fine to be using in pregnancy that can result in false positives. Absolutely. But whether or not the test result is accurate, and even before a second more definitive test can be performed.
Hospitals in more than half the states in this country are Are required by law to alert child protective services of a positive test or potential exposure. That's tens of thousands of reported infants every year. often resulting in an investigation that can turn a family's life upside down. I was not allowed to be at home alone with the children at all. For nearly a month, Katie was only allowed supervised time with her children.
And although she was breastfeeding, she had to leave her house at night. I would leave the house and I would scream in my car because I was so devastated to leave her.
Sorry. It's okay. What was that like? It was torture. I mean, it was pain I've never felt before.
Katie, did you feel that there was a risk that if you didn't follow everything you were told to do, you could. Lose your children. Absolutely. In a statement, Crew Medical Center says it conducts a urine drug screen on all patients admitted for labor and delivery. and immediately orders a confirmatory test after a positive result.
but at the same time, also notifies the Department of Human Resources pursuant to Alabama state law. But perhaps more unsettling, A mother can be investigated if she or the baby tests positive for opiates. even when the medication was given to her by the hospital during labor. When you went to your prenatal appointments, they would Screen you for drugs, right? Yes.
And did you ever have a positive drug screen? No. Victoria Villa Nueva was 18 years old in 2017 when she gave birth to her first baby in an Indiana hospital.
Okay.
Her urine drug test was negative. But later she was given morphine during labor to ease pain.
So no one should have been surprised when her newborn baby tested positive for the same medication. But that didn't stop the hospital from reporting her to the State Department of Children's Services, or DCS. Just because somebody gets medicine, that means that There's a potential that DCS is going to come and possibly take my child when I didn't do anything wrong. Although the morphine was noted in her medical records, she was still required to sign a safety plan. She believes that it may have been because she admitted to once experimenting with drugs two years earlier.
I felt like that they were really trying to judge me for something that I wasn't and that I'm not. Over the next month, a social worker came regularly to check on her and inspect her home. She could still remember, she says, the fear she felt those first weeks of motherhood. I was robbed of that experience to actually be able to enjoy my child. Honestly.
Because I was just... Too busy worrying about DCS and them possibly taking my daughter away from me. A pregnant patient has fewer rights. than anybody working at that hospital. Lynn Paltrow is a founder of Pregnancy Justice.
Paltra was part of a legal team that won a 2001 Supreme Court decision. that ruled it unconstitutional to use drug test results to criminally prosecute pregnant women. But hospitals can still report mothers to child welfare officials. Paltrow says a single test result should never be relied on to report a mother. I brought this with me, I always do.
And makes her points in a rather novel way. Here's a cup of my urine. If I give it to you, you could test it. Maybe it's positive. But it can't tell you if I'm addicted, I'm dependent.
And yet, for thousands of women in this country and families, probably millions, a drug test is used as a parenting test. But somebody could say, A woman comes in to give birth, she's not the only patient.
So is the baby.
So doesn't it make sense to make sure she's not using drugs that might affect this baby and might affect the birth? Oh, we should be. But screening doesn't have to equal a urine toxicology. Screening can be a very simple battery of verbal questions. Do you use?
Verbal screening is also what most major medical groups, including the American Medical Association, recommend. I think it's wrong. When you're ruining precious moments of people's lives, you can't just shrug it off and say, well, sorry you fell in the cracks. Katie says that after she and her husband hired an attorney, The Alabama Department of Human Resources closed the case.
So I hate to bring this up, but you're Pregnant again. Yes. I'm terrified. I brought up with my new doctor opting out of a drug screen, and I was told that. The hospital will report me to DHR if I decline to do a drug screen.
So I feel trapped. I mean this all just happened a year ago.
So it's very fresh and I'm very wounded still from it and terrified of it happening again. Last month, Aaron Moriarty reported on an investigation into practices of the kidney dialysis industry, an industry patients say sometimes prioritizes profits over care. LQ, is it fair to say you're living literally day to day? Yes, literally. Among those we met, LQ Goldring, who turned to dialysis after experiencing kidney failure as a young adult.
When we talked with LQ, she'd been on the waiting list for a kidney transplant for a decade. Today, 627 Shortly after our story aired, she received an anonymous kidney donation. She's now four weeks post-op. doing well. her years of dialysis hopefully behind her.
This is Tracy Smith. Thank you for listening and please join us the next time our trumpet sounds.
