She loves it hot. He loves it cold.
However you sleep, the pod by 8 sleep adapts to you. Personalized temperatures keep you in deep sleep longer, so you wake up refreshed. Learn more at Aidsleep.com Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. The kiss, a simple gesture, but loaded with meaning, far more perhaps than most of us realize.
French poet Alfred de Musset tells us, with a kiss we set out for the unknown world.
So with Cupid making his annual Valentine's appearance in just a few days, this morning we turn to Susan Spencer. to size up the smooch. Guess Me? It's almost Valentine's Day. How about a kiss?
Kissing is something that we have evolved to do over time that is a way of showing that you care. But why does smashing your mouth up against somebody else's mouth show that you care?
Well, it feels good. From polar bears to prairie dogs to people. Why We Kiss, Ahead on Sunday Morning. 50 years ago this month, the Eagles released their first collection of greatest hits. the biggest selling album in history.
The band is still performing to sold-out crowds, led by co-founder Don Henley. who's talking with Tracy Smith. To a generation of music lovers, the Eagles are essential. But they won't be around much longer, says band co-founder Don Henley.
So, what if people say, we want more Eagles after this? I guess they'll just have to listen to the records.
Okay, Jenny. We hope to get An Eagle show like you've never seen before and may never see again. coming up on Sunday morning. For breaking up the winter blues, there's nothing quite like a dog show. And there's no show like the Westminster Dog Show.
For our Martha Teischener, this one was a labor of love. Oh my gosh, the first time I saw her, I thought she was the best doorman I'd ever seen. Look up, look up, look up here. Penny won best in show. But there are no losers at Westminster.
The 2,500 plus dogs invited to compete. are all champions. But more important Beloved pets. The Westminster Dog Show ahead this Sunday morning. Since it's Super Bowl Sunday, We'll be doing some blocking and tackling of our own.
Jim Axelrod asks why quarterbacks get all the attention. Chris Livesay pays a visit to Antwerp in Belgium, diamond capital of the world. Plus Luke Burbank on Super Bowl party etiquette. Faith Saly warms up to the streaming sensation, heated rivalry. And more on a Super Sunday morning for the 8th of February, 2026.
We'll be right back. Valentine's Day is just a few days away. reason enough for Susan Spencer to ask is a kiss Just a kiss? 48-year-old Shimin Ajan still thinks about a long-ago high school kiss. though she'd rather not think about it.
Almost immediately. His tongue starts darting in and out of my mouth. You don't look like you like this. Who likes that? Nobody.
Well, he must have encountered someone who did. I don't know if he had very much experience, but nobody likes. Dart tongue. She says that awful kiss probably didn't influence her career choice, yet today she's a certified sex therapist with some serious thoughts about kissing. A kiss is a small short moment in time.
that can have a really big impact. What a good kiss is really about is You and your partner doing the same dance to the same tune. And we're not all Fred of Stare. We're not all Fred of Stare, but we don't have to be Fred of Stare. It's about attunement.
She says a kiss, one kiss, and even can determine if a relationship moves forward. Kissing can be a way of assessing attraction. When you're all up close in somebody's face, you can assess pheromones. You can get a sense of someone's immune system and whether or not there is compatibility there so that you can have a child who's healthy.
So there's a lot that a kiss can do. That's putting a lot of responsibility on a kiss. Yeah. I think kissing is such an interesting behaviour because it's something that at least in the Western world people do every single day without really thinking about it. That mystery inspired Matilda Brindle to look deeper.
So the University of Oxford evolutionary biologist spearheaded a recent study on smooching. How long have humans been kissing?
Well, we think that humans have been kissing for as long as humans have existed. She says the very first kiss might date to our ancestors as far back as twenty one million years ago. which is perplexing when you dissect what a kiss really is. Kissing does at first glance seem counterintuitive because you're swapping saliva with another individual. You know, if someone went and offered you a cupful of their saliva, you probably wouldn't take it.
And yet we're happy to kind of smush our mouths together and do that.
So it does seem counterintuitive. And yet everyone seems to be doing it, including animals.
So, you know, polar bears share these really sloppy, foamy kisses with one another. They're kind of horrifying to look at. We mustn't judge the polar bears. We mustn't judge, you know, it's probably very romantic for them, but it's it's a lot for us to look at. And then things like prairie dogs kiss as well, and they have these kind of softer, more nuzzling kisses, and they seem quite sweet, whereas the polar bears are extremely intense, I would say.
You work with animals quite a bit. I do, yeah. Has any ever tried to kiss you? Oh, I should have known this question was coming. Yes, there was a young capital monkey called Pepe who did.
He did try and kiss me once. It wasn't a romantic advance. I wasn't special. He was trying it with a lot of different individuals. But you've known people like that.
Yeah. Even animated animals kiss. It's hard to be more romantic than Lady and the Tramp.
Well, they're two dogs and they're in love and they're eating a plate of spaghetti. On this lovely. And they both end up eating the end of the same piece of spaghetti and they're eating it and then they end up in a kiss and it's really adorable. That moment of puppy love made the In Style magazine list of the most iconic movie kisses ever.
So how do you decide what the best movie kiss is? Ooh, I think we we love a brainstorm. We love sharing ideas. Fashion features director Madeline Hirsch worked on the list, along with deputy editor Jonathan Borge and editor-in-chief Sally Holmes. I think with a movie especially, the dialogue almost makes the kiss in some ways.
I think of when Harry met Sally, there's that moment, Billy Crystal says something like, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want that moment to start now. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. And the romance of that statement. adds to, you know, the actual kiss. Celebrity kissing is always a hot topic for these three in movies or in real life.
How big a deal are kisses in pop culture overall? Huge. I think they're often the high point of a story. There are many pop culture kisses. My all-time favorite, I'd say, is Britney Spears, Madonna, and Christina Aguilera at the Vienna's.
That shocked the world and I think it altered my brain chemistry as a kid or teenager. We interviewed one therapist who remembers a kiss she had in the 11th grade. Oh wow. Because it was a disaster. Do you all remember your first kiss?
I think everybody does. I mean, assuming you've had it. You must remember this. A kiss is just a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh.
Which brings us back to Shimin Ajan. That high school kiss, as terrible as it was, had a positive impact. I learned to speak up for myself. I learned to advocate for myself in that moment. If I didn't like something, I figured out how to do so in a way that was kind and constructive instead of humiliating.
So, Dark Tongue did you a favor? Thank you, Dark Tongue. Yeah. Not something you ever thought you'd say. What advice would you give as we approach Valentine's Day when it comes to kissing?
Kiss more. Practice. Practice, practice, practice. Practice, practice, practice. There are so many benefits to kissing.
It helps you to feel closer, more connected, more comforted.
So we can all use a little bit more of that these days. Kiss, kiss. Super Bowl Sixty is just hours away, which gives Jim Axelrod the chance to offer a little insight into what may be the most challenging position in all of sports. Second down and five from the 38 ball near hash. Off set I made handoff Stevenson.
If recent history has any guy throws it nearside, Holland's open, makes the catch over the shorter 40. He's first down.
Somewhere near 130 million Americans will tune into the big game tonight. Darnold, time, ball thrown, open is Rashid Shaheed, makes it catch, drop. And no two players will have more eyes focused on them. then the quarterbacks for each team. The quarterback.
There's no There's nowhere to hide, ever. Young goes deep in the- No, he's not there. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young with a flay fake, drops back the throw, deep mid won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49er. It's the most difficult job in sports. Quarterback is opposed to being a star linebacker or a running back.
Or even other sports because it's just. different. Quarterback is a different spot. You can't control hardly anything, yet. You're held accountable for everything.
You don't play quarterback. You live it. Author Seth Wickersham spent years studying how NFL quarterback. is different. from any other job in sports.
There's so much pressure.
So much scrutiny. and so much celebration and fame surrounding it. that I think it's more comparable to a politician or a rock star. In his latest book, American Kings, He examines what makes an elite subset of quarterbacks the best of the best. There are about 16,000 high school quarterbacks in America in any given year.
About a thousand end up playing at the highest level in college. There are 32 starters in the NFL. There are 10 good ones, and there are three future Hall of Famers.
So how do you survive that winnowing? Who makes it? And who doesn't?
Well, the first thing is you have to have the physical attributes. element above the line with arm strength, accuracy. But The rest of it is all You're you're f psychological makeup. Joe Namath's psychological makeup provided a transformative moment for pro football 57 years ago. When he boldly guaranteed his upstart New York Jets would beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
And he has said that the Jets are going to win. He doesn't even predict it. He said, I guarantee a Jet victory. And then He backed it up. Yeah.
The game is over. and New York Tips are the world champions. Did you ever Feel pressure. Did I feel pressure? We all felt we could win, we won.
Baltimore felt they could win, they lost. You had to think here for a few seconds about whether or not you even felt it. Being worried about playing wrong or thinking it's all on my shoulders. Oh, you know, never, never. Cool and confident, Joe Neyman.
That Super Bowl win changed not just football, But the culture. The Colts were led by Johnny Unidas, the paragon of the establishment.
So Unitis has a crew cut and wears high top shoes. Namath? Namath had sideburns down to here. He had shaggy hair. He wore fur jackets on the sideline.
He did pantyhose commercials.
Now I don't wear pantyhose, but a beauty mist can make my legs look good. Imagine what they'll do for yours. boys and girls across the country like being able to throw the football well gets you this life. Hello, sir. I'm doing well.
While 60 years later, at his restaurant in South Florida, Namath still enjoys what football gave him. He's also candid about the price even American kings pay. When the cheering stopped.
So where you're sitting now You're feeling lucky. Oh boy, you bet. Oh man, are you kidding me? The the things that I did he filled the quiet after his playing days with drinking. you know, driving a car under the influence of alcohol.
I mean, come on, I'm so lucky I didn't hurt somebody else or kill somebody, you know, myself. He got help. And Broadway Joe found his best life in the least glittery place possible. in the backyard with his grandchildren. Driving them to school.
Do you like life as Carlpool Lane Joe as much as you liked it as Broadway Joe. If I didn't have my daughters and if I didn't have my grandchildren, I don't know. I know. I really think I'd have been dead by now. The Indianapolis Cold Select Andrew Locke.
Quarterback Stanford. Retired quarterback Andrew Luck. could conduct a clinic on life as a former American king. How do you exist in a world where you are trying to stay closely connected to your humility and this is what you have to walk by every day? I don't know.
We caught up with him at his alma mater, Stanford, where he's the general manager of the football team following seven seasons in the NFL. A STAR WITH THE INDIANAAPOS COLTS. Fuh. A quarterback to succeed, the quarterback has to be the sun and the ecosystem all orbits around. but sidelined for a season with an injury in twenty seventeen.
Luck realized the traits needed for success on the field. were unsuited for a happy life. Off it. What did you find out about yourself? That ultimately led to you walking away?
I think I realized that I'd been putting up walls as opposed to building bridges to the folks. that were most important in my life. I think I took it as a marker that this wasn't for me anymore. At the age of 29, One of the best in the game. Hello.
He walked away from $58 million left on his contract. And retire. But I am going to retire. This is not an easy decision. More interested in being an elite husband and dad.
than an elite quarterback. After retiring, walking away from football, I found a lot of purpose in my what, you know, raising a young family and being a domestic dad and coming to terms with 70,000 people who weren't going to be cheering for me when I changed the diaper. Sure as he is of the path he took. Luck admits to some occasional pangs. Walking away meant also walking away from a dream.
But Sam Darnold and Jackson Smith and Jigba were ready to win. Which raises the idea that throwing the perfect pass is the simple part for an NFL quarterback. the rest of what he has to master. Borders on mystery. It's a mystery because I can't write it.
I have to go live it out. in dynamic kind of insanity. Trying to find Beautiful choreography, timing, intricacy, like I'm done. Despite The insanity of it all, right? It's like, run!
And then, oh no, there's something beautiful in here. Find it, let it go, let it, and just, and then all of a sudden you make this play and it all happens, and you win games, and then you go into the championship, you win a Super Bowl. You're like, this is insane. It's it's crazy because you can't You just don't know. For the subjects of our next story, it's truly a dog's life.
Here is Martha Teischner. Yeah. For Best in Show at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. is the Doberman pension. A very big ribbon for a very big honor winning Best in Show.
But especially special this year, the 150th anniversary of the Westminster Dog Show. All of us that do this dream about winning this. You know, just like an NFL player dreams about winning the Super Bowl. This is our Super Bowl. For handler Andy Linton, Penny's win was his second Westminster Best-in-Show, 37 years after the first.
A career capping triumph. As Parkinson's disease forces him to dial back. Oh, you're so nice. Is she always this nice? She's always that nice unless you're a burglar or a squirrel.
She was so excellent, and she also stole my heart. For Best in Show judge David Fitzpatrick, The honor of choosing. was a privilege earned. The piggy news. A two-time Best in Show winner himself, most recently in 2021, with his Pekinese wasabi.
This year was his fifty-third Westminster. But wait, let's rewind. Go back one week and counting before. The Big Knight. Here's Wasabi.
Wasabi. David Fitzpatrick was at home in rural Pennsylvania, taking me on a tour of just some of the loot his dogs have won over the years. all the silver and ribbons. Upstage. Here.
Here's a lovely little puppy. By the puppies. It's like a huddle. You can't tell the heads from the tails. Have you ever seen Pekinese puppies?
Look at those babies. are five-day old Maltese. How old were you there? I think I was maybe nineteen. Fitzpatrick was obsessed with dogs as a kid in Wilmington, Delaware, but wasn't allowed to have one.
So, as a teenager, he started working with other people's dogs. I was just immersed into this world of dogs and dog shows. And I was just so happy. You know, once I became older and I wasn't living at home, I hated going home because every time I'd go home, my father would be like, when are you going to get a real profession? You just can't.
Play with dogs your whole life. And I'd be like. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. He worked his way up to top-level handler, breeder, and finally respected dog show judge.
preparing for Westminster as he brushed up on the breed standards for the more than two hundred breeds entered. His biggest priority? Just basically try not to fall and break a leg or get food poisoning or do anything that's going to sabotage the event. The first Westminster dog show was in 1877. Its mascot then, its logo now.
A pointer named Sensation. For most of its history, the show has been held at Madison Square Gardens. Sure, there's the dog show and it's serious and it's important and it's iconic. But what really thrills me is that so many people come together just because they love dogs. Every day can be Bring Your Dog to Work Day for Donald Sturz, President of the Westminster Kennel Club, since twenty twenty two.
He hasn't missed a Westminster since he was ten years old, competing in junior showmanship. I was showing our dog Clyde, who was this big blonde golden retriever who I could barely see over the top of. I was unfortunately one of those children who had some challenging times in school. I had a lot of bullying experiences. After a difficult day to come home and the dogs are jumping up and down and the tails are wagging as a child, that's a wonderful counterbalance, right, when things are not so great otherwise.
As best-in-show judge in 2022, Sturz picked Trumpet the Bloodhound as the winner. This way, Pablo.
So we thought we'd ask him how a judge judges, demonstrating on my dogs, both bull terriers. Pablo wanted nothing to do with any of it. Oh, girly, are you ever special? But girly, a rescue. You're gonna go around the ring this direction.
Loved her moment in an honest-to-goodness Westminster ring.
So the judge is gonna be looking at the head, and as we know, a bull terrier has an egg-shaped head. Girly's showdog wannabe ambitions were rewarded with a ribbon. Oh my! Good girl. That was last Sunday afternoon.
Yeah. Meanwhile, at the New Yorker Hotel, where most of the dogs and their people stay. A log jam in the lobby. What a beautiful dog. We happened upon Jet, a standard poodle, and his owner-handler, 23-year-old Gia Jufrida.
What are all the blue things? His hair is like... nine or ten inches long, so it just keeps it protected while he's being a dog. On Monday. D for dog, day one.
Pitch number thirty. Pitch number 32. We saw two shows going on. The official one, the breed judging taking place in ten different rings. And the unofficial and lovably goofy one.
in the benching area where dogs waited to compete. He'd do anything for me. Compliantly getting his hair done. We just take these bands out of his hair and then we'll brush through it with a pin brush and then we'll end up blowing it through it with a blow dryer and then at the end we spray him up with hairspray. A two and a half hour process.
And then it was showtime. A place like this with all the crowd and the excitement, he just thrives off of it. He knows, he looks at me and we just go do it together. Together. They won best of breed.
Maybe we brought them luck. Yeah. By Tuesday evening. The field had narrowed to seven best of group winners. Wall-to-wall fans screamed and cheered as the finalists circled Madison Square Garden.
New York crowds are pretty rambunctious.
So I'm going to try to tune it out. Yet, uh, you know, I don't know if that's possible. As David Fitzpatrick approached the ring, he had no idea which dogs were out there. The best in show judges sequestered. Until the big reveal.
A good example of any breed is beautiful, really. Your heart skips a beat to see something absolutely near perfect that nature could be so kind to let happen. The Doberman pension. But it was Penny's night. Here's the cold truth.
A streaming hockey series has gotten a lot of viewers.
Well, all hot and bothered, including Faith Saley. Maybe you've heard of Heated Rivalry, the Viral and Viral Sensation? This gay hockey romance series created in Canada has absolutely steamy scenes and a worldwide fan base. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Well, there are butts. There are slap shots and butt shots. Two hockey stars face off and body check each other on and off the ice. Spoiler alert, after much action with sticks, they skate into each other's hearts.
Now the actors who play them, Hudson Williams and Connor Story, are everywhere. From presenting at the Golden Globes. To carrying the Olympic flame. to hugging world leaders. That's Canadian Prime Minister Mark Kearney, who pulled a power play by declaring that heated rivalry proves the fundamental Canadian value that, quote, people should be able to be whoever they want to be.
I green lit this thing. I stood up to the Americans. That's some hardcore, soft power. Heated rivalry has set the world on fire. Turning point lines like this.
I'm coming to the cottage. Appear on merch. There are heated rivalry raves and trivia nights in Boston, Nashville, Toronto. In Russia, where declaring one's love for this gay romance can land you in prison, fans call their illicit viewing digital resistance. Gay audiences feel seen, literally, by this show.
And get this, heated rivalry is beloved by women. Oh, just wait, just wait. Straight women in particular. Hi, moms. Hi, daughters.
The extremely explicit consent is hot. And there's a poignant sweetness to witnessing two young men fall in love while they embody conventional masculinity and defy its limitations. This show is a woman's fantasy, but it's not a sexual fantasy. It depicts a world in which men are allowed to be all that they can be, which is a world women dream of for their partners, their sons, and themselves. Heated rivalry reminds us that vulnerability is strength, and the manliest choice is love.
We can go the distance, we'll find out in the long run, in the long run, we can handle some resistance. No question about it. The Eagles are rock music legends. More than five decades after they first got together, they're still making music. and still a tough ticket.
They're talking with Tracy Smith. The nighttime lights of Las Vegas are too bright to let you see the stars, but sometimes you can find them under one dazzling roof. Oh no. I feel the highway cooling. One of the greatest old school bands on earth, the Eagles, are in residence at the state-of-the-art Las Vegas Sphere, led by the band's co-founder Don Henley, along with longtime guitarist Joe Walsh and country legend Vince Gill.
One writer said, and I'm going to paraphrase this: there's one thing in America that people agree on, or seem to agree on, and it's the eagles. I don't know if I would agree with that. I guess we're kind of a staple. Our first record came out in 72. 53 years of playing for people.
So it's, you know, it's been a miraculous run. TV. Jesus. And it got even more miraculous last month when one of those Eagles albums from the 70s, their greatest hits 1971 to 75, became the first to sell more than 40 million copies, cementing its place as the best-selling album of all time. Greatest hits is kind of a misnomer.
It should just be called their best songs because. Every song on that album was not a great hit. You know, there are a couple of songs on that album that didn't break the top 30. But they're good songs. Desperado, for example, was never released as a single.
Not by us, nor by Linda Ronstadt. Desperado. Mm. Why don't you come to your senses? And Henley says the album wasn't even their idea.
It was basically forced on them by the record company execs. You didn't want to make a greatest hits album. No, we didn't have any way to stop them except just to complain. And you complained? We complained.
Oh, yeah. You can see it's documented. You mentioned Desperado wasn't a hit. I want to go back and talk about that song a little bit. That was the first time that you wrote a song with Glenn Frye.
That's right. Did you immediately click as songwriting partners? Yeah, I think we did. He was great. Uh we used to call him the Lone Arranger.
The Lone Arranger. Because he was so good at arranging songs. Eagles co-founder Glenn Fry died 10 years ago at age 67, but his legacy is larger than life. Yeah. Fry's wife Cindy helped create this.
The Eagles' third encore, an almost life-size model of the key places in the band's history, including a mock-up of LA's Troubadour nightclub, which includes a real working bar. What was your drink of choice back in the day? We were trying to be macho back in the day, so you would have a shot at tequila and chase it with a Doseki's beer. Yeah. Yeah.
Take another shot occurred. Which was pretty stupid, yeah. The true door there. These days, Henley's pre-show routine is a bit more sensible.
So you're doing sit-ups before you go on stage. Before show, yeah. And that's my warm-up. I don't do voice exercises because It doesn't help. tightening the abdomen.
It's where I sing from.
So I sing better if I keep that in shape. Oh, interesting. You gotta keep your abs in shape for your voice. Yeah. I mean, I don't have a six-pack or anything, but there's one under there somewhere.
Yeah. And I never feel One of the emotional highlights of the show is the moment where Glenn Fry's son, Deacon, takes the stage in his father's spot. often with his father's guitar and sings his father's songs. What's it like now to sit there and see Deacon Fry where Glenn used to be? I burst with pride.
You know, I I almost got tears in my eyes the other night. Was there any sort of internal debate about going on after Glenn died? Yes. I didn't think it was feasible.
So we thought about it and I said to them, I said, Well, we I'll only do it if if we can get Glenn's son. to be in the band. That was your condition. Yeah. Woooooo.
Thank you. And at the Vegas Sphere, Dad is looking down. A father of four himself, Don Henley has always had a rich life outside the band, and he recently co-produced a PBS documentary with filmmaker Ken Burns about Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was trying to make sense of life. He lived exactly the way he wanted to live.
There are so many parallels to what he was seeing during his time and what we're seeing now. You know, as Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I think that's That's what's happening now. You can What's happening now for the Eagles is more live performance. They'll hit the road this summer for a few more shows.
And they've extended their run here until April using technology that didn't even exist when they first started making music together. The sound system is like nothing on the planet. There are about 167,000 speakers. In that dome. Is that intimidating?
It was at first. I mean, good God, they can hear all the mistakes. Hello. The Eagles' current tour is called The Long Goodbye, and Don Henley says this time he means it. You know, I think this year will probably be It.
I've said things like that before, but I feel like we're getting. toward the end. And that will be fine too. You think 2026 will be the end of the Eagles? Yeah.
And I'm okay with that.
So, what if people say, we want more eagles after this? I guess they'll just have to listen to the records.
Are there ever times that you have to kind of psych yourself up to play the songs that you've played for 50-some years now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like every night.
Every night. You know, it's not about. us, it's about what they mean to the people we're playing them for and therefore you have to play them every night with your heart in it. And you do it because of those people out there. What makes us happy is that we make other people happy.
We say that music is medicine. And people need some medicine right now. Keep the sun. This all World feeling the same. As Valentine's Day approaches, there are those of us who have diamonds on their mind.
like our Chrysler say.
Well They're the ultimate status symbol from Marilyn Monroe to Taylor Swift. When pro football player Travis Kelsey popped a question last year, fans around the world were talking about the rock. But in Antwerp, Belgium, a world away from the glitz of pop culture, diamonds, some are murmuring. may not be forever after all. For more than 500 years, this quiet cluster of streets has been one of the most important diamond hubs on Earth.
A place where 80% of all the world's rough diamonds have once passed. Phil Houmans is managing director of Bonas. One of the companies that helps run Antwerp's diamond auctions. Even in Belgium, a lot of people are not really aware of what is happening here in this diamond district in Antwerp. Hidden behind nondescript buildings and down bleak white halls is a warren of customs checkpoints, grading labs, and trading floors that still runs on whispers.
Broken by the gentle tinkling of some sixty billion dollars in annual trade value. Antwerp trades product that comes directly from the mine. Mines in places like Botswana and Canada that send their uncut gems to Antwerp to be traded around the world. Why do people still to this day, five centuries later, still come to Antwerp to get their diamonds? It kind of works like a Swiss watch.
We're operating here in a square mile where it got. 1200, 1300 diamond companies, many, many different communities and nationalities of people working here. I thought it was exceptionally unique. Ravi Bonzali is the managing director of Rosie Blue, one of the world's largest diamond companies, and part of a family that's been in the trade for generations. It's a beautiful diamond.
My grandfather would cut and polish diamonds, and his nephew used to sell them, and that was the whole company.
So from that to going to today where we're about 4,000 employees, it's a beautiful story behind there. But today, that legacy is under strain in ways Antwerp has never experienced all at once. First, blood diamonds. For years, the industry was plagued with exploitation in developing countries, a history that's led to some of the strictest oversight requirements in the global luxury market today. Second, geopolitics.
For decades, a significant share of the world's rough diamonds flowed into Antwerp from Russia. That ended abruptly with sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That's about $3 billion of Russian diamonds that stopped flowing through India. $3 billion. $3 billion.
Then came tariffs. My favorite word: tariffs. If they've been cut and polished in India, it's Indian. American tariffs that we have to pay. And then, there's the fastest moving challenge of all.
Lab-grown diamonds, once a novelty, now mass-produced, chemically identical and indistinguishable to the naked eye. Anzali has to scan all of his diamonds, millions per year, to make sure no lab growns have been snuck in the mix. You can't tell the difference, so why pay the markup for something real? Yeah, that same statement can be said for any good counterfeit. This is a finite resource.
And I think that forever story holds a special power. Over something that was grown two weeks ago in a factory in China and cut in polars. It's that story that's brought American Sarah Casey to Elliot and Ostrich, a boutique showroom. That's really special. This could be a contender for the 10th anniversary celebration.
Congratulations. Beautiful. And how would you feel if you found out that your husband had gotten you a lab-grown diamond?
Well, again, it would depend on the context, but I probably wouldn't be happy for the tenth anniversary. Which raises another challenge to the industry. Marriage rates are declining worldwide. Fewer engagements mean fewer engagement rings. Fortunately, Jennifer Elliott, the owner of this boutique, says there's also a new market.
Yeah. A divorce range. Actually, I myself got divorced, and what I realized was that. It's quite a painful moment in life. And so, what we do is we keep the diamond, the central stone, but then reset it in a new design that is an expression of.
The new you. Antwerp is evolving, but evolution here doesn't mean abandoning the expertise and artistry that's made the city indispensable in the first place. I'm on my way to see the world's biggest polished diamond, which, as luck would have it, just so happened to be unveiled while we're here in Antwerp. Yeah. Meet Peter Her Bols.
and his crowning achievement, the Black Eagle.
So that's the world's Biggest polished diamond. It took seven years to cut and polish. But here are billions of crystals inside in all directions.
So the light dies inside.
So much so our cameraman struggle to focus on all 612 of its carrots. It's like the black hole of diamonds. What do you plan to do after you sell it? I think after fifty years. It's time to retire.
Your swan song or your eagle song, as it were. Yeah. Not a bad retirement with the millions of dollars he should get for it. But the rest of this jewelry box of a city isn't ready to call it quits. Wagering that some things are still worth taking their time.
and come out stronger under pressure. I have no doubt in my mind that we will have an industry here tomorrow. Did you know that the youngest diamonds are a billion years old? The youngest diamonds.
So that predates trees on planet Earth. How many things? Do you carry or hold in your home or wear on your body? Can you say? the same thing for Mm.
You say you're going to a Super Bowl party. Luke Burbank has a few tips. Super Bowl Sunday is here, meaning millions of Americans who don't really care about football will find themselves at parties trying, for at least one day, to act like they know what's going on.
Well, as a lifelong fan who derives way too much of his emotional well-being from how his team, the Seattle Seahawks, are doing on the field, let me share some handy tips for fitting in at the party. First off, jinxes are a very real and scientific thing. If the team everyone at the party is rooting for needs a field goal, don't say, there's no way this guy is going to miss, because then he will, and it will be considered your fault. Also, don't say he is going to miss, because then he will also miss it and it will somehow also be your fault. Honestly, maybe just take a hot lap for some more guacamole and sit this one out.
Jinxes can be pretty tricky. Also, don't enter the party by saying, I'm just here to watch the commercials. That was a clever line about 20 years ago. Plus, we've already seen practically all of the commercials online in the week leading up to the game because the companies now release them early. If there's a lull in the conversation, don't panic.
Just say, these refs are killing us. Every fan, no matter who their team is, no matter what has actually been happening on the field, will 100% agree with you. This is the immutable law of football watching. Every fan thinks their team is perfect and pure-hearted and has never committed an actual penalty, but a shadowy cabal of NFL officials has conspired to keep them down. This, of course, cannot be true if you think about it, other than in the case of the Seattle Seahawks, who are perfect and pure-hearted and have never committed an actual penalty for the record.
And finally, If and when it becomes clear the team you all want to win is not going to win, you just turn to that guy wearing the $300 custom NFL jersey, even though he never played a down of football in his life. The guy crying into his nachos, complaining about the refs. You turn to him and you say, I think we're just a couple of key players away from winning it all next year. Is that true? Absolutely not.
but will I appreciate hearing you say it? You betcha. Connor Knighton this morning has a message for nature lovers. Tonight's Super Bowl comes with a pinch of salt. In the southern end of the San Francisco Bay, less than 2,500 yards away from the 50-yard line of Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, California, there's a vibrant patchwork of ponds saturated with salt.
How much salt are you taking out of these ponds every year?
Well, this year we're taking about 650,000 tons. Matt Pitcher is a solar plant manager for Cargill, which runs a bustling saltworks here. Native Americans harvested sea salt from natural ponds in this area, but commercial production really ramped up in the mid-1800s during the Gold Rush. You couldn't have had the gold without the salt, right?
So all the people that came here needed to preserve their food to get over to the areas where they were mining. The bay is naturally salty, but the ponds concentrate that salt over a two-year process of pumping and evaporation. A pool's salinity also impacts its color, thanks to microorganisms which thrive in the brine until the ponds are eventually drained. That John Deere tractor is pulling our harvester, which is loading salt into this haul truck right here. Sea salt remains a big business.
It's used in everything from swimming pools to snack foods. Although the process has streamlined over the years. Salt production once occurred on more than 50,000 acres. Today, Cargill operates on just 12,000.
So everything that we're seeing around us was once a salt pond? That's right. And before that, it was marsh.
So for thousands of years it was marsh, then for about 100 years it was salt pond, and now it's back to marsh.
Okay, so it's really just sort of a blip in the history of this landscape was the salt production. That's right. Rachel Turtis is a wildlife biologist at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, established in the late 1970s on former salt ponds. Due to all sorts of human development in the years since the gold rush, we've lost 85% of the tidal marshes which once surrounded the bay. Do you feel like marshes are underappreciated?
Absolutely. Yeah, they're very flat. It's a subtle beauty, but just being able to find marshes in this urban area with 7 million people, you can go in an area and not see anyone. But getting this to look like this? Takes some work.
The erosion protection has been installed. The trail has essentially been surfaced on the other side. We're adding a long public access trail. Dave Halsing is the Executive Project Manager for the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. In 2003, state and federal agencies acquired 15,000 acres from Cargill.
A mix of sales and donations, with the goal of turning much of that acreage back into marshland. Marshes are important for a number of reasons. They're important wildlife habitat for endangered species, but also for fish. They're highly productive habitats. They absorb pollutants from the water, so they make the bay cleaner.
They buffer and protect the adjacent built lands behind them from wave run-ups, storms, high tides. Restoration begins by breaking down Waldoff ponds. What we're doing here is what we call a breach, a levee breach, so that there's aquatic connectivity between the inside of the pond and the sloughs in the bay around it. The water mixes with mud, and eventually plants and wildlife return. Everything from ducks to egrets to the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.
The restored marshland is also well used by humans. In the heart of bustling Silicon Valley, these former salt ponds offer an opportunity to take a timeout. I mean being an urban refuge really lets us connect people to nature whereas otherwise they might not have that. And so we see it as an opportunity to provide access to these wild areas to our local community. Thank you for listening.
Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless.
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Taxism fees extra. Speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms. I'm back. I'm really back.
School Spirits returns. Why am I here? Lot dead. Right. Disruption on this campus will not be tolerated.
If I look crazy, it's because that's how I feel. I don't know how to live in two worlds. Secrets lurk. There are others beneath the surface. They're not like us.
We need to get out of here.
Now. School Spirit's new season now streaming only on Paramount Plus. Yeah.
