CBS Sunday Morning,

Hi, podcast peeps. It's me, Drew Barrymore.

Oh my goodness. I want to tell you about our new show. It's the Drew's News Podcast. And in each episode, me and a weekly guest are going to cover all the quirky, fun, inspiring, and informative stories that exist out in the world because, well, I need it.

And maybe you do too. From the newest interior design trend, Barbie Corps, to the right and wrong way to wash your armpits. Also, we're going to get into things that you just kind of won't believe. And we're not able to do in daytime television, so watch out.

Listen to Drew's News wherever you get your podcasts. It's your good news on the go. Even as stay-at-home orders are easing nationwide, many of us are still struggling with the effects of isolation, as Lee Cowan now tells us.

Baby birds, not quite ready to fly, stuck in their nests, waiting for their food to be delivered. That's pretty much the way so many of us have felt lately, even as we too poke our heads out more and more. We used to crave silence and solitude. Isolation was healing. But as beautiful as all of this looks, chances are most of us would trade peace for other people right about now. Human beings do not like to be alone.

Jack Fong is a sociologist at Cal Poly Pomona. We're not taught to cope in solitude. We're taught to cope with people.

We're taught to interact with people to get our validations. And when you're on your own, you have to author your own way out of this. And it's a very scary process. And that's really what this is all about, is coping, right? Figuring out, like you said, we're sort of figuring this out every day. We need to connect again to the body, to the handshake, to the hug. But for the time being, that's not going to happen because our physical spaces have been emptied. And even as they fill up, we're still told to isolate six feet apart. Learning how to live in this kind of social straitjacket is kind of a new thing for us.

Steve Cole is a genomics researcher at UCLA. He says loneliness isn't just a mental deficit. It can be a physical one, too. We're literally more likely to die, more likely to get cancer, more likely to get heart attacks, more likely to get Alzheimer's disease, and more vulnerable to viral infections when we're lonely. Blame what he calls our dinosaur brain. Long ago, being alone meant being a pretty easy lunch for something bigger and more powerful. Our brains are wired, he says, to see isolation as a threat. And what happens when we feel lonely is that dinosaur brain immediately computes not safe, and it triggers these physiological responses that get us ready for injury completely without us thinking about it.

So we may not even be aware of this. So even just being alone for a couple of weeks can have a physiological impact? Absolutely. Even being alone for a few days is enough to do it. But isolation doesn't have to get the better of you.

Just ask Father Angelus Echeverri. Do you ever get lonely? Oh, sure. Sure.

He's a Benedictine monk at St. Andrews Abbey on the edge of California's vast Mojave Desert. What would you tell people that are having a hard time with this sort of forced isolation, who haven't chosen this voluntarily like you? What's your advice to how you get through it? Be gentle with yourself.

Be patient. Patience is something that is quite difficult to do because patience simply means to be able to sit with our suffering. Most of us struggle with that. But it's in that struggle, he says, that we sometimes forget that while isolation does take, it can also give. The space has been created for dreaming. The space has been created for allowing our mind to wander. You get rid of the clutter. Yeah.

You're not worried about the next thing because the next thing isn't happening. History is full of examples of people who have used isolation to their benefit. Henry David Thoreau self-quarantined in these Massachusetts woods for two years, an experiment in what he called constructive solitude. It gave us his masterwork, Walden. In the plague-ridden 1600s, with playhouses closed, William Shakespeare penned King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Sir Isaac Newton was stuck at home, too, when he developed the theory of gravity.

All right, boys and girls, let me go to our slideshow for today. Let's face it, Newton, Shakespeare, or Thoreau didn't have this to worry about. I said what? Homeschooling. Or job loss, either, like most of us mere mortals. But if we can seize on our isolation as an opportunity, like they did.

Seventy-five rides on the Peloton. Even the smallest thing And I've been making pie holders for the last three years. Might empower us to feel a little less alone. So many of you have sent us the ways you've been coping with the lockdown, from sketching to baking to quilting. Carrie Fisher Pasquale has been typing her way out of isolation. You know, a lot of people are feeling robbed and they're feeling trapped right now.

They're feeling so cut off, but there are certain things that you're never cut off from. You know, your spirit, your hope, your ability to encourage other people. She's making greeting cards using old photographs. She types uplifting captions on them, like, better together, or your heart is my home. There's so many challenges, but somewhere in there, there is something that you can be doing.

There is a gift in there. And if you can find it, I think that's complete joy. Nine-year-old Alex Negourney found joy It is called magic. In figuring out how to digitally disappear.

Six-year-old Margo Rocchio discovered nature through a camera lens. That's the part I like about this quarantine, but I don't like to not be seeing my friends. And that, at the end of the day, is really how we all feel. We're all grieving the loss of community, even as we begin to step back out. I think once we resolve the physiological aspects of this pandemic, we're still going to have to deal with all the unresolved issues of new fears of the public.

Isolation may linger just as long as the virus does. And while it is an unnatural human condition, our experience of being alone could just inspire a new way of living. All crises are opportunities to kind of go back to first principles, decide what really matters, readjust our lives, and lead a life that is fundamentally more nutritious for our spirits and souls. Tomorrow is not promised, for any of us. And so, what are we doing today?

That's the question. How we live today is what we'll determine tomorrow. It may be hard to believe, but it was 40 years ago tomorrow that the biggest of big bangs rocked the Pacific Northwest.

Luke Burbank takes us back. May 17th, 1980. 40 years ago today was a beautiful day on the mountain in southwest Washington.

It was also the most significant day of Carolyn Dreiger's life. She and a colleague had traveled to the active volcano Mount St. Helens to drop off equipment at a U.S. Geological Station. They planned to stay the night, but geologist David Johnston, tasked with monitoring the mountain, warned them against it.

He said, let's just have as few people here as possible. We were very disappointed that we were not going to spend the night looking at this beautiful volcano. The sun was just starting to set. We stopped and I took a couple of last photos of Mount St. Helens. The very next morning, at 8.32 a.m., Mount St. Helens erupted. They are calling it the most violent eruption of this volcano in 32,000 years. The energy that came out of Mount St. Helens that day is bigger than any nuclear weapon that we have in our arsenal.

Steve Olson is the author of a book about it. The whole northern flank of the volcano collapsed into this valley that was between us and that let out this burst of pressure that had been building up inside the volcano. The blast triggered the largest landslide in recorded history and flattened trees for 220 square miles with a cloud of smoke, ash and hummus.

In all, 57 people died. It was the first clear weekend that had happened in the year 1980, and so a lot of people in the surrounding area simply made plans to come out and go camping and hiking. They weren't even watching the volcano necessarily. Two exclusion zones had been set up to try to keep people safe while still allowing warehouser logging trucks to harvest timber off the side of the mountain. There were a lot of people that owned property up here that wanted to be able to get to their property and geologists would issue warnings saying, no, we think the volcano is too dangerous. Then, as now, debate raged over whether to protect people's livelihoods or their lives. They have to put a roadblock up just to keep the tourists out. What do they expect us to survive on? If it's so dangerous here, why are we still here?

I think the whole thing is just ridiculous. Ridiculously deadly, it would turn out. In fact, scientists had even drawn up new, larger boundaries which might have saved lives.

But the plans sat on then-Governor Dixie Lee Ray's desk, unsigned, as she attended a rhododendron festival. In fact, all but three of the people who were killed in the eruption were outside of the danger zones that had been established. When the volcano erupted, 1,500 feet of the mountain vaporized in seconds in a violent, super-heated cloud of debris, killing people as far away as 20 miles. I think people would think a cloud of dust and debris doesn't seem that dangerous. Yeah, this was more than a cloud. It was more like a stone hurricane, essentially.

A hurricane made up of pulverized stone that was moving with such force that it could just knock down anything in its path. One of the first to die? Geologist David Johnston. It turns out he hadn't planned to be on the mountain that day. He was filling in for his colleague, Don Swanson. He had taken my place on Saturday night. In the 45 seconds before the cloud hit, he was able to radio out one last warning, telling the Vancouver monitoring station, this is it.

His body has never been found. David Johnston, where you can see those trees down there that are cut off flat, he was in an area that had been logged so that he had a clear view of the volcano and could monitor it from that ridge. In the end, the only reason there wasn't a greater loss of life was that it was a Sunday, so fewer people were working on and around the mountain. Today, trees and wildlife are returning to Mount St. Helens. But 40 years later, in the midst of a different kind of catastrophe, it's hard not to wonder if we've learned all we could have from that sunny Sunday in 1980. . Sunday morning, 24 hours a day.

Check out our website. Earlier, Rita Braver told us about the class of 2020 doing without proms and graduation ceremonies. But Steve Hartman has found some determined seniors refusing to take no for an answer. When Gabrielle Pierce's graduation got canceled, her dad, Torrance, was almost as upset as she was. It really just broke my heart, but what do you do? Well, you thought of something. I think I did. I said, well, I guess we have to do it at a driveway.

So right there, where they usually park the shepherd. Graduation girl, y'all. Torrance graduated his daughter from Xavier University of Louisiana on a rented stage and podium in front of friends, family and passing motorists. Gabrielle says it was definitely not the graduation she envisioned, but still everything she dreamed. I think it was better than a regular one. Could you imagine that being possible just a few weeks ago?

No, not at all. And that's just one of many small miracles we're starting to see across the country. Disappointed graduates discovering pomp and silver linings as schools get creative with banner tributes and parade graduations. Others are planning drive-in graduations and at least one whiz-bye graduation.

Here in Indianapolis, it's cap and gone. The Speedway hosting a ceremony where kids can cruise the track in their own vehicles, presumably at a reasonable speed, and pick up their diplomas on the way out. It's not the memories they thought they were going to have, but it's something different and unique that they'll probably remember forever. Scott Cumrow is band director at Fergus Falls High School in Minnesota. Here he is playing for his high school's virtual graduation, all 22 parts.

It took Scott two full days to make this video for his students. And it's educators like him and parents like these who are pulling out all the stops to make this a graduation to remember. And so it's our hope when these graduates look back in hindsight at 2020, they won't dwell on what was lost, but what was found and what was left completely unaffected. Moments like this one. Very proud. My father couldn't be much prouder than I am right now, my daughter Gabrielle.

And there's the only graduation speech that matters. This pandemic has put a lot of summer vacations on hold, but never fear, our Connor Knighton has sent us a postcard from a faraway place you can visit from home. A few years ago, I took a trip to the Faroe Islands, located halfway between Iceland and Norway.

The collection of 18 small islands is officially part of the kingdom of Denmark and is easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I was hoping to go back for a vacation this year, but obviously those plans have changed. We haven't had any tourists here for the past seven or eight weeks, and it looks like it's going to be a very tough summer as well. Levi Hansen works for the Faroese Tourism Bureau. When we met back in 2017, he mentioned that it can sometimes be challenging to attract visitors to a place most tourists have never heard of.

We realized that we live in a very remote place, and we sometimes have this feeling of being like David against Goliath. But Faroe Islands tourism has steadily been on the rise. 2020 was set to be a record-breaking year.

This was definitely going to be our busiest year. We have, you know, two new hotels opening up. Doesn't sound a lot, but in the Faroe Islands, you know, that's done. I remember we couldn't find a hotel. Those hotel reservations are all canceled now. But once COVID-19 completely shut down tourism, Hansen and his team decided that they would serve as the eyes and ears of those who were forced to put their trips on hold.

At remote-tourism.com, you can now guide the Faroese Guides. They've equipped themselves with cameras and headsets and have been live streaming hour-long walks. Every minute, a new person gets the chance to direct their movements from home. When you press forward, we move forward. When you press left, we turn left. And when you press jump, well, we jump. Even if you don't get a chance to snag a minute of the controls, it's fun to watch no matter who's in charge. The guides have hopped onto boats, the virtual tourists you can ride, horses and helicopters. It's a bit surreal, really, to know that you're being controlled by a person in a completely different country, you know, many, many miles away.

As you can see, the houses are quite close together. If there's something you want to get a closer look at, a press of the button transmits a live instruction to the guide's earpiece. What's the percentage of helpful versus messing with you? Have people just been making you jump and run left and right?

How's that balance? Yeah, we considered that a lot, you know, before we did this. Most people have been very helpful, but there have been a few cheeky people that have, you know, asked us to run and jump a lot, which is also, it's a part of the fun. It's fun. I'm not satisfied until I find some sheep. I was one of those cheeky people.

When I got my turn at the controls during one of the tours, I couldn't resist putting Levy through his paces. I'm going to walk forward up this way towards the sheep again, which you can see at the top there. I think it's time to run to those sheep. Okay, are you going to make me run again? It's fine.

I'm sorry, buddy. Lift. Good idea. While the guides will often make suggestions about where they'd like you to steer them, If you ask me to turn to the left here, I'll show you a beautiful view.

you're given the final say. The hope, of course, is that some of these online visitors will turn into in-person visitors one day. And really, what better way to show off a destination than to show that, in the Faroe Islands, it doesn't really matter which way you turn.

It all looks beautiful. Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian equally at home on television and the stand-up stage. This morning, he's in conversation with Tracy Smith. Sorry, Jerry. Of course.

That's okay, Tracy. Oh, there you are. You just popped up. Awesome. Thank you. Hi. Hi.

Tracy, hi. Your house looks very nice. Why, thank you. Okay, after years of watching Jerry Seinfeld on TV, it was kind of strange to have him watching me. And I know that those two lamps, where everything was done very carefully, but I have to tell you, it's a very pleasant place to be. Well, thank you.

It's so weird being able to see into people's houses this way, isn't it? I know. Most of them are quite sad. You realize, oh, they're not special people. They're just people.

Thank you. And to him, people are still the most fertile ground for funny. Human beings like to be close together because it makes it easier for us to judge and criticize.

In his new Netflix special, 23 Hours to Kill, Jerry Seinfeld is back doing what he loves among the people he loves. But only to a point. This could be my favorite spot in the entire world right here, right now.

Could be. This is in fact my favorite type of intimate relationship. My favorite type of intimate relationship. I love you. You love me.

And we will never meet. It struck me watching 23 Hours to Kill that even though it was clearly taped before the world shut down, it was somehow amazingly on point. And I'm wondering if for you watching it now, you felt that way. What do you mean by that? There were some lines in there.

One was when you were talking about your relationship with the audience. I love you. You love me. And we'll never meet. Oh, right. Yeah, that does kind of fit this moment, doesn't it?

Yeah. We're together, but we're really not. Even though your life does pretty much suck. And I know that because I know that everyone's life sucks. Your life sucks. My life sucks, too.

Perhaps not quite as much. And the whole idea that everyone's life sucks actually seems pretty appropriate right now. But it's also great that you're alive. You can get excited about a bowl of cereal now that you really couldn't before this. If it's like 12 o'clock and you kind of want to eat something before bed and you go and look this Frosted Flakes in the cupboard, it's like so great. What is the idea of the buffet? Well, things are bad. How could we make it worse?

Why don't we put people that are already struggling with portion control into some kind of debauched, caligula food orgy of unlimited human consumption? I know you love going out and testing out material in clubs. How are you testing material now? I'm not. I'm not. I have no idea what's funny right now.

No idea. At the moment, his audience is usually his wife, Jessica, and their three children. Do you try material on your family? Yes, I do. Are your teenagers willing listeners if you try material on them?

Yeah, they'll listen, but they're not easy because there's nothing better than to look at your dad and go, eh, I don't know about that one. The phones keep getting smarter. Why don't we? Seinfeld's hoping to take his new show on the road soon. But for now, that other show is finding a new audience.

Nothing for you. You know, Seinfeld, the series, has been on a zillion lists of the thing to Quarren's stream or, you know, to binge watch right now. Oh, Quarren's stream, that's a new one. I didn't know that one. Hello, Newman. Hello, Jerry. He says Seinfeld is timeless in part because it came out before smartphones. So maybe that's part of it that Seinfeld was set in the 90s, but come on, do you think there's a little something more to it that people are reaching for that now?

Is it kind of comfort food in a way? Yeah, well, it's funny, it's funny, but no phones is a nice thing. There's always texting now in every story they tell you, and it's nice to have just people in faces. Who's saying you want a piece of me?

I could drop you like a bag of dirt. And talk about timeless. The great Jerry Stiller passed away just a few days after we talked with Seinfeld. In a tweet, Seinfeld said that Stiller's comedy would live forever.

What else is annoying in the world besides everything? Of course, Seinfeld's new show is funny too, but what really makes it special isn't just the jokes. It's the sight of the audience laughing together, shoulder to shoulder.

The other thing that struck me, I also felt a little sentimental seeing the crowd there together, people enjoying a laugh in a crowded theater. And I wonder, do you worry that that's gone forever? No, it won't be gone forever. This can't last forever, and any more than we could last forever. This is a virus that's, you know, I think in show business terms, it got a lucky break, so it's having a good moment now.

But it's going to be tired, it's going to get over, and pretty soon people are going to go, you know what, you've had your time, move on. Thank you, New York City, you've been the best. I love you guys. Nine weeks into life in quarantine, let's see how our Jim Gaffigan is holding up. Unprecedented. Remember when hearing the word unprecedented was rare?

It was something special, something people would say to sound dramatic. The unprecedented devastation in Australia. The hurricane caused unprecedented devastation.

The unprecedented outbreak of a mosquito-borne illness. I used to be frightened, a little excited when I would hear the word unprecedented. This is a really almost unprecedented big snowstorm. Ooh, something's unprecedented.

Well, that's never happened. Mixing things up, are we? Now the word unprecedented bounces off me. Breaking news, unprecedented job loss.

Unprecedented measures taken to shut down the country. There could be, quote, unprecedented illness and fatalities. Like most of you, I just want to go back to the times of precedence.

I miss the good old days when politics was boring and business news was a snooze fest. I want to go back to a time when I had no idea what an epidemiologist was. We live in unprecedented times with an unprecedented number of sick people and an unprecedented strain on our healthcare workers.

An unprecedented level of unemployment and an unprecedented number of Americans seeking food assistance. To me, the struggle to find hope and gratitude in these times is unprecedented. I have so much to be grateful for. My wife survived a brain tumor.

Should we do the totem pole? My children are healthy. Wait, what about you? Well, physically, I should focus on gratitude during these unprecedented times. See, unprecedented events are now the precedent, not the president. Although the president is unprecedented, which is now the precedent. Wait, how long have I been in here? Who's the president?

This is The Takeout with Major Garrett. This week, Stephen Law, ally of Mitch McConnell and one of Washington's biggest mid-term money men. List for me the two Senate races where you think Republicans have the best chance of taking a Democratic seat away. Nevada, New Hampshire. Not Georgia. Well, Georgia's right up there, but New Hampshire is a surprise. In New Hampshire, people really just kind of don't like Maggie Hassan. For more from this week's conversation, follow The Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.