Dani’s Twins, The Cast of Ghosts, Wacky Weather

Hey Prime members! You can listen to CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today! Here's a question the wedding planning experts at Zola get asked. Do we really need a wedding website? Well, that depends. How do you want to spend your weekend? Relaxing? Or chasing down RSVPs? Or the night before your wedding?

A long soak in the tub? Or answering last-minute questions from your guests? And do you really want your family going rogue when it comes to buying wedding gifts? Skip the headaches and get a wedding website from Zola. They're free and foolproof. A simple place for your guests to RSVP to all your events, get all their questions answered, and shop your Zola registry.

Plus, they look beautiful. Designed to match your Zola invites and totally customizable. Start your free wedding website at Zola.com. That's Z-O-L-A dot com. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the Kids for Cash scandal, a story about two judges who stood accused of making millions of dollars in a brazen scheme that shattered the lives of countless children. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Music Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning.

The Tony Awards, the annual salute to the best on Broadway, lights up the screen tonight here on CBS. We'll have more about that all through the morning. But we'll begin with a story about childbirth and parenting.

Both wonderful, both tremendously challenging. But for most of us, there's no shortage of how-to books showing the way. Not for Danny Isaiah.

She has no how-to guides. Lee Cowan introduces us to Danny and Danny's twins. Do you want me to help?

No. Although Danny Isaiah has been living with quadriplegia for well over a decade now, her twin girls see her as just a mom and she wishes everyone would. You could look at me and say, well, the physical challenges must be the hardest.

Honestly, I think it's how I deal with things like tantrums. A remarkable story of pride, persistence and parenting. Coming up on Sunday Morning. As for our morocca, this morning he goes in search of the real King Arthur and tells us about the latest revival of his life story, now on Broadway. Enough with the Marvel Universe. There's a reason the story of King Arthur and his court has inspired countless movies and a beloved Broadway musical. The Kingdom of Camelot stands for justice, stands for right, stands for peace, honor, loyalty, chivalry, everything we want a society to be.

Ahead on Sunday Morning, Camelot and the Arthur Universe. In London, Seth Doan will be talking with a legendary Broadway composer. After decades of show-stopping success, Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking back. He's pretty much defined the Broadway musical with so many award-winning shows. What do you attribute all of this to? Just sheer talent, timing?

Probably age, probably. I've been around a long time. And he's got plenty to say about the state of the industry. Andrew Lloyd Webber, later this Sunday Morning. That's where we'll begin.

Tracy Smith is talking with first-time novelist Bonnie Garmis about her best-selling book, Lessons in Chemistry. Nancy Giles catches up with the cast and creators of the hit sitcom, Ghosts, plus a story from Steve Hartman. Curtain going up on Sunday morning for the 11th of June, 2023.

And we'll be back after this. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our newest series, we look at the Kids for Cash scandal, a story about corruption inside America's system of juvenile justice.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, residents had begun noticing an alarming trend. Children were being sent away to jail in high numbers and often for committing only minor offenses. The FBI began looking at two local judges, and when the full picture emerged, it made national headlines. The judges were earning a fortune carrying out a brazen criminal scheme, one that would shatter the lives of countless children and force a heated debate about punishment and America's criminal justice system. Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. To have a child, it's one of life's biggest decisions, made immeasurably more difficult if a parent is disabled. Lee Cowan introduces us to a woman who made that decision and came away doubly blessed. Sisters can help you climb a tree. Those are silly koalas. Fanny Ise and her husband, Rudy, insist there's nothing really extraordinary about how they're raising Lavinia and Georgiana. They're twin girls out here in rural Virginia.

Oh, a cake, a happy birthday cake. Double the fun always means double the chaos. I've had periods over the past two and a half years where I've been very tired, just like any other new mom, you know. We're just two normal people, raising twins. But alongside their parenting challenges... My hips are tight. ...are their personal challenges.

Danny's a speciality. I'm a quadriplegic. I have paralysis in both my lower and upper limbs. But thankfully, her paralysis isn't complete.

Hey Rudy, can you help me real quick? My hands are paralyzed, so my fingers, I can't move them individually. And my triceps specifically are paralyzed in my arms.

And then my core, my abdominals and my back muscles are paralyzed. You want me to help? No. We adapt and do things probably different than other people do it. But Danny supports me and I support her. It's just different. Yeah, scooch forward a bit. There can be people around who, boots, say it's not normal. There's a sock in there.

And this is proof. Well, yeah it is. Did you always want to be a mom? Yes. I had my injury almost 15 years ago initially.

I was like, I still want this, but how? Danny had always been easygoing and outgoing. She grew up outside Washington, D.C., went to college abroad in Rome. Adventure, it seems, was in her bones. But in 2009, when she was only 23, she slipped on a bathroom floor and snapped her neck, paralyzing almost everything from her chest down.

The first two years, coping, were the hardest, she says, both physically and psychologically. When you're always thinking of how you're going to walk again, you're living your life waiting. But there came a moment when her waiting stopped, and it was a moment straight out of Hollywood.

I can't be like this, Frankie. One night in her acute rehab facility, the film Million Dollar Baby happened on a plane. You might remember Hilary Swank plays a boxer who ends up a quadriplegic. So despondent over her situation, she asks her trainer, played by Clint Eastwood, Please don't ask me. to help take her own life.

I'm asking. Is this what my life is supposed to be? Like, be so devastated that I go die? Shouldn't I try to get in a wheelchair? Shouldn't I try to live?

Shouldn't I think about falling in love and getting married and having kids and pursuing a career? What was the answer? I think the answer was really adapting to my life with a disability and accepting that having a disability is not the end of the world.

That's a pretty big acceptance, though, isn't it? Yes, but I'm tenacious. That tenacity, in part, is perhaps what led her to putting herself out there on dating apps. That's where she met Rudy in 2016. Their first date? Whiskey and ice cream.

Whiskey and ice cream. Great date. He was so easy to talk to. He didn't have any qualms about my disability, so that was nice for once, right?

You may kiss the bride. Soon after their wedding, they sought out an OB-GYN who confirmed what Dani already knew. Her paralysis didn't preclude her ability to have children.

I got pregnant right away. It was Rudy who first realized that they were getting a lot more than they bargained for. I was like, is there supposed to be two? And he said, why is there two? And I was like, two what? And the lady was like, you didn't know? And we were like, no, we didn't know. Both babies have normal heart rates.

Both babies have normal fluid, and there's no evidence of any trouble with them getting along in there. A friend of hers, who was also a filmmaker, suggested Dani and Rudy make a documentary, film their entire wonderful adventure, and put it out there for all to see. It's almost the ultimate click bait, right? Quadriplegic woman gives birth to twins during the pandemic.

I'm having strong regular contractions. The result, Dani's Twins, a documentary that continues to be a fan favorite at film festivals. I just don't feel comfortable videoing myself. I wanted to just come here and stay safe.

But as Dani became more confident on camera, she became more confident about her message, too. Society doesn't think we're capable of being good parents. It's prejudice, pure and simple. Although more than 300,000 people are living with a traumatic spinal cord injury in this country, most of them are men. There aren't even numbers on how many moms are living with paralysis, let alone those who have twins.

I've had many friends who are also quadriplegic women who are told that they should have their tubes tied. Based on what? I don't know. Stigma. When Dani began posting about her pregnancy, most were supportive, but there were plenty of internet trolls, too. There are some pretty nasty comments saying that I'm selfish, that I shouldn't be having children. How can I take care of children when I can't take care of myself? And I'm like, I'm taking care of myself. And she took care of her babies. I'm so happy.

In April of 2020... Six weeks earlier, Lavinia and Georgiana finally arrived. To have my body do something right, it was just very empowering. I was like, wow, I'm in a quote-unquote broken body, but it's not broken. It is strong. It made me feel powerful as a woman. Look, I got it.

Yeah! Say good job, mama. Good job, mama.

But it was also pretty humbling. Multiple feedings, diaper changes. This takes so much patience, I swear.

But she and Rudy are a well-oiled team. Typical day with twins, eating, sleeping, nursing, pumping. It's exhausting. And she does all of this while working a full-time job. She just got her own company off the ground, AccessSocial, a digital marketing firm that connects businesses with the disability community.

Let's see. What little time is left in her schedule, she devotes to a private Facebook support group she started called QuadSquad. With 400 members, many of them moms, they understand each other in perhaps ways others can't. We share pictures with each other.

We get our questions answered, share our experiences. Okay, I'm gonna go. Cory, Cory.

You better keep up. Lavinia and Georgiana, now three, have unwittingly proven Dani's critics all wrong. She's thriving, and so are they.

There are dictionaries full of tempting superlatives you could use to describe this family of four, but there's one in particular that Dani would ask you not to use, inspiring. I think it's wonderful that people feel inspired, and I'm inspired by other of my friends with disabilities as well, but I don't want to go to the grocery store and have somebody come up to me and say randomly, you're so inspiring. Why?

Because I'm at the grocery store? I want to be seen as normal. I want to be seen on the same level as everybody else.

I don't need to be inspiring. Come on this way. Come on, Gigi. She's a wife and a mom who may have lost what so many of us take for granted, but these days she says she's never felt more whole. It feels like I got a gift. Two of them.

Two, yeah. It's a scarily successful sitcom with a surprisingly lively cast. Nancy Giles is talking with the stars behind the breakout hit, Ghosts. Babe, it's so charming.

What could possibly be wrong with it? It's the haunted highlight of the sitcom universe, a CBS Paramount Plus comedy set in a Victorian mansion in upstate New York, inherited by a young couple who leave their city jobs to open a bed and breakfast. Boy, she is really can do. I am rooting for these kids. Only to discover they have company.

This place is going to make an amazing hotel. A motley crew of ghosts that only aspiring B&B owner Sam can see and hear due to a near-death experience in the first episode. Oh, my God.

What are you looking at? Rose McIver plays Sam. A lot of this show, when I first read it, I talked to me about it's how we all accommodate each other. It's how a bunch of people who think and feel very differently with different life experiences can coexist.

And action. Thanks for hopping on, Dan. This whole situation's obviously really unsettling.

Sam's husband, Jay, is played by Utkarsh and Budkar. Because I love you. Aw, he's a keeper.

Hold that thought. I gather that you guys have different styles of working. Rose, you seem sort of like Type A, you know, sticking to stuff.

Thottin' up. Stiff. All right, and Utkarsh, how would you describe Rose? Detail-oriented.

Rose works best when she's prepared and when she's, like, fully 100%, like, ready to go, knows what's happening, can take care of yourself and everyone else. And I'm somewhere close to the opposite of it. I'm way looser. What do you mean I'm inside of Jay's body? How?

When? Oh! That's not mine. This show is shot in Montreal, not L.A. During COVID, the actors, like the ghosts, couldn't leave. Imagine going to your office every single day and then when you go home, the only people you hang out with are the people you work with. Oh, my God.

It's accentuated both the sense of claustrophobia and the sense of family, which are both very useful for the show. Look at that. I use my female brain to exercise my rights and I don't feel the vapors coming on at all. Wait, hold on. No, I'm good. Rebecca Wysocki's character, Hetty, is the lady of the house.

I would say that she is uptight and untethered. Yeah, I died right there. I watched my flesh rot and my bones swallowed by the earth over hundreds of years.

It's pretty cool. Devin Chandler Long plays Thorfinn, a Viking who was left behind by his friends a thousand years ago. Kind of abandonment issues there. And then he was alone for 500 years before he met Sass. Sass is short for Sissapis, a native Lenape, played by Roman Zaragoza.

He was a storyteller when he was alive, but he's also been dead for 500 years, so he's pretty jaded. Look, I get it. Who wants to think they're seeing ghosts? It's scary. You know what's scarier? Eternity. Asher Grodman plays Trevor, a hedge fund guy, who unfortunately died without his pants on. Good God. Please.

How are your hands? It was really freeing in a way. The idea was if I bomb a joke, I'm like, well, they can cut to a wide shot.

Don't worry about it, because this is a joke. What's it like to have to wear the same costume every episode? It depends on what season it is. You know?

It's true. Summertime, it's a little rough for the crushed velvet. Which is great for us. We're the summer team right here. I'm not the summer team.

We're the outside kids. And what happens to people once the ghost walks through them? If you walk through Isaac, you're gonna smell like...

It's gonna smell like you've died of dysentery. Right. Not a good time. Silent but deadly.

Yeah, SBD. Got it. Ugh! Ugh!

Ugh! Another rule for ghosts... We could have sex, but we can't poop. Wait, what? Things are interconnected. And all the ghosts love to watch TV.

That's it? But they did not tell us whose baby it is. It's called a cliffhanger, Thor. Orphan and Sosapis, they love reality TV.

Not fair wanting them to be together. Hedy and I were more into the soap operas. Of course. Danielle Pinnock's Alberta was a jazz singer during prohibition. Once I lived the life of a millionaire. And that's you singing, right? Yes, that is me singing. You sing great. Thank you so much. I didn't care. This was the biggest role that I've ever booked.

It's my first series regular. How does that feel? It feels like an answered prayer.

All my fans led down by their one true God. Even in despair, she retains a healthy ego. There's a fear sometimes that happens for, I say, blacktresses. Where it's like, are they going to understand me? And see all the signs of you. Exactly.

And not just make me stereotypical or make me the sassy black this or the sassy black that. And I really, really appreciate the time that the Joes just take to get to know us. It is funny that they're having that little moment though, too. The Joes are Joe Wiseman and Joe Port, the writers and executive producers of Ghosts.

I think part of the charm of the show is being able to have all these different perspectives from history. There's a hippie and a viking. Be gone.

Peace. And a guy dressed like Hamilton. Hamilton?

How do you know about Hamilton? They adapted it from the British version. It had such a fun premise and also just had a lot of heart. We wanted to, no pun intended, keep the spirit of the show. I'm going to Ohio to see if my dead mom is a ghost. When we find out Sam's mom died, it made me cry. It was so touching. Bye mom. Goodbye.

Bye. Life and death is so much on the surface of all our stories that you can access emotions that most sitcoms couldn't dream of. This bed is hard because ghosts are technically weightless. Wait, I have to see what this feels like. Yeah, you're trying.

It's the most- Oh, snap. Right? What?

That's not easy. I know. Brandon Scott-Jones plays Isaac, a Revolutionary War soldier who tries unsuccessfully to seduce Hetty. Oh, what's happening? Oh, stop your games.

If you were to tell me this is a scene I was going to get to do on this show, I would have been overjoyed. Oh, Isaac, my name. Oh, Isaac. Are you still with me, Isaac?

And then comes out to her. The person who caught my eye is Nigel. Oh. It was one of these really, really wild moments where I did get a chance to connect with that character. As a queer person myself, I had that same experience. I held onto that secret for 20 something years.

He held onto the secret for 250 years, and I am so, so deeply sorry for deceiving you. Thank you, everybody. When we were on set last January, cast and crew were told to gather. Joe Wiseman has a special announcement. Late last night, we got a call from the network and picked us up for season three.

So stay tuned. These ghosts aren't going to disappear anytime soon. Now onto a week of weather that was even by current standards pretty remarkable. It's looking like the worst is over for the Northeast. But what's next?

When questions are in our forecast, we like to turn to David Pogue. Want to know a better term for global warming? Global weirding. I mean, freak snowstorms in Texas? Wildfires in Siberia?

This past week, another wall of weirdness wafted over the Eastern US. Thick, smelly smoke from the 400 wildfires burning in Canada. Right now, about 11 million acres are on fire.

That's bigger than Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey combined. Two anomalies were at play simultaneously. First, the Canadian wildfires have burned 15 times more area than average. And winds pushed all that smoke south and then stalled. This last week saw the worst wildfire smoke exposures across the country ever seen. Vijay Lemay is a senior scientist and environmental epidemiologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. It's not just trees going up in flames, right?

It's homes, it's cars, car batteries. Wildfire smoke is actually a toxic soup of multiple air pollutants. Even worse, we're inhaling particles that are less than one ten-thousandth of an inch across. For size reference, here's a piece of human hair. They enter deep into our lungs and from there they enter the bloodstream.

They're able to transport all sorts of deadly compounds, including carcinogens, to multiple organ systems. Truth is, wildfire smoke isn't that freakish anymore. At one point in 2020, San Francisco looked like this. Much of the Northeast was covered in a blanket of haze today. And the East Coast has been hit by Canada's smoke before, too.

Hundreds of miles away in northern Quebec. For now, the smoke is finally clearing out. But... Canada is on track to have its worst wildfire season on record and it's only early June.

We haven't even technically begun summer yet. So, to conclude, Canadian wildfires? Not unusual. The smoke reaching this far south? Very rare. And Canadian fires this big this early in the season?

Freakish. The climate science indicates that this could just be the beginning. We're going to see fires start earlier, last longer.

We may look back at this first week of June in 2023 fondly in the future as a relatively modest event. I hear it never rains till after sundown By eight the morning fog must disappear The musical Camelot is back on record. It's a great show. I hear it never rains till after sundown By eight the morning fog must disappear The musical Camelot is back on Broadway.

Mo Rocca looks at this latest revival and the centuries-old story behind it. Go! Go now! Long before there was a Marvel Universe, or anyone had heard of Star Wars, there was King Arthur. The Arthur Universe is more expansive than you may realize. Halt!

Who goes there? It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon from the castle of Camelot. And this is my trusty servant Patsy. Movies. The king has spoken.

Best-selling books. And one very beloved musical. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe's Camelot, originally starring Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, takes place in the legendary kingdom ruled over by Arthur. More happily ever aftering Than here in Camelot. Was there actually a King Arthur?

So that is the million-dollar question. Dorsey Armstrong is an English professor at Indiana's Purdue University and executive editor of the journal Arthuriana. And I think that the best we can say is that there was probably an Arthur-type figure around whom all these aspects of the legend coalesced over time.

That figure would have lived some 1,500 years ago, after the Romans abandoned Britain, when the island was left vulnerable to attack. Legend has it, this hero rallied the native Britons to defend themselves, becoming a symbol of English identity. The story of Arthur seems to originate with a person who managed to create order out of chaos and did so in a positive way. That made people love him, want to serve him, want to follow him. Stories about Arthur and his round table of knights evolved over the centuries. Arthur became the symbol of a benevolent ruler. His kingdom Camelot, the symbol of a just society. No, not might is right.

Might for right. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. No wonder then that the man behind TV's West Wing, that paean to good government, couldn't resist bringing his own spin to Arthur's story. This version of Arthur, he grows up to be Martin Sheen on the West Wing.

Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin adapted the script for the current Broadway revival of Camelot. This is the time of King Arthur and forgiveness is not weakness and justice is not revenge. Why this story now though? Is there a reason to tell it now?

Yeah, I think that there's always a reason to tell it. We have been for the last five, six years waking up every morning as if there's a gray cloud over us. I think that we want to be reminded that we are better than it seems like we are. I've seen how you sparkle. In the musical, the kingdom comes undone when the knight Lancelot comes between Arthur and his queen, Guinevere. Human passions undermining civic ideals. But in Sorkin's version, which is up for five Tony Awards tonight, Guinevere is less of a trophy and more a political partner.

My escape is time sensitive. Do you understand that? Camelot? No, he does not. And Arthur's mentor, Merlin, is less magical, more mortal.

Merlin reminds this correspondent of another famous sage. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Is Merlin Obi-Wan Kenobi? OK. You can do with this what you like, Mo.

But here's where I'm going to get killed. I have never seen a Star Wars movie. Really?

Yeah. Listen, I know enough to know that Obi-Wan Kenobi is a character in Star Wars, but I've never seen a Star Wars movie. I have never seen a Star Wars movie. I'm sorry.

That's the tea. Finding Camelot has never been easy. Neither has staging a successful version of the musical. When it first opened, reviews were mixed.

It's tricky because it is a musical comedy at the beginning, but becomes a tragedy at the end. A tragedy with hope at the end, but that has always been the problem with Camelot, making those two pieces work together. It's true.

It's true. Then the stars appeared on Ed Sullivan. By order, summer lingers through September in Camelot. Camelot. Camelot.

I know it sounds a bit bizarre. And overnight, the show became a huge success. Journalist Michael Lerner is the son of Camelot's co-author, Alan Jay Lerner. What drew your father to this subject matter? Well, he was an idealist, and I think he saw this play as a way of expressing some of that idealism through Arthur. This idea that Arthur was a link between barbarity and civilization was very appealing to him. Mrs. Kennedy was in the car, as we said, with President Kennedy.

He slumped into her lap. But sadly, it was a barbaric act that would immortalize the show. After President John F. Kennedy was murdered, Jacqueline Kennedy told Life magazine that her late husband listened to the cast album before going to bed each night.

Each evening, from December to December. I think that we cannot overstate the impact that not just the President's assassination had on the story, but more importantly, the fact that Jackie Kennedy chose to link those two things together. It was as if the idea of Camelot, a thing that had been great, that had reached for excellence and then had fallen short, was remembered, was mourned. A civilized king. Mournful, yes. Dedicated with all my limited ability. But for Aaron Sorkin.

To the belief that we should be governed by law. Also hopeful. Do you believe that Camelot is possible? I do.

I do. Honestly, who would want to wake up in the morning if they didn't think that it was possible? And I think that the quest for goodness, it turns out it's a fight against human nature. And no matter how many times you try, no matter how many times you fail, keep trying. And we reach for the stars! By God, Excalibur, I will be a king!

All alone in the moonlight, I can smile at the old age, I was beautiful then. He's the winner of multiple Tonys, Grammys and more. Seth Doan is talking with a true legend of Broadway, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Do you know how many Tonys you or your productions have won? Oh my gosh.

Do you know, I don't know off the top of my head. That's saying something. We count it. Andrew Lloyd Webber has won seven and earned more than 20 Tony nominations.

He's had an unbroken string of shows on Broadway for the last 43 years, and he likes to keep audiences guessing. People do love to put you into a box, and they say that's what he or she does. Do you think you are in a box?

Well, the point is that I can't be put in one. Because I wrote some Paganini variations. I set T.S. Eliot's poems with a musical called Cats. I then wrote a requiem mass at the same time as I was doing a silly pop musical about trains. And then I wrote Phantom of the Opera. Add to that Evita, School of Rock, and Jesus Christ Superstar, the 1970s rock opera phenomenon that launched his career, one of many collaborations with lyricist Tim Rice.

There have been more than half a dozen film adaptations of his work, not to mention Grammys, an Emmy, and an Oscar. His latest composition was for a stage of a different sort, God save the King! the coronation of King Charles III. The king said, would you write the anthem of the coronation?

And I wrote it. How does that happen? The king calls you? Well, I was actually having a dinner with him and the queen. As one does. But he's got a lot of interest in the same sort of causes that I have, you know. And he said, well, what about an anthem from you?

It's a far cry from Cats. I have a deeply serious side, but I also do enjoy having a bit of fun. So what's the secret? How did you avoid being put in that box?

No secret. I just, I'm not in it. I just write what I want. The man who helped define the Broadway blockbuster also says what he wants. You could get a Tony Award for putting up a bit of money and saying you're a producer. Somebody puts $20,000 into a play or something and then a play wins best play and they can say, well, I'm a Tony Award-winning producer. The Tony Award people are not going to like that comment.

But it needs to be addressed, you know, because it is a bit silly. There was that moment when sort of 30 people would come on stage because they're all producers. There were no Tony nominations this year for Lloyd Webber's newest production, Bad Cinderella, a playful alternative twist on the fairy tale.

It closed prematurely this past week, ending his decades-long run with the show on Broadway. I completely baffled how a show in London could have probably had the best reviews of my career. What the nerve it touched in New York, which made everybody feel so bad about it. It got some pretty scathing reviews.

The New York Times wrote, bring eye plugs, bring ear plugs. I haven't read any of the reviews. Really? No, because my son, you see, died on the day after it opened. Nicholas Lloyd Webber was just 43.

A Grammy-nominated composer, he died in March after battling gastric cancer. I don't think it really has completely sunk in yet. How do you deal with something like that? Well, I'm not sure I've dealt with it very well. In what way?

I don't know. I mean, it's very hard to put into words. But I think about it a lot and, you know, we hugely miss him. He dedicated the final Broadway performance of The Phantom of the Opera to his late son. When he was on the stage with us in New York a few days earlier, Lloyd Webber reflected on the show's record-breaking 35-year run. What resonates so much about this production? I don't know. I mean, if I knew why Phantom has really touched so many people, then I'd do it again. It remains a mystery to you? It's not that.

There isn't a formula. A 75-year-old composer says it's getting harder to put on a show here, creating barriers to experimentation. I'm a bit worried about the future of Broadway. The running costs are so incredibly high, so Broadway is going to turn into the equivalent of Fifth Avenue, where, you know, if you want to create a brand, you put it on Broadway, knowing you're not ever going to really make any much money in it. But they have to be there.

And then there's the price of tickets. It can't sustain as it stands. It'll just be very, very big hits, and it bothers me. Of course, Phantom is one of those very, very big hits.

It grossed an estimated $6 billion worldwide. Let's give them the chords. There we go.

There it is. The profits from the musical helped fund the $100 million renovation of his Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London. Well, architecture has always been my first love. He's investing in the future of the industry.

He's helped shape for the past half century. The last minute, we put it into Cats. It was a last-minute decision? Yes. To add this song to Cats?

Yes, very last minute. As a composer, he uses music to control the evening. Keys are really vitally important. The music of the night is in fact in D flat. And it's a wonderful key, this, because it's so warm.

Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendor. Audiences may not recognise the musical devices employed by a great composer, but can most certainly relish them. I love D flat.

Don't Cry For Me is in D flat. Can you believe you play these songs? They're all so memorable. They're huge songs and they've all come from you. That's kind of what I do. I mean, I do love melody.

And melody for me is everything, melody and story. Steve Hartman this morning is all about second chances. It's OK. Here at the God Body Gym in Memphis, owner Roderick Duncan says real change never happens overnight. But he says it always starts in an instant, or in this case, an instant cup of coffee. A few months ago, Roderick says he noticed someone behind his gym. Saw this guy sitting in the vehicle. He says the man was sleeping in one of his old cars. Homeless?

Homeless guy had to be in. So, camera rolling, he opened the door and told him to get out. Come on, get up out of my car, man. Because the door doesn't lock, the next day, same problem.

Look at you, man. And he kept coming back. He kept coming back. And so it went, until Roderick tried a different approach.

Before I could knock on the window, I said, you know what? I came back in here, I made him a cup of coffee. And on those grounds, Roderick began to build a relationship with 24-year-old Brian Taylor.

He learned about his troubled childhood and his drinking problem. And then got him some clothes, took him to get an ID, and drove him to job interviews. He even gave him a spot on his couch.

Brian says he couldn't be more grateful. But he doesn't always show it, whether or not following the rules or violating a trust. Roderick says there have been many times over the past few months where he's told Brian, that's it, that's the last straw. And every time, it's not. Some people need more than one chance.

You know, some people, it takes a while for most kids to stop bumping their head. You always have to work on you. And that patience may be the greatest gift he's given this young man. Everything you did yesterday is what got you in the situation today. So everything you do today is going to be preparing you for tomorrow. And both men agree, tomorrow is looking brighter.

I got a job, I got more confidence, I got a smile on my face. Good thing. Because Roderick says if Brian messes up one more time, he's done helping. That's it. Why do I not believe that? Well, I don't believe it either. Unconditional love.

It's crazy. Forgiveness to a fault. She's a writer whose debut novel has become a sensation, filled with life lessons found under the title Lessons in Chemistry. Tracey Smith asked author Bonnie Garmis to share her formula for success. So do you hang out in bookstores? I do. I love bookstores.

It's the best place to go any day of the week. After a decades-long career as a copywriter, Bonnie Garmis has found a new gig. Does it have a different feel now that you have a book in the bookstore?

Yeah, it's a much better feel. Her debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry, arrived in bookstores in April of 2022, is in its 56th week on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and has been translated into 40 languages. This fall, it'll be an Apple TV series starring Oscar winner Brie Larson. Welcome, viewers. My name is Elizabeth Zott, and this is Supper at Six. And it's made Garmis, at age 66, something of a literary rock star. I'm such a huge fan. Oh, thank you. I gave 20 copies of your book away at Christmastime. Oh my God, can I hug you? Yes.

The adoration is still a bit of a novelty. When Garmis sent out her first finished book, it was rejected 98 times. Did you want to give up? Oh yeah, but you know, the thing with writing I think is so important for people to realize is that the only woman who says it's over is you. It's never over.

Just because 98 people reject you doesn't mean that they were right. Garmis set that first book aside, and after a frustrating meeting at work when a male colleague took credit for one of her ideas, she started writing a new novel. I was supposed to be revising what I was working on, and instead I wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry. So I now call that constructive anger. Constructive anger.

Yes. Clearly it was good. It fueled your fire.

Yeah, yeah. I could hear her in my head. I knew she wanted to tell me that her decade was even worse. Set in the 1950s and early 60s, Lessons is about Elizabeth Zott, a chemist and mom who hosts a cooking show that ends up teaching women about a lot more than food. Some reviews have called the book subversive.

Do you like that? Yeah, I think Elizabeth Zott is entirely subversive, and when I was writing it I wanted the tone of the book, the writing style, the voice to be subversive. In what way? I just thought it would be really interesting to have a character who took herself seriously and never thought about what she looked like, never doubted herself. Basically I was writing my role model.

Garmis didn't have to look far for inspiration. Her mom was a nurse who had to stop working when she got pregnant. Lessons in Chemistry is in part for her. Yeah, it's an honor of my mother for sure.

My mother would tell you she would not like the swearing, but she would really approve of the message of women being more of who they really are. Garmis herself is a wife and mother to two daughters. During the five years it took her to write the book, she kept her full-time copywriting job and taught herself chemistry, even trying some experiments from this book.

And the fire department was called, yeah, one of my neighbors saw flames through the window and called the fire department. Yeah, anyway, I learned the hard way you should really take this really seriously. But not everything she wrote about required research. Why make Elizabeth a rower?

Well, I had to put something in the book I actually knew about. Garmis started rowing in her late 30s here in Seattle. It's a sport that involves early mornings, grueling workouts, and brutal weather, so it makes sense that tough-as-nails Elizabeth Zott rose too. Is this kind of a masochistic sport? Absolutely.

Absolutely. We used to say before every race, we'd join hands in the boat and we'd say, to the death. Because you do want to just, you do want to go all the way. You don't want to give up.

It feels pretty different now that we've got the wind behind us. It seems in rowing and in writing, dogged determination pays off. When Garmis finished lessons, she found herself in the middle of a bidding war. For a woman used to rejection, it was too much. The whole time, in the back of my head, I didn't believe it. And so I had this weird habit where I'd go to bed and then I'd get up in the middle of the night and go to my computer and look at email and see if I'd imagined the whole thing, because I have a pretty good imagination. So you would check your computer to make sure it was real? Yeah.

And I think the third night I did this, my husband literally grabbed my arm and pulled me down and he said, I'll save you a trip. It's real. It's real all right. In fact, readers tell Garmis the story of Elizabeth Zott inspired them to change their lives, take up rowing, go to law school. Thank you for writing such a courageous book for us women, honestly. And the story of Bonnie Garmis was a pretty powerful lesson, too. Ever since you were five years old, you wanted to be... A novelist. A novelist. And now... Yeah, I am.

For me, it's just a dream come true. And there's something about, I mean, if one of the messages of the book is you can change your story, you can own your story. Yeah. That's kind of you, too. Yeah, it's me, too.

I think it's everyone, though. That's why so many people see themselves in the book. So, yeah, you can change your story. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. Thank you for listening.