President Joe Biden, James Baldwin at 100, Horseshoe Crabs in Florida

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I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. We'll begin this morning with an interview with President Joe Biden, his first since announcing he wouldn't seek another term in office. a momentous decision, one that may well have changed the course of this election and history. President Biden will talk about why he bowed out of the race, the stakes this election poses for our democracy, and more. with Robert Costa.

Thank you. While Joe Biden is no longer atop the Democratic ticket, he tells us he chose to leave the race for the same reason he sought the presidency four years ago. When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president. I can't even say how old I am. It's hard for me to get out of my mouth.

Although I It's a great honor being president. I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I, the most important thing to do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump. Coming up on Sunday morning, President Joe Biden reflects on the stakes in this election and his place in history.

Now on Broadway, a storied musical that helped launch the career of an American comedy legend. But you might call Tracy Smith's report a genuine tofer. I've always been shy 65 years ago, a Broadway show helped make Carol Burnett a household name. Did Once Upon a Mattress put you on the map? Yes.

I'm going fishing for it. She's going fishing for it. And now another legend is taking a turn. I knew it the minute they said it. What took them so long?

We're not doing it already! The tale of one little show and two towering talents ahead this Sunday morning. This morning, we'll get a summer song from one of the new kings of country. Anthony Mason sits down with Post Malone. With more than 40 billion streams, Post Malone is one of the most popular musicians in the world.

What does songwriting give you? You're making a baby. With like sound waves, which is neat, I think.

Now the pop star is putting out a country album with some of the biggest names in Nashville. She's searching for the song. Host Malone. Later on Sunday morning. But I ain't got a God.

Yeah. Horseshoe crabs aren't crabs and have very little to do with horses, but it turns out they've helped save countless lives. Connor Knighton has the story of a mysterious creature that's actually older than dinosaurs, and that's old. Michelle Miller catches up with actor Zoe Kravitz, who has news public and private. Caliph Asane marks the centennial of the birth of author James Baldwin with an appreciation of his prolific prose.

plus a good yarn from Serena Ultschule. Humor from Jim Gaffigan. and more this Sunday morning for the eleventh of august, twenty twenty four. We'll be back after this. Hiring is challenging, especially when you're a business owner with a lot on your plate.

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Discounts are not available in all states and situations. Joseph R. Biden, 46th President of the United States. His has been a challenging, complicated term of office, quite literally, from day one. He's reflecting on the stakes for this election and on his legacy.

with Chief Election and Campaign Correspondent Robert Costa. We're living through history. We really are. Let's begin with your decision. You're at your home.

Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. late July with your family, and you make this historic decision. Tell me the story.

Well look, um the polls we had showed that It was a neck and neck race. We'd have been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate. thought that I was gonna hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race.

That would be the topic. You'd be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say, why did someone. And uh And I thought it'd be a real distraction, number one. Number two, When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president. Shit.

I can't even say how old I am. It's hard for me to get out of my mouth. And uh But things got moving so quickly, it it it didn't happen. And the combination was that I thought is a critical issue for me, still is not a joke. maintaining this democracy.

I thought it was important because although I It's a great honor being president. I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I... the most important thing to do and that is we must We must, we must defeat Trump. I saw those images of your family in the Oval Office sitting just over to your left. As you addressed the nation, they came up to you.

after the speech, what did you say to them? It's what they said to me. Uh They said, my grandchildren call me Papa. My uh my children call me dad. And uh They said they were proud, and it mattered to me a lot.

When I saw you with your family in the oval, I wondered. Is he thinking of Beau? Two. Look. I can honestly say that uh I think of them all the time.

Whenever I have a decision that's really hard to make, I literally ask myself, what'll a bow do? He was he should be sitting here being interviewed not me He was uh really a fine man. You know, Bo. Paul was committed to my staying committed. We uh we had a conversation.

Toward the end when he was we Everybody we knew. He wasn't going to live. And he said, Dad, I know. We know it's going to happen, so I'm going to be okay, Dad. I'm alright, I'm not afraid.

But Dad, you gotta make me a promise. I said, what's that, Bo? He said, I know when it happens, you're going to want to quit. You're not gonna stay engaged, even when it was my dad. Look at me.

Look at me, Dad. Give me your word as a Biden. When I go, you'll stay engaged. Give me your word. Give me your word.

And I did. And then some of them. That's why I had not planned on running after he died. And then Charlotte's who happened. In 2017, white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia turned deadly.

when on august twelfth Heather Heyer, a civil rights activist, was murdered in what the Justice Department called a hate-inspired act of domestic terrorism. Biden has long traced his decision to run in twenty twenty to that moment. It really is the beginning of your journey. to the presidency. As you look at American democracy, Seven years later.

How do you see it? When I spoke to the mom who lost her daughter. It's a consequence of those. neo-Nazis and race white supremacists come out of fields with in America with torches. carrying Nazi banners.

singing the same sick anti-Semitic bile was sung in Germany in the 30s. and when her daughter was killed. The press went to the then President Trump and said, what do you think? He said, they're very fine people on both sides. I knew then I knew I had to do something.

And that's when I decided to run. because democracy is literally at stake. And you know, you g and then he made He evidenced everything that we thought. No, January 6th one. Attack on the capital.

talked about now because he now talks about making sure they're all take you know, let out of prison, they're gonna pardon them. Think of this. Every other time the Ku Klux Klan has been involved, they've wore hoods, so they're not identified. Under his presidency, They came out of those woods with no hoods. No one had an ally.

That's how I read it. They knew they had an ally in the White House. And he stepped up for them. Are you confident? that there will be A peaceful transfer of power in January 2025.

If Trump wins, no, I'm not confident at all. I mean, if Trump loses, I'm not confident at all. He means what he says. We don't take him seriously. He means it.

All the stuff about if we lose, there'll be a bloodbath. It'll have to be a stolen election. Look what they're trying to do now in the local election districts where people count the votes. They're putting people in place in states that they're going to count the votes, right? You can't love your country only when you win.

Trump has said his remarks on Charlottesville were not intended to praise white nationalists, and that he was warning of economic carnage when he said bloodbath. But Trump isn't the only thing on Biden's mind. You have about five months. left in your Presidency. You're managing two wars.

domestic policy. the economy. on foreign policy. Israel's war with Hamas. Is a ceasefire possible?

Before the end of your story. The plan I put together Endorsed by the G7, endorsed by the UN Security Council, etc. is still viable. and I'm working literally every single day. to and my whole team to see to it that it doesn't escalate into a regional war.

but it easily can't. You've had a lot of ambition.

Some senators told me in March of 2021, you took them into the Oval Office and pointed up at FDR's portrait and said, we're going big. We're going in that direction. I did. We have. with the great help of so many people.

Look. Democracy works. And it was very important to prove that it worked. Prove that it worked. I mean, look at what we've been able to do.

We've created 16 million jobs. Real new jobs. We've gotten, we're around the brink of having the private sector invest over a trillion dollars. a trillion dollars in the American economy. One of the things I fought for as a senator Long time was to change the dynamic of how we grow the economy, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

The idea of trickle-down economics doesn't work in my view. You're proud of this record. Will we see you out on the campaign trail for Vice President Harris? Yes, you will. I talk to her frequently, and by the way, I've known her running mate as a great guy.

As we say, if we grew up in the same neighborhood, we'd have been friends. He's my kind of guy. He's real, he's smart. I've known him for several decades. I think it's a hell of a team.

To those who have expressed skepticism about how much you'll be on the trail or about. The rest of your term? Raise questions about your health, what do you say to them? All I can say is watch, that's all. Look, I had a really, really bad day in that debate because I was sick.

Um but I have no serious. problem. I was talking to Governor Shapiro, who's a friend. We've got to win Pennsylvania, my original home state. He and I are putting together a campaign tour in Pennsylvania.

I'm going to be campaigning in other states as well. And I'm going to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most. We had this conversation in the President's private residence, here in the White House Treaty Room, where historic peace agreements have been signed. Watching over us, Ulysses S. Grant, the general turned President who labored to restore the Union after the Civil War.

When you think about the presidency, we're here in a special room in the residence.

So much history in this room. How do you want history? to remember President Biden. Did he prove democracy can work? It got us out of a pandemic.

It produced the single greatest economic recovery in American history. We're the most powerful economy in the world. We have more to do. and it demonstrated that we can pull the nation together. Look, I've always believed, and I still do, the American people are good and decent.

They're honorable people. When I announced my candidacy to run way back for president, I said we've got to do three things, restore the soul of America. build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down, and bring the country together. No one thought we could get done. And including my own people, what we got done.

But one of the problems is I know all the things we did were going to take a little time to work their way through.

So now people are realizing, oh. That highway, oh that The biggest mistake we made, we didn't put up signs saying Joe did it. Folks. The people of this nation have spoken. four years ago.

What Joe did was defeat Donald Trump.

Now, with Trump attempting to return to the White House, Biden is sounding the alarm, in a way sitting presidents rarely, if ever, do. The stakes are that high to you. I give you my word. I think you're that high. Mark my words.

if he wins this nomination. I mean, excuse me, this election. Watch what happens. It's a danger, he's a genuine. danger to American security.

Look, we're at an inflection point in world history. We really are. The decisions we make And the last three, four years, the next three or four years are going to determine what the next six decades look like. And democracy is the key. And that's why I went down and made that speech at Johnson Center about the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court is so out of whack.

So out of whack. And so I propose that we limit terms to 18 years.

So it anyway. There is little regard by the mega mega Republicans. for the political institutions. That's what holds this country together. That's what democracy is about.

That's who we are as a nation. Mr. President, thank you.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. It's an honor to be with you. Not reviewing this room. with you.

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On this, the centennial of Baldwin's birth, California finds more and more attention is being paid to his singular journey. It is now with very great pleasure and a very great Cambridge Union Society in London. I find myself, not for the first time, the position of a kind of Jeremiah. James Baldwin, a voice of the civil rights movement, debated the commentator William F. Buckley, who was skeptical of the cause.

The topic that, quote, the American dream has been achieved at the expense of the American Negro. It comes as a great shock. around the age of five or six or seven. If you discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. Baldwin won in a landslide, 554 votes to 164.

He didn't go to college. He ain't educated. He's po. You know, he grew up in a place that isn't supposed to be able to hold fire with Buckley and with anyone. He's created himself.

Kevin Young is the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. He's also my colleague at the New Yorker. That's what's so tremendous about him is to see his almost very American transformation and say, I have a voice and I know what I believe and I can say it beautifully. One hundred years ago James Arthur Jones was born in Harlem, New York.

Soon after, his mother, Emma Burtis Jones, married David Baldwin, a volatile Baptist preacher. her son, now called James Baldwin, found a nearby escape. He spent a lot of time here as a kid, didn't he? Yes. He came to visit the 135th Street Branch Library at least three or four times a week.

Baldwin once said he read every book in the building, which is now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Barry Brown is curator of a new exhibition dedicated to Jimmy, as he was known. He listed that he wanted to be a novelist and a playwright, so it seems like he knew that he was destined for great things. At the age of twenty four Baldwin moved to France, where he wrote his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and his first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son. I think that there was this shadow that always was sort of cast over him that Rhea Combs curated the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery exhibition on Baldwin.

He was a visionary, a visionary thinker, and sort of speaking truth to power in a way that was not necessarily always sort of recognized or appreciated at the time. In the 1960s, Baldwin marched and spoke out for civil rights in Selma, in Washington, and elsewhere. He's older than Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Sure. And he outlives all of them.

Well, and I think he's doing the civil rights work that led in many ways to the movement. He transforms his unease into writing. In the 60s, he kind of acquires this reputation in America. as a celebrity, as an oracle? And at the heart of who he was was an integrationist who really sort of believed that there were these opportunities for America to live up to her principles and values.

He's using his writings as a way to be autobiographical, but it becomes a portrait of America ultimately. Writer, essayist, black, New Yorker, expatriate, gay, and that's maybe affected the way he's viewed, right? 100%. James Baldwin is a multiplicity of identities, just like we all are. And that's what I think resonates so much with his writings, is that grappling of these multiple selves that make up an individual.

Did everyone know he was gay? I don't believe so. I think that it was sort of assumed, it was presumed through the text, through the writings. In 1956, he published a pioneering novel, Giovanni's Room, about a love affair between two white men in Paris. I always go back to this quote.

He says, I want to be an honest man and a good writer. As a man, he wants to be honest. And as a writer, he wants to be good. These are slightly different things. James Baldwin died in nineteen eighty seven at sixty three at his home in the south of France, which was paid for by his forty two books and hundreds of essays.

He would maybe be only one generation removed from slavery.

Well, his grandmother who lived with them had been enslaved. He's, you know, one of our most history-based writers. You can't get to America without going through Baldwin. If he were still with us, do you think he would be surprised at how many people are still reading him and still talking about him? Depends on the bald one you meet.

I think maybe in public he'd be humble and then in private say, I knew I was right.

Somebody pull me a straight Holly bummy smoke, I'm about to get I've been breaking my back, just keeping up with the Joneses. He's one of the most popular musicians in the world.

Now something of a crossover king as he tries his hand at country music. With Anthony Mason, we have a summer song from Post Malone. What are we doing today? We're shooting a music video today with Mr. Luke Combs.

Okay. Nashville shut down its legendary Broadway for Post Malone last month. I gotta gotta sign. We're gonna be performing on the back of a semi-struck. One of the biggest pop stars in the world.

I'm pretty good at breaking down. Singing with one of the biggest names in country. Here's someone Put a tire back in the drive. And if they don't, then I just mine. Stars like Luke Combs signed up quick for Post's country album.

I heard he was going to be working on this thing, and I just wanted to be a part of it. Big times for Country Music. Yeah. The new album, F1 Trillion, also features duets with other country's superstars. including Morgan Wallet.

Blake Shelton. And Dolly Park. Everyone here was so accepting and kind. That's a testament to you. I disagree.

I think that's a testament to that man. Host Malone wasn't met with that kind of acceptance in the beginning. In 2015, when his hip-hop track, White Iverson, dropped on the internet and went viral. He was called a culture vulture. A one-hit wonder.

How did that feel to you? It sucked. Yeah. I was a kid in 1920. How did you deal with it?

Drink a lot. Did you take it personally? Absolutely. It's hard not to. but he kept writing hit songs.

It's not for the people who hate you. It's for the people. who love you. And for yourself, you know what I mean? A decade later, he has more than 40 billion streams on Spotify.

and six number one hits, including a pop song, Run Away. A hip-hop track. I feel just like a rock star And most recently, a country tune. Steve Ray Vaughn. Across his knuckles are tattooed an eclectic collection of heroes.

George Harrison. John. Uh Hink Sr. Yeah. They're all dead dudes, by the way.

but all dudes that are important to you. Yes, sir, absolutely. You're the reason that I'm traveling on But don't think twice. That's alright. Austin Richard Post, he added Malone as a stage name, grew up in Dallas, where his dad managed concessions for the Cowboys.

What made you want to play guitar? Guitar hero it was a hundred percent and I was like all right well Let me get a real guitar and see if it translates. And it did not. It did not. But Austin started writing songs and found what Rolling Stone would call a gift for turning dreamy darkness.

into top 40 gold. She joy Yeah, I'm not. You're making a baby. with like sound waves, which is neat, I think. He has a baby now, a two-year-old daughter he sings about in the new song Yours.

Don't know. We talked about her as he was cracking open a beer. You're already envisioning. your daughter getting married. I think about it a lot.

Yeah. Yes, it might be. We wear wide button first dress. Supposed to Is that the first song you've written about your daughter? No, sir.

I've written a whole lot of songs. He keeps her name private, but her initials are tattooed on his forehead. Right by the brain. Yes, sir? I'll never forget her.

If you've heard her cry, you'll never forget her either. It changes your life in the best way ever. And the most beautiful thing is. She has a beautiful mom. You've said She Saved your life, kind of?

That's true. Yeah. That's true, her and her mom. In what way? four years ago and I was on a a rough Path.

What were you wrestling with then? Everything. It was terrible. You were already really successful. Yes, sir.

So what was what was troubling me? That's a good question. This is like I Loneliness. Post says he was spiraling. downward.

Getting out. Having a good cry. Yeah. Drinking. And then go and live in your life.

And then whenever you go lay down. Drinking some more and having a good cry. And just like. I gotta wake up tomorrow and do this again. And I don't feel like that anymore.

And it's the most amazing thing. I'm sorry you went through that. That's alright. I needed to. for myself.

To figure out who I am. At 29, Post Malone, who fans affectionately call Postie Posty, is now one of the most popular musicians in the world. Good to see you. Great to see you too. Backstage before a gig in Nashville last month, he was nervous.

I got a big pit in my stomach, like ready to go, big butterflies. But posty. as an intimate relationship. with his fans. Thank you for your love and thank you for your support over all these years, ladies and gentlemen.

You tell your audience frequently That You're loved. It's true. Why do you do that? It's important. Because not everyone knows it.

You know, there's a lot of very I think lonely people. Are you trying to give people something that you yourself have at times felt missing. I think so. I think so. Yes, sir.

I think that's a good Way to put it because I don't want people to feel how I fell. And I know they do. And I'm here and I'm on stage and I just want everyone to feel welcome and to feel loved and that's the most important thing for me. And the love you get back is just as important. I cannot even believe the place that I'm in.

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Terms apply, limited time offer. You might call them nature's real life blue bloods. Horseshoe crabs, ungainly creatures, uniquely valuable to humankind. Connor Knighton has the story of a species. Located between Delaware and New Jersey, the tranquil waters of the Delaware Bay offer a bit of calm compared to the open ocean.

But for a couple of months each year. Yeah. It was a chaotic party on the beach. The bay is home to the world's largest population of horseshoe crabs. Are they looking for mates at this point?

What's happening? They are. These are all males mostly, and they're looking for a female. Lisa Ferguson is the director of research and conservation at New Jersey's Wetlands Institute. While the crabs spend most of their lives deep underwater, They surface in late spring and early summer to lay their eggs.

So they're depositing eggs into the sand. She has some males that are coming along with her. Yeah. An estimated 40 million horseshoe crabs live in the bay, although they can be found all along the Atlantic coast. Horseshoe crabs have been around for over 450 million years.

Further up the beach, Tony Rose Tablante works with the American Littoral Society.

So there's that like sweet spot like right here. Teaching volunteers how to tag select crabs for tracking. Frequently described as living fossils, these resilient, bizarre-looking armored creatures have survived numerous mass extinction events. They are arthropods. And that's why they're more closely related to scorpions and spiders, and they're not actually crabs.

Horseshoe crab, not a crab. Horseshoe crab, not a crab. Not really a horse either. Yeah. A female can lay 4,000 eggs a night.

You can see some of the eggs that have washed up and come to the surface.

So these are the ones. They're tiny. But only the ones that stay buried in the sand have a chance of hatching. When the tide inevitably unearths the rest, it turns into a feeding frenzy.

So it seems like we're not the only people who know that there are eggs here. It seems like there's some other species that have figured that out. Migratory shorebirds depend on the surface eggs and fly thousands of miles to eat them. Birds like the Red Knot, which makes a perfectly timed pit stop in the Delaware Bay to refuel on its journey from South America to the Arctic. And where there are birds, there are birders.

Seeing this migration in person is a bucket list activity for Jay Bolden. But while birding is just a hobby for him, His professional life is also linked to the crabs. I just noticed this actually. Yeah. You've got a crab pin?

Yeah, it's been our mascot. As a senior biologist with the Eli Lilly Company, Bolden is very familiar with a medical marvel flowing underneath the horseshoe crab shells. This is LAO, this is purified horseshoe crab blood. Limulus amoebocyte lysate, made from the bright blue blood of horseshoe crabs, is used to detect dangerous endotoxins in medicine. Have all of us benefited from horseshoe crab blood?

Sure, if you've gotten a vaccine. Anything that comes in contact with that medicine has to be shown to be free of endotoxin. While bacterial endotoxins can be found everywhere, you don't want to put them straight into your bloodstream. That could make you sick or potentially even kill you. Horseshoe crab blood reacts to the presence of endotoxins, which is why for decades LAL has been used to test all sorts of medicines, syringes, and implantable medical devices.

Before this method was developed, scientists tested with live rabbits. Every pharmaceutical company, every manufacturer, everyone's using this. Anyone making an injectable is using it, so it's widely spread. The actual collecting and bleeding of crabs is done by LAL manufacturers like Lanza and Charles River Laboratories. While live crabs are returned to the water after their blood is drawn, inevitably some do die in the collection process.

but it's difficult to know the total impact. They throw it in the water and they say, you know, that crab lived. But they have no idea that that crab's going to live.

So you're looking for a better procedure if they are going to flee. They're looking for better practices.

So that's a female. Wildlife biologist Larry Niles is the co-founder of the Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition. which advocates for increased transparency in the bleeding industry. He's been studying crabs since the late 1980s. How have you seen the crab population decline?

So, we best measure that by the eggs, because that's the most direct connection with the birds. And so, the eggs have gone down by. About 90%. In the 1990s, there was a bait boom that led to a significant decline after fishermen started using the plentiful horseshoe crabs to catch eels and whelk. They park by the beach and just take every crab that was coming ashore.

Within two years, they were taking 2.5 million crabs a year. And almost right away, our egg density started crashing. While horseshoe crabs are still used as bait today, the harvest is now better regulated. State by state, there are a patchwork of protections which address bait and bleeding. Still, the Center for Biological Diversity and twenty two partner organizations are actively trying to get the horseshoe crab listed as an endangered species, in part due to how many other species, like the threatened red knots, depend on them.

The bait industry, significant habitat loss, sea level rise all pose challenges. At least in the biomedical world, there's change on the horizon. The reason I'm hopeful is because synthetic. Synthetic is a very important advance.

So you mix these in a certain ratio? That's where Jay Bolden and his lab come in. Bolden's been working to get Eli Lilly and his colleagues at other companies to use a synthetic alternative to horseshoe crab blood, originally discovered in Singapore. Is the synthetic just as good as the real deal? It is, it's the biochemical equivalent.

Eli Lilly's now converted 80% of its testing to use a synthetic product. I knew the impact of the birds, I knew the impact of the crabs, and it was something that we can make a positive change. But change doesn't come quickly. Testing old products with new methods requires new regulatory approvals. In the lab, pictures of the crabs and birds remind the scientists why they're making the switch.

Rabbits protected us for 40 years. Horseshoe crabs have protected us for 40 years. 40 years from now we won't need to be impacting animals to do this test. In the meantime, every crab counts. Which is why Lisa Ferguson and this group of trained volunteers are walking along the Delaware Bay turning over toppled crabs to help make sure they get back to the water after spawning.

The effort is called RETURN THE FAVOR.

So you feel like they have done us a favor? They've done us a favor.

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That's amazon.com/slash ad free podcast to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. From Serena Altshul this morning. What you might call A good yarn.

Okay, the group of three, I'll have you come here with me. There's magic in the air.

Alright, come with me. Except there are no wands, but crochet hooks instead. I want to thank you all for being a part of this. And Holly Christensen is the fairy godmother in this story. Having been a cancer nurse, I know that small gestures of love.

Uh go a long way. She runs the Magic Yarn Project, where volunteers transform yarn into character wigs for kids with cancer or any child dealing with medical hair loss. There are all kinds of princesses Rapunzel from Tangled, Elsa from Frozen, and Moanna are among some of the more popular requests. There's Jack Sparrow and superheroes. Any character a child sees themselves as.

They put on a Batman beanie or the Elsa wig and all of a sudden they light up. And now they're not so afraid to go have their poor access to get chemotherapy because I'm brave like Batman, because I am powerful like Elsa. And they get to just be kids again. This fairy tale began a decade ago when it wasn't a fairy tale for her friend whose daughter Lily was undergoing chemotherapy at age three. Wigs made out of real hair weren't really an option.

Their skin is often so sensitive they can't tolerate those wigs.

So they'll often wear beanies or scarves on their heads, which is wonderful, but still is very difficult, especially for young children. There should be two strands of yarn on the hook.

Soft yarn was the magic solution. I'm just going to pull the tail through. And what began in 2015 with one Rapunzel wig for Princess Lily, who is now cancer-free, has spun into a national non-profit with 10 chapters nationwide. It's an army of magic makers. An army of magic makers, and that's what we call them.

The result of these wigs, the effect they have on the children, their parents, is magical. She's got a lot of money. Of course, she wouldn't mind if someone else had a magic trick up their sleeve to keep the organization tightly knit. Growing sustainably has been difficult. We're running out of our homes, out of our garages.

But magic makers are still hooked. They even reached a milestone last year, crocheting a total of more than 50,000 wigs. Each and every fiber counts. Sadly, the demand is not going away. There are over 200,000 children diagnosed with cancer in the world every year, 15,000 alone in the U.S.

So you're scratching the surface. Exactly. This thing right? But scratching the surface can do wonders for just that one family. Macklin was just a spirited two-year-old that people just came to love.

They um they loved her smile. Mallory and Justin Campbell didn't know about the project when two-year-old Mac was being treated for a cancerous tumor in her head in 2015. But someone made a request on their behalf and knew that Mac loved the little mermaid. I just remember the day that we received the package and her opening it up and her lighting up and and one of my favorite pictures is me walking into a room. And seeing her.

looking at herself in the mirror. And she was just grinning like she just felt so beautiful at that time. which is why. When Mac passed away in May of twenty sixteen, The picture of her wearing that arial wig forever rests on her headstone in Franklin, Idaho. It's just one of my favorite pictures of her.

Like, her smile is so genuine. To me, it shows you what that wick did for her. It helps you. not think about what they're battling. And just be able to focus on them and their happiness.

It takes seeing the photos, the videos, or the written emails that we receive from parents to realize that We may not be saving lives, but what we're doing is giving life and hope to others.

Well, of course, the hope is that we eradicate cancer. The hope is we can save every life. We can't do everything. But we can do something.

Now from our Jim Gaffigan, something really corny. In the summer after seventh grade, Okay. Th that isn't a photo of me from seventh grade. Look, it was the 1970s, and I was the youngest of six kids. Honestly, I'm surprised there are any photos of me.

Anyway, in the summer after seventh grade, I tried to grow corn in sand. I did. I wasn't a bright kid. You see, I loved popcorn. I still do, but back then, I was obsessed with popcorn.

For my birthday that year, I was given my very own hot air popcorn popper. Once upon a time, that was cutting edge technology.

Well, to me it was. One day my mom casually mentioned that if I planted a kernel of popcorn, a corn plant would grow. This blew my mind. I could grow my own popcorn. Again, I wasn't a bright kid.

Either way, the next day I set out to grow my own popcorn. The only issue was we lived among the sand dunes next to Lake Michigan. The soil wasn't ideal for growing anything.

Well, it was sand. This didn't deter me. I took my handful of popcorn kernels and planted them next to the beech grass that sparsely grew around our house. I watered the soil I mean sand diligently. My parents and older siblings snickered and thought I was crazy.

Then the most incredible thing happened. little tiny corn plants sprouted out of the sand next to the beech grass. My family was shocked. I was thrilled and proud. I was growing corn.

Then the corn plants died. It was sand after all. You can't grow corn in sand. At least I couldn't. This summer I'm growing corn once again.

now in a New York City suburb. Here is our first ear of corn. Isn't it amazing? My wife and children kind of snicker and think I'm crazy. This is my third year in a row trying to grow corn successfully.

If my recent past harvests are any indication, this summer I'll likely feed my family one entire meal of corn for all my effort. Could I cheaply fresh corn from just about anywhere. Sure, but I didn't grow that corn. Besides. I'm still not that bright.

I love you guys. She lived half a dozen. Happily, happily ever after a magical kiss counter. Once upon a time, there was a fairy tale that became a Broadway show that turned a struggling young performer into a legend of comedy. And now there's a whole new chapter to that story shared by our Tracy Smith.

We have a New York has always been a place where stars are born. But every once in a while, the city gives rise to a legend. In 1959, a new show opened, written by Mary Rogers, daughter of Broadway composer Richard Rogers, and it starred a newcomer named Carol Burnett. Oh, I'm frightened and shocked. And despite the impression I give myself in the scope of your incredible career.

How important was Once Upon a Mattress? Way up there. What is some kind of Night. The show, seen here in a later version made for CBS, was an adaptation of the old fairy tale, The Princess and the Pea. It would be simply dropping.

with exhaustion about the princess who could feel a pee under a stack of mattresses. And from the start, it seemed like Princess Winifred was a role Carol Burnett was born to play. It was her Broadway debut. Sheep? I'm ready whenever you are.

And a golden opportunity for a girl who grew up nearly penniless. How ironic was it that you played this princess on this pile of royal mattresses and yet you yourself didn't have your own bed until you were what, 21 years old? Right. I slept on the couch. I lived with my grandmother in a one-room apartment in Hollywood until I left to go to New York.

Then I lived in a wonderful place called the Rehearsal Club. And you had a cot. I had a cot, and I thought, wow, this is nice. I have a bed for the first time. Her threadbare upbringing might explain her ferocious work ethic.

In 1959, between mattress and her regular CBS network gig on the Gary Moore show, It's super great. Carol Burnett was working seven days a week. Mm. In fact, she was so exhausted that during one matinee performance atop the mattresses, she actually passed out. You literally fell asleep.

Calm down, because at the beginning, I'm pretending to be asleep, you know, and maybe I've put an audience to sleep, but I never. could sleep in front of an audience and I remember The stage manager is going, Carol! Help! How about you? Yeah.

Maybe I was out for a minute, I don't know, or two, but it was long. But the hard work was literally paying off. Burnett was soon making what was then a fortune, more than $500 a week. I was rolling in dome. I've never seen that much money in my life.

What did you do with it? I spent it. Yeah. You know what? I bought the first pair of shoes that actually fit me.

That was then. You hadn't had a pair of shoes that fit you before. Because I couldn't afford it.

So when I got Mattress and Gary, I remember getting my first pair of high heels that fit. Wow. It was a thrill. I wish I still had them. I'd have them bronzed.

Yeah. Once Upon a Mattress has held up pretty well through the years, both on stage and screen. Wretched moat swimming princess. It was last adapted for TV in 2005. Carol played the scheming queen that time.

Happily, happily, happily. Family ever after. And the newest version opens this week with two-time Tony winner Sutton Foster in the lead role. It's such a gift to be able to play such a wild and crazy character. She says the princess role is fun.

But playing her night after night takes everything she has. It's kind of like, you know, Dolly Parton has that phrase, it takes a lot of money to look this cheap. And it's kind of the same thing, like, it takes a lot of hard work to make it look easy. Yeah. I'm going fishing for amazing gold.

Then that's my goal for it to be like, oh, this whole thing? Nothing. But inside, I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. You're in love with a girl named Fran. But then it's like, boof.

Oh, yeah. I do this every day. Piece of cake. But inside, we couldn't help but wonder what Carol Burnett herself would think of Sutton Foster's interpretation.

So we got the two of them together. There she is. Hi, hi, sweetheart. I'm so happy to see you.

So good to see you. Hi. Hi. Thanks for doing this. And it's pretty clear that Carol's a fan.

There couldn't be a better Winnifer than therapy. You are it. I knew it the minute they said it that you'd been cast. I said, What took them so long? You know, like that because so it's perfect.

Perfect. Sutton, you watched the Carol Burnett show growing up. What kind of effect did that have on you? It was everything. I used to watch it every week.

I would tune in. You were the one. I was the one. I was the only one.

Now, do you have any proof that you're my real swiss? That you're my funny, you were tall, you were unafraid, confident. And I was like, I want to do that. I want to be that. And I was just always tuning in to see that spontaneity and that aliveness and to be able to.

Look up to someone who was unafraid to be ridiculous.

Okay, so do you two have a secret? Princess Winifred handshake. Not yet. What, what? I feel like you need a secret handshake.

Don't worry about it. Yeah. All right, lumps. And now, watch out! As the crown is passed from one Princess Winifred to another, Once Upon a Mattress seems poised to deliver a few more happily ever afters.

What are your hopes for it this time around? That it's a great success. Here it is, 65 years later, and this show is going to keep going. It's a fairy tale. And then there'll be some day that there'll be A girl that you're going to love the way I love you.

And you're going to be encouraging her. Ha ha ha ha. I have no doubt. But a genuine princess This is exceeding. The robots have gotten pretty good at what they do, but they can't pour passion into what they make or give them a human touch.

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Need to hire? You need indeed. Her father is rock and roll royalty. Her mother, a famous actor. and Zoe Kravitz already has quite a resume.

So what else does she have up her sleeve? Michelle Miller has the latest. and there's a lot of latest. What do you like about Brooklyn? What do I like about Brooklyn?

I mean, it feels very neighborhood-y, you know? It's a hot day in her hometown, and Zoe Kravitz couldn't be happier. I love New York in the summer. Really? I love it so much.

I love sitting outside. I love the humidity. I think there's nothing like it. But even if it's 100 degrees, Kravitz has a way of staying cool. Don't throw your life away.

She does it as Cat Woman in the Batman. Don't worry, honey. I got nine of them. And the Blockbuster franchises X-Men, Divergent, and Mad Max. And so I started to run at him.

or in the hit series, Big Little Lies. And the closer I got to him, The more I knew what I had to do. An actor, producer, executive producer, and now for the first time, director. Nice to meet you, Frida. We're going to my island for a few days.

Do you guys wanna come? Yeah. Everybody safe! Making memory! I knew I always wanted to direct.

But it felt like with this story specifically, it was so clear in my mind and so specific in tone that I didn't feel comfortable. just passing it on to somebody else to to direct. Blink twice, which she also co-wrote, Is you having a good time? We're having a great time. Is a thriller with charm?

The legendary parties of Slater King with drugs and debauchery. We still do drugs. It tells the story of a tech billionaire who invites a cocktail waitress to his island getaway. I think I'll survive. Strange things start to happen, and she starts to realize that maybe this trip isn't going as well as she thought it was.

And she's gotta figure out what's going on. And Get out of there. I don't want her to speak over your line, you know what I mean? The foray into filmmaking is not much of a surprise considering her root. Her paternal grandmother, Roxy Roker, played Helen Willis on the Jeffersons.

That's joy. That's joy. Her mother, Lisa Bonet, became famous as Denise Huxtable. On the Cosby show. Listen, we got some new steps to show you.

Oh, great. Are they really fresh? Absolutely. I want to spring them on my dad. You like, that's my mom.

That's my mom. I don't think I understood at the time. What that show meant culturally when it was on the air. It was the same for her dad, rock star Lenny Kravitz. I ain't gonna go my way.

Who shared custody of Zoe after he and Bonet divorced? He picked me up from school one day and the entire School like flooded to the parking lot, and it was just this insane. Scene. It was just a moment of really understanding, you know, what his life was like. She'd follow in their footsteps.

We got this.

Okay. We're fine. We're fine. Poking a little fun at their celebrity. I've seen the way you show up and take care of the people you love.

Like when her father received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But mostly I've seen through your shirts. At 35, Kravitz knows who she is. And what inspires her? I'm attracted to strong women, you know, women who Don't see themselves as victims, or aren't written as victims, really.

Her co-stars on Big Little Lies. Oscar winners Rhys Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman have been a guiding force in front of and behind the camera. Just having a community of women that show up for each other and take care of each other, whether it's supporting each other's projects or getting together and having a glass of wine and a laugh and a cry or whatever, that was an incredible gift.

Something biggest forget. Which brings us back to Blink Twice. First dress opening in theaters this month. I would say the women in this film are badass. Yes, they are.

You got all that? It's a bit of a whirlwind. Oh, yeah, no, I have an excellent memory. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You look kind of familiar. I know you're from somewhere. Seen you somewhere? What? Lemon.

We watched a scene featuring the film's leads, Naomiake and Channing Tatum. I wanted it to feel a little bit disorienting, you know? I mean, the only thing you didn't put in there was the shining. With the ding. I know, with like a spark on his teeth, you know.

I mean, I like playful filmmaking. I like when the audience has a sense of it's a movie, you know what I mean? And we're all in it together and it's not reality. But what did become reality? A real romance with her star, Channing Tatum, and Kravitz fell in love during production.

and are now engaged. I hate it. Look at those eyes. Very handsome. It's not to love.

Honestly. Yeah. What's it like directing someone you're in a relationship with? Is it more difficult? No, I think, you know, I directed him the same way I directed.

All my other actors. You get to know all your actors, and different actors want different kinds of direction.

So I think that's the thing that you have to learn as a director. But when we're at work, we're at work, you know, it requires so much of you. There's no room for anything else to creep in there. Laser-like focus. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

With a keen attention to her craft, Zoe Kravitz has the confidence to do it all. You've been a model, an actor, a writer, a director. A musician, do people not expect you to do all that? I love exploring different expressions, and I think they all feed each other too and inspire each other. And I feel.

Like there's just so much to learn. I'm a very curious person and so I think doing one thing and one thing only doesn't feel like I'm growing and learning.

So yeah, I like to stretch my legs. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.

From Wondery. I'm Indra Varma and this is the Spy Who. This season we open the file on Oleg Penkovsky. the spy who defused the missile crisis. It's 1960 and the world's on the brink of nuclear war.

However, one man in Moscow is about to emerge from the shadows with an offer for the CIA. His name is Oleg Penkovsky. As a Cold War double agent, Penkovsky wants to supply the U.S. with the Soviet Union's greatest nuclear secrets. But is this man putting his life on the line to save the world?

Or is he part of an elaborate trap? Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of the Spy Who Diffused the Missile Crisis early and ad-free with Wondery Plus. Brighten your mornings with CBS News Sunday morning merchandise from ParamountShop.com. Shop mugs, sweatshirts, and t-shirts to start your mornings with style.

Take 20% off at checkout with code Sunday20 at paramountshop.com. That's 20% off at checkout on all CBS News Sunday morning products with code Sunday20 at paramountshop.com. Paramount Podcasts. Yeah.