A Shot in the Arm, Will Ferrell and Harper Steele Road Tripping, Connie Chung

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One tip could make the difference. Learn more by visiting dhs.gov slash see say day. Good morning.

I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. An updated COVID vaccine is now available across the nation. You've no doubt heard about it and seen all those calls for Americans to roll up their sleeves. So, why are some of us still reluctant to get a COVID shot?

Or any other vaccine? This morning, Dr. John LaPook looks at the growing number of Americans who just say no. And then, a few days after Vice President Kamala Harris took on former President Donald Trump in their first debate, the other woman who ran for the White House against Trump spends time with Erin Moriarty. Hillary Clinton on lessons learned and more. Please welcome Hillary Clinton. Last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton walked out to a standing ovation at the Democratic National Convention.

What did it take to get here? It was a hard speech to write. It was a hard speech to deliver. I had to read it through like seven or eight times because I got teary. Coming up, a reflective Hillary Clinton opens up. What do you think when you look at this outrageous?

Actually, I love it. From Saturday Night Live to classic movies like Anchorman and Elf, Will Ferrell has been entertaining us for decades. Now in a new documentary, he's hitting the road with former SNL head writer Harper Steele. Tracy Smith takes us for a ride. I'm Will Ferrell, one of the greatest actors in the world. When Will Ferrell's best friend, Harper Steele, came out as a trans woman, Will helped her rediscover her world.

I'm driving across the country with Will Ferrell. That's an amazing force field. A force field? Star power.

Yeah. A-list. A-list. Star power. This will be a cut, by the way.

We're going to cut. Will, Harper, and a road trip for the ages, ahead this Sunday morning. Connie Chung came to the news business at a time when network anchors were almost always men. Of course, Connie Chung is a woman who's never let anything stop her from going after what she wanted and proving she belonged. As of four o'clock this afternoon... Why aspiring journalist Connie Chung learned to talk like a sailor and act like a guy. What were you wearing on your feet?

I was wearing four inch heels because I'm short and I wanted to be more at eye level with them. We go eye to eye with Connie Chung later on Sunday morning. That's the valley.

Martha Teichner is dining with reporter Pete Wells, who recently left the table after more than a decade as restaurant critic for the New York Times. Plus, California catches up with the multi-talented LL Cool J. And more on this Sunday morning for the 15th of September, 2024.

And we'll be back in a moment. Hey, it's CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett with a message from our sponsor Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. You've seen the headlines, quote, AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power.

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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Fall is fast approaching, which means flu season and a probable uptick in cases of COVID. Of course, there's a vaccine for that, but there seems to be an epidemic of doubt among some Americans.

We've asked our Dr. John Lapook for his diagnosis. Thanks to all those shots in the arm, in the year 2000, measles in the United States was declared eliminated. The CDC is warning about the rise in measles infections in the U.S.

But now it's coming back, with measles cases reported from California to Vermont. One big reason, across the country in 2023, more families exempted their children from routine immunizations than ever before. There's never been a better time in human history to tackle an infectious disease than today. There's so many things we can do, from vaccines to antivirals to antibiotics. And yet I am dumbfounded by the volume of anti-vax voices. Dr. Howard Markel is a medical historian, retired from the University of Michigan.

He's also an author and pediatrician. Dr. Markel says vaccine hesitancy is as old as the United States. In the 1700s, when smallpox was ravaging the colonies, some people were given an early form of immunization called variolation. You went to a doctor who had this infectious material, dried pus and detritus of smallpox scars and so on.

And then they would cut you open, make a slice of your arm and inoculate, put it in your arm. And half of the people got really sick and some of them died. So it cost a lot and it was dangerous. But the people who recovered, they were immune.

Yeah. Benjamin Franklin decided it was too dangerous for his sickly four-year-old son, Frankie. One of Franklin's great regrets was that he did not get his son inoculated, instilled with smallpox virus, to prevent what ultimately killed him.

He went to his grave regretting that. Absolutely. In the 1800s, as a much safer smallpox vaccine was developed, many cities and states started requiring smallpox vaccination. At the University of California at Berkeley in 1902, it was mandatory. What was the reaction here at Berkeley about a century ago when students were forced to get vaccinated against smallpox?

They were up in arms about it and people in town cheered them on. Professor Elena Konas is a medical historian at UC Berkeley. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled the government has the authority to require vaccination. This, importantly, had the effect of energizing a lot of anti-vaccine groups. And the anti-vaccine groups at the time believed that they were defenders of individual liberty. But by the 1950s, there was one thing that united Americans, their fear of polio. The three-year statistics run 50,000 polio cases, 103,000 cases, 122,000 cases.

Where will it end? The idea that your child will be paralyzed or worse, condemned to an iron lung, this giant tank where your head's sticking out and that's how you breathe for the rest of your life. That terrified people. An historic victory over a dread disease is dramatically... When Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, he was considered a hero. And the entire world heralded the discovery which assured an end to one of mankind's most dread diseases. The greatest faith probably ever in the American medical industrial complex was around the 1950s.

And here you had this photogenic Jonas Salk with his wife and his children and they saved the world. The 1950s might be considered the high-water mark of vaccine acceptance. Vaccines were then developed for diseases including measles, mumps and rubella. As Americans, especially children, got their shots, rates for those diseases plummeted.

But it all ran straight into the counterculture decade of the 1960s. As more and more doctors and public health officials were encouraging people to get vaccinated or encouraging their children to get vaccinated, people were saying, but hold on, I need to ask questions. What are these vaccines for? Who made them? What's in them?

And why are they necessary? Can you tell me that? The overwhelming medical consensus is that the benefits of vaccines have far outweighed the risks. We're talking about our kids. But an upsurge in the anti-vaccine movement was fueled by a 1998 study in a prestigious British journal that falsely linked the measles vaccine with autism.

It took 12 years for the journal to retract the study after concluding the research was fraudulent. If you asked me 40 years ago would I ever have to be defending vaccines like I do now, I'd say you're crazy. So what happens in here? This is the first step in our vaccine production process. We use fermentation technology.

It's actually similar to the technology used in making beer. Dr. Peter Hotez has worked for decades to develop vaccines at the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital. Everybody knows the life-saving impact of vaccinations. One study estimated that by the end of 2022, the COVID vaccine had saved more than 3 million American lives. I'm worried there's a full-on frontal assault on biomedical science. He's entered the public debate as a passionate advocate for vaccines and become a bit of a lightning rod. Unfortunately for all of us, when Peter Hotez speaks, he discredits American medicine.

He is a misinformation machine. When we talk about anti-vaccine, anti-science movements, we call it misinformation or infodemic, as though it's just some random junk out there on the internet, and it's not. I want to convince you today that it's organized, it's deliberate, it's politically motivated, and it's having a devastating impact. It's reached that level of 200,000 Americans needlessly dying because they refuse to take a COVID vaccine. With public figures like former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vocalizing vaccine skepticism, Dr. Hotez believes politics has turbocharged historical reasons for resisting vaccines. He sees a widespread issue. Why would somebody want somebody else not to get vaccinated? It's a form of political control, and it's a part of creating another issue to galvanize their base. As an historian who knows about the arc of the vaccine movement in a way that most of us don't know, are you concerned about where vaccines are right now in terms of the public?

What I will say is that I'm not at all surprised. We've been here in some respects before. Vaccination resistance bubbles up when we use more vaccines and when we use more of the force of law to encourage or require vaccination. When I hear arguments and when I hear frustration that people aren't getting vaccinated, how can they not understand? My response is, let's try to understand their distrust.

Let's try to understand their concerns, and let's take them seriously. But as we try to benefit from the lessons of history, Dr. Hotez warns the clock is ticking. The things that we're talking about today, like COVID-19, H5N1, they're the warm-up act. You know, Mother Nature's not being coy with us, right? She's telling us, I'm going to hurl a major pandemic at you every few years, and you better get ready. And by the way, you better convince your population to accept vaccines. Otherwise, the devastation is going to be unprecedented.

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That's audible.com slash wonderypod or text wonderypod to 500-500. His identity was one of the best kept secrets in New York City. But now former New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells is revealing himself and calling it quits after years of dining out.

He shares some food for thought with our Martha Teichner. Well, one area that was key. Tucked in a cabinet above the service station. Just in case it might be. The photograph of Pete Wells, just in case a server suspected the New York Times restaurant critic might have been sitting a few feet away. That's the universal photo of them around. Yeah, the one photo. Ryan Bartlow, the chef and co-owner of Ernesto's, a Basque restaurant in Manhattan, was willing to reveal the dirty little secret New York City restaurants don't like owning up to.

This is our bulletin board. Pete Wells again, along with pictures of other food critics, cheat sheets in the high stakes game between restaurants out to spot reviewers and lavish them with special treatment and reviewers out to remain anonymous. I don't want to say I was terrified. There's always a little bit of nerve.

Maybe your throat gets a little drier or you're kind of a little bit more on edge. Everything you put into this restaurant could have been destroyed by a bad review. Yes. Yeah.

Bartlow, we should tell you, had nothing to fear. Pete Wells gave him a great review in 2021. New York Times, the 100 best restaurants in New York City. Yes. And for the last two years, Ernesto's has been on his best of list. Now, I happen to have with me the photograph that was always, how long ago was that photograph taken?

I think that's probably close to 20 years old. This is my entire disguise wardrobe. After slipping into restaurants in all sorts of classes. But I mean really, are you fooled? No. After concocting more than 100 different aliases and paying with multiple credit cards.

David Malone, which I thought was a nice invisible name. After eating out five nights a week since 2012, Pete Wells, arguably the world's most powerful restaurant critic, wrote on July 16th that he was done reviewing restaurants. For him, the game is up. Do you have any idea how many meals out you had in that 12 years? Let's say between 2,500 and 3,000 meals maybe. Is that a lot? I can't tell. Sounds like a lot.

With the New York Times picking up the tab for Pete Wells to eat out with friends, why quit? Somehow I can just keep going and going. Doctor's orders. My cholesterol had gone out of whack and my blood sugar was in the pre-diabetic zone. I didn't need anyone to tell me that my liver was working too hard and that it really needed a rest. The weight was no surprise, but everything else was news to me. So it was a sobering wake-up call to think that being a food critic could kill you.

That was sobering. Mmm. Ooh. This is what professional eating looked like for Pete Wells.

Mmm. Welcome to Sema, a South Indian restaurant in Greenwich Village, number seven on the 2024 New York Times Best Restaurants in New York City list. Vijay Kumar is the chef. In a place like this, I would try to bring at least three other people because you could order a whole bunch of food. Typically, he would visit a restaurant at least three times and try to sample everything on the menu. Do you ever feel like the Nathan's hot dog eating contest is stuffing yourself with literally dozens of hot dogs? So it happens in slow motion, but at the end of the night, I do feel like I've eaten a mile of hot dogs. So what is all of this?

This is a million different things. Trin City Roti Shop is a Trinidad Tobago-style takeout near JFK Airport and number 18 on his 2024 New York Times Best 100 list. Wells has been criticized for ranking places like this above fancy Michelin-starred temples of fine dining in Manhattan. Do you judge them on the same basis? I judge them in terms of how, well, how delicious is it? That's like at the top, right?

And then how well do they do the thing they're trying to do? So that's where you can get, you know, a Trinidadian roti shop and a Jean George side by side. Wow.

For Ewere Adoro, owner of Ewe's Delicious Treats, a Nigerian storefront in a remote part of Brooklyn, and number 99 on this year's Best 100 list, recognition was a miracle. And I thank God. Are you the person doing this? Yes. He was the guy. Thank you very much.

I really appreciate it. Showman TV chef Guy Fieri wasn't so thankful when Pete Wells, ever the wordsmith, eviscerated his now defunct Times Square restaurant in 2012. Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste, the watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde? I'd always rather write a positive review.

Now, having said that, the negative reviews are often the ones that most people want to read. But where my heart is, is with the discoveries, the ones that say, hey, stop what you're doing and put this place on your calendar. What's on his calendar these days is getting healthy, losing the weight he gained, overeating for a living. I really hope that all the chefs I've torched over the years are enjoying this display of kitchen incompetence. What's on the menu? Salad. Fire away. Tell me everything that's wrong with it.

Don't be cruel, but be honest. Pete Wells, okay. This is really good. The menu, it's not necessarily company food. He's not leaving the New York Times, only his job reviewing restaurants. But the day his last column was in the paper, his colleagues at the food section paid tribute to what it's meant to be Pete Wells for the last 12 years. Cheers to Pete.

His permanent successor hasn't been named yet. When I first came to the Times in 2006, a reporter warned me not to identify myself too heavily with my work. Any job at the Times is a rented tux, she said. It's time to return the tux. I've had the trousers let out a few inches, but a tailor can take them in again. As for the stain on the jacket, that's just pork fat.

I think it adds character. Putin, from everything I see, has no respect for this person. Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States. No puppet, no puppet. It's possible there's only one woman who truly understands what Vice President Kamala Harris experienced at the debate in Philadelphia Tuesday night, and that's Hillary Clinton.

This morning, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president is in conversation with our Erin Moriarty. I look at life from both sides now When singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell sang at the Grammy Awards earlier this year, the song that made her a star more than 50 years ago struck a different chord for at least one person watching. I really don't know life at all You said that it was almost as if you were hearing Both Sides Now for the very first time. I felt that because, you know, when I first heard it, I had no idea what she was talking about.

And then, of course, it happened to me. And to see love from both sides now, then to see life, all of the ups and the downs and the extraordinary opportunities and setbacks, everything that happens in a life. Hillary Rodham Clinton says that poignant performance inspired her to do something that doesn't come easy, opening up in a new book called Something Lost, Something Gained.

It's not my comfort zone, I'll be honest. You know, I've always been a pretty private person. But as she approaches her 77th birthday, the former first lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State says she is finally willing to share some of the wisdom she's gained and what it has cost her. There were setbacks that I got back up from and kept going. So I feel something gained over a long life is a way of looking back and saying, what did you do with the gifts and opportunities you were given? One of the toughest setbacks, losing people that Clinton had turned to over and over again at low times in her life.

I was disappointed and sad about my husband and that should have been between us and that was our business. High on the list, Betsy Ebeling. We witnessed that closeness ourselves when the two women once grade school chums and sat down in 2003 for Sunday morning to talk about their long friendship. I had not seen this in forever. Oh, I'm sorry.

It was your artistic side. This was the wallpaper in your mother's bathroom. Betsy even just showed up out of the blue at the White House when you thought Bill's presidency could be over and then all of a sudden she shows up. She just showed up. That's the kind of friend she was.

She's a sweet pea. Ebeling died in 2019. And I miss her every day. And I had a period in 2019 where I lost another dear friend, Ellen Tauscher, who'd been a stalwart ally of mine politically and personally. Then I lost my younger brother and then I lost Betsy all in the space of three months. I had a hard time coping with that and it took a lot of long walks and deep breaths and prayer and just constant awareness of, yes, I lost these three very important people to me in a very short period of time. Still at her side is the man she married in 1975. Clinton says time has also given her a deeper perspective on love and marriage.

You are approaching your 50th wedding anniversary. I know. Can you believe it?

It's pretty shocking to me. Was there ever a time where you thought you might not quite make it? Oh, you know there was. You know there was. Did you both go to counseling? Yes.

Yeah, we did. And I mean, it was really hard. And, you know, one day I'd wake up and I'd say, OK, no, I'm done. Another day I'd wake up and I'd say, I got to keep trying to see this through and figure out what is it I want and what is it I feel right about and how do you rebuild trust and how do you rebuild the relationship and is it worth it?

Is it something I want to invest in? And when I went through all of those questions, the answers were yes, yes, and yes. In her book, Clinton, who had long hoped to be the first woman to become the U.S. president, says her loss in 2016 has been hard to shake, even eight years later. Since 2016, people have asked me, will you ever be able to move on?

Move on, I wish. This past May, she was recently reminded of just how close she came. We have just learned that the verdict is in. A New York jury had found former President Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree for covering up payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. I got tears in my eyes then because this man has escaped accountability his entire life. The case, which was mistakenly called a hush money case, was an election interference case. Why did he do what he did? He did it to try to keep the information from the American public so that they wouldn't turn away from him and vote for me. So it's a pretty clear case of election interference. And when you heard that he had been convicted, there had to be, you're human, there had to be a side of you after enduring months of hearing Locker Up, thinking this is the person who's actually facing time in jail.

Looks like karma to me. And the debate that took place this past week between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump brought back memories of her own duels with the man. It wasn't hard to keep your cool. It was hard because I had to be responding on the debate stage, but then I had to be thinking now, do I respond to that? She's trying to bait you.

Everything's broken about it, everything. You know, it's like that old saying, if you wrestle with a pig in the mud, only the pig comes out happy. I see this as a relay race. You know, you can go way back into the 19th century and the early suffragists. Inside the Museum of the City of New York, where our interview took place, is an exhibit dedicated to a woman who helped pave the way for women like Hillary Clinton.

My presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, was also the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination 36 years before Clinton. I stand on the shoulders and have passed on the baton to the next generation just as Shirley did. And so when I see this exhibit about her, I think, she did her part. She really did.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton was asked to do her part in August when she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention. It was a hard speech to write. It was a hard speech to deliver.

I had to read it through like seven or eight times because I got teary. Together we put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. I had a big responsibility that I understood that only I could fulfill.

Let's send Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the White House. Hillary Clinton says she was there this time to officially pass the torch to Kamala Harris. That was sort of the unspoken through line that I had been there and now it was generational. This moment required it and I wanted to give her the best sendoff I could. A little emotional? Oh, it was so emotional.

On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th President of the United States. This is another one of those moments in my life that I will never forget. Calling all shoppers, Bracketon is the smartest way to save money when you shop because you earn cash back at over 3500 stores. Fashion, beauty, electronics, home essentials, travel, dining, concert tickets and more. Your favorite stores like Ulta, Urban Outfitters and Neiman Marcus pay Bracketon to send them shoppers and Bracketon then passes on part of that payment to its members as cash back. Cash back is deposited directly into your PayPal account or Bracketon can send you a check. You can even maximize your savings by stacking cash back on top of other deals like store sales and coupons. You're already shopping at your favorite stores. Why not save while you're doing it?

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Send in when you're ready. Go to Legacybox.com slash wondery. Legacybox.com slash wondery. Even if you don't know much about rap, you probably recognize LL Cool J. The Grammy winner, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member and Kennedy Center honoree also starred in the hit CBS show NCIS Los Angeles.

He's talking for the record with Kellefisane. Love this hood, man. Love this neighborhood. Love everything about it.

Love the energy. I mean, I made a name for myself rapping around here once I made my first song. Neighborhood Hero and all that. How you doing, baby?

LL Cool J is still a Neighborhood Hero here in Queens, New York. Much love, baby. Much love.

All the time. I'm LL Cool J. Good to see you.

You too. Forty years after his first record, he is a walking embodiment of hip hop history. Which doesn't mean he's retired. Last week at the MTV Video Music Awards, he celebrated his extraordinary track record. What is it about you that's kept people interested in you for so many years? I just continuously do what I love. And I know an apple tree keeps giving fruit, an orange tree keeps giving fruit until it's gone.

So I just keep giving. Yeah, yeah, this is the basement where it all started. His career began here, his childhood bedroom in the basement of his grandmother's house in St. Albans, Queens. This feels like New York history. This feels like I'm in a museum. Oh, it is.

It is. You're in the museum, baby. I'm in the museum.

You're in Graceland, baby. He still has boxes filled with old demo tapes and handwritten rhymes. For him, this was his artist studio. You know, I wrote Rock the Bells down here. I wrote I Need Love down here.

I wrote a band like In Da Car and down here. And was this like your grandma would kind of just like leave you alone down here and this was just your world? Oh, this was completely my world, man. This is my imagination.

This is like the place where dreams come true. As a boy, James Todd Smith also saw this basement as a refuge. I think a lot of people who experience what you experience, right, you see your father shoot your mother, right? You get abuse from your mother's ex-boyfriend, right? Go through these really difficult things. Don't come out of it the way you came out of it. Yeah, you know, life is funny. You know, you can use things as an excuse for failure or a reason to succeed. When my mother was shot, they told her they didn't think she would walk again.

She walked again. You know, I just say using the things that happen in your life to propel you towards your dreams is probably the healthiest way to deal with anything that happens. You know what I'm saying? He was largely raised by his grandparents. They bought him these turntables to keep him in the house and out of trouble. It was a more important gift than they could have imagined. It really was just wanting to escape pain.

It was an escape, you know what I'm saying? So the music became like a way to feel empowered. LL Cool J, short for Ladies Love Cool James, started writing rhymes and recorded a demo tape. And in 1984, the right person found it. I was friends with Rick Rubin, the producer who had just started his record label, Def Jam. And so I would just kind of go through demo tapes. Something about him just sounded really cool.

I don't know. He sounded interesting. Adam Horovitz, known as Adrock from the Beastie Boys, convinced Rick Rubin to listen to it. And he remembers when LL Cool J came by to meet them. So a teenager walks in and he's like, I'm LL Cool J. And the LL stands for Ladies Love Cool J. And you're just, you know, a high school kid. A high school kid? The ladies love you? Okay.

All right. If you say so. And he was real confident. And he should have been. He was really good at what he did. Were you able to predict like, oh, this guy is going to go places.

This guy is going to be around for a while. He is a force. But I never would have predicted that LL Cool J would be what he is now.

Never. LL's just personality, you know, his inner light shines. It really does. He also helped produce LL Cool J's first single, I Need a Beat. That track got LL Cool J a record deal, although you might say it got the record company an LL Cool J deal.

He was the first artist ever signed to Def Jam Recordings. Did it feel like a breakthrough when you did I Need a Beat? Like when you wrote that? Oh my God. A breakthrough?

Come on, bro. A breakthrough? It felt like Christmas, honeymoon, hitting the lottery, jumping out of an airplane, roller coaster all at once. It felt it was the best feeling in the world.

Best feeling in the world getting that deal. LL Cool J became one of the first major hip hop stars. Hits like Going Back to Cali. And Mama Said Knock You Out. LL Cool J raised a trail for other rappers to follow, and in 1987 he pioneered a new tradition, the hip hop love song.

When I'm alone in my room, sometimes I stare at the wall, and in the back of my mind I hear my conscience call, telling me I need a girl. You ate my bird. LL Cool J's career turned into a career in film and then on television. For 14 seasons he played Special Agent Sam Hanna on NCIS Los Angeles, which mainly kept him away from the recording studio. I thought the show would last two years and it be done.

I had no idea that NCIS would be so huge, and I'm very grateful I had a great time doing it. But you can't be a part time MC. You can't really be a part time musician.

There's no such thing. Now 56, LL Cool J is returning to the thing he loves most, rapping. He recently released his first album in more than a decade, The Force, which includes appearances from Eminem and other rappers who grew up listening to him. He says there's still something magical about making a hip hop record. My job is to go into a room and paint on silence and then say, listen to this. Like it's easy to sit around and judge it or say that album was better than that album, but can you go in a room, paint on silence, present it to the world and have them enjoy it?

Can you do that? LL Cool J says he's still having fun making music, which doesn't mean he doesn't want people to pay attention. I love the idea that you're talking to a hip hop artist in year 40 and his record is relevant and impacting the culture. It's exciting to me. They were talking about it on the radio this morning. I love it. I love it. I love it. Because you know why? Not only for me, I love it for future generations.

I love that they get to see, oh, I can keep doing what I love. Yeah. Have you ever covered a carpet stain with a rug, ignored a leaky faucet, pretended your half painted living room is supposed to look like that?

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Why not? I don't know how to do what you do. Listen, everybody in this life is an actor. That's the trailblazing Connie Chung interviewing the legendary Marlon Brando, one of many memorable milestones in a long and accomplished career. I paid her a visit to catch up and look back. Good evening from CBS News. This is Newsbreak.

You know, when you're young and you don't know any better, I just plowed forward as if I knew what I was doing. Stand by. Here we go. And setting a pace for herself, nobody was going to outwork Connie Chung. Her career began with an entrance. I barged into a local TV station. I can learn.

I don't have experience, but I can do this job. At home in Montana with her husband of nearly 40 years, daytime TV legend Maury Povich, she can enjoy the view and reflect on a four decade career. Her new memoir is called Connie.

Let me tell you, when we first realized that there was a Connie Chung. Maury Povich was then a rising star in the newsroom. She wanted a job and the news director said, no, no, no, you're my assistant. She says, no, I want that job. Weekend writer on the news desk.

And he said, well, then you have to replace yourself. She walks out of the newsroom across the street into the bank, looks at the first woman teller and says, you want to be in TV, marched her across the street into the newsroom. She got the job and the bank teller got a job as the secretary. Soon she caught the eye of CBS News, barging into a restaurant cited for health violations with camera crew in tow. Lo and behold, the CBS bureau chief was sitting there having lunch. He saw me and he gave me his card and he said, call me.

The CBS News Washington bureau in 1971. All I saw around me was what I call a sea of men. Connie devised a survival plan. I looked around and I said, well, heck, I'm going to be a guy too. So I took on their characteristics. I had bravado.

I would walk into a room as if I owned it. And she could talk like a sailor. I had a body, body reputation for saying the unexpected to these men who were rather sexist and racist. And they were. But the bad words, not good.

I don't recommend that to anyone. It was just my M.O. of how to survive in that snake pit.

Moving up one step at a time wasn't enough for Connie Chung. News, business, sports and weather. Get it first, get it fast. NBC wanted to hire somebody to do the half hour news before the Today Show.

So nice. And I said, I'll do that, but I also want to not just do that. I want to report political stories for Tom Brokaw's Nightly News. And I want to do the Saturday night news. And I'd like to do news breaks at 9 and 10 p.m. That made it very difficult to sleep.

The people of Chile had rejected continued rule of General Augusto Pinochet. You seem to be a powerful hybrid of your American-ness and your Chinese. American opportunity. Yes.

Chinese. Dutiful. Always does the right thing.

Goody two shoes. Respectful. Ambition drive. Oh yeah, you know. Focus. Yeah, sure, sure. The drive to succeed.

That was a combo platter. In hyper-competitive network battles, the prize interview was the get. In November 1991, Magic Johnson, the great L.A. Lakers point guard, revealed he'd tested positive for HIV. I will have to retire from the Lakers. I went to his agent's office and squatted.

I wouldn't leave until he left the office. She got the interview. Magic, how do you think you were infected?

Well, the doctors say that it's definitely through sex. And the first interview with the captain of the Exxon Valdez. It's nice to be home. Yeah. After the devastating Alaska oil spill. Captain Hazelwood, were you drunk when you boarded the Exxon Valdez?

No. But while the Tonya Harding skating scandal and documentaries with titillating titles delivered ratings. Life in the fat lane. The taint of tabloid fare sullied her name and reputation. It was story after story after story. And I just did not have the power to say no. And I so regret that, Jane. The daughter of Chinese immigrants.

My parents were very, very traditional Chinese people. Connie was the youngest of five sisters. The only one born in America. Her father decided she would be the son he never had and carry on the Chung name.

As of 4 o'clock this afternoon. She exceeded his expectations and realized her own dream. I'm thrilled. Joining Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News in 1993. Good evening and welcome, Connie.

Thank you, Dan. But it was not the dream team. Do you remember the line from the Bette Davis movie? It wasn't all about Eve.

Yes. And she's going up the steps and she says, fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night. And I thought, yep, hang on, honey.

Before we say goodnight, some news about ourselves. After two years, she was fired. I was crushed.

Absolutely crushed. But then, just days later, after years of miscarriages and infertility treatments, their adopted son was born. And we got Matthew when he was less than a day old. He never left my arm, you know. He was an extension of my arm. And to this day, he's a grown man.

And so wonderful. At the age of 49, Connie almost had it all. I could never declare success. I was born Chinese. Never enough? I'm born humble.

Yeah, never enough. And I think it took the Connie generation for her to realize exactly what she had become. Last year, the New York Times published a story entitled, Generation Connie.

Chinese, Korean, and Japanese parents across the country had named their baby daughters after her. I couldn't believe it. It was the most exhilarating day that I could have ever imagined. Thank you. Thank you. It was they who declared me a success. And once they did that, I thought, really?

I have to accept that. What did you mean to their parents? Work hard, be brave, and take risks. I wasn't the smartest. I wasn't the toughest.

But those three things I did. This podcast is supported by Progressive, America's number one motorcycle insurer. Everything is more exhilarating when you're on your motorcycle, just like your bike is more protected when you choose Progressive Motorcycle Insurance. They offer coverage for your bike starting as low as $75 per year, and they keep things affordable with discounts like paid in full, multi-policy, and responsible driver. So raise your kickstands and get to quoting at progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, a $75 premium, is for state minimum coverage, not available in D.C. Discounts not available in all states or situations. This episode is brought to you in part by Progressive.

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Discounts not available in all states and situations. Will Ferrell's new documentary takes him on a road less traveled to explore uncharted territory in today's America. He and co-star Harper Steele are chatting with our Tracy Smith. You think you know somebody. Comedy legend Will Ferrell and former Saturday Night Live head writer Harper Steele are best friends.

They've always shared everything. Mainly I'm hoping I don't lose anyone I care about. But two years ago, Steele wrote a letter to her closest family and friends saying she'd come out as a trans woman. That letter was really hard to send. I just kept rewriting it over and over again and trying to say what I wanted to say.

It was just, whoa. Harper had always liked driving across the country alone, but was unsure of how it would be as a woman. So Will suggested they drive from upstate New York to California and see what happened. Here's a question.

Do you think you're a worse driver than a female driver? That's the dumbest, that is so, no, no, that is so. It's all in the new documentary, Will and Harper, which opened Friday in theaters and will premiere later this month on Netflix.

Take one of me kind of sexy. Oh, yeah. Their friendship began in the mid-90s when they were hired the very same week at Saturday Night Live.

Look, the memo said we relaxed the office dress code to allow showings of patriotism. So, this coffee's really good. Harper helped create some of Will's most memorable characters. Do you have a favorite sketch that the two of you worked on, on SNL? I love my Robert Goulet sketches that I did with Will. Robert Goulet here.

Your phone is ringing, la dee da doe, da dee da doe doe. Of course, he went on to bigger things. I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal. Really? People know me.

But when he first arrived at SNL, Will Ferrell was anything but a superstar. I'm going to give you the beating of a lifetime in front of these people. You happy now? Oh, here's a gem.

Dinkle, dinkle, dinkle, dinkle, someone's calling you, Goulet. You've said that Harper kind of helped you along in the beginning at SNL, that people weren't sure what to make of you. People were kind of saying, oh, yeah, I met that guy. He seems nice. He doesn't seem that funny.

I don't know what he's going to do on the show. And it's true. And it was Harper who kind of reported back to some of the writers like, oh, no, no, don't sleep on him. He's pretty funny. That guy's funny.

So it was kind of like a guardian angel in a way, someone who was looking out for me when I didn't realize it was happening. So we're heading to Meeker, Oklahoma. Uh-huh.

This is in the category of places you would have visited and not thought twice about. What are you feeling? What are you thinking? I'm nervous and anxious. Like, I spent my life going to little towns like this, stopping in bars, drinking, meeting people. I just don't know if I can anymore. And it seems that Will Ferrell became kind of a guardian angel himself when the two of them hit the road last year.

I love this country so much, I just don't know if it loves me back right now. What were you expecting this time around? I definitely walked into that experience a little afraid. There was times when I wasn't with Will. So Will is, that's the part that needs to always be explained.

I'm driving across the country with Will Ferrell. That's an amazing force field. A force field. Yeah, I have a, it's like... Star power.

Yeah. A-list. Star power. I would have... A-list.

B, most famous movie star in the world. I would say armor. I would say armor. Armor.

That's about the other stuff. This will be a cut, by the way. We're going to cut, like... I don't think we're going to cut this.

We're going to say armor or force fields. This is gold. No, I'm looking, yeah. Anyway, everyone wants to talk to Will. They all love him.

Whatever your politics are. You love Will. You either love the elf or... I don't know any of the movies. Do you recognize this guy?

This is a Hollywood movie star. No. Okay. That's okay.

Roll up the window. The trip itself was fun and funny. If you named that beer, what would the name of the beer be? There's no question. Yeah. Cornelius Danderhoff. Your beer's called Cornelius Danderhoff?

Seventeen days of laughter and tears and beer. Hello. Hey. Hey. Come on in. Okay. But maybe inevitably... Is this real, Phil?

Yes. But it's also punctuated with the reality of what it means to face the world as a trans person. This is my friend Harper. How you doing? Nice to meet you, bro. Hey, not a bro though. It's a she.

It's a she. But that's okay. I'm sorry. That's all right? That's all right.

You'd try it again? Yeah. I mean, trans people for sure have to be careful. There's people out there that are filled with hate, and not necessarily it's going to be aimed at me.

It's going to be aimed at people who don't have the kind of advantages I have, and so I'm not abdicating everyone to run out in the middle of the country and run around, because I swear to God, we have some people out there that are not good people. Oklahoma, thank you. Oh, thank you.

But what she found on the road was more good than bad. But I live in New York now. Okay, you're on the East Coast.

I'm on the East Coast, yeah. What'd you learn about each other? Honestly, Will is a sweet human being. We were friends. We were friends before. I mean, I don't know what more to say, really, than that.

I'm sure you've been asked this before, but what have you learned about yourself on this journey? I'm a much better driver than Harper. Like that's not even opinion. That's fact.

That's science. Wake up. When the three of us went for a ride, Harper took the wheel, and her driving is, as she puts it, creative. Look at this adventurous driving.

See what I'm talking about? Yep. Just cut across five lanes of traffic there. New York, buddy.

Golly. That's how we do it in the city. And maybe the film will help attitudes about trans people turn a corner. The documentary got two standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival. What was it like to have that reaction, the two standing ovations?

Well, it felt great. I mean, people are just ready for acts of civility. They just want to see people being nice to each other. And I think it was, yes, it's about her experiences, about the trans experiences. It was a lot of people being nice to us all across the country.

All across the country. And I think people just loved seeing that we can all still hang out with each other. 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. At a time when we're debating where policing is going, we're going to tell you where the police came from. They wanted me to write about the New York City Police Department, but without using the words violence or corruption, which is effectively impossible. A story of how the largest and most influential police department in the country became one of the most violent and corrupt organizations in the world. Doesn't matter if you're a self emancipated mob person or if you're a free, they're just sending people back to the south, kidnapping them. When officers with the power to fight the danger, become the danger.

I was terrified. I'm not going to talk to the police because they're the ones who are perpetrating this. Who am I going to talk to? From Wondery and Crooked Media, I'm Chinger Akumanika and this is Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD. Follow Empire City on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free on Wondery Plus right now.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. When 60 Minutes premiered in September 1968, there was nothing like it. This is 60 Minutes.

It's a kind of a magazine for television. Very few have been given access to the treasures in our archives. But that's all about to change. Like none of this stuff gets looked at. That's what's incredible. I'm Seth Doan of CBS News. Listen to 60 Minutes, a second look. Ad free on Amazon Music starting September 17th.