Daniel Craig, Notre Dame Restored, Squid game

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Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Good morning. Jane Pauley is off this weekend.

I'm Lee Cowan and this is Sunday Morning. It was five years ago when images of a global landmark ablaze shocked and devastated onlookers the world over. That fire was at Paris's famed Notre Dame, the internationally beloved Gothic cathedral, which traces its roots back to the 12th century.

At the time, many feared that that building was beyond repair. But as Seth Doan will show us, generosity, ingenuity, and just plain hard work have produced something of a miracle rising from the ashes. World leaders gathered in France this weekend to witness a modern miracle of sorts. How is it for you to work on the reconstruction of this cathedral?

It's unbelievable. We are very proud of what has been done here and we are on time. A bold timeline and a nation undaunted.

Notre Dame rising from the ashes ahead this Sunday morning. At the age of 22, Billie Eilish has already ascended to pop music heights that few have ever achieved. And this morning, Anthony Mason shares the proof.

Billie Eilish already has nine and she's up for seven more, including album of the year as she tours behind Hit Me Hard and Soft. Do you guys want to meet CBS Sunday morning? We go backstage with Billie Eilish later on Sunday morning. New York's legendary Apollo Theater has been making and breaking careers for nine decades. It's hosted some of the biggest names in show business. And now Nancy Giles tells us the Apollo is getting its due. The Apollo Theater has launched some of music's most iconic stars, including Smokey Robinson. When I first came into the Apollo Theater ever in my life, I saw this mural.

I wanted to be on it so bad. And here we are. We finally made it.

Now the theater itself is taking a bow. Coming up on Sunday morning. There's been a lot of talk about tariffs lately. We asked David Pogue to sort things out and tell us just what tariffs might mean for the economy.

Mo Rocca visits with actor Daniel Craig, shedding his James Bond persona for a decidedly different role. With a new season just around the corner, Elizabeth Palmer goes behind the scenes at Squid Game, the South Korean streaming series that was a worldwide phenomenon. Faith Staley offers up an earful on ASMR, the increasingly popular relaxation technique, and more. It's a Sunday morning for the 8th of December 2024.

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But the heartbreak of that day, when seemingly all was lost, has given way to a resurrection of sorts. With a ritual knocking, the Archbishop of Paris marked the reopening of Notre Dame Saturday night, just five years after the fire, unveiling a restoration perhaps as extraordinary as was the destruction itself. At the gleaming Gothic monument, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted world leaders and luminaries, among them Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Britain's Prince William and President-elect Donald Trump. Macron triumphant after the successful completion of his audacious five-year renovation deadline. Last summer, we were granted rare access to the cathedral. They've been removing the scaffolding, but we're still about 100 feet up in the air. Philippe Jost was in charge of meeting Macron's deadline. You know now, but it was a question.

It was a question. To rebuild, they first had to stabilize the 12th century monument, encasing it in scaffolding. Then 21st century tools, drones and computer animations were used to study and guide the reconstruction. This, they're not calling a sprinkler, but a mister. It's the first of its kind in a cathedral in France.

If there were to be a fire in the future, a mist would come out here and help fight that fire. It was among the changes meant to prevent a repeat of the 2019 fire, which investigators believe was an accident. They put massive metal trusses here to divide the roof into three sections, making it less likely for a fire to spray. Amid such a grand reconstruction, Thomas Lefebvre was among the army of artisans working on the smallest of scales, cutting these decorative lead details for the roof. This is done on site at the last minute. Yes. All the pieces here, it's different, so we have to do hand-made.

Everything by hand. Yeah. Do you forget where you are? Way up in the air.

No, yes, we forget this. Around 2,000 people helped rebuild. A foundry in Normandy retuned the bells, which rang out again this weekend. Some scoured forests for centuries-old oak. They had to find a thousand pieces of this French oak to rebuild the spire.

We're really at the heart of it now. They call this a masterpiece of French carpentry. Help came from across France. At Gettelon, in the Burgundy region, they're building a castle from scratch. And a handful of workers applied skills sharpened here to the effort in Paris.

Marilyn Martin is co-founder of this experiment-turned-tourist attraction. French carpenters who want to do the job in Notre Dame call us and come to learn how to cut the wood as the medieval techniques with the medieval tools. And at the Montblier National in Paris, paintings once covered in soot were on display before being returned to Notre Dame. Aurien Levite was curator. It was a disaster, the fire, but in some way there is a lack because we have the funds to restore 22 canvas.

Luck you call it. In part luck because it was a rebel for all of us, but we could restore our dispensing because of the fire and because there is a lot of money to do the restoration. Nearly $900 million was raised from 150 countries, including around 40,000 donors in the U.S. You can see the before and after so clearly. Yes, one of the aim of the exhibition is to show to people the work of restoration on the canvas. And then after restoration, you have like the revelation of colors.

It is so much more colorful. The newly cleaned interior of the cathedral is now markedly lighter. In this side chapel, a restorer was retouching where centuries of grime had been removed.

Looking around is incredible. There are these bright colors that have been revealed just from cleaning. It's true, restorer Charlotte Falouza told us, everything was black and by doing a simple cleaning we could already find the original colors. When we first saw the renovation underway, retired French army general Jean-Louis Jojolain was in charge. He pointed out the cavity where the spire once was.

This is the heart of the drama here. The last time we were here, we were standing just on the other side. They're looking down into a gaping hole. That hole was where the spire now stands. It's been completely rebuilt. The general died in a hiking accident last year.

Philippe Joost had been his number two. It was a big shock for all of us. But we knew that it was what he would have wanted for us to continue the work. How important was it to respect the original, to try to rebuild as close to the way it was as possible? It's what we owe to this monument. You owe it to the monument? You owe it to the monument. To make it as original as possible?

Exactly. Joost calls this a monument with a soul. As it opens to the public, this painstaking renovation proves a testament to human innovation, past and present.

France's president praised the firefighters, engineers, and craftspeople as he declared the bells of Notre Dame are ringing again. Finding the perfect gift can be tough, especially one that won't end up in the back of a closet. This holiday season, give the gift of planning unforgettable experiences with Viator, book-guided tours, activities, excursions, and more. With over 300,000 travel experiences to choose from, it's easy to find something that everyone on your list will enjoy. With real traveler reviews, you can pick the perfect experience with confidence. And with free cancellation and 24-7 customer support, you can gift worry-free, knowing the plans can change.

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Pricing coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which anyone raised or lowered raised tariffs in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work, anyone?

Anyone know the effects? It did not work and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. That's tariffs, as explained by Ben Stein in the classic film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. So with talk of tariffs all over just now, just what about today? What could tariffs mean for your pocketbook?

David Pogue adds it all up. The word tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary. I think it's more beautiful than love. President-elect Donald Trump has made his feelings about tariffs very clear. I love tariffs. Tariff!

It's music to my ears. Well, a tariff is a tax. So in US history, we're basically only talking about import tariffs, taxes on imported goods coming into the US. According to Dartmouth economics professor Doug Irwin, governments have all kinds of reasons for introducing tariffs. So sometimes it's to reduce the trade deficit. Sometimes it's to bring back jobs. Sometimes it's to punish other countries for their unfair trade practices.

Sometimes it's to raise revenue so that we can cut income taxes. At its most fundamental, a tariff works like this. Suppose we import a product from China. The price is $50. But before you can buy it, our government adds $25 to the price. That's the tariff.

Your final price is $75. China gets its $50. The extra $25 winds up going to the US Treasury. But who pays these tariffs? According to Donald Trump, it's the other countries.

Trillions and trillions of dollars pouring into the United States Treasury. China paid hundreds of billions of dollars during my term. But of course, that's not exactly the way tariffs work. I think economists would say that's very misleading to say that that's what's going on. Of course, it's the US final consumers that are paying those, not China itself.

So China's not writing checks to the US government. It's a transfer from consumers to the federal government. Tariffs have been part of international trade since our country was founded.

The first one was imposed by George Washington. And what we've learned over history is that they often have unintended consequences. We have a tariff on sugar that has doubled the price of sugar. It has helped out our sugarcane farmers in Louisiana and Florida, but it's also driven 34% of American chocolate and candy manufacturing and jobs out of the country. Then there was Trump's 25% tariff on imported steel in 2018. Our steel makers thrived, but companies that make things out of steel, like Ford, GM, and Caterpillar suffered dearly. Just ask Ford's then CEO, Jim Hackett. The metals tariffs took about a billion dollars of profit from us.

If it goes on longer, there'll be more damage. Tariffs against one particular country can backfire. With the China tariffs, we're importing a lot more from Vietnam, we're importing a lot more from Malaysia. If the idea with the tariff was to bring jobs back home, instead we're just shifting them from China to Vietnam in some sense.

And P.S. tariffs don't just raise prices on the imported stuff. It's the price of the domestic substitutes as well. So if there's a tariff on imported steel, but I'm an American steel maker, I can opportunistically say, well hey, now I can raise my prices too?

Absolutely. Consumers don't have the choice anymore. They can buy the really high-priced steel or they can buy you. Finally, there's the retaliation problem. When we imposed the steel tariffs, the European Union and China got very upset with us.

And what did they do? They raised tariffs on American farm goods. So all of a sudden, American farmers, who had nothing to do with steel per se, they found their sales limited overseas.

Even Ronald Reagan could have told you that. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So exactly what tariffs has Donald Trump proposed? We will phase in a system of universal baseline tariffs. Originally, he outlined tariffs across the board. Every product, every category, every country in the world.

We're going to charge them 10 to 20%. Now every recent president has favored some tariffs. The Biden administration, for example, maintained some of the tariffs from Trump's first term and imposed its own 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars. But these tariffs have always targeted particular categories of products. And across the board tariff, that's not targeting a particular commodity or product.

It's not targeting a particular country. It's just saying all imports, all sources get hit with this tax. That's a very different type of tariff. And wouldn't we then notice that, wow, prices are going up on everything?

We would definitely notice. More recently, Trump has proposed double digit tariffs on everything imported from Mexico, Canada, and China. They would raise the price we pay for things like fruit, lumber, electronics, oil, medicine, metals, and beef. Studies have calculated that those tariffs will cost 1% of all American jobs, raise average car prices $3,000, and cost every American household at least $1,000 a year. But Donald Trump's transition leader, Howard Lutnik, predicts that his boss won't tax imported goods for which there are no American made alternatives. Tariffs are an amazing tool by the president to use. They're an amazing tool, but he understands don't tariff stuff we don't make, right?

If we don't make it and you want to buy it, I don't want to put the price up. But maybe Donald Trump has no intention of imposing the tariffs for real. Maybe he's playing a strategic game, tariffs as negotiating tactics. Tariffs give you tremendous power over countries when they're doing bad things, including war. Tariffs can be used as a threat and a bargaining chip. And sometimes if you're really credible, just making the threat of a tariff is enough to bring another country to change its policy in a way that you desire without you actually having to impose the tariff in the end. In the end, when the government wants to achieve some economic or geopolitical goal, it can use all kinds of different tools. According to economics professor Doug Irwin, tariffs are a powerful tool too. They're just rarely the best one.

What economists have concluded is that tariffs usually have a lot of unintended consequences, can lead to blowback where other countries retaliate against you, and so are not a really good policy instrument for achieving goals that we all Americans want to achieve. Daniel Craig may be one of the most recognizable film stars in the world. But moviegoers can now see him in a whole new light. He's in conversation with Mo Rocca. Daniel Craig is back on the big screen, not as 007. Enter Benoit Blanc. Or the smooth southern private investigator in the Knives Out movies. You will find me a respectful, quiet, passive observer.

But in the movie Queer, directed by Luca Guadagnino, he's William Lee, an American living in 1950s Mexico City, who becomes infatuated with Eugene Allerton, another much younger expatriate played by Drew Starkey. There's a really great effect in the film where there's kind of a translucent overlay. And I just found that so tender and poignant. The sort of invisible hand is what you're talking about. Yeah.

I really recognize that. There's something in life where something hope happens. Hope would happen, yes.

The yearning and hope is a really good word that something will come of it, and maybe it's falling in love. Craig's character is an alcoholic and a heroin addict. I want to talk to you. And undeterred by the reticence of Allerton.

Without speaking. Do you think that your character, Lee, is especially ardent in his overture because the Allerton character is aloof? Maybe.

I mean, maybe. But I also think that he's searching clearly from the top of the movie. He's searching for something, and he finds Allerton, and he thinks this is it. This is the one. Yeah. So therefore, he throws everything at it.

He probably awkwardly and embarrasses himself in the process. Oh. When you walk into the bar and do that bow, that says the young people say very cringe. Yes, it is. Is that what they say? Yes, it is very cringe. Yeah. And that's sung to me.

I've been in situations, certainly when I was younger, of trying to impress and trying to be kind of that person and just failing miserably. That really rang out to me. The movie is based on the book Queer. Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs' semi-autobiographical account of his own time in Latin America. It's hot on the outside and cold inside.

That's why they call it Baked Alaska, I imagine. And there was performances by Patti Smith. We were shown around Burroughs' New York City home by the site's executive director, Anthony Huberman. I genuinely didn't know this was here. It's such a lovely surprise. And if I'd known, I would have come and visited earlier.

And the fact that he actually this was he lived here for so long to conquer ignorance and prejudice. Craig's latest role harkens back to the grittier parts he was known for in Britain pre-Bond. You know, you shouldn't be smoking in your condition. There's a lot of things I shouldn't be doing. Me too.

Personally, I like to live as if I'm going to die tomorrow. Daniel Craig was born in the north of England and at six years old saw his first stage production. Who introduced you to the theater?

My mother. We lived in Liverpool in the 70s and there was a theater called The Everyman Still There. They had cheap tickets so everybody could go. A lot of my mom's friends were designers and costume designers and worked backstage and she was a single mom and we spent most of our time there. And was it magical, do you think? It was, yeah. I think that's the moment I said, I want to be an actor.

I mean, these people would walk off stage and I'd see them in the bar afterwards and I think they were gods and they were just drunk. His mother's love for theater, it turned out, ran much deeper than her son realized. Is it true that you found out later that your mother as a young woman had been accepted into the Royal Academy of Traumatic Art, one of the great acting schools of the world?

That's right. Yeah, she was. And she hadn't told me, no.

But they couldn't afford to go so she had to go home and went to art college and set up up north. And when you found out, what was that? I was very moved. I mean, she's always encouraged me. I mean, she sort of gently kicked me out the door to say, go get on with it.

All the drama schools were in London, everything that was happening and she said, you've got to go. So I left and went. How old were you? 16. You were 16? You were young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But your mother really wanted this for you?

She realized I was failing so badly at school that there was really no other option, I think. I mean, that's the way I see it. Craig hasn't just been successful. He's one of the most recognized actors on the planet, whether he likes it or not. We interview a lot of big name actors on this show and a lot of them say they don't like being famous. And it's not that I don't believe it, but I need to understand what does being famous do to your brain?

Like that kind of thing? Well, that's a big question. The key to this entire case.

And it was staring me right in the face. It can do all sorts of wonderful things, of course, and as an actor, why did I become an actor? Because by like dressing up and showing off when I want people to like me, I mean, it's like you want to distill it down to its absolute basics. But what does fame do? I think fame can take you off in all sorts of weird and strange and not very healthy directions. Well, it's got to make acting harder in a way because you can't, for instance, easily go on the subway and just look at the person across from you and kind of observe life around you.

People watching. Yes. Yeah.

I did a lot when I was younger. So I've got a lot in the bank. Daniel Craig has always been known for his intensity.

I want you to help me catch a killer of women. But at 56, his next chapter might not be quite as physically rigorous. You're about 20 years older now than you were when you were first cast in Casino Royale. Remind me, why don't you?

Well, if you were reporting for duty today as Bond and you were the intake physician was saying like, you know, what do we need to know? Like you have now, you know, also it's more like cricks and cramps and sprains and stuff. Or could you do it now? Life is pain. No, and that's why I wanted to stop. One of the reasons I wanted to stop because I've thrown myself into those movies, each one. From the very beginning, I've been wanting to do as many stunts and as many of the action sequences as I possibly can and I've injured myself and I don't want to do that.

I don't want to take that risk anymore. I've got kids and I've got a life and I want to spend the rest of my life upright if I can. Upright and sort of conserving your energy for that. With a standing. Standing.

On my own two feet as opposed to being wheeled around. Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths but have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm.

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Credit Karma, evolve your finances. For 90 years and counting, New York City's legendary Apollo Theater has celebrated many of the biggest names in entertainment. Now as Nancy Dries explains, this venerable venue is celebrating itself.

On Wednesday nights, the Apollo Theater in Harlem is one of the hottest tickets in town. But there's no celebrity headliner. It's amateur night and the audience is there to pick the next breakout star. I know how tough the crowd can be. I know that's what makes this place legendary, what goes into it. Kyle Parks, a 23-year-old singer from Yonkers, New York won the crowd over with A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke. Others weren't so lucky.

They're brutally honest and just sometimes just brutal, it's not necessarily honest. Just wanted to say we are thrilled to have you all back. Marion Caffee is the longtime producer of the Apollo's iconic amateur night and says it's the longest running singing competition in history. Well, The Voice and America's Got Talent and American Idol and Star Search and we are the great grandfather of all of that. This was the blueprint. The theater's motto is where stars are born and legends are made and it's launched plenty of them.

From James Brown and Ella Fitzgerald to Stevie Wonder, Lauryn Hill and Her. And if you're wondering why every performer rubs that tree stump. This stump used to be a full tree and it stood outside the Lafayette Theater and they would pull leaves from the tree for good luck and now everyone comes here and rubs the tree of hope for good luck.

Does it work? Well, I think it's good luck if you win and it's not such good luck if you lose. But it worked for the award-winning Dionne Warwick, whose career skyrocketed after she and her gospel group won amateur night back in 1958. When you guys won, what did that mean to you?

What did that prove to you? Well, that we were good enough, first of all, and that we won $50. Warwick says going to the 1,500-seat theater was like going to school and getting a crash course in performing. And the old saying, it's true, it is so true, if you can make it at the Apollo, you can make it anywhere.

They brought out the very best in you. Every single time I played the Apollo, it got better and better and better and I felt like I was at home. But it wasn't always welcoming. Before it was the Apollo, it was a whites-only burlesque theater. In 1934, under new ownership and a new name, it opened its doors to everyone. One of the first to allow black and white patrons to enjoy the music together.

After all, it's New York City. And the black community was growing and so it was basically a business model decision to allow black citizens in. Guthrie Ramsey is a music historian and says the story of the Apollo and the story of America are intertwined. It was a representative of anything that was going on in America, you could see the Apollo theater reflecting that. It's all of our history.

We all have a stake in it. During the civil rights movement, the Apollo became more than just a performance space. We're sitting in and marching and doing all this and going to restaurants and they don't want to serve us and all that.

We couldn't stay in any hotels. I mean, you were even performing sometimes at these places where you couldn't stay. No, exactly. Yeah. So it was a rough time, you know. But this theater was like a beacon, I guess. It was the beacon, you know. It was the black music staple. It was just, you know, where the black acts came. Couldn't play nowhere else.

I don't want you to know what I need. Motown great Smokey Robinson says the first time he and the Miracles performed here, he was a nervous wreck. They bombed. I was frightened to death to be at the Apollo theater had we not had a record out and supposedly be professional at that point that the guy with the hook would have came and took us off the stage because we were terrible. What do you mean you were terrible? We were just amateur. We were so terrible until Mr. Shiffman, the guy who owned the Apollo at that time, called Berry, Berry Gordy, who was our manager and stuff at that point, and told him he wanted his money back. Are you serious? I'm serious.

He wasn't even paying us any money. In the decades that followed, as more places became integrated, the Apollo struggled financially and closed its doors more than once. It means we could have lost the Apollo, but we're still here. Actress and singer Melba Moore says she grew up watching shows at the theater and then got a chance to perform here and later became a guest host on It's Showtime at the Apollo, the TV version of amateur night. Okay Nancy, I got to show you something. Yeah. Moore says this theater is something to be treasured.

This is the very famous signature wall. Oh my God. I'm here. Okay, let me find me. Oh, here I am. There, look at that. Oh, wow. Love, Melba Moore.

Always love. And this- That's Prince. Get real.

I'm in there with Prince. Look at that. Tonight, the Apollo Theater is awarded a prestigious Kennedy Center honor at a ceremony that we'll see later this month on CBS. This is the magic of art, the power of art. Michelle Ebanks, the president and CEO of the theater, says it's the first time an institution and not a person has received such recognition. The idea of the Apollo opened up this whole just universe so that everyone could see this is American culture too.

This is also the year the theater begins its 90th season. And to Smokey Robinson, the Apollo is still a force to be reckoned with. You know, it's the beginning. It's the proving ground.

It's the Apollo, yeah. Time for our Faith Salie to make some noise. There is a quiet little corner of the internet getting louder and growing larger every day. Welcome to the whispery world of ASMR. Today we are going to make some great ASMR tingles. ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. That very scientific sounding mouthful refers to a pleasant tingling sensation some people experience in response to certain sounds or visuals.

It's a brain massage that's just so satisfying, melts your brain and makes you feel fuzzy and so calm. Maria Victorovna should know. She's been called the ASMR queen. With 1.2 billion video views, it's easy to see why. So one of my latest videos I did shaving of celebrity faces and people pinpointed like oh my God, can you do a whole video of that? So I did the whole video of that. You understand this sounds, I don't want to sound judgmental. This sounds strange.

A lot of ASMR triggers are sometimes out there and are very personal. The first ASMR videos came out around 2009. Since then it's been snap, taking these crackers out of their wrappers, crackle, they came with my soup and popping its way into the mainstream. And into a 2019 Super Bowl commercial.

This is my prop closet. But for Victorovna, who in 2014 was able to quit her receptionist job, and work on her channel full time, the rewards are far beyond financial. I get messages almost every single day. Some of the most touching stories I get are from people who have experienced some kind of hardship and once they start watching videos, they kind of get lulled into that space of safety and calmness and everything's okay. So this one right here is a brain scan when they were feeling the tingles.

It's on fire. Yeah, it's red, orange, yellow colors, meaning those are the areas of the brain that are activated. So when someone feels the tingles, they say they feel euphoric.

Dr. Craig Richard is a professor of physiology at Shenandoah University in Virginia. He estimates only 20% of people are wired to experience ASMR. Are those of us who don't feel it missing out? The people who are experiencing it will tell you yes, because it's a beautiful thing to be able to just turn on an ASMR video, have these moments of euphoria, then have these moments of relaxation. So yeah, you may be missing out on that. What else is missing is further research on ASMR. In some studies, it's been linked to lower blood pressure and heart rate.

Craig Richard would like to see more. Get that pile of research, especially that clinical-based research, up higher to show that this is a worthy medical treatment. How do you deliver ASMR in someone as a form of therapy? Rebecca Benvy has taken a hands-on approach to ASMR therapy, opening up WhisperWave in New York City just this year. It's one of the few in-person ASMR spas in the world. So there are millions of people watching ASMR videos, and yet there aren't in real life ASMR places to go? You know, customers will often say that they can't believe that this isn't more of a thing, and it's true.

There's a huge gap in the market. It brings about a feeling of peace, of just like calm, like an escape from the real world. And I believe that this is sort of the natural evolution of the videos, is more in-person experiences that people can seek out.

And I think that this is really just the beginning. For now, most ASMRtists, like Maria Victorovna, are happy to remain online, whispering sweet nothings. How are you feeling, my dear? That can mean a whole lot. You feel relaxed at all?

I feel like a lot of people are stressed, and ASMR is so easy because it's online. You can just watch a video, and as you watch it, it somehow transports you into a different place, into a little island of peace. Let your light shine. Hey Prime members! Have you heard? You can listen to your favorite podcast ad-free.

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To learn more, visit amazon.com slash Blink. It's Sunday morning, and here again is Lee Cowan. Her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell, but the world simply knows her as Billie Eilish, a pop superstar with millions of fans.

She's talking with Anthony Mason, for the record. At the open of a Billie Eilish concert, a giant lightbox rises in the arena. Spoiler alert, I'm in the cube, but you can't see me. I can literally see everybody so well from inside this box, but they have no idea I can see them. It feels like I'm wearing an invisibility cloak. That's a luxury you don't have most of the time.

No, that's true. That's true, but it also makes me feel a little like I'm not real. Her whole career has been kind of unreal. Eilish, who turns 23 this month, has more than 100 million followers on Spotify.

An ardent fan base that filled the United Center in Chicago. I kind of want to introduce you to everyone. A few hours before showtime, Billie was scurrying around backstage, introducing us to her backup singers. This is Ava. Hi Ava. Hi, nice to meet you.

Her band. This is Abe. Hi. Hi Abe, how you doing? This is Solo.

Solo, nice to meet you. And taking us. Have you guys gone to the puppy room yet? To a room full of rescue dogs. Welcome to the puppy room.

Who offer stress relief. He adopted one the other day. She adopted one the other day too. She's filled her crew with friends, even the furry kind, because this tour is different.

How's it different? Well, I don't have my brother. As Eilish broke out at 14, her older brother Finneas has been her producer, songwriting partner, and backing band. And I've never done a show without my brother in my life. I mean, I barely performed and sung without my brother, like ever. But they agreed it was time for her to go out on her own. I was built into the show for several years in an irreplaceable way. And I always kind of was trying to make myself replaceable. I wish you the best.

Her mom, Maggie Baird, came to the Chicago show, but her parents also aren't touring with her anymore. Does that feel strange? Yeah, it does feel strange, yeah. But it also feels okay.

And there's also a lot of jobs I used to do where I'm like, I'm happy I don't have to do that one anymore. Honestly, she won't admit it, but I think it's been really nice for her that I've been gone. And then she can come see me, and it's not just like her whole life. I mean, I've been her whole life for like 23 years now. Yeah, pretty good life though.

Yeah, a lot, but yeah. Earlier this year, Eilish won her second Oscar for the Barbie theme, What Was I Made For? Billie Eilish, Billie Eilish, Billie Eilish. She already has nine Grammys, and now another seven Grammy nominations. Yeah, how about that? You got Record of the Year and Song of the Year nominations for a song you almost didn't put on the album.

Right, I know. Billie and Finneas had struggled with the song Birds of a Feather. We wrote like the first half, and it was super good, and then we re-overthought it for like months and months and months. When you sing it, do you hear all that you went through to create it? Sometimes. Sometimes when I listen to it, I hear certain parts that I'm like, oh, that was such a nightmare.

That was so punishing. At least until recently, you didn't think of yourself so much as a songwriter. Yeah. Has that changed?

It's changed. I did like way more writing on this album than anything ever. But this is the thing I'm trying to say is that like I've been writing music since I was 11, but because I wasn't as fast at it or it wasn't as good as my brother, I kind of thought, oh, I'm not a songwriter. But when they sat down to write Billie's third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Finneas felt uninspired.

We'd get in the studio to write, and I'd be like, can we go play pickleball? I know. I think I just sort of had a little fatigue there. You were in different places.

Different places. In that moment, did you feel alone? Yeah, totally. In the past, Finneas would help pull a lyric out of his sister. This time, she had to coax the words out of herself.

And then in just being given that space, I'd come up with it. On the last chorus of Birds of a Feather, Eilish reached for a note she wasn't sure she could hit. Her vocal bravery came after she started taking singing lessons. Have you found some part of yourself you didn't even know was there? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, my voice. I can't express how gratifying and satisfying and fulfilling it has been to learn these things about my own voice that's in my body that I didn't even know I was capable of. It's liberating. It's so liberating. For all we may think we know about Billie Eilish, the singer is just beginning to know herself. What's interesting to me is you're talking now about two things.

One is you've discovered a part of your voice you didn't even know was there, and you've discovered you're more of a songwriter than you ever thought. Yeah, ever. Yeah. Where does that leave you? Great question. We'll see.

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Uncommon Goods, we're all out of the ordinary. It was the global television hit of 2021, Squid Game, the South Korean series that broke viewership records all around the world. Elizabeth Palmer shares a sneak peek at its much-anticipated season two.

Squid Game fans know that trumpet wake-up call means somebody is going to die. Not our hero, Gi-hun, but one or more of the players hoping to win a fortune competing in childish but lethal games. It's at once a thriller and a critique of inequality and greed. Season one was an international blockbuster. With 330 million views, it's Netflix's most-watched series of all time. It won Emmys for its lead actor Lee Jung-jae and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk.

Both made history as the first Asian winners in their categories. So you're kind of in a sweet spot now, yes? I don't know what you mean by sweet spot. Well just that things are going your way. But it's not easy, nothing's easy. We first spoke with Hwang in Korea just as he was about to start a global promotional tour for season two. People keep saying to me, you are the happiest person in Korea.

But in my mind, I'm not that happy, I'm struggling every day and night. That's thanks to a brutal workload. Hwang directed and wrote every episode. Sworn to secrecy, we were invited to a soundstage outside Seoul where much of season two was shot.

Hwang was at the top of his game. But it wasn't always that way. He was only five when his father died. After that, he says, his family was trapped in poverty. As a struggling filmmaker and in debt, he says he sought escape in comic books. I read a lot in the survival game genre and gambling genre. And that led me to think, what if I were to combine childhood games with people putting their lives at stake for a huge cash prize? And that was really how the idea was conceived.

And a blockbuster was born. Yes, indeed. In the show, contestants driven by desperation risk everything for money. Exploited by a sinister game master, the powerful front man.

Squad game is really the story of a group of desperate people manipulated by a cruel and wealthy elite. Is that the way you see capitalists and capitalism in general? I think fundamentally what continues to drive this system is human selfishness and greed. These days, I'm becoming more pessimistic about human nature.

I almost think that for Homo sapiens, it's greed that allows them to create a society that they feel most comfortable in. Many of the characters in season two are new, Hwang having killed so many of them off in season one. But the guards are back.

And so is Gi-hun. Now on a doomed mission to stop the game. Skid Game season two and three will show people the bottom of this world, bottom of the human being. Oh, so it gets even darker.

It's getting darker by episode by episode. The show is so popular that recently 50,000 people applied for a chance to take part in this real life but non-deadly squid game in Paris. The prize, an early look at the new season. Hwang is amazed, especially by his show's wild success in the U.S. American audiences traditionally have not really wanted to go for a subtitled series. Were you as surprised as anyone else? I was always hoping to make something very popular in the States. So I was surprised but at the same time that was like my dream come true. The level of success like just beyond my expectation. Ironically this creator of a dystopian parable about desperation and poverty now finds himself a wealthy man.

And now you're one of the great winners of capitalism. How has that changed you? Has it changed you? Not much. Not much.

Really? It made my life better for sure because I don't have to worry about to make money anymore. But since then I don't think I was changed a lot by more success or more money. It's just a number, doesn't have any meaning to me at all. What does have meaning is his work. But the success and the pressure of Squid Game have taken a toll.

It's more than like five years. I've been just working on this one project day and night. I'm so exhausted, I'm so sick of, you know. So I need a break, I need a break.

A break from non-stop work and from his deep dive into the dark depths of human nature. So what makes you laugh? My friends.

Thank goodness. I love talking with my friends and having a beer. I'm Lee Cowan. Thanks for listening and 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. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry, but things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood in Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood in Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Did you know that after World War II, the U.S. government quietly brought former Nazi scientists to America in a covert operation to advance military technology? Or that in the 1950s, the U.S. Army conducted a secret experiment by releasing bacteria over San Francisco to test how a biological attack might spread without alerting the public? These might sound like conspiracy theories, but they're not. They're well-documented government operations that have been hidden away in classified files for decades. I'm Luke LaManna, a Marine Corps recon vet, and I've always had a thing for digging into the unknown. It's what led me to start my new podcast, Redacted, Declassified Mysteries. In it, I explore hidden truths and reveal some eye-opening events like covert experiments and secret operations that those in power try to keep buried. Follow Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with me, Luke LaManna, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen ad-free, join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.