At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories.
Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.
Wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. It's been a dizzying 34 days since President Donald Trump took office. In that time, the White House has issued a blizzard of executive orders, some of which have been blocked, at least temporarily, by court actions across the country. Which raises the question, in our federal system of checks and balances, what would happen if a president simply ignores the voice of the judicial branch? We've asked our Robert Costa to explore the implications of testing the limits of presidential power. Many American presidents have faced reckonings over their power, including President Trump.
But where are the lines drawn? What is a constitutional crisis? A constitutional crisis is if the president refuses to carry out an authoritative opinion of the Supreme Court. It's never happened before in American history. Ahead on Sunday morning, testing the limits of the presidency. Survivor, the show that gave us tribal councils and tiki torches, reinventing television along the way, is marking a milestone. Jonathan Vigliati gives us a behind-the-scenes look at an American TV phenomenon and the man who's been there from the start. For 25 years, Jeff Probst has been the one and only host of Survivor. When did you know that Survivor was going to be ahead? Day one of season one. It's the pioneering reality show that asks, how far would you go to win a million dollars?
How Survivor survives and thrives, coming up on Sunday morning. William McKinley, our 25th president. His face, you may or may not know, is on the $500 bill. He's been getting a lot of attention lately. Mo Rocca explains why. As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year, Seth Doan will show us the toll the fighting has taken on journalists covering the conflict.
He's been called the biggest art dealer in the history of the world. This morning, Larry Gagosian has a conversation with Anthony Mason. Plus, a story from Steve Hartman. A different sort of visit to the animal kingdom with contributor Robert Krolwich and more.
All on this Sunday morning for the 23rd of February, 2025. We'll be right back. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.
Wherever you get your podcasts. With judges across the country pushing back against some of the Trump administration's flurry of executive orders, there are those who ask, what would happen if the White House defies the courts and simply moves ahead with its plans? We've asked our Robert Costa to make some inquiries. Despite his own considerable powers as chief executive, his future is really in the hands of the other two branches of government, the courts and the Congress. More than a half century ago, as the Watergate saga unfolded, President Richard Nixon had a standoff with the Justice Department and the courts. In breathtaking in breathtaking succession tonight, the following historic events occurred.
The president of the United States demanded that the attorney general fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, the attorney general refused and resigned. The tensions brought a certain phrase to the fore of the American conversation. The country tonight is in the midst of what may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history. Now that term constitutional crisis is back. We're headed toward a constitutional crisis. We're fast barreling towards a constitutional crisis. Many Democrats are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's use of executive power. The actions that Musk and his IT goons have taken through, they're illegal. Full pardon. And some fear that Trump, who has shattered norms and who worked relentlessly to try to overturn the 2020 election, cannot be counted on to follow the courts.
I've been asked so many times, aren't you uncomfortable with this? No, I'm not. Most Republicans are shrugging off talk of a crisis. In fact, many are cheering as Trump overhauls the Justice Department and FBI, works with Elon Musk to fire thousands of federal employees and signs piles of executive orders. Making sense of this moment is tricky, but looking to history can be a good place to start. You cannot talk about the Constitution enough.
Jeffrey Rosen runs the non-partisan National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. What is a constitutional crisis? If the president refuses to carry out an authoritative opinion of the Supreme Court, it's never happened before in American history. Andrew Jackson threatened to ignore the court, but he didn't. And no president has ever defied the court so far. President Trump hasn't either. The Supreme Court has never been defied. You haven't had an authoritative order that a president's refused to carry out. These days, Trump's attorneys are busy appealing lower court decisions that have tried to rein him in. Those cases could soon reach the Supreme Court. Do you see President Trump deliberately testing the bounds of executive power? I think he is. Jillian Metzger, a constitutional law professor at New York's Columbia University, is keeping watch. She worked at the Justice Department in the Biden administration and clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As you see it, where are the guardrails around President Trump and his use of power?
There are some guardrails. There's the courts. Are they holding? So far, the courts are holding. This is early days. I mean, we've had a whole lot of legal action. It's hard to keep track of everything.
It's very hard to keep track of everything. But we've had a lot of interventions early on by courts. There's only so much the courts ultimately can do. If you really have an administration that is intent on violating the law, it's going to take not just the courts, it's going to take Congress. It's going to take the states. It's going to take the people standing up and making it clear they're not going to stand for that, for our constitutional order to be preserved. For the time being, the Republican-controlled Congress is doing little, if anything, to contest Trump. Democrats have expressed outrage. Most Republicans range from muted to thrilled.
Number one trending. Trump has also unsettled his critics by leaning into the idea that he has immense power, even posting a fake magazine cover where he donned a crown. On social media, he has quoted this line from a film about the French Emperor Napoleon.
He who saves a nation violates no law. What does it say to you when a president puts that out there? Truthfully, I really don't know what to make of some of the stuff on social media from Trump or from Musk or from others.
It seems to be aiming for some kind of shock value. Don McGahn, who was White House counsel in Trump's first term, says he sees a president who is generating headlines, not a crisis. Do you believe he's testing the bounds of executive power or not?
I think you can make that argument. He certainly is doing it in a way that is very open, very transparent, very in your face. There doesn't seem to be a lot of secret memos telling people what to do. It seems that he is certainly doing it wide open in a way that lets people see.
I think he certainly is pushing the envelope, and I think he's doing it in a way where I think he has much more solid legal authority to do so than I think a lot of people realize. What's your message to Americans who are feeling whiplash with everything that's happening? Calm down. That's my message.
Calm down. It's a process. It's a lot of paper. It's a lot of executive orders.
It's a lot of hype. There's a process in place. People are going to go to court. Courts will sort it out. Congress can help sort it out.
We'll see what comes out of the end. But this is how our system works. This crossroads on presidential power has been years in the making, with conservatives long calling for an empowered executive. And you do have courts now which have a very heavy Trump stamp on them. Don McGahn was a key attorney behind Trump's nominations to the high court, which last year ruled presidents have broad immunity. What is the significance of the presidential immunity ruling when it comes to President Trump today?
Well, I think it reflects what really had already been the law. Now, there's some scholars and law professors and things that disagree with that, but I think really the president gets to be president. And when he makes decisions within his constitutional or statutory authority, that's it. But what if the courts tell Trump to hold up and he doesn't? If the president starts ignoring court orders, that gets into some odd situations.
Hasn't done that. He says he's not going to do that. Do you believe him?
I do. In a statement, the White House said President Trump is following the Constitution to a T. In the end, for Jeffrey Rosen, history and the Constitution remain the guidebooks for our turbulent times, especially as this president is on the brink of making history of his own. Where does President Trump fit in the context of presidential power? President Trump is asserting a robust form of presidential power that's as strong as any president in history. It's called the unitary executive theory. And the basic idea is that Congress can't constrain the president's power. Now, the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in on the extent of this unitary executive theory.
But if the court agrees with President Trump, as it could, then he will, in fact, wage executive power more robustly than he could in any president in history. Ready to finally go after that Picasso of your dreams? Chances are you might encounter the name Gagosian. Larry Gagosian, a legendary American art dealer. He's talking with Anthony Mason. On any night, he can have art openings in Paris, in London, or at his flagship gallery in New York.
That's the pain that the title of the show comes from. Yeah. With 18 galleries around the globe. And he's a great curator and a great artist. Larry Gagosian has more exhibition space than most museums. His annual revenues are estimated at over a billion dollars. Which, as the New Yorker put it, may make Gagosian the biggest art dealer in the history of the world. The American dream Warhol's sublime Marilyn Monroe. In 2022, when Andy Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn 150 million set an auction record for a 20th century artist at Christie's, the winning bidder and selling was Larry Gagosian. That must have been a crazy moment. When you're bidding at that level, it's just your adrenaline is, you know, and it's very exciting.
The final price with fees, 195 million dollars. It's a brutal business. It's a blood sport. What do you love about this most? I love the challenge.
I love, I love winning. Gagosian represents more than 100 artists and shows the work of Picasso, Warhol, and de Kooning. His clients include billionaire mega collectors like New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, music mogul David Geffen, and cosmetics air Leonard Lauder. That's why New York is such a great city for an art dealer, because you have all these super competitive rich guys trying to, you know, in a certain way outdo each other. You know, I got one, oh I got a better one.
Gagosian, who grew up in an Armenian family in L.A., never had any formal art training. In the 70s, he was working as a parking attendant. Then I saw somebody who was working as a parking attendant. Then I saw somebody selling posters. Literally on the street. Literally on the street.
What made you want to do what he was doing? I saw that and I said, geez, I could do that. And so I bought basically the same posters and I'd literally pay a dollar a piece and then put a little aluminum frame on them and put them on a pegboard. Yeah.
And try to get as close to 20 bucks as I could, which is pretty good profit margin. He built it into a business and started selling shows. In 1981, a young New York artist caught his eye, Jean-Michel Basquiat. You bought what, three paintings on the spot? That's right. You know what you're talking about. I bought three paintings on the spot and sadly sold them all. I wish I still owned them.
He'd give Basquiat his first West Coast exhibition. That show kind of put your gallery on the map. It was a big deal in L.A. show and it was like mobbed. The buzz was just unbelievable. I've never experienced anything like that in my gallery.
But Gagosian knew New York was the center of the art world and in 1985 he relocated. How were you received in the New York art world? They didn't like me so I mean it was kind of, I guess they thought I was gonna, you know, cause some trouble. Yeah. Well you kind of did. People kind of slow me down. I'd rather not go into that litany but I got, I was roughed up quite a bit by competitors.
I think very unfairly. They gave you a nickname? Gogo. Yeah. When I was a kid, yeah, my friends had a hard time pronouncing my name, Gagosian. And that's really when it started but then it became, yeah, people associated with something else. But Gagosian made an important ally, the esteemed dealer Leo Castelli. On a walk together one day Castelli stopped a nondescript man in the street. So I said well who was that? He said well that's Cy Newhouse and I'll never forget his very words, he can buy anything.
Newhouse who owned the Conde Nast magazine empire would become Gagosian's first big client. At Sotheby's 1988 auction of Jasper Johns' painting, False Start, they sat side by side. He didn't want to be seen bidding so he would literally nudge me when he wanted to bid. And I bid and we, I think it was around 17 million dollars.
Yes. And he got the painting, yeah. It was a record for a living artist at the time.
It was, you know, like jaw dropping. That price seems almost quaint today. Do you think there's a billion dollar painting out there? Maybe.
I don't see why not. Young artists, if they're really talented, can sell for a million dollars. I asked Gagosian about the comments of one of his former rivals, Arnie Glimcher of Pace Gallery. Five years ago he said this market has nothing to do with art, it's all about how fast one can make money. You know there's a certain truth to what he's saying but I don't think it's just about money at all. I don't think, if people didn't love art, you know, I think they wouldn't buy it at that level.
I don't think it's just an asset class and it's not just about money. It's just gotten more expensive to buy really great art. Do you think in any way it distances ordinary people from from loving art? No. I think it actually makes art seem more interesting. Wow, somebody spent x amount of money for a painting? Wow, that's fascinating.
Gagosian, who's had some high profile romances, is single and has no children. He's still energized by the hustle. I guess to a degree I thrive on it. It gives you something to go for.
Why do you thrive on it? Because I'm tenacious and because I like to win. What's the win for you? The win is to keep it going.
The win is to survive at the top. There's no real finish line. But there is, of course. Gagosian turns 80 in April and the man who's been called the closest thing the art world has to a Caesar still has no plans of succession for his empire.
Can there be a Gagosian without Gagosian? I don't know. That's the question. I don't want to think it's an impossibility.
I think it's a serious challenge, but I'm not ready to pass the reins. I enjoy it too much. Are you ever going to be, do you think? No. Well, it kind of means you're like never at rest. Well, there's no time to rest, really. It's overrated.
It's overrated. When it comes to his predecessors, President Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for one in particular, William McKinley. So who exactly was our 25th president?
Mo Rocca looks for answers in America's heartland. We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley. One of President Trump's first executive orders in his second term was reverting the name of Alaska's highest peak, Denali, to Mount McKinley.
How many steps? 108. But there's already a Mount McKinley of sorts in Canton, Ohio, right between I-77 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A magnificent mausoleum to our 25th president, William McKinley, entombed here alongside his wife, Ida. What a tribute.
Yeah. And just next door, you can learn more about McKinley's life. Welcome to our home.
It has been some time since Ida and I have hosted visitors. He looks as close to what McKinley looked like in real life. Kim Kenney is executive director of the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum. If there's one thing that people know about President McKinley when they show up here, what is it? It's that he was one of the four presidents that was assassinated.
That ignominious distinction has eclipsed a remarkable life story. By all accounts, he was just a super nice guy. He was always kind, he was always polite, he was always very proper. University of Akron history professor Kevin Kern says McKinley first rose to prominence as a Civil War veteran and an Ohio Republican congressman with a singular focus, tariffs.
That was his jam. Man, he just really, really loved tariffs. People eventually called him the Napoleon of Protection. The 1890 McKinley tariff raised rates as high as 50 percent, but when the economy tanked, McKinley lost his seat in Congress. Undeterred, he was soon elected governor of Ohio, and in 1896, president of the United States. His focus was still the economy until the battleship Maine exploded off the Spanish colony of Cuba.
It wasn't clear why it exploded. Still, war fever swept the country, but McKinley urged caution. He had this belief that let's investigate things. He was actually accused of being, you know, weak-kneed and vacillating by a lot of people. Including his own assistant secretary of the Navy, Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt very famously is reported to have said that McKinley has the backbone of a chocolatey Claire. That really disappointed me because I'm a TR fan. I mean, his charisma, those teeth, but that really disappointed me.
It is very much in his character, though. Remember, Teddy Roosevelt is all about, you know, ruggedness and manhood, masculinity, and he believed that a really vibrant country ought to project power. McKinley came around, and in just four months, the Spanish-American war was over, and the U.S. took control of Cuba and acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. That same year, the U.S. annexed Hawaii. Altogether, it was the birth of an American empire. And yet, he really rejected this idea of the United States as an expansionist power for the point of its own self-aggrandizement.
He really believed that they were bringing American promise to these new territories. Perhaps, but the ensuing occupation of the Philippines cost as many as a quarter million civilian lives there. Is this Vietnam before Vietnam? In some ways, yeah. So here is the first engagement of American forces on another country in guerrilla war.
It was really ugly. Even so, McKinley won re-election in a landslide. One of my favorite William McKinley fun facts, he's on the $500 bill. Yes, yes he is.
He began negotiations for the Panama Canal and traveled to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where he took a more nuanced position on his signature issue, tariffs. But the very next day, at a public reception, anarchist Leon Sholgash shot the president. He's mortally wounded by this guy, and there are people all around.
They're just beating the tar out of Sholgash. They probably would have killed him. What does McKinley say? He has been shot by this guy.
What does he say? He says, go easy on him, boys. To his assassin.
Go easy on him, boys. Eight days later, President William McKinley died. He was 58. Was this the equivalent of the Kennedy assassination? Oh, absolutely.
If anything, even more. In 1907, the McKinley Memorial was dedicated before an estimated crowd of 50,000, its size a reflection of the monumental loss felt by his countrymen. My grandmother was a school teacher in like the 19-teens. And they had a portrait of McKinley on the wall of her schoolhouse. This was almost 20 years later, draped in black crepe.
That was the degree of admiration and respect that people had for him. Every now and then, we like to journey into the creative world of contributor, Robert Krulwich, and animator, Nate Milton. This morning, they're taking us to the Rocky Mountains.
And as always, we're traveling first class. Here's the thing about size. If we have two frogs, one of them is little and the other one is bigger. Generally, the little guy will croak higher and the bigger guy lower. And you'd see the same thing with birds. Little birds go high, bigger birds lower.
And there's a reason for this. If an animal is bigger, it generally has room for a larger larynx, longer vocal tracks, and more space inside to produce a deeper sound. Musicians know this, of course. Your bassoon, sir, for example, is a little longer than her clarinet, see? So we would expect, go ahead, the bigger to go lower. And tubas, the biggest of all they go, the lowest of all. And that seems to be the rule.
But like all rules, every so often, you find a fascinating exception. And my favorite is elks. I just said elks.
Elks are very big, big, big. A full grown bull elk averages more than five feet tall at the shoulders and can weigh between 700 and 1100 pounds. And you look at a critter this size, and you would naturally expect a deep basso voice. But when you hear an elk calling out, well, it's just embarrassing, really. They sound like mammalian canaries. Elk are odd. The animal that most resembles them is a red deer found in Asia and in Europe. And when a red deer calls out, it sounds, well, kind of like you would expect. Compare that to the elk. And here's the deer again. Nobody knows exactly why elk developed this way. Their vocal cords are longer, but they've got muscles inside that constrict the sounds and have them go falsetto. But why?
Why do this? The explanation is so unlikely. I'm just going to say it's wind. Elk live mainly in the mountains in the Rocky Mountains, which as this map shows is an especially windy zone.
And these deep blue lines you see here, they track high wind speeds roughly at the height of a tree. And when the tree is a pine or a spruce as they are in the Rockies, wind creates a whistling noise that can get very loud for very long, even days at a time. These are the loudest trees I have ever encountered, says biologist David Haskell. It's like the forest is shouting. So where then does that leave an amorous elk? Well, when it comes time to mate, a male elk will go to a spot kind of alone where he can advertise, they call it bugling. He will cry out as loud as he can in the direction of some lady elks who may be two or even three miles away in all female herds, cloistered somewhere in the forest where they gather and they listen.
Meanwhile, other males in other places will cry out, bugling their love songs, simultaneously begging for attention. And they do this with the wind around them blowing fiercely, which should make it almost impossible for anyone to hear anything unless male elks can find a way to get around the wind. Nature gives them a choice. They can either pitch their voices low down under the wind or higher and higher up over the wind. Either way works and evolution, it seems, has chosen the higher route. Wind takes up so much audible space in the Rocky Mountains that over the last 10,000 years, American elk have learned to sing in higher and higher register in order to reach females who hear them and then welcome the best performer into their herd where he can make babies.
Lots of babies and that's the key, reproductive success. So it may be that male elks sound like big canaries because going soprano gets them up over the wind barrier. Yeah, there could be other explanations. Female elks may find a high-voiced male just very sexy and choose them with or without wind. Sexual attraction matters in evolution but so does environment. And as best we can tell, when you hear a big elk call out like a little bird and you say, what is that about?
We say, best guess, blame the wind. Steve Hartman now on some real team players. At the diner he owns outside Pittsburgh, David McComb is the decider. No sugarcoating necessary, no getting grilled for the decisions he makes. But in a marriage, as he now knows, you really should consult with your partner. This is a big decision.
When you marry somebody, you kind of know how they're going to react and know what they're going to do. Now you have a conversation about it. There was a reason why all this happened. We'll settle the argument in a minute.
But first, the backstory, which begins an ocean away. In 2021, a young boy from Senegal, West Africa had dreams of playing basketball in America. The kid, named Ama So, posted videos hoping some private high school in the states would sponsor him. And sure enough, one did. You left your family in the hopes that you could play basketball?
Yeah, I wouldn't do anything for basketball. Unfortunately, not long after Ama arrived, the school went out of business, leaving that 15 year old boy homeless and penniless with nowhere to go. And that's when a former staff member here reached out to his old friend, David. I mean, I didn't think if there was anybody else that could take him in, I just said, okay. Nevermind that he already had a full house with three kids of his own, David agreed to take in one more without even meeting him.
We could take Ama. And he says he knew his wife would come around, which she did almost immediately. Ama's never seen a dishwasher. He's never taken a hot shower until he came to America.
So it grounded everybody. Ama now attends the local public high school, where his basketball dreams are coming true. Next year, he'll play division one college at the University of Tennessee, Martin. But he says the bigger blessing is the second family he scored. But a family going to be here forever. They're going to love you forever, going to have you forever. Is that what you have here?
Yeah, that's what I have here, I think. Nicole says he definitely does. I love him. He's part of our family.
So he did it right. This time. It's been a quarter century since a fledgling primetime show pretty much revolutionized television and added phrases like the tribe has spoken to our national lexicon. Jonathan Vigliati takes us to Fiji to find out why Survivor has stood the test of time. Divide 18 strangers into three tribes. Drop them on remote islands with little food. I've never been this hungry in my entire life.
I feel like I'm just fading away and no shelter. And have them outwit unbelievable and outplay one another. Until the last competitor standing, he's crowned the winner. In the end, only one will remain to claim the million dollar prize. When the adventure reality game show Survivor debuted in May of 2000. This is Survivor. Nothing like it had been seen on American television before. How would you describe Survivor? It is a social experiment in that it takes a group of people who don't know each other and forces them to rely on each other while playing this game where you vote each other out. Zack, the tribe has spoken. Welcome to Survivor 48. Host Jeff Probst invited us to watch this experiment for ourselves in Fiji as he began taping season 48 last summer. I like it.
Which premieres on CBS and Paramount Plus this Wednesday. Do you still get nervous? I don't get nervous on Survivor. It's weird. I've never gotten nervous.
I lean into it. I love the uncertainty. And it's this uncertainty that's made Survivor one of the most popular shows on television for a quarter of a century.
Genders and ages separated the four of us. I mean, it'll be interesting. I don't think this has ever happened before. The show averages around 6 million viewers an episode.
In the past 24 years, fans have collectively watched 10 and a half billion hours. When did you know that Survivor was going to be ahead? When I knew Survivor was going to be interesting was the first day of the first season when we abandoned everybody on the beach and Richard Hatch, who ended up winning the first season, got up in a power position in a tree.
You guys, I think the first thing we ought to do is talk about how we're going to do whatever we're going to do. And he was looking down on everyone and he said, I think we should all talk. And Sue Hawk, a truck driver from Wisconsin, looked up and said, where I'm from, we work while we talk. Corporal Rhodes ain't going to work out here in the bush. While probes had no doubt, Survivor almost didn't happen. Mark Burnett, President Trump's newly appointed special envoy to the United Kingdom and the British TV producer behind hits like The Apprentice and Shark Tank, reimagined a Swedish reality series and took his idea to just about every U.S. TV network. And every network said, no, that's a crazy idea.
We don't want to do it. But Mark is not easily deterred. So he went out and got sponsors for the entire show. At the time, Probst hosted music shows on cable TV. I was literally the last person hired.
I heard Mark talking about Survivor on a radio interview and he described the show. I knew when I heard it. I told all my friends, this is my show.
This is this is what I've been waiting for. Today, Probst, now also the showrunner, has his hands in every aspect of production, including combing through more than 15000 audition tapes that arrive each year. I know within 30 seconds. Honestly, within 30 seconds, I'm I'm pretty sure you're going to be on the show or not. Some people are compelling immediately. I love Survivor. People like Stephanie Berger, a technical product manager from New York City and one of this season's chosen ones.
What's your strategy going to be? So in my like day to day life, everyone will tell you that I I get to be the alpha. Like I like to be in charge. I like control and I know that I cannot come out here and do that. When I first started watching Survivor, I knew that this game was for me.
Kyle Frazier is a contestant from Roanoke, Virginia. Are you willing to lie? Like where do you draw a line in your game?
Yeah. So I mean, listen, I am going to have to lie. You know, like I'm not going to tell people I'm a lawyer. Contestants not only need to build trust through any means possible, they have to win mental and physical challenges from the moment they arrive. Or risk getting voted off. No need to vote. Don't waste any more time. Grab your torch.
Probst says what we see is never staged or scripted, including tribal councils, where Probst grills contestants off the cuff, a skill he's developed over time. So is this an argument or just a discussion? You're a student of psychology and anthropology. Without the degrees.
I've always loved all of that. I just never formally applied it. I didn't want to be a psychologist.
I wanted to be a storyteller. What does make it on television is carefully selected from thousands of hours worth of video shot around the clock for 26 days in what is one of the largest television productions on earth. It's a great trick because when you're watching Survivor, it does feel intimate and it is. When the tribes are on the beaches, there's just a small handful of crew there and producers. When you get to a challenge or tribal council, you know, there's cameras everywhere. We have roughly 400 people that are our international crew. Then we have another 400 Fijians who work with us as well. So we're close to a thousand people. Each season films in the summer with crews arriving months in advance, turning this resort into a production village. It's not only work, it's family. Roberta Limchap works in the art department. Everything we see around us. Everything is made from scratch. You can't buy this somewhere else.
You can't buy this, exactly. Dozens of young production assistants test every detail of the challenges while crews plot camera angles. One more. I had my chance.
Okay. CBS Sunday Morning got on a plane, came all the way to Fiji for this moment with Jonathan. It's much harder than it looks. And tribal members often compete exhausted and hungry. Absolute exhaustion.
They are not fed when the cameras are off. I tried my hand at survival. Don't be afraid to take off too much. Opening up a coconut. You know what I'm afraid of? Taking off my thumb.
Not easy. That's coconut there. I've earned this. Co-executive producer Jimmy Quigley also coached me through starting a fire. Smoke. Oh, smoke. Oh boy. There we go.
Oh, okay. Who's got some fish? Turns out I did. My first try with a spear gun. Beginner's luck. All right, shall we get to today's immunity challenge? What isn't luck is survivors staying power. That freedom to play is what keeps us out here in the middle of Fiji.
Jeff Probst, host, showrunner, ultimate survivor. It sounds like you're in this until the end. I'm in it now. I don't have any thoughts of not being in it.
But I mean, yeah, if you're saying at 86, I mean, maybe I'm too old then. But I never really look at it that way. I feel like I'm a part of a team. And I've said to the people I work with, as long as you all keep showing up, I'll keep showing up. All right. Well, CBS Sunday morning, it has been a pleasure to have you out here.
And I hate to say this, but it is time for you to go. Tomorrow, the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year. Thousands have perished in the conflict on both sides. The fighting has taken its toll on those covering the Russian invasion as well.
A reality South Stone explains, one reporter knows all too well. He was in critical condition, but fortunately, to be this far, loaded into a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter near the Ukrainian border. This was the scene of a battle just a few days ago. The Russians tried to move forward. Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was covering the war when his car was struck by Russian missiles.
These are his cameraman's last images. I've reached for the door of the car, and I managed to get one foot out of the door, and then the third bomb. Hit the car itself, and I was, I was out. I'm not sure how long, but I woke up and I must have been about 15, 20 feet from the car. I was on fire.
It was March 14th, 2022. He and his crew had traveled to the frontline town of Harenka with two Ukrainian soldiers. I started to sort of gather where I was and what had happened. I was confused because I had no trousers or shoes on. I didn't quite fit in.
I was confused because I had no trousers or shoes on, I didn't quite figure out, but it burnt off and my right foot had been largely blown off. And I can still sense what it was like. All the worries had gone. There was like one sole thing, survival. There was one thing, get home.
He flagged down a car that drove him to a Ukrainian hospital. That was the last, last I remember. I think I was just barely, barely alive at that point. When did you realize the extent of your injuries? You know, I didn't, for example, the left foot, I didn't really realize, but it was only later that I saw a picture that was taken in hospital, which just has a baseball size hole right through the middle of it. I mean, totally gone, but I didn't notice that. The leg obviously took most of my attention. I didn't know how badly I was burnt and had shrapnel in the eye, cut the eye in half. I was unaware of that. You know, I was bleeding from the head, but I didn't know how much of my skull had been taken out, nor did I even know that the thumb had been pulled off.
And it is an incredible place that your body goes to. You are in this, you know, survival mode. He was the only survivor. Longtime Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakchevsky and local producer Sasha Kushinova were killed.
With no space in the car, they decided to go without Fox's own security. You juggle a lot and adrenaline is pushing and you're up against deadlines. Were mistakes made? No, I don't think so. We have a routine that we follow.
We know where you're going and talk about it as a team, and that's what we did that day. Pierre and Sasha are dead. Do I want to reverse it? Do I want to go back? Would I bring them back for absolutely anything?
Of course I would. That will be with me forever. Hall documents the dramatic and tragic events in his book Saved, which details how Fox News helped get him on a train headed to the Polish border. Where the US military was waiting. And I've taken off that train at the other end and there was this Blackhawk 82nd Airborne. I felt I was absolutely saved.
I'm going to get his head. The war correspondent and dual UK and US citizen began chronicling his own battle. It's a long, long process and the last few days have been quite hard.
I've had an infection which they found and an operation. One, two, three, go. His journey to recovery took him from Poland to Germany. To Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, ever further from his wife, Alicia Mellor. So what do we want to say, steady?
And their three daughters in London. Get better, Daddy. Yes, get round. Yes, and get well. And be so brave.
Chin up and get better soon. Ready, steady, go. When we met the family last year, they were getting ready to welcome a new baby and adjusting to a changed reality. Were there times that you were preparing for the very worst with him? The first night that I got the call, I actually thought he was probably going to die, to be honest. I think when this kind of a thing happens, you do expect worst case scenario and you can be prepared for death. But I was not prepared for this. I have no experience with amputees or amputations or just the amount of surgeries that are involved with someone who has a blast injury.
I had no idea. Until you're challenged with something, I don't think you always understand what you're capable of. So I think maybe you surprised yourself with your capabilities.
He's undergone around 40 surgeries. They woke me up at about six this morning and I was like, you woke me up at about six this morning out of the blue and said from nowhere, you're having an IOP this morning. And hundreds of hours of physical therapy, writing about that too in another book out next month on the power of resilience. You suddenly are open to doing anything. And if a doctor comes in and says, we're putting leeches on that, we're going to take the thumb off, we're going to put your elbow onto it, bring it on.
Whatever you've got to do to get me home, to get me walking, to get me back to my kids, I will do it and I won't complain about it. He's embraced the challenge and even his new mismatched eye. The only lens they had left was blue and they said, we can go and find you a brown one. I said, give me the David Bowie look, I want it, you know.
So I love the eyes and you know what, they're a conversation starter and I love that. Why do you want people to ask about the injury? You know, I don't think I had spent much time before the injuries to thinking about what it was like to be disabled.
So I guess I want to do it to help others feel natural about it. So Ben, we hear from our audience all the time. What's the update on Ben? How's life for him?
How is he recovering? This is my first day back at the London Bureau and I'm a strong believer that if something knocks you down, you go away, you deal with it and you keep coming back. Reminders of the tragedy are ever present.
Fox dedicated its London Bureau to Zakchevsky after the deadly attack. Sasha's parents are suing Fox News. They're claiming a wrongful death in this lawsuit. They've named you, your book, as perpetuating a story that they believe is a false story of how close you were, whether you should have been that close.
Yeah. Like I came home to my family, I came home to my children. They lost their daughter. But when it comes to my book, I sat down within a few days and I started jotting down what happened. I wanted people to read about what happened because I wanted to talk about Pierre and about Sasha and the amazing work they did and the war, what we were covering. And so the idea that the book is false in any sense isn't true in any bit. How was it to have your memoir named in this lawsuit?
The allegation being that HarperCollins is a subsidiary of the same parent company that somehow Fox is getting its story out through you. Yeah, I mean, I was surprised, I suppose. I certainly didn't see it coming.
Who do you think is going to win? The ordeal has reordered his priorities and family is more important than ever. Do you think you've fully processed what happened? Yeah, I have. Processing it doesn't mean that it's gone.
Pierre and Sasha died. I don't want to totally process that. I always want to have that drive me. So I'm happy to hold those burdens, you know. I feel like they're part of me now. How do you think about conflict reporting today? Oh, more important than ever. I loved my career. I loved what I was doing and I would take these injuries as a result of that.
I would change it all to bring Pierre and Sasha back in a heartbeat. But I think it's the most important job in our field, to be honest. I think it's essential. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts.
