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I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday Morning. Election week is over, and the projected winner is Joe Biden. Not that his victory at the polls was easy or free of controversy or dispute. It was a nail biting conclusion to a campaign for the history books, as Martha Teichner will report. It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric. Lower the temperature. See each other again.

Listen to each other again. Oh, if only President Elect Joe Biden could pull that off. I think the vast majority of people in this country really don't want to think about politics 114% of the time. For now, though, a look back at our fraught election this Sunday morning. From there, it's on to one of the enduring legends of the silver screen. She's Sophia Loren, and she'll be talking with our Seth Doan. The word legend may be overused, but with Sophia Loren, it's warranted.

And this week, she's returning to the screen. There's some Oscar buzz around this performance. You know, you know, Oscar, I have already won. For me, it's enough to have made my film. That's what I really believed in. More things, if they come, they come.

If they don't come, that's life. Loren on life, family, and her definition of beauty later on Sunday morning. California offers a read on the next chapter for a landmark bookstore. Barry Peterson tells us about a new technology that's a huge step forward for amputees.

Lee Cowan samples a top shelf bourbon, plus Steve Hartman, Jim Gaffigan, and more. All on this Sunday morning, the 8th of November, 2020. We'll be back after this. And the winner is Joe Biden. What a long, long journey down the campaign trail it's been.

Our cover story is reported by Martha Teichner. I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but unify. Is it really all over? We have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies.

They are Americans. After a wild week of waiting, president-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech last night in Wilmington, Delaware. This is the time to heal an American.

This is a major fraud in our nation. President Trump has not called to congratulate Biden. He has not conceded defeat. He continues to cry foul. But ultimately, I have a feeling judges are going to have to rule.

What we don't know. CBS News has learned the president vows to keep fighting the results in court and will not concede. Is whether a litigious president unwilling to go down without a fight will get his ultimate wish. So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What we do know is what we saw for ourselves. This will be the most important election in the history of our country. And this is the most important election of our lifetimes. The candidates framing the stakes in this election.

Never mind the threat of coronavirus. We saw long lines at polling places. Ballots cast in numbers demonstrating how intensely Republicans and Democrats both believe that the course of our democracy was indeed on the line.

Voter participation was the highest in more than a century. And the outcome? What's extraordinary about this election is, despite a pandemic, great depression levels of unemployment, huge turmoil, an impeachment before that, you have ended up seeing the partisan divide as deep, as rooted as ever. Journalist Fareed Zakaria is the author of 10 lessons for a post-pandemic world. In some ways, the pandemic has been a great revealer.

In others, it's been an accelerator. What the pandemic has revealed, perhaps more than anything else, is that we're really two countries. So, no real movement across the ideological divide. Think World War I trench warfare, advances and retreats, measured in feet, stalemate, but a war just the same.

When have you ever seen plywood? Just think about that for a second. After an election day, New York's Times Square boarded up an unscalable wall around Donald Trump's White House, armed protesters.

Describe an emotion you've felt this past week, anxiety, fear of what might happen? You know, 50 years ago, when I moved to the U.S. from Lebanon, I never thought I would be concerned about violence, conflict and even bloodshed in this country. Harayar Balian heads the conflict resolution program at the Carter Center in Atlanta, which has monitored more than 100 elections worldwide. Look, what I've seen around the world is far, far more violent, bloody and destructive conflict and civil war. We're not there.

We're not there. But nonetheless, that is not to say we should not be concerned. I think Americans should be worried about the fabric of our society really fracturing. We haven't crossed that line.

It hasn't fractured yet. But we're not too far from that line either. This is the United States. That can't happen here, could it?

Hypothetically, yes. Back to us right now, Tony. Yesterday morning at ten thirty six Washington time, Donald Trump, en route from the White House to his Virginia golf course, tweeted CBS News projects that Joe Biden has been elected the forty sixth president of the United States. Within an hour, news organizations, including CBS, called the election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris presidential election. We did it, Joe.

You're going to be the next president of the United States. A national street party erupted across the United States. Not celebrating the roughly 70 million Americans who voted for President Trump. How many of them no longer trust the legitimacy of the process, such as this man in Georgia?

It almost seemed like they were waiting to see how many votes Trump had, and then they would count the rest to make sure Biden had just enough. What is the long term cost to our democracy of widespread doubt? I work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as those who did. Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now.

How likely is it that Joe Biden will convince nearly half the electorate that he is their president, too? Our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. And what presidents say in this battle matters. It's time for our better angels to prevail.

I'm not going to be a Pollyanna here. This is going to be really hard. It's going to be one of the hardest things we've had to do as a republic, which is to tone things down. Longtime political commentator Joe Klein. Job number one, probably for Joe Biden, it looks like, but also for the Congress and the courts and for us as citizens is to figure out ways to reach out to each other and start conversations. And what are the chances of that happening?

Or they deserve a minimum wage of $15. I'm going to ask big corporations and the super wealthy just to begin to start to pay their fair share. The issues Biden campaigned on actually getting passed. Unless the Democrats can flip the Senate, likely only if they win both Georgia's runoff votes in January, President-elect Biden's agenda will hit a formidable red wall there by the name of Mitch McConnell. You know, the same Mitch McConnell who set out to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

The same Mitch McConnell who sabotaged Obama's Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland. Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake. They are setting the stage to potentially steal an election. For the moment, the GOP still sounds like the party of Trump, but I don't think you can underestimate the incredible power that a president has in setting style for the country.

Just look at what Donald Trump has done. I think that if you have a different president setting the tone, there are things that are going to change. The dozens and dozens of executive orders and regulatory rollbacks President Trump signed into effect. With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden plans to start undoing them on day one, January 20th.

You're going to start paying your fair share. He is expected to re-engage with the world, albeit a warier world. The world has seen that there is this backlash in America to its engagement in the world. And so it won't be able to forget it. You know, Joe Biden can demonstrate that there are two Americas and one does want to be engaged. He can move aggressively and intelligently, but it won't change the fact that people have seen that other America. And they know it's lying there, maybe dormant for a while.

Maybe dormant for now, but it could rear its head again. Tonight, the whole world is watching America. Trying to read Joe Biden and Kamala Harris after their historic victory. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. Biden won with more votes, 74 million and counting, than any American president ever. While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.

Harris will be the first woman, the first person of African-American and Asian descent, and the first child of immigrants to be elected vice president. Every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities. It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again, and to make progress. What's the takeaway from this messy, sometimes ugly election?

It's really healthy for us to see who we are and where we are. Good news, according to noted Harvard University historian Danielle Allup, author of an award-winning book about the Declaration of Independence. An expression of disagreement with the other side and a vote against the other side, but it's a vote, not a pitchfork. That's the important point.

It's the choice to use a vote to express that disagreement, which is the commitment, the pledge card to peaceful resolution of conflict. And that's a beautiful thing. But a lot can happen between now and Inauguration Day. The next chapter of a beloved bookstore is being written by thousands of loyal customers. Caliph Asane has the fine print. Would you like to see our most expensive book?

Do you have a layaway plan? This copy of Ulysses signed by both author James Joyce and illustrator Henri Matisse can be yours for $45,000. When's it from? 1935. So it's almost as old as this bookshelf.

Almost, yes. At 93 years old, The Strand is a New York institution. Four floors of books, chosen by staff members who have to pass a literary test before being hired.

But it's also a family tradition. My grandpa was a real book man, as was my dad, but my dad had a very good business sense. Nancy Bass Wyden is a third generation owner of the store in Greenwich Village. But the book trade has never been easy.

How cutthroat was it back then? Well, there was one store called the cheapest bookstore in the world, so... Still, The Strand endured through the Great Depression, World War II, 9-11. Even the Amazon we were fine against, but this COVID has really knocked our socks off. That's true for stores all over the country.

So these are the ones that are like, you know, they're really durable. But for some independent bookshops, there's a secret weapon. A community of readers that wants them to survive. We opened it up based upon our experience of raising our children. In St. Louis, Missouri, Jeffrey and Pamela Blair created iSeeMe, an African-American children's bookstore, five years ago.

Representation matters. And having my children see themselves in the books that they read really helped them become self-motivated about learning, and they did extremely well through school, and then we continued to see those benefits. The shop opened amid protests over the police shooting of a local 18-year-old, Michael Brown. Suddenly, everyone wanted what iSeeMe was selling. People that were not African-American, they want to expose themselves and their children to know more about African-American, African-American cultures.

All children need to see more representation in the books of other people to dispel like a lot of stereotypes and things like that. But in April, during the pandemic, the store began to struggle. In an effort to hold on, Blair started a GoFundMe campaign. Just so people know honestly what was going on with us. Was that a moment when you had to kind of swallow some pride?

A hundred percent. We felt like it was our last resort. Even before we pressed the button, it was like, I don't really want to do this. And what was the reaction like when you put up this plea on GoFundMe? We reached our goal within a week, 25,000. The community really showed up for us.

There's so many institutions that are closing are closed, and this is one place that I cannot imagine New York without. Two weeks ago, the Strand posted a plea for help, and the whole world responded. In 48 hours, we received 25,000 internet orders. Now, on a typical day, we'll receive 300 internet orders. By then, Wyden had already furloughed most of the Strand's 216 employees.

Even though she owns the building and got a loan from the government's CARES Act, by this fall, the losses were mounting. Asking a business to sustain eight months of sales at a 30% level is, you can't, it's a marathon. And how many people are working here now? We have 79 people, and we are quickly rehiring. And this one's going to Switzerland.

Wow. Rehiring can't come soon enough for shipping clerks like Uzudima, who faces a crush of orders each day. The more it piles up, that's more jobs. That's more of our friends, more of our co-workers who come back, so everybody's happy. The store is counting on more than books to keep customers interested, including magnets, face masks, and totes, all designed to appeal to holiday shoppers. So the holiday bump is really important for this shop? It's essential, it's essential for us and all independent bookstores. And both ICME's Jeffrey Blair and the Strand's Nancy Bass Wyden hope their season of good tidings continues and spreads.

What do you know about running a bookstore now that you didn't know a year ago? How wonderful the Strand community is, and I just treasure them even more than ever. Sophia Loren's performance in Two Women earned her an Academy Award and a place among the legends of the movies. Now, after a long absence, she's back on the screen. In a new film that's all in the family, her family, here's Seth Doan. In a career that spans 70 years, it's a performance that stands out. The life ahead, out this week on Netflix, is Sophia Loren's first feature film in a decade.

And watching her on screen is like catching up with someone you haven't seen in a while. We're all just a bit older. It was time for me to start again at my age, which I'm not going to tell you. Maybe you know it already, but it's fun, it's fun, it's wonderful.

Since its public knowledge will divulge, Sophia Loren is now 86. Hey, everybody ages. I mean, me too.

I'm not a saint. Me too. What can I do?

Should I be afraid? Why? It's wonderful.

And I look wonderful for my age anyway. I would agree. What a life. Throughout her career, she's played decidedly unglamorous roles. Her latest, Madame Roseb, is a former prostitute who cares for the kids of other sex workers.

She lives on the margins of Italian society, much like Loren did growing up in poverty with an unmarried single mom in a suburb of Naples. That's why I made the film. She reminded me a lot about my mother. My mother was absolutely like that.

Inside, she was very fragile, but she looked strong. The family connections do not stop there. The film's director is Eduardo Ponti, her son. Who's the boss on set? He pretends not to, but he is the boss.

Even just pointing. She doesn't even need to speak, and it says a lot. Eduardo is the younger of two sons Loren had with her late husband, Carlo Ponti, the movie producer who first discovered her as a teenager in a Rome beauty pageant. This is the third time mother and son have teamed up. Did you always have your mom in mind for this role?

I wish you did. I don't think that anybody could have inhabited the role of the character of Madame Roseb the way that she did. Quite a resource to have in the family. If my mother happens to be such an amazing actress, and I happen to be a director, I would be an idiot if I did not cast my mother in my movies.

The story chronicles the unlikely friendship between a Holocaust survivor and a 12-year-old Muslim immigrant from Senegal. Momo, played by Ibrahim Aguaye, his first acting role. He was really like somebody that he has always been in this business. I think he was born for it.

I think so. That's no small compliment from Loren. That's no small compliment from Loren, who's played opposite the likes of Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Cary Grant. Did you second guess at all putting this completely untested actor next to your mom in these leading roles?

Thank God I didn't. To make sure that he felt comfortable with my mother, we all actually, during the shooting, lived together under the same roof. So he could see her the way that I see her. So Ibrahim would get up in the morning and Sophia Loren would be in the kitchen saying before we shoot, I'll make it?

Correct, yes. Because that was the only way to create the right bond for them to know each other. It was a way for the young actor to see Loren as an Italian mom, not a movie star. We glimpsed that too.

Had coronavirus precautions not kept our interview virtual, Loren, at home in Switzerland, said she would have welcomed us and cooked pasta. Loren was the first to win a Best Actress Oscar in a foreign language film, 1961's Two Women. For decades, she's dazzled audiences with her talent, but much has been made of her beauty. For someone who has been such a big fan of the film, I think it's a great honor to be able to see her in the film. For someone who has been such an icon of beauty, how has your definition of beauty changed, or has it? It's not important, the appearance. It's important maybe in films, but it's what you have to give inside of yourself.

Your soul, your everything. The way you believe in things, the way you are with your family, the way you are with your friends, that's life really. That's a good life.

Loren had taken a nearly decade-long break from acting to dedicate time to her family until the right part with the right director came along. How was it to work with your son? Oh, not good, not good at all. Very bad, very bad, because he knows me so well.

He always knows how to push the right button for me to be able to react and do whatever he thinks I should be done. My mother approaches every movie like it was her first. And part of her process is, oh my God, I can't.

And part of my process is, no, no, no, of course you can. She really doubts herself? Every day, every take, every moment. And it's beautiful because she still approaches it with the same anxiety, the same spontaneity, the same passion as if it was her first film. Do you agree with him? Yes, yes, yes.

I know myself, yes, he's right, he knows me. Their film is already generating Oscar buzz, and they're passionate about its messages of tolerance and the value of non-traditional families. If this film can give an audience the desire to love others and live their lives to the fullest, then anything is possible.

It must be quite something to be able to come together and make a creative product with someone you love, and then you put it out there and the world sees it. Certainly, absolutely. It's good for my soul.

How? Because it aligns everything that I love. My work, my mother, telling stories, it aligns everything. I love her, I love her. I have a good son, good son. And I have a good mother, a good mother.

Oh, see, that's for sure. Hi, podcast peeps. It's me, Drew Barrymore.

Oh my goodness. I want to tell you about our new show. It's the Drew's News Podcast. And in each episode, me and a weekly guest are going to cover all the quirky, fun, inspiring, and informative stories that exist out in the world because, well, I need it.

And maybe you do too, from the newest interior design trend, Barbie Corps, to the right and wrong way to wash your armpits. Also, we're going to get into things that you just kind of won't believe and we're not able to do in daytime television, so watch out. Listen to Drew's News wherever you get your podcasts. It's your good news on the go.

It happened this weekend. News of the passing in London last month of Marguerite Littman, AIDS activist and literary muse. Born into a prominent Louisiana family and blessed with great personal charm, she grew up to mingle with some of the 20th century's best known avant-garde artists and writers, including most notably, Truman Capote. She's said to have inspired the character, Holly Golightly, in Capote's novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's. A character brought to the screen by Audrey Hepburn.

How do I look? Marguerite Littman went on to help found the AIDS Charitable Trust in Britain, which counted Diana, Princess of Wales, as one of its supporters. Marguerite Littman died at age 90. A new medical procedure is a giant step forward for people trying to live their lives again after an amputation. Barry Peterson shows us how it works. This is the fun part. I hardly ever get this right the first time. Every time Donna Thornburg attached her artificial leg, it was an equal measure of necessity and happiness. Every time Donna Thornburg attached her artificial leg, it was an equal measure of necessity and pain. After a car accident led to her leg amputation in 2017, she spent weekends only doing things like... G52.

094. ...playing bingo. But even that hurt because prolonged sitting twisted the leg. Okay, my leg is completely off. You have pain from the socket's bigger circumference than my other leg, so you're always sitting sideways, which causes pain in your back and your hips.

To the point where walking out of the bingo parlor was a bittersweet reminder of the life she once had. Hike, run, horseback ride, bowl, ski. Have you been able to do this with the prosthesis? No, I can't even walk very far.

It's a very difficult... Her walk was assessed by surgeon Dr. Jason Stoneback of the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora. So you can see her upper torso is sort of shifting over the right side so that she can maintain her balance through her... Her whole body is changing.

Right, right. He decided she qualified for a new kind of surgery called osseointegration that he performs. Osseo comes from Latin for bone and integrate to make whole. The idea, insert a titanium rod into the bone. Over the course of several weeks, the bone will grow around the rod and integrate it. The last one I had... One part of the rod sticks out of the leg where a special prosthesis can be literally snapped on or off. Carol Davis lost her leg to cancer. I just go turning this way.

I always have to tell myself righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, and it's off. I can feel it pretty much... Carol has embraced her new freedom with a vengeance. The average amputee walks two million steps in three years.

With her new leg, she did two million steps in the first 10 months after surgery. Carol, what has this meant for your life? I can get out and enjoy my life. I can take care of my grandkids.

I have 19 grandkids. I go out and I can garden with them. I can do pretty much everything that I couldn't do before with them where I would just be sitting in the house. With a gyroscope and a computer chip, the leg works with her. If I had stepped on something that threw me off balance... A twig or a rock or something. It would tighten up so it would just make it firm so that I wouldn't fall down. And it may get a lot better if nerves in the stump could be linked to the artificial limb then the brain could control the limb just as it does a normal arm or leg.

The first patient was... That's what Dr. Richard Brennemarck, who helped develop osteointegration in Sweden, is now exploring. We've already seen it work in the movies. Have you ever seen the movie Star Wars?

Did you ever see those movies? Yeah, yeah. Do you remember the scene where Luke's arm has been cut off?

And they attach a robot arm and he can move his fingers and touch. That's what you're trying to do, isn't it? Yeah. Can you? I mean, George Lucas dreamed it up. Now it's just up to you to make it work.

No, we don't know, but I'm normally pretty confident, so I think we can do it. Three weeks after Donna's surgery... Oh my gosh. The first steps... I'm blown away.

The first steps... I'm blown away right now. I'm kind of speechless. It's beyond what I ever even hoped or thought or imagined. Like, I don't even know what to say.

It's crazy different. It feels like a part of me. For the first moment since she lost her leg, something to celebrate.

It's... I wish I had words, but I don't have words. No pain? No pain, none.

No pain at all. We caught up with her four months after the surgery, after the leg had become her new normal. Are you getting close to the point where it just, you don't even think about her anymore? I hope so. The main thing for me is moving my arms. I forget to do that, and I'll start walking like this. Not just walking, but Donna and her granddaughter went a step or two better, breaking into dance. Ta-da! Fair to say, nobody enjoyed a more special Halloween than the little girl Steve Hartman wants you to meet.

A search for hope at the end of this anxious week led me to this humble bundle. Zoe, now three, is the proud product of T.J. and Courtney Thomas of Atlanta, Georgia. Oh, look who's here. Hello.

Cameo. Back in February, Zoe was diagnosed with leukemia, and because her immune system is now compromised, she couldn't go trick-or-treating last weekend with all the other kids. In fact, her parents even had to put up a sign to keep others away. Sorry, no candy.

Child with cancer. The whole purpose was just so that we wouldn't have to keep telling kids sorry and have disappointed kids. Never expected anything like this. Never expected those little ghosts and ghouls to be such saints.

I just immediately started crying. There, at the foot of the sign, trick-or-treaters left their Halloween candy for the child inside. Doorbell camera footage shows kid after kid making the same character-defining decision, mostly on their own. No grown-ups were there telling you what to do?

No. We tracked down a few of the angels. She dumped her whole bag. Your whole bag? I wanted to give back to them. I wanted to give back to them.

It's somebody's little girl. The empathy we heard and saw, Courtney says it was just the medicine her family needed. During this crazy time with everything going on in the world, just the gesture of hey, we're all in this together and just remind each other that there's still hope and love. Still hope, love, and much better role models than the ones we obsess over. Once again, we return to the week that was and thoughts from our Jim Gaffigan. Well, it's over. You survived it. Can you believe it? That's right, daylight savings is finally over. Of course, I'm talking about the election. Wow, that was an emotionally taxing experience for all of us.

This right now is trending to be the most diverse electorate ever. Gayle King went on no sleep. Are you still wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday? I am. And made that yellow dress do a double shift.

He's winning 76% of them. I think Steve Kornacki broke his hand using that giant iPad screen. Good Lord, I don't know what I just pressed. Halloween. Remember Halloween?

I don't know how to tell you this. Halloween was two years ago. Obviously, the election is not officially over, but it's almost over. Well, it's over for me.

After hyperventilating for four days, on Friday morning, I woke up, allowed myself to breathe, and then slept for 20 hours straight. This year's election was a painstaking, belabored marathon. Welcome to our CBS News election headquarters.

As the counting continues across the country, Joe Biden leads President Trump in the electoral vote. Welcome once again to our special coverage. But it had to be. This year is 2020. Why would we expect it to be anything but anxiety-filled?

After all, 2020 is the year that made antidepressants more important than water. Thankfully, soon this year will be over. Before we know it, it'll be December. December, that's a fun month.

There's no stress associated with December. Oh, no. No, no, no. Gail, get that yellow dress ready. In a universe filled with major brands, at least one small family liquor business is thriving.

Lee Cowan serves up proof positive. Kentucky's limestone water. It's too good not to be used in good bourbon, which may be why there are two barrels of bourbon for every person in the country. Maybe why there are two barrels of bourbon for every person who lives here.

Although in the wake of the election, some of them are likely empty by now. But there is one tale about one bourbon, told in the glow of an autumn evening. It's less about whiskey and more about family and time, and not enough of either. This is the home of the Van Winkle's, an unassuming family in Louisville, who are as private as they come.

Cheers. If their name wasn't on the bottle, you'd never know. They craft some of the most coveted bourbon in the world. Pappy Van Winkle. Do you remember the first time you tasted it?

I do. It had some, but it didn't taste thin and gasoline-y. I don't have the official words, but it felt like if I poured it over a spoon, it would coat the spoon. That's Wright Thompson, senior writer for ESPN, who, like the sports heroes he usually writes about, thought that the lore of the elusive Pappy was worth a book. You get the sense that the bourbon is almost an accidental byproduct of these people just living their lives.

And maybe that's why people go so crazy for it. I think you think you know yourself pretty well until someone else starts writing about you. The current keeper of the Van Winkle secret is Julian Van Winkle III. The first one, not so much.

Not bad, just different. His son Preston has spent nearly a lifetime as his dad's able apprentice. I was younger than the whiskey I was selling when I started working for my dad. Learned all kinds of stuff hanging out with us, Lee. Julian started young too, fixing leaky barrels for his dad, who learned the craft from his dad, Pappy himself.

That is probably the rarest bottle in there. Pappy is so storied, he has his own exhibit at the Frasier History Museum in Louisville. He was just a great old guy. He was very dapper with his little vest on, he was smoking his cigars, and he was a very unique individual, a real salesman. His sister says that Julian is Pappy made over. I don't see that.

Look at the label, you're turning into him. Pappy used wheat instead of rye in his bourbon recipe, which gave it a smoother, sweeter taste. His vow is still bolted to the distillery that he co-founded on Derby Day in 1935. We make fine bourbon, it reads, at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always fine bourbon. It's what my father and grandfather were always doing, was selling aged bourbon whiskey. Really good aged bourbon whiskey.

But by the 60s, even the finest bour had gone out of favor. They were dinosaurs with a cork. It was like an old man's drink, you know. My grandfather used to drink bourbon, but we sure don't drink that stuff anymore. It's one of those kind of deals. Yeah, I mean, if the last time you had bourbon was Kentucky Tavern in college, like, you know, the difference between this and that is like a hood ornament and a racehorse.

I mean, it's just... And yet, there Pappy sat, unwanted. Julian's dad reluctantly sold the family distillery in 1972. Do you think he ever got over selling the distillery?

I don't think so. No, it pretty much did him in, I think, in the end. It was his life. I mean, he brought it home every night, so it was a tough deal. He died of prostate cancer just a few years later. Did you feel a pressure to carry on the business, or was it a desire, really? It was the only thing I knew how to do, to earn a living, basically. So he started over, from scratch, really, with a beat-up truck and a forlorn distillery that he bought in 1981. He set about honoring something old, even while the beverage world had moved on to something new. Did you ever think about giving up?

Nope. We didn't realize what was happening all that time. And he didn't either, honestly. He just knew how to work hard. Julian's daughters, Carrie, Chenault, and Louise, triplets. He was always fixing stuff and rolling barrels.

And he would come home with a bleeding head or a sprained ankle and have driven home with a bag of ice from the gas station on his ankle. No one paid Pappy much mind until 1997, when the Beverage Testing Institute in Chicago got its hands on some Pappy. It gave it a 99 out of 100, the highest rating ever given to a whiskey. Ever since, Pappy has become one of the most sought after and expensive bourbons anywhere.

Many camped out through the pre-dawn darkness. It's so rare that it's a news event when the few bottles of Pappy are released. I feel like I got the golden ticket. Some stores have even resorted to using a lottery to decide who gets to buy even one bottle. People call them unicorns and supposedly they're out there, but most people don't see them. Did you always intend to make less than you could sell?

Not a good, smart move. It would be nice to have more. And we're making more, but the demand keeps going up. So I don't think we'll ever get there. No one knows when bourbon goes into a barrel if it'll make the trip, if angels will drink more than their fair share as it evaporates over the decades. Every now and again, you'll see the word empty.

That's just a bad day. But what is left isn't just a family's loved and cared for whiskey. What Wright Thompson discovered in writing his new book was that the real spirit in a bottle of Pappy isn't its rarity or its price or frankly, even its taste. A bottle of Pappy is all about those who have gone before us. When you get it now, what you get is a son and a grandson's memory at work. I find that really powerful and moving. For you, this really isn't a book about bourbon at all, is it?

It's barely a book about bourbon. It's a lot about what we owe our families and how we can pass the best of them along. I'm Jane Pauley.

Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts.