60 Minutes - 04/30/23: The Domino Effect, Out of Thin Air, An American Down Under

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

THE DOMINO EFFECT – A woman in the United States is currently twice as likely to die during pregnancy as her mother was a generation ago, indicating that the country is experiencing a maternal health crisis. Sharyn Alfonsi visits Louisiana to report on the state of maternal healthcare in the United States, which has some of the highest maternal mortality rates and where women already face additional obstacles to care due to the state’s abortion ban. The producer is Ashley Velie. OUT OF THIN AIR – Carbon dioxide’s heat-trapping effects are worse than anyone expected, according to a 2023 United Nations climate report, as oil and gas emissions hit record highs. Bill Whitaker visits Iceland to observe the first commercial direct air capture plant, which could help solve climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it underground. Whether or not a climate disaster occurs depends on how quickly this new industry can expand. Heather Abbott is the producer. AN AMERICAN DOWN UNDER – Mason Cox, the lone American in the Australian rules football league, is the subject of a profile by correspondent Jon Wertheim. Cox, who is nearly seven feet tall, is a native Texan who had never heard of football before moving to Australia to play for the legendary Collingwood Magpies. Jacqueline Williams is the producer To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. The United States is in the middle of a maternal health crisis. Today, a woman in the U.S. is twice as likely to die from pregnancy complications than her mother was a generation ago. You've looked at this as a doctor, as a policymaker. What needs to be done? We have to prioritize motherhood, right? As a country, we have, and particularly in the Deep South, said that we're pro-birth. If we're really going to be pro-birth, we need to be pro-motherhood and pro-family. It looks and sounds a little like science fiction. This is the first carbon removal plant on Earth, designed to ingest harmful CO2 from the atmosphere and pump it into the earth,

where it gets turned to stone. Am I optimistic as an engineer? I am, absolutely. Am I optimistic as a citizen? Maybe half-half. This goal can be reached technically. It's just whether we have the political and social will to do it. I think that's the exact right way of looking at it. Cox, already a big target. No, he's a good hand.

This football player wasn't just drafted into the NFL. A double step from Mason. No, but at 6'11", he's the tallest player and only American currently playing professional Australian rules football. A fast and fierce game that makes ours look like a quilting bee. So who is this tall Texas transplant? And how, in the name of Walton Matilda, did he become a star down under? That's our story tonight.

I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. The United States is in the middle of a maternal health crisis.

Today, a woman in the U.S. is twice as likely to die from pregnancy complications than her mother was a generation ago. Statistics from the World Health Organization show the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the developed world. Women in the U.S. are 10 or more times likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than mothers in Poland, Spain, or Norway. Some of the worst statistics come out of the South, in places like Louisiana, where deep pockets of poverty, health care deserts, and racial biases have long put mothers at risk. Tonight, you will hear from some of the women trying to improve maternal health care in Louisiana, and why they say last summer's abortion ban set off a domino effect, making a bad situation worse. The state of maternal health in the United States is abysmal, and Louisiana is the highest maternal mortality in the U.S. So in the developed world, Louisiana

has the worst outcomes for women having babies. Good morning. As an OBGYN, Louisiana's former state secretary of health and founder of NEST, a primary health service for families, Dr. Rebecca Gee spent a career advocating for better maternal care. Renowned for its rich culture and legendary celebrations, Louisiana also holds the distinction of being one of the riskiest places in the country to give birth. 39 out of every 100,000 mothers in Louisiana die during or shortly after childbirth. How did we get here? Why is Louisiana in this position? The high c-section rates have contributed, the lack of access to well-woman care before and after pregnancies. 50% of the time, women don't get that postpartum care, which means they have untreated hypertension, untreated diabetes, untreated depression,

the fact that we have racial bias in health care. And so all of these things are compounded, especially worse for low-income women. As Louisiana's Secretary of Health, Dr. Gee helped expand postpartum Medicaid coverage and push the state to track how race impacted care and maternal outcomes. Was it underreported? Absolutely. In the prior administration, when I was medical director, we were told we were not allowed to show data that showed health disparities. Because why? Because the political establishment didn't want to data that showed health disparities. Because why? Because the political establishment didn't want to admit that there were disparities. A state board now reviews

and reports every maternal death in Louisiana. Dr. Gee worked with that board and found the results especially upsetting. Data showed 80 percent of maternal deaths in the state were potentially preventable. You've looked at this as a doctor, as a policymaker. What needs to be done? We have to prioritize motherhood, right? As a country, we have, and particularly in the Deep South, said that we're pro-birth. If we're really going to be pro-birth, we need to be pro-motherhood and pro-family, right? What does that look like? Making sure that women have time off to get their medical appointments. Making sure that we have affordable child care.

Making sure that women have access to well-woman care. Access is a big hurdle for many women in Louisiana. So what's it like to raise a family here? A struggle. 28-year-old Teresa Dubois and 32-year-old Brittany Cavalier are both married and mothers of two. Thank you. They're expecting their third babies this summer. Who's going to win?

Brittany runs the local daycare that Teresa's younger daughter attends. They live in Assumption Parish, a rural county of 21,000, where sugar cane is plentiful and doctors are scarce. So to give us a sense of kind of where we are, how close is the nearest pediatrician? Almost 45 minutes. OBGYN. An hour and 35 minutes. When you have to go to OBGYN and it takes you an hour and a half. Oh, it's a nightmare. It's a lot. It's a lot emotionally. It's a lot in the car. It's a lot on your body just waiting that long to get help. A third of Louisiana parishes are maternal health deserts,

meaning they don't have a single OBGYN, leaving more than 51,000 women in the state without easy access to care and three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes. The only hospital in Assumption isn't equipped to deliver babies, so Cavalier and Dubois have to travel more than an hour to get to hospitals in Baton Rouge to give birth, a harrowing journey when there's an emergency. I mean, we are supposed to be one of the best countries in the world, and you're just leaving the women out there to dry.

Latona Giwa saw those disparities when she worked as a delivery room nurse. In 2011, she co-founded the New Orleans-based Birthmark Doula Collective. Hey, Trinity, how are you? Doulas provide emotional and physical support before, during, and after childbirth. Last year, the collective worked with 2,000 mothers. We work with the most marginalized families who are most at risk for poor birth outcomes. And we prioritize working with black and brown families, with low-income families. In Louisiana, black women are up to four times more likely than white women to die during or after childbirth.

What do you see in your line of work that black and brown women are facing when they're pregnant versus a white woman? We live in a country that does not guarantee insurance coverage and health care to everyone. There is different and discriminatory care. Black and brown people are more likely to be on Medicaid. They're going to practices that are busier, that take more patients. And that's where the doula comes in. So you have your baby laying. Studies show better birth outcomes for black women who've had doula care.

There you go. Good job. Birthmarks work in Louisiana caught the attention of every mother counts. The maternal advocacy group founded by model Christy Turlington after she suffered complications with the birth of her daughter in 2003. I hemorrhaged. There was a lot of blood. There was a whole sort of stream of things that needed to happen. Really scary. Scary and painful. But it was when I got home and really started to think, what about everyone else in the world that this happens to, but doesn't have that team of care, working together, understanding what's happening and actively managing it? Those questions led Turlington around the world to document the challenges women face giving birth. Stories of midwives in Haiti and mothers in Baton Rouge.

How do you compare U.S. maternal health care to maternal health care in the rest of the world? Well, the U.S. is one of eight countries that have actually had an increase in maternal mortality. So we're certainly at the bottom rung. Last year, Every Mother Counts distributed more than a million dollars to groups focused on strengthening maternal care in the U.S., a mission that became even more difficult last summer.

My body! My body! My son! After Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in June, Louisiana implemented a sweeping abortion ban. The ban set off a domino effect across the state, impacting women like Caitlin Joshua, a community organizer. Joshua and her husband were thrilled to learn she was pregnant last summer. The couple have a four-year-old daughter and were looking forward to expanding their family. We started experiencing cramping. I've lost a lot of blood. She told us she went to a woman's hospital in Baton Rouge where they did an ultrasound, examined, and

monitored her. Joshua says that's where the treatment ended. And so I said, okay, so is this a miscarriage? And the young lady, she said, I can't really tell you that right now. I don't know. And I said, well, what do you mean you don't know? We did the ultrasound. I recall her saying, we're just sending you home with prayers. We're going to hope for the best. So you're in pain.

You think you're miscarrying, and they say we're going to send you home with prayers? Yes. You know, we're Christians too. Like, we pray, but it just was very insulting in the moment just because women come there for answers, so it would have been nice to get a definite response. Wilman's hospital told 60 Minutes it's complex. When diagnoses of early pregnancy loss is unclear, the standard of care is to wait. The next day, Kaitlin Joshua told us her pain became unbearable, so she sought care from a second hospital, Baton Rouge General, where a doctor ordered another ultrasound.

She straight up said, this doesn't look like a baby at all. Are you sure you were ever pregnant? This just looks like a cyst. Wait, she questioned whether you were pregnant or not? Absolutely. And they discharged me maybe within an hour and a half or so after monitoring me. And on the paperwork, it literally said potential miscarriage or possible miscarriage, but nothing definite. Knowing what you know now about what your body was going through, could you have died? When I finally did get care from a midwife on like day five, she said that you certainly could have died. She said the amount of blood you lost, the amount of fluids that you were passing was a lot for someone in such a short

period of time. Why do you think there was such ferocious pushback from not one, but two hospitals? I just have to believe that it is just the vagueness of the abortion ban in this state that's caused so much fear around physicians doing their job. We reached out to Baton Rouge General. They told us every patient is different and that since the ban, they have not changed the way they manage miscarriages or the options available to treat them. The hospital left Joshua with one option, to take Tylenol and monitor for worsening symptoms. In Louisiana, some physicians are now afraid to offer methods typically used to treat miscarriages

because those same methods are used in abortion and could be seen as illegal, potentially landing health care providers in jail. To be clear, you were not seeking abortion. You were trying to have a healthy baby. You needed care, and nobody would touch you. Absolutely. I think a lot of times we fail to realize the intersectionality between maternal health care, reproductive justice and abortion care. Until we understand that all of those things interconnect, we probably will not see change anytime soon.

We take an oath to do no harm and that's really our North Star as a physician. But when the prospect of doing that might cause you to be brought up on criminal charges, that's a really difficult place for our physicians to be. Dr. Jennifer Avegno has been an ER doctor for 22 years and is the current director of the New Orleans Health Department. Last summer, Attorney General Jeff Landry sent a letter to doctors about the new abortion ban that Avegno says paralyzed maternal health care across the state. The letter was something that I've never seen before as a practicing physician, a non-medical layperson inserting themselves into medical care. And there was a direct line about any physician who violates this will lose their liberty and medical license. And so really it was a threat.

What kind of criminal penalties does a doctor face? At least one year and up to 10 years of imprisonment with hard labor. This is about going to jail? This is about going to jail. Doctors don't want to be in a war with their own state. They want to be able to just practice. As the New Orleans Health Department director, Dr. Avegno has seen how doctors are struggling to interpret the language of Louisiana's new abortion ban.

What they're being told is, well, you can consult with the hospital attorney. But I don't know of any other disease or process where routinely you're being told, we'll get the hospital attorney involved. That also brings up what if the attorney advises something that the physician really feels is harmful. So really what our physicians are facing is a terrible choice

to make decisions that might not be in the best interest of the patient or risk going to jail. We reached out to three urban hospitals, rural hospitals, providers, and they said, we'd love to talk to you, but we're afraid. Yes, that has been the consistent echo from providers. There are several providers I think that would love to speak out, but we're told by their hospitals that it's too risky. So why are you sitting here today? I am concerned that we are going to see a worsening of our morbidity and mortality rates, simply because of access and simply because of fear.

Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Last month, the world's top climate scientists delivered a sobering warning. Their mammoth report to the UN boiled down to one message. Act now before the climate breakdown becomes unstoppable.

The report says extreme weather has forced millions of people from their homes and devastated food supplies. Oil and gas emissions are at a record high. The UN report calls for drastic cuts in fossil fuels. But if our old technologies got us into this mess, can new ones get us out? Among politicians, corporations, and billionaires, one new technology is gaining traction. It's called direct air capture that vacuums carbon dioxide out of thin air and locks it away underground. Sound like science fiction?

We thought so too, until we went to Iceland to see the world's first commercial direct air capture plant in operation. Here, on a frigid plain near the Arctic Circle, worries about an overheating planet seem far away. Yet tiny Iceland has put itself on the front line with a new kind of machine that will fight climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. This is Orca, the first commercial direct air capture plant on Earth. What are these fans? How does this work? Here you see the backside of these collectors, where the air is being pulled through the system by aid of these fans.

Carlos Hertel is chief technology officer for Climeworks, the Swiss company that built Orca. He told us as the fans draw air in, the carbon dioxide is trapped by a special filter inside these giant collectors, each the size of a shipping container. The captured CO2 is then siphoned off to storage tanks. We had to shout over the powerful fans as a bitter wind whipped around us. So you didn't come for this wonderful weather? No, we did not. We knew that the windows were harsh, but it's a good real-life test as well for the plant. What you're describing almost sounds like science fiction. But what you're saying is that we can actually do this.

People never doubted the fundamental physics or chemistry of it, but realizing it under real-life conditions is a whole different matter. And that's what this system shows. It can be done. Climeworks is now building a new plant in Iceland ten times the size of Orca that will look like this, a modular design that Hertel told us can be easily assembled. But capturing the CO2 is only half of the story. a modular design that Hertel told us can be easily assembled. But capturing the CO2 is only half of the story.

So this is where the magic happens. The second half starts here in these metal igloos, where the CO2 is sent to be buried in the porous volcanic rock of Iceland. So this pipe is actually filled with water. Sandra Osk is a geologist with CarbFix, an Icelandic company that pioneered the groundbreaking injection method. Here we have the CO2 and the CO2 is actually dissolved in water so it's actually just fizzy water. Just fizzy water? Yeah and this fizzy water is being injected here into the injection well. How far down does it go? It actually reaches over a mile down.

A mile down. Yeah. The fizzy water is shot like a soda stream into Iceland's basaltic rock, where it reacts with the minerals and hardens to stone in less than two years. So the fizzy water turns into this in just a matter of years. So you take this gas that you can't see, you turn it into fizzy water, and then it turns to stone, and you don't have to worry about it. Turned into stone. It's quite amazing. CarbFix didn't invent the process, nature did. But nature takes millennia. After years of experimenting in

Iceland's grueling outdoor laboratory, CarbFix figured out how to speed things up. Aerospace engineer Carlos Hertel told us ORCA was a milestone. Now the hard part starts, scaling up fast enough to slow climate change. Whether we are taking the right direction will depend as much on societal things and on technical matters. Am I optimistic as an engineer? I am, absolutely. Am I optimistic as a citizen? Maybe half-half. I haven't made up my mind yet. This goal can be reached technically. It's just whether we have the political and social will to do it. I think that's the exact right way of looking at it. There's been a stampede of investment.

Microsoft, Airbus, insurance giant Swiss Re have poured in millions of dollars. But it's a stupefying challenge. Orca is built to take out the emissions of about 800 cars, or 4,000 tons of CO2 a year, a tiny fraction of the annual 10 billion tons scientists say we need to remove from the atmosphere. It's the problem of our generation.

It's like a moonshot. Calorie Hegelson is an astrophysicist with CarbFix. He told us studying space helped him to think big. We met him on a barren stretch of rock that could have been Mars. But Hegelson told us he saw potential. We need big solutions. We need to return the carbon back to where it came from, which is the Earth. Tell me what you're doing here.

This will be a first-of-a-kind carbon mineral storage terminal, which means that we are going to bring in CO2, transport it from industrial point sources in Europe, and ship it here and inject it for full mineral storage. It will be the world's first industrial-scale underground disposal site for CO2, capable of handling three million tons a year. Hagelson sketched out a new world where tankers running on green methanol would transport carbon dioxide from European businesses to Iceland. Is this going to happen fast enough to help us with climate change?

I don't know. To be perfectly honest, we are demonstrating the first mineral storage hub here at the megaton scale. Whether that will happen in time, that is not entirely up to us. That is up to politicians, governors, financiers, societies. And quite frankly, we are running out of time. Direct air capture as it now exists is expensive and energy intensive. In Iceland, that energy is geothermal,

renewable and green. That's not the case elsewhere. So governments in Europe and the U.S. have dangled billions of dollars of tax breaks to encourage companies to take the plunge. But there's a bigger question than just who writes the check. Do you fear that people will think, oh, well, we can now clean the air. We can just take the CO2 out of the air so we can carry on with business as usual. All the time, yeah.

But that's not how it works. We must stop the emissions and wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. That's what we need to do right now. On top of that, we also must take down the carbon that we've already put up in the atmosphere. Only then will we reach our climate goals. So carbon capture can never be an excuse for continuing business as usual. But it's that business as usual that critics are warning against as direct air capture expands to the U.S. That's because here, oil companies are one of the technology's biggest boosters. They have been capturing CO2 to inject into oil wells for decades, not to bury it, but to flush out more oil.

For Kauri Hagelson of CarbFix and many others, that's a non-starter. We don't see the need to work with the oil and gas sector. If the oil and gas industry could help with the financing of the direct air capture, why not team up with them? We don't need them for direct air capture. And quite frankly, we don't want there to be an oil and gas industry in 40, 50 years. There will still be an oil industry in 50 years. I have no doubt about that. I think our company, though, will be a different company by 2050. That company is Occidental Petroleum, and Vicki Holub is CEO.

She wants to turn Oxy into what she calls a carbon management company. It has set aside more than a billion dollars to build what will be the world's largest direct air capture plant in Texas. So this would represent the CO2 that's equivalent to taking 200,000 cars off the road. Holub showed us the Texas version of how CO2 would be sucked out of the air. These are air contact towers. Some of the captured CO2 will be locked away underground, just as we saw in Iceland. Some will still be used to extract more oil. But Holub told us using carbon sucked out of the air means the new oil produced is what she

calls carbon neutral. That was hard to wrap our heads around. But you'll be using carbon that you're capturing and taking out of the air to produce more oil that will then generate more carbon. But the oil will emit less carbon than the CO2 we've injected to get it. So we've put more, at least the equivalent, and sometimes more CO2 in the ground to get that oil than the oil will emit when used. Holub told us producing oil this way is essential in the transition to a green economy. Airlines and ships, for example, would need to run on fossil fuels until a sustainable alternative is found. That could take years.

Until then, Holub argues, using CO2 to get that oil helps keep a lid on emissions. Your critics will say you can't trust an oil company talking about reducing CO2, that your mission here is tantamount to greenwashing. I would first say that we would never spend $1.2 billion for greenwashing. So we've got a monumental task ahead of us. The way that the CO2- oil recovery process works is that we can reduce more out of the atmosphere than what our products will emit when used. And so if that's not a concept that people can get, then we will not have a chance to achieve what we need to achieve. Holub told us she knows critics of big oil are suspicious and that many feel industry isn't moving fast enough to avoid a climate catastrophe.

On that point, Holub doesn't disagree. She told us with the help of tax incentives, Occidental plans to build 130 more direct air capture plants by 2035. We know how to make it happen. We know how to drill the wells. We know how to safely sequester it. We were in Iceland and we were talking to some of the direct air capture companies. And to be blunt, they don't quite believe you. We're going to walk the talk. That's the only way that does it. Words will never convince anybody. We need to get the direct air capture up and working.

We need to make it better, make it more economical, and start having it developed all around the world. The next decade will be critical if the direct air capture industry is to grow big enough to make an impact. Both CarbFix and Climeworks told us they will be expanding to the U.S. Neither plans to work with the American oil industry. Don't be fooled by the name. They call Australian rules football footy, which sounds cute and precious. But footy is a sport that makes American football look like a quilting bee.

It's a game of almost cartoonishly violent collisions without the benefit of pads. It features nonstop trash talk and is played on a field practically the size of a speedway. As the name does suggest, Australian rules football is the national sport down under, with games that draw 100,000 fans and TV audiences that, per capita, often outrate the NFL. So why in the name of waltzing Matilda do crowds in Melbourne sometimes break into chants of USA, USA? The answer, they're cheering Mason Cox, a Texan who stands nearly seven feet tall, ranks among the best footy players out there, and might be the most unlikely success story in global sports today. Sits it up. Cox again. I cannot believe it. At first glance, anyway, Mason Cox comes across as the quintessential Aussie Rules or AFL player.

At age 32, he's logged almost 100 games over eight seasons for the storied Collingwood Magpies, the AFL's equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys. And he is an evangelist for his sport. One played on an oval surface almost double the size of an NFL field. Footy entails players running about 10 miles a game, juking, tackling, passing by punching the ball and scoring by kicking the ball through goal posts six points for splitting the center uprights one point for the side ones it's unlike anything else you've ever seen it's probably the the roughest sport in the world i'd say it's a mix of basketball football um it's a mix of basketball, football, it's a mix of soccer,

cricket even. There's really no rules. A few sticks at each end, just try to kick it through those, and then whoever does it more than the other team wins. Sounds like fun. Yep. For three straight goals, Mason Cox delivers! Cox plays like a human blowtorch,

not only catching and kicking, but mastering the art of the specky, a tactic that transforms an opponent's back into a stepladder. Yes, it's legal. It is one of the major things of AFL that people look at and they go, oh my gosh, that is insanity. To stick your knees on someone else's shoulder, launch yourself up to 15 feet in the air, take a grab, come down, and then be looking at this guy going, yep, I just literally jumped on top of you. It's like getting dunked on.

Yep, it's very similar. Cox already a big target, noise of good hands. But Mason Cox is the most unlikely player in the history of the sport. Never mind that at 6'11", he's the tallest player ever to suit up, or that he's the only American in the league, he lived the first 23 years of his life without knowing the sport of footy even existed. He may be an Aussie celebrity and may recently have starred in the AFL's equivalent of the Super Bowl, but is still mastering the sport's

nuances. And he's still fuzzy on basic footy facts, as we observed at practice. Kangaroo grin. What's this made out of? Kangaroo skin. That's pig skin. That's a pig skin. I should probably learn a few things. That's all I say. I think they give him grief about that. You should hear them ribbing him about his accent.

Here's Collingwood captain Darcy Moore. He's kind of this weird fusion between Southern drawl and Aussie accent. That's an interesting mashup. He definitely loves putting it on in the locker room. That's for sure. The Texas drawl. He puts the Aussie on for us. You think the football, made of cowhide, by the way,

travels in strange trajectories? Get a load of Cox's story. What would you have said the odds of success were going to be? You could comfortably say one in a million. One in a million? Because there's so many talented players all around the country that just never make it, and the odds of succeeding are just so...

It's so difficult. Like any professional sport, there are so many things, seen and unseen, that make it really hard to succeed. No skills, no track record. Yeah, no knowledge. Nope, no knowledge. Living, you know, thousands of miles from home by himself. It's an extraordinary thing. Home for Cox was suburban

Dallas, where in high school he had to duck under doorways but played soccer. The great annoyance of classmates who played hoops. There's no way that he's not on the basketball team at seven foot. What else could you possibly do at seven feet tall other than play basketball, right? And Mason is a prime example that there's a whole possibility of things you can do at seven foot. That's Marcus Smart, now a Boston Celtics star, who went to high school with Cox. You ever hear, height is wasted on the tall? That's the old saying, you know, all this height is wasted on this tall dude for nothing. But as we've seen, it's not wasted at all.

After high school, Cox went to Oklahoma State, majoring in engineering. As a sophomore, he was approached about an unusual on-campus job, practicing with the women's basketball team and simulating tall opposing players, including Brittany Griner. When the men's team was short on height, they too called on Cox, which reunited him with Smart, then the team star. Mason Cox back into the game. A walk-on, Cox spent part of three seasons as the last option off the bench for OSU.

He says he did guard and bead for a little bit. He did guard and bead for a little bit. You remember that? When he was at KU, he did guard and bead for a little bit. He did guard Embiid for a little bit. You remember that? When Embiid was at KU, he did guard Embiid for a little bit. Yes, when OSU once played Kansas, Cox matched up against Joel Embiid, now one of the NBA's best players. And Cox held his own. He's always had a little spunk, a little fire to him.

He had moments where, you know, he'd be like, Mason, like, it was like, wow. I didn't know you could, you know what I'm saying? I didn't know you had that in you. Like, is everything okay? Know a little bit about being a physical athlete. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Shortly before graduating in 2014, Cox lined up a six-figure engineering job at ExxonMobil.

Then came an intriguing opportunity. A scout hunting for graduating college athletes contacted OSU to see if Cox might want to attend a combine in Los Angeles for this thing called AFL. You never heard of it? Oh no, I'd never heard of it. Like never once had a word have been spoken about it in my life. So we Googled it as everyone does. And then this thing comes up and it's like AFL's biggest hits. And it is literally people getting knocked unconscious. And yet you go to this combine. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. I land in LA. I get picked up in an unmarked white van, thrown in the back. And he goes, we're going to go to the hotel and we're going to do three days of training. If Americans know Aussie rules football at all, it's likely because in the 1980s,

before it could afford NBA or NFL rights, ESPN aired AFL games. But the sport was founded in the 1800s as a way for cricketers to stay in shape in the offseason. It's especially popular in Melbourne, where the MCG, at nearly 100,000 capacity, the largest stadium in the Southern Hemisphere, will routinely fill for games. After the combine, Cox was summoned to Melbourne, where he impressed Australian coaches with his height and his surprising agility. Soon after, he declined his job at Exxon and signed with Collingwood.

We get the initial taste of what he's capable of. Can't kick, can't handball, but seven foot tall. Craig McRae is now the team's head coach. In 2014, he was the head of development and assigned to Tudor Cox. He'd finished college, he wanted to travel Europe, but he took the football with him. I get this video late at night of Mason kicking the ball in some forest in Scandinavia somewhere. And there's Mason running really awkwardly, carrying the ball like this, and then chopping the ball onto his foot. There was progression, but there's still a long way to go.

Cox approached his development like the engineer he was supposed to be. And that's why they pay him the big bucks. Making steady and deliberate progress, solving the physics of using his height as an advantage, not a liability. And he's doing all of this with guys that have been playing their whole lives. Yeah, when we grew up, you know, sleeping with little footballs, you know, we slept and breathed it and idolized the game. Mason had none of that. What made you think he could pull it off?

He's got that chip that, hey, I'm going to prove a lot of people wrong. Present arms! do you think he could pull it off? He's got that chip that, hey, I'm going to prove a lot of people wrong. Cox made his big league debut in April 2016 on the hallowed ground of the MCG, an annual rivalry game held on Anzac Day, a national holiday. I remember sitting in this locker room just thinking to myself, holy smokes, this has happened pretty quickly. You're sitting here about to play in front of the most passionate fans probably in the world on one of the biggest days, and you barely know what this sport is. I still had questions on rules at that point.

Like, I didn't 100% know what was going on. He was standing arm in arm with his teammates when Australia's national anthem started. I think to myself, I go, I don't know a word. And everyone else is belting them out next to me. So I kind of just laughed to myself and just kind of hum along. I had no idea.

And that kind of took the nerves away. That settled you down? That settled me. The game started as if scripted. Cue the sports movie music. A ball spilled out. Darcy Moore got the ball and saw Cox in the distance and punted it to the rookie. I thought this could be a fair return.

Who caught it and scored with his very first kick. And he rides it home. What a beauty. Can you believe an American in his first game has just kicked the first goal on the exact day? That day, I think, was one of those days that solidified that, you know, this might be something you're going to do for quite a long time. Cox was literally off and running. His breakout performance two seasons later in the preliminary final, like the NFL's conference championship game, suggested he could be a star.

Having crossed 15 time zones, Cox's parents were in the stands that day as he scored three times. Can he guide it through? Yes, he can. Three of the very best. It's one of the greatest stories, I reckon, in Australian football unfolding before our very eyes. As Mason Cox became a fan favorite, he also developed into what locals would call a fair dinkum Aussie. This country's really got my heart, I think. I'm still marveling at your accent. Are you the most American Australian or the most Australian American? Probably the most Australian American.

I still love America, I'm still American, but I'm half and half now. Flanked by his captain, his coach, and his parents, he got his Australian citizenship to prove it. And he's seen more of the country's exquisite landscape than most natives. But as in any sports movie, there were setbacks. In this play, he resembled a basketball player who headed down court forgetting to dribble. He's gone! He's gone! Oh, boy! When Cox was a rookie new to the sport, these bloopers were part of the novelty act. Jumps what he should have taken.

When Cox was a veteran, the passionate Collingwood fans were less forgiving. You've seen that? Yeah. Yeah, the judgment, the criticism. Adding injury to insult, in 2019, Cox was raked across the eye in a game and diagnosed with two torn retinas, leaving him temporarily blinded. That, he says, was when he felt the distance from home. I'd lost one of my senses all within 48 hours. And I had to figure out if I ever was going to play AFL again, if I was ever going to see again.

What's that internal conversation going like? Did I do the right thing coming here? Now I have something that's probably going to affect me for the rest of my life. Was it worth it? And you feel quite isolated and alone. Six surgeries later, he regained most of his vision, but was a diminished player, and the great American experiment looked

to be fizzling. Then Cox made an equipment change, adding another distinguishing feature, becoming the first AFL-er to wear prescription goggles. He had one of his best years. This year, Cox's coaches say he's never looked better. That's pretty damn good. I'm watching your practice thinking Americans would love this. Oh, would go crazy for it. So in 20 years, if there are a dozen Americans playing in the AFL, how's that go over with you? I would love an American to break every single record I've done because it means that I've left a mark, you know? You know how extraordinary and unlikely the story is. I'm going to look back and think you had the most ridiculous life you could possibly think of that makes no sense. And I took it by the horns. I made the most ridiculous life you could possibly think of.

It makes no sense. And I took it by the horns and I made the most of it. Learn the rules, or lack thereof, of Australian rules football. It's a chaotic sport that no one really knows about bar Australia. At 60minutesovertime.com. You've got unlimited access to music, but time? Now that's limited.

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he was Prince of Wales. But in describing his responsibilities, Charles was already sounding like the man who would be king. I would list it as worrying about this country and its inhabitants. That's my particular duty. I found myself born into this particular position. I'm determined to make the most of it and to do whatever I can to help and I hope leave things behind a little bit better than I found them. So it's hard to say it's a profession, but I think it is a profession actually doing what I'm doing. Because if you tried it for a bit, you might find out how difficult it is.

I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.