60 Minutes - 08/04/2024: Master of the Mind and Sealand

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Alfonsi follows neuroscience pioneer Dr. Ali Rezai for more than a year as he tests experimental procedures at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute in Morgantown, W.Va. The results of Rezai’s clinical trials are changing the lives of his patients and may offer hope to others suffering from brain disorders.” Correspondent Jon Wertheim journeys by boat (and winch) into the world’s smallest – and unlikeliest – state: the Principality of Sealand. Just off the English coast, and roughly the landmass of two tennis courts, it boasts a full-time population of one. 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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Learn more at visa.ca. Most American families know someone who's been afflicted with Alzheimer's disease or the scourge of addiction. Tonight, we will show you research that is being done on both and introduce you to the pioneering neuroscientist who allowed us to follow his startling progress. Okay, ready. We can sonic it now. Here we go. There's always risk, but you cannot advance and make discoveries without risk. But we need to push forward and take the risk

because people with addiction and Alzheimer's, it's not going away. It's here. So why wait 10, 20 years? Do it now. Enter some countries, you arrive in style. Here, you arrive in what's basically a backyard swing hoisted by a crank 60 feet above the North Sea. And if you're wondering about the safety regulations, yeah, us too. Then again, when you are a sovereign nation, you, by definition, set your own rules.

That's a hell of a way to get into a country. It's the only way to travel. Welcome to Sealand, a monarchy that declared its independence in 1967. Just wait till you hear this story. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Anyone who has had experience with Alzheimer's disease knows the agony of watching someone fade away as it steals memory and, at the end, a person's own identity. Tonight, we'll show you an experimental way to try and beat back Alzheimer's. It's been tested on just a handful of patients, but caught our attention because of the doctor involved, Dr. Ali Rezaei, who 60 Minutes first met 20 years ago.

Dr. Rezaei is a neuroscience pioneer who has developed treatments for Parkinson's disease and other brain disorders. For over a year, we followed this master of the mind as he attempted to delay the progression of Alzheimer's disease and its worst symptoms using ultrasound. As we first reported in January, we saw a cutting-edge approach to brain surgery with no cutting. If we can, we should not be doing brain surgery. You're a brain surgeon.

I am, but I should be out of a job because brain surgery, it's cutting the skin, opening the skull. It can be barbaric. You're going to go right in there. It looked like a scene from a sci-fi movie. Okay. Just to make it a little bit more comfortable.

A halo-wrapped patient pushed into a tube. We're ready to go. As a team of doctors manipulate his brain from the other side of the glass. Gain high modulate power in three minutes. Okay, we're ready to go. Dr. Ali Rezaei allowed us to witness his revolutionary attempt to use ultrasound to slow down the cognitive decline in three patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It's never been done before.

There's no miracle cure here. It's advancing medicine with calculated risks and pushing the frontiers. So we're targeting these areas. Dr. Rezaei and his team are focused on these red patches in the patient's brain scans. The red indicates the densest beta amyloid protein. That gummy protein is believed to play a major role in Alzheimer's by disrupting communication between brain cells. In people with Alzheimer's, it accumulates much faster.

And over time, these protein aggregates, In people with Alzheimer's, it accumulates much faster. And over time, these protein aggregates, we call them plaques, like plaques in the arteries, they keep on accumulating and impacting function. AMNA NAWAZ There are new drugs that can help break up the beta amyloid plaque in the brain. The first to be approved by the FDA was Aducanumab in 2021. The drug is given intravenously, but Dr. Rezai told us it works slowly. Typically, you go into the clinic and you get an IV and you have the antibody infusion over one to two hours and you have to do it once a month or twice a month for 18 months and longer.

And during those 12 to 18 months, the brain is continuing to progress. Alzheimer's is not going away. It takes so long because the drugs have a hard time getting through something called the blood-brain barrier. This tight filter of cells line the blood vessels to keep toxins from leaking into the brain, but it also prevents almost all of the medication from getting in too. We think that that's what's causing the baby disruption by opening this here.

Dr. Rezai thought he could solve that problem with ultrasound, the same technology that's been used for 70 years to give doctors a view of organs and fetal development. You're good. Come back. He chose ultrasound because it easily penetrates the skull and can be focused, like sunlight through a magnifying glass, to help open the blood-brain barrier and allow the drugs to rush in. This way we're getting the payload, the therapeutic payload, exactly to the area it needs to go with the high penetration.

But we've got to be careful because we want to be safe about this. You don't want to deliver too much. You don't want to open the blood-brain barrier too much. Because if you open it too much, what could happen? You can get bleeding in the brain, you can get swelling in the brain, you can get many other problems. So you have to get it just right. We will show you exactly how that worked and the early results in a minute.

But to understand why one of the country's most accomplished brain surgeons is betting on ultrasound, you have to go back to 2002, when Dr. Rezai first caught our attention in a story Morley Safer reported on treating Parkinson's disease. Dr. Rezai was among the first to implant a pacemaker-type device in the brain which stopped uncontrollable movements suffered by Parkinson's patients. It's like traveling through a labyrinth, as in the Greek myth. And around every corner you have that bloodthirsty monster that can jump on you.

So you want to be careful to avoid these areas. That kind of implant surgery is now routine for advanced Parkinson's. Dr. Rizai went on to write hundreds of scientific papers, secure dozens of patents, and present his Parkinson's research to Congress and the White House. He could have gone to any big city research center, but true to form, he chose to try something different and move to Morgantown, West Virginia, where he is the executive director of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. It was a fantastic move because we're able to achieve so many things that would have been difficult at other institutions.

Sometimes in the bigger institutions, you may not be hungry as much for it. You may have a thousand different agendas and priorities. Here, we think we have a very nimble and agile team that can quickly get outcomes. Like in 2019, this is video Dr. Rezaei's team took when they were among the first to use ultrasound to treat tremors. For 15 years, Dan Wall had been suffering from essential tremor, a neurological disorder. You okay? You got a hat on now. Okay. All right. Very good. Reza's team focused ultrasound into a part of the brain called the thalamus to destroy a pinpoint size patch of tissue doctors believed was responsible for the tremors. You said that 980 elements converging right there. Wall was awake during the procedure.

After two hours, the 71-year-old's tremor was gone. I'm still afraid I'm on drop. You got it. That success helped convince Dr. Zai that focused ultrasound could be adapted to patients with other brain disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. My first symptoms that I noticed were that I was having trouble typing at work. Did you think you had Alzheimer's? No, I didn't. Dan Miller is just 61 years old. His wife Kathy began noticing changes four years ago.

He kind of hid it pretty well. And then I noticed he was having trouble, his clothes would be backwards, and those kinds of things. Just little things. Just little things, yes. A scan of his brain revealed what Dan had been hiding. Mr. Miller had very large amounts of beta amyloid. The red spots indicated a buildup of those beta amyloid proteins,

the so-called brain plaque, a marker of Alzheimer's. Dr. Rezai explained to Miller he couldn't cure him of the disease, but he hoped to slow its progression. Why take part in the trial if it's not a cure? I have to explain to you that I was at the point, you know, like in Dante's Inferno, where it says, abandon all hope, you enter here. For me, it was just, you know, let's do this, you know. What do I have to lose?

And you are in fusion, sir. Here's how it worked. Hours before the procedure, Miller was given an IV treatment of adecanamab, one of those new drugs to reduce beta amyloid plaque. Miller was then fitted with this million-dollar helmet, similar to the one the team used to treat tremor patients. It directs nearly a thousand beams of ultrasound energy at a target the size of a pencil point. Basically, the patient lies on the MRI table and the head goes inside the helmet. And the patient is immobilized with a halo or with a mouthpiece

because we don't want movements to cause errors in our targeting in the brain. Is that comfortable? Once inside, the MRI machine gave Dr. Rezai a 3D view of the plaque he would target in Dan Miller's brain. The next step was an IV solution that contained microscopic bubbles. When hit with ultrasound energy, the bubbles pry open that blood-brain barrier. Okay, ready. We can sonic it now. Here we go. The bubbles start vibrating. They're moving.

They're moving. They start expanding, so you can open the barrier temporarily. Now it's open for 24 to 48 hours, and then it reseals. So this gives you a tremendous opportunity for 24 to 48 hours with the barrier being open, So now therapeutics can get inside the brain. You can't hear ultrasound. That noise is a signal to tell Reza's team the ultrasound is doing its work. Very nice opening of the blood-brain barrier. Each dot represents an area where all the waves, all the ultrasound waves converge and open the blood-brain barrier.

So this is just one blast, if you will. One blast getting there. And you're hitting one point. One point, and then it moves to the next one. Even though patients were awake, they told us they didn't feel a thing. It all took a couple of hours, and they went home when it was over. The three patients were given the treatments of ultrasound with infusion once a month over six months. That's another target

right there. The result? Beta amyloid plaque targeted with ultrasound were reduced 50 percent more than areas treated by infusion alone. That's the top of the head right there. Dr. Rezaei shared the three patients' brain scans with us. And the red indicates more density of beta amyloid plaques in the brain. So you can see as you treat it with ultrasound. Look closely at the areas outlined in white that were targeted with ultrasound and the drug. You get reduction right there. That's after you can see the plaques are very significantly reduced

by opening the blood-brain barrier just in one area. Dan Miller and the third patient in the trial had larger areas of their brain targeted with ultrasound. And this is his baseline, and then you can see here after 26 weeks, there's a very dramatic reduction in the beta amyloid in the areas as outlined by this white mark. And now we're going to look at patient number three. And this patient underwent antibody infusion therapy plus ultrasound. You can see this area, which is really amazing. The ultrasound opened the blood-brain barrier and the antibody went in faster and cleaned out the plaques.

What was your reaction when you saw this scan? I mean, my jaw dropped. I'm like, whoa. I was actually even in the clinic seeing patients. And the PET scan technician called and said, oh, yeah, there's a big change. I'm like, how do you know? We have to analyze it. He's like, no, you can see it on the screen.

What did you think when Dr. Rezai shared the scans with you? It was surreal. You can really see it. You don't have to be a doctor nurse to know what's going on there. Absolutely not. Even the red is decreasing. That's amazing. Kathy Miller says she can see it in her husband, too,

who slips up once in a while but hasn't slipped further away. He has trouble finding things. I'll send him into the kitchen to get something and he's like, it's not there. And I'm like, yes it is, I can see it, but he can't see it. But if that's the worst, that's nothing. You'll take it? I'll take it. Do you feel hopeful about the future? I do, yes. I learned that what I needed to do is accept that the old Dan is gone and then start working on the new me, which has a future. Dr. Rezai's team

told us there was no change in the ability of the three patients to do their daily activities after the ultrasound treatments ended in July 2023. Now that Dr. Azai has shown focused ultrasound can clear beta amyloid plaques faster, he has FDA approval to use ultrasound to try and restore brain cell function lost to Alzheimer's. What's the result of breaking up all those plaques to the damage that's already been done to the brain? We don't know if it's going to reverse the damage to the brain because Alzheimer's, the underlying cause is still occurring. So we have another study that we're looking at with ultrasound. First, clear the plaques, then deliver ultrasound in a different dose to see now if we can reverse it or boost the brain more for people with Alzheimer's. Since we first reported this story in January, Dr. Ali Rezaei

says two of the three patients who had the limited treatments for Alzheimer's have experienced some decline. When we come back, we will show you Dr. Rezai's attempt to use ultrasound to reset the brain and help people suffering from drug addiction. 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. The human brain contains 100 billion neurons. That's as many cells as there are stars across the Milky Way. Dr. Ali Rezaei has spent 25 years exploring this frontier of medicine. The surgical techniques and therapies he pioneered are in use around the world. Dr. Rezaei allowed us to see his latest research over the last year at the Rockefeller Neuroscience

Institute in Morgantown, West Virginia. It includes revolutionary treatments for a brain disease suffered by 24 million Americans, addiction. As we first reported in January, the results have been life-changing for the people we met once trapped by drugs. Looking back, I didn't have a chance. What do you mean you didn't have a chance? I couldn't do anything without having that drug in my system. Jared Buckhalter is the son of a coal miner. At 6'3", he was a high school football standout who dreamed of playing wide receiver at Penn State.

But after a shoulder injury, he got hooked on painkillers. The very first time that I took that first pill, I knew that I wanted that feeling for the rest of my life. What does it feel like? It's just pure euphoria. He took us to where he said he often went to buy drugs, including heroin. Everybody in Morgantown knows to come here. He's probably 17, 18 years old, you know, just a kid.

Buckhalter still looks like an athlete. It's hard to imagine he was an addict for more than 15 years. He told us he does not remember how many times he overdosed and that he couldn't stay clean for more than four days at a time. I didn't know where I was going to sleep some nights. You know, my family didn't want me around anymore. I did so many things to hurt them that, you know, it was just too much for them to deal with. Five years ago, a psychologist who'd worked with Buckhalter

introduced him to Dr. Ali Rezaei, who was gearing up to perform a new kind of brain surgery to treat severe addiction. Our protocol was people that have failed everything. Once you've tried everything. Everything. Residential programs, multiple failures. Detox multiple times. Outpatient, inpatient, multiple failures, detox multiple times, outpatient, inpatient,

multiple overdoses. I think he classified it as end-stage drug user. I mean, end-stage makes you think that this is the end of your life. Correct. And hearing that at the age of 34, it was crazy. Dr. Rezaid thought he might be able to adapt technology he helped develop years earlier to treat Parkinson's disease to treat people with severe addiction. We've been able to map out with neuroscience imaging. There's a specific part of the brain that is electrically and chemically malfunctioning that is associated with addiction. So it's not just willpower,

it's what's happening in the brain. It's a brain disease. It's an electrical and chemical abnormality in the brain that occurs over time with recurrent use of drugs. And this can be any substance. Alcohol, can be opioids, amphetamines, cocaine, and they all are involving the same part of the brain. And so your idea was what with the implant?

Parkinson's, we implant that in the movement part of the brain that is electrically malfunctioning, causing shaking. In this case, we're going into behavioral regulation, anxiety, and craving parts of the brain. Dr. Rezai has seen the impact of addiction in his community. The problem is so severe in Morgantown, a vending machine dispenses the overdose antidote, Narcan, for free. The National Institute on Drug Abuse agreed to support Dr. Rezai's attempt to fight addiction with a brain implant. In 2019, the FDA gave him a green light to attempt

the groundbreaking surgery. That is Jared Buckhalter. He agreed to be the first addiction patient in the U.S. to get the implant. Dr. Reza's team interviewed him the day before the surgery. The best outcome possible would be, you know, just to cut the cravings out and make me feel a little bit better. If, you know, if those couple things happen, you know, that's all I could possibly ask for. At that time, I was so desperate for a better life that I was willing to do just about anything, and I signed up to do it. I think some people might look at this and think an electronic implant in the brain sounds a little creepy. People, maybe 50 years ago, they say an implant in the heart sounds creepy. Now it's like normal. 25 years ago, people were saying, what are you doing? You're

putting an implant in the brain for Parkinson's? But now it is routine, part of standard of care for advanced Parkinson's. This is video from the seven-hour procedure. Surgery so new, it didn't have a name yet. Dr. Rezai opened a nickel-sized hole in Buckhalter's skull. Then he directed a thin wire with four electrodes deep inside. Jared, are you okay? Yes, sir. All right. Jared was awake during the surgery. Why was that necessary?

To map the brain. We have tiny microphones the size of a hair we put inside the brain, and they're going slowly with micro robots. They go at increments of a thousandth of a millimeter, very slow. We drive them into the brain, and we're listening to the neurons talking to each other. In addiction, we want to find the area in the reward center, so that confirms where we are in the brain. Once we listen, we say, okay, that's the right sound, then we put the final therapeutic pacemaker.

What does it sound like? Static electricity, which may be electricity to you but is music to my ears. Music because Dr. Rezai says it's a signal that he found the right spot in the brain for the implant. Once in place the wire was connected to a device placed below the collarbone. The electrical pulses it sends to the brain are intended to suppress cravings. Buckhalter said it was painless. Post-surgery, the system is adjusted remotely with a tablet computer as needed. When they turned the unit on, it was an immediate change. What was the change? Just felt better, you know, just felt like I did prior to ever using drugs, but a little bit better.

And it was at that point that I knew that I was going to have a legitimate shot at doing well. In all, four patients with severe drug addiction had the implant surgery. One had a minor relapse. Another dropped out of the trial completely. But two have been drug-free since their operations, including Jared Buckhalter, who's been clean for four years. If you hadn't met Dr. Rezaei, if you hadn't gone through this implant, do you think you'd be sitting here talking to me today? You may be talking to my parents, you know, those that have lost their loved ones to a drug overdose, but you wouldn't be talking to me. There's no doubt about that.

Ah, beautiful, beautiful. The surgery was a success, but opening someone's skull is always risky. Dr. Rezai thought he could reach more patients quickly if he used ultrasound. He was already using it to treat other brain disorders and was convinced focused ultrasound could target the same area of the brain as the implant. Is this brain surgery without a knife? It is, indeed. So there's no skin cutting, there's no opening the skull.

So it is brain surgery without cutting the skin, indeed. Now this is just the measuring part, right? Dr. Rizai explained how his team would be the first to treat addicts by aiming hundreds of beams of ultrasound to a precise point deep inside the brain. So the area that we're treating is the reward center in the brain, which is the nucleus accumbens, which is right down at the base of this dark area. And then we deliver ultrasound waves to that specific part of the brain, and we watch how acutely on the table

your cravings and your anxiety changes in response to ultrasound. How is the ultrasound making a change here? Ultrasound energy is changing the electrical and chemical milieu or activity in this structure in the brain involving addiction and cravings. Just resetting them and giving them kind of a fresh start? At this point, it seems like the brain is being reset

or rebooting of the brain, and the cravings are less. They're managed. Anxiety is better. So now that allows them to interact with the therapist. It's very important to know that this is not a cure, but an augmentation of the therapy by reducing the cravings and anxiety that's so overwhelming that the therapist has difficulty working with the patient. In February 2023, we watched Dr. Rezai use focused ultrasound to treat Dave Martin, who told us he's been surrounded by friends and family who use drugs his whole life. When did you start using drugs? When I was seven years old.

Seven? Yes. I did drugs for 37 years. What kind of drugs were you using? Anything I can get my hands on. Inside the MRI, Martin was shown these images of drug use to stoke his cravings. His legs were moving a lot and he was very agitated. A simultaneous brain scan allowed Dr. Rezai and his team to immediately spot the area in the nucleus accumbens that was most active.

I'd like to see the targets one more time. 90 watts of ultrasound energy were beamed at a target the size of a gumdrop. Ready? Sonicate. There we go. Within minutes, we noticed Martin's foot that had been anxiously bouncing was still. And he told Rezai's team that those same images of drugs he was shown earlier were now not sparking the need for a fix. Heroin is going down.

Meth is also going down. Marijuana's down. Marijuana's down? A lot, actually. Good. Keep on sonicating. The day of the procedure, it was the best day of my life. I didn't experience the same effect as, like, the times before. You didn't feel like, I need that, I want that?

No, I didn't feel like I needed that. The urge or the desire to use wasn't there anymore. So within 15 to 20 minutes of treatment, their craving and anxiety melts away. And we're seeing this pattern in multiple instances. Then they can walk away after this? They get off the table and go home. And how long does this entire procedure take?

One hour. One hour? One hour. Have you been around people still using drugs? Yes, yes. Unfortunately, I have. And what happened? It didn't even trigger me. I used to use endurinously with needles, and it was a little while ago, not too far back, but this one individual was trying to hit herself, and they couldn't hit. And they asked me, can you hit me?

Do you actually put drugs in this person? Yeah, I actually stuck them, drew the blood back, you know. Now, before when I drew the blood back, it would like make me sweat because I couldn't wait to hit myself. But this time it was just like, God, I hope they don't OD and I kill them here, you know. But I didn't have any urges or desire or anything. Dr. Azai's team told us Dave Martin did admit to taking one pain-killing pill at a party in December. Still, 12 of the 16 patients remain drug-free throughout the three-year trial. Dr. Ali Rezaei is trying the same ultrasound therapy on 45 more addiction patients.

He's also been given FDA approval to use ultrasound to help people with obesity. This is serious business. Research never been done before. We have to learn more. We have to replicate our findings. Is there any risk at running towards something quickly? There's always risk, but you cannot advance and make discoveries without risk. But we need to push forward and take the risk,

because people with addiction and Alzheimer's is not going away. It's here. So why wait 10, 20 years? Do it now. Meet Tim's new Oreo mocha ice caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side or B-side

or bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Okay, name that country. It's planted opposite Europe, sitting proudly on the other side of the North Sea. It's a monarchy that features its own currency, postage stamps, constitution, national anthem, love of tea, and a pair of handsome princes born two years apart.

We speak of Sealand, a crumb of real estate off the English coast that declared its independence in 1967, Sealand has a full-time population of one. It has a landmass the size of roughly two tennis courts. Its leading export might be the National Mythology, a history of piracy, coups, counter-coups, rogues, and offshore internet schemes. It may make tiny Lichtenstein look like China by comparison, but as we found out last year, by rights, Sealand is a sovereign nation. Join us as we compile some notes from a truly small island. We can see Sealand over there by the way now. You see that? Oh, there she is.

Yeah, yeah. On a starboard bow. Behold, the world's smallest state. It's a micronation in the extreme, a principality which sits, or stands, only seven miles off the coast of England. Its self-described reigning monarch is this guy, Prince Michael Bates. Here we are.

Yeah. A platform and a couple of concrete husks, and this is a state. Yeah. A platform and a couple of concrete husks. Yeah. This is a state. Yeah. Enter some countries, you arrive in style. Here, you arrive in what's basically a backyard swing hoisted by a crank 60 feet above the North Sea. And if you're wondering about the safety regulations, yeah, us too.

Then again, when you are a sovereign nation, you, by definition, set your own rules. That's a hell of a way to get into a country. The only way to travel. On the plus side, there's no long line at the arrivals hall. I'm following you to passport control. Mike Barrington fills various roles and positions on Sealand. Right now, it's Immigration and Customs. He also happens to be the only permanent resident.

There you are, sir. So now I'm official. You are. Welcome to Sealand. It wasn't always named Sealand, and it was never intended to be a country. Originally called His Majesty's Ruff's Tower, it was a hastily constructed nautical fort, one of several the British set up in the North Sea during World War II.

Equipped with anti-aircraft artillery, these forts were designed to prevent German bombing raids on London. During the war, more than 100 Royal Marines were crammed into these towers for months on end. Descending the seven-story towers, it feels and smells like a cross between a tree house and a diesel-soaked submarine. First up, the first-class bedroom suite.

It's a nice one. Yeah, nice TV. Our claustrophobic tour continued downward. Now we're underwater at this point. So we've still got a couple floors to go. You hear ships going past, you hear the propellers going round. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Like many countries, there's a national cathedral.

Freedom of worship in the sea land. I think there's even the Quran here somewhere. On the bottom floor, the jail. Two days in Sealand. I think there's even the Quran here somewhere. On the bottom floor, the jail. Two days in the brig. Bread and water. I have to look at the Sealand Constitution and see what my rights are. Very limited. If you're wondering by now how this concrete island constitutes a country, stick with us here. This is Radio Caroline on 199. Back in the 1960s, these same waters played

host to the burgeoning, unlicensed commercial radio business that operated on ships and old fords, what the British government called pirate radio. It was the time of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks. But the stodgy BBC, which had a monopoly on broadcasting in Britain, gave the rock bands just an hour of airtime a week. The younger set in Britain, millions of them, tuned their radio knobs to the pirate stations. In 1965, Prince Michael's father, Roy Bates, an enterprising, swashbuckling World War II veteran,

commandeered a fort where another pirate station operated. It was the Wild West on the North Sea. The DJs may not be highly experienced, but they certainly pull their weight. Bates set up Britain's first 24-hour outfit. He called it Radio Essex. You're in tune with Radio Essex broadcasting on 222 meters. We're doing a job that's needed. The public want us to do the job, so do businesses. And I think while this demand is here, we'll remain in business.

But not for long. The British government enacted a new law rendering all pirate radio stations illegal. Bates was forced to shut down. But true to his nature, he was something other than scared off. He just would not back down. Form of surrender, if he had said, you know what, I'm out. He wouldn't know that word, surrender. I mean, no. Far from surrendering, Bates seized another fort, Ruff's Tower, which was outside UK

territorial waters. Instead of restarting Radio Essex, he did something bolder still. On September 2nd, 1967, he declared it an independent state, Sealand, and declared himself its prince. It was his wife Joan's birthday. And it was, of course, a hugely romantic gesture to make my mother a princess. In addition to taking you out to dinner, I'm going to make you a princess. He didn't take her out to dinner, but he just made her a princess, yeah. Prince Roy and Princess Joan, along with their two children, Michael and Penny, set up home on Sealand. The sheer novelty of their lifestyle was a constant source of amusement on the mainland.

This newsreel is from 1969. The start of another day, even for the new royals, is no different than for millions of others, the request for a common cuppa. Mrs. Bates, how is it possible to keep looking glamorous in conditions like these? It's no more difficult than anywhere else in the world. We're quite comfortable here.

We have all the things I want. Look, make-ups, brushes and things. At age 16, Penny was less convinced. It was freezing cold and it had no electricity. To flush the toilet, you'd have to chuck a bucket over the side, drop it down about 80 feet, pull it up and flush the toilet. That was your toilet? Yes.

The Bates family had big ambitions to turn Sealand into a tax haven, a luxury island and casino. And they went all in on the trappings of statehood, fashioning a flag, stamps, currency, an anthem, even a national motto, Imare Libertas, from the sea of freedom. As teens, Michael and Penny would spend months on sea land, holding down the fort, as it were, firing off warning shots and tossing Molotov cocktails overboard to fend off periodic attempts of invasion from rivals and buccaneers. When the press eventually came out and took photographs, my father called me down and he said, now look, he said, how many times have I told you, you do not hold a gun like that? You weren't holding the gun the right way.

And actually, if you look at the picture, the way I'm holding the guns is dreadful. Firmly settled on Sealand, the Bateses remained a nuisance to the British government. So much so, as a warning to the family, a team of royal engineers blew up a similar North Sea fort. At Sealand's National Archives, which doubles as Prince Michael's dining room table, we were shown declassified plans drawn up by the British Ministry of Defense to take Sealand by force. The following units are to be available to the execution of the operation. Royal Navy, two Wessex 5 helicopters,

crafts from HM Naval Base Chatham, Portsmouth, Medway, and a clearance diving team. It's crazy, isn't it? But it wasn't just the British government that wanted to dislodge the family. In August 1978, a band of rogue German and Dutch lawyers and diamond merchants launched a coup d'etat with designs of founding their own offshore casino. They arrived by helicopter with a film crew in tow, taking Prince Michael by surprise and then roughing him up. They tied my elbows together, my knees together, my feet together, my hands down to my knees,

and they picked me up, and they swan-sifted the other in German. Let's chuck this bastard over the side. He's too much trouble. You're a full-on political prisoner right now. Yeah. Sealand had fallen. After three days, Michael was released. Did Michael and his father then return via helicopter, fully armed and flanked by a group of bruisers, to stage a successful counter-coup? Yes. Yes,

they did. But I jumped and landed, crashed in the middle of the Germans. A sauna shotgun hit the deck. Boom! And all the Germans went like that. They surrendered. That's it. You've reclaimed your principality. Disarmed, the plotters were released, all except for one. His name was Putz. And he was made to clean the bathroom, make coffee, and imposed a fine for treason.

$37,000. His imprisonment brought a German diplomat to Sealand. But if you have German emissaries coming here to try and negotiate the release of this prisoner, doesn't that imply that Sealand is a state that's having relations? Absolutely. It's de facto recognition, isn't it?

It happened, yeah. This diplomatic visit was critical for the Bates family. An international treaty signed in the 1930s established four requirements for statehood. One is recognition by another state. Sealand had already met the other tests. A government, check. A defined territory, check. And a permanent population, check, thanks to Michael Barrington.

So what's your position here? I do most of the engineering work, electrically and whatever. Apparently I'm head of homeland security. What are you protecting this place from? The British government or anybody else that decides to take us over. We're our country, after all. We're a small nation. You're ready to use weapons if you have to? If need be, yes. No hesitation.

But in recent years, to keep Sealand afloat, the Bates family has updated their pirate radio sensibilities for the times. In the early 2000s, they partnered with fringe Internet entrepreneurs who invested millions with designs of turning Sealand into an offshore data haven. Prince Michael's son, Prince James, showed us the old server room. We used to run things like gambling sites, porn sites. We had a few dubious people asking us to do things that we didn't really agree with. There was an organ transplant company, like Human Organs, that wanted to host out here, which my father was against.

Gambling and porn is okay, but we draw a line at harvesting human organs. Yes, exactly. That venture failed dismally. But today, James and his younger brother, Prince Liam, are still harnessing the power of the Internet. The Bates family won't disclose the size of the national debt or the yearly budget, but it is serviced through the online sale of noble titles. Become a lord or lady for $30. $600 will make you a Sealand duke or duchess.

And people are buying these titles. What is that all about? I think it means so many things to so many different people. Some people love the act of political defiance. Some people love the love story that ran through it with my grandma and grandpa. Some people love that, you know, David against Goliath. That national myth, the very idea of Sealand, has now far outgrown the country itself. As for the House of Bates, well, Roy and Joan have passed on.

And the rest of the lineage lives in the small English resort town of Southend-on-Sea. Princes James and Liam run a business harvesting cockles. Princess Penny runs a Botox clinic nearby. And seven years ago, Prince Michael married and welcomed a new princess, Mei Shi, a former artillery major in China's People's Liberation Army. Six decades after founding their private little country, the royal family remains committed to the bit. Is this the golden age for Sealand?

Hopefully. The British Navy rolled up tomorrow and said, it's time to reclaim Sealand. How do you respond? Well, first of all, I'm sure they wouldn't. But if they did, I'd just get the best china out and make them a nice cup of tea. Later this year, the royal family will be rolling out their latest gambit, digital citizenship, to help fund Sealand's refurbishment into a tourist destination.

Getting to and staying on Sealand. I'd be lying if I said it was the most comfortable night's sleep. At 60minutesovertime.com. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Paramount Podcasts.