60 Minutes - 09/06/2026: Sharswood, Boom Chicago

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Lesley Stahl visits Fred Miller and his family in the large house in southern Virginia that they bought to host family gatherings, only to discover that their own ancestors had once been enslaved on that very property. Miller’s sister and cousins scoured historical records and enlisted a genealogist, who found evidence that their great-great-grandparents, Violet and David Miller, were enslaved on the plantation, then called Sharswood. The dilapidated building still standing behind the main house has been identified by archeologists as living quarters for some of the enslaved men and women on the plantation. Buying this home opened a window into the Miller family’s past that they had never discussed, and that many African American families struggle to obtain. This is a double-length segment. Shari Finkelstein is the producer. If you think America’s top laugh factories are only in New York, Chicago, and LA, think again. Reporting from Amsterdam, correspondent Jon Wertheim takes us inside Boom Chicago, an English-language improv theater founded in the early ’90s by two American comics. What sounded like a punchline became a pipeline, launching future stars like Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis. At a moment when American comedy feels under siege, this beloved Dutch theater keeps proving that funny survives—and travels. Michael Gavshon is the producer.

Hey, we're going to gather in the room here mainly. The Millers are a large family that enjoy getting together. They purchased this historic house in Southern Virginia near where they grew up to have a place for family celebrations. This is an original room from the 1800s. But no one could have imagined how the history of the home and its grounds would change everything they thought they knew about their family's history. It's like a full circle.

Like, it was meant to happen. To me, like, it was meant to happen. This is God. This is where we're supposed to be. The Dutch are famous for their windmills, their canals, their bikes, their comedy, not so much. So you might be surprised to learn that some of America's funniest figures sharpen their comic chops at this improv club in Amsterdam. Yes, Amsterdam. Dutch people are not the most giving laughers.

I'm going to ask you about that. Dutch people laugh like this. Ha ha! And they immediately get quiet. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker.

Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Just off the side of the road sat a grand White House called Sharswood, silently holding secrets from the past, waiting for a new owner to uncover them. Sounds like the opening line of a Southern Gothic nun. But as we first reported in 2022, this story is about a real family and a real house,

this country's history, and a man who found himself at the center of far more than he had bargained for. The man is Fred Miller, then a 56-year-old Air Force veteran who was looking to buy property in his Virginia hometown for his large extended family's frequent get-togethers. He had never heard the name Sharswood, and yet this old house would lead him on a journey of discovery with surprises and revelations that seem both impossible and inevitable all at once. These are the gentle hills of Pennsylvania County, Virginia, quiet rural farm country near the North Carolina border that once produced more tobacco than any county in the state. We're going to gather in the middle here mainly.

grew up here in a close family that likes getting together regularly for birthdays, fish fries, and as his cousin Adam Miller told us, just about anything. We play games and we do, like, a lot of food competitions. I hear the food is mainly cake. Yes. Too many cakes. Fred's cousin Tanya Miller Pope and his sister, Deborah Coles, told us it's a big family. Fred's mother Betty and his aunt Brenda were two of 11.

How many cousins? Oh, my. Oh, my. At least 100. So no wonder Fred needed to find a big. Yes. Exactly, yes. Fred lived in California, where he worked as a civil engineer for the Air Force.

But he visited the family in Virginia often. One day, out of the blue, my sister called me and told me about a big house up the road for sale. This sister right here? Yeah. Karen Dixon Rexroth, Fred's baby sister, had spotted it. Me and my mom was riding past the house and I saw the first sale sign. I said, oh my goodness, we have to get this house. I called Fred.

Fred, this house is for sale. He's like, what house? I said, you know the house? The scary house, I call it. The scary house was less than a mile up the road from their moms. They'd passed it every day as kids on their way to school. What did you know about Sharswood? Absolutely, nothing, nothing.

No. He just knew it. It was a house. A big house. He was debating, should we put in a bid for it? I said, yes, absolutely, let's do it. Did she twist your arm? Took all the twisting she could do with it. I didn't want to buy it.

But thinking his bid would be rejected anyway, he made an offer of just above the $220,000 asking price. Why did you think they weren't going to do? they weren't going to accept the offer? Well, I mean, initially, I thought that because I was black, that they were never, surely they would never sell this house someone that's black. So for us to be able to own this thing,

I thought it would never happen in a million years. So guess what happened? A million years. A million years. Yes. Yes, absolutely. We should always see this house out here. So in May of 2020, Fred Miller purchased the fully furnished house plus 10 and a half acres of land from a family called the Thompsons who had owned it since 1917. The first time I drove up to the place, all I can do is stop at the edge of the

roof there and just look up in an amazement. Like, wow, this is mine. This is an original room from the 1800s. Karen says she got obsessed with the house, spending nights and weekends online researching its secrets. A hiding spot, they say was from the civil war so they would hide the valuables. A secret hideway. She discovered the house had been built around 1850 in the Gothic revival style by a well-known New York architect. And she learned and told her family that its name had been Sharswood.

Every day she was calling me with new information. I'm like, my goodness, okay, relax. Are you exaggerating? No, I'm not exaggerating. But then, Karen. Karen turned up something that stunned her. In the 1800s, Schar's Wood had been the seat of a major

1,300-acre plantation, one of the larger ones in the county. What did you think of you owning a plantation? I was a little bit shocked by that, I would say, because I just wanted somewhere to have family gathering. When I found out that it was a plantation, and then I'm like, okay, Fred just bought a plantation. I was like, we own a plantation.

It was just a feeling of just power. It was just a powerful feeling. It is. Powerful, but of course plantation implies slavery. And before the Civil War, Pennsylvania County held more than 14,000 enslaved people. The state of Virginia, just under 500,000. I said, do you realize what this is?

They didn't have a clue. Dexter Miller, one of Fred and Karen's many second cousins, knew something about Charswood because years ago, he'd been co-workers with Bill Thompson, whose family then owned it. Bill joined us for a conversation on what used to be his childhood porch. You grew up in this house.

I did. This was my home. He inherited much of the farmland and still lives up the road. His sister, inherited the house and sold it to Fred. You know, when Fred was buying the house, he did not think that the house would be sold to a black person.

Why would you think that for you? Probably because, you know, we are in rural Virginia, right? Well, this is true. For years, Dexter and another second cousin, Sonia Womack Miranda, had been trying to piece together the Miller family's origins, A notoriously difficult task for African Americans because records are hard to come by, especially before 1865.

It really was a hobby. It was addictive. It was addicted. It really was. You were like private eyes. Yes. And the land records... They'd been able to trace the whole Miller clan back to one woman.

It's Dexter's great-grandmother. It's my great-great-grandmother, Sarah. Sarah Miller. Yes. They had found a picture of Sarah Miller. And they'd gotten hold of her death certificate, which showed that she'd been born in Pennsylvania County in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War.

And they found an even better resource, one of their oldest living relatives, a beloved former school teacher named Marion Keys. Miss Keys, as everyone here calls her, was almost 90 years. years old. Sarah Miller is the matriarch of the family. Yes, she was. Did you know her? Yes, I did. Well, tell us about her. She would always be out there with a broom and her hand, and then she would be waiting for us. Marion Keyes remembers her great-grandmother, Sarah, as a force to be reckoned with.

What she wanted you to know, you were going to know it. Was she persnickety, as they say, was she difficult? Stern? Very. Very. Very. She didn't play. She didn't play. But we loved her. But that's where Ms. Key's knowledge of Miller family history ended. She didn't know anything about the generations before emancipation. When you were growing up, what did you learn or hear from your parents about slavery? Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. They did not talk about it. I don't know whether they were afraid, whether it was too miserable or painful, or they wanted to forget it. I don't know, but they did not talk to us about it at all. And we didn't ask them questions about it. Why not? We were afraid to. We heard that again and again from members of the Miller family. Slavery wasn't mentioned at all. Was there almost a code? We don't talk about slavery, so nobody did. It was something that every black person knew you didn't talk. about. The parents was tell you not to discuss grown people business. That's what they'll tell you. The first time slavery was discussed was, I guess, in the 70s, when Roots came, the move Roots came about.

That's the first time when Roots was on television. Did you read about it in school? Not much. His family also remembers Roots as pivotal. Yes. I think that's weird. That's weird. That's what we all got up like that. That was an eye opener. But even after roots, you didn't go and say what about our family? No, not at all. What held you back? I just didn't think they wanted to talk about it.

But didn't you want to know? I would love to have known. I would love to have known. Fred's purchase of Sharswood was about to give him a crash course in his hometown's slavery roots. It started with a call from two archaeologists who wanted to come do research. We're historic preservationists. And so, you know, we start from the idea that these places matter. Dennis Pogue once worked at Mount Vernon,

Doug Sanford at Monticello. They asked if they could come explore Sharswood. But they weren't interested in the ornate house designed by that famous architect. What they cared about was the dilapidated building with the tin roof past the big oak tree behind it. They suspected it had once been, been slave quarters.

There were once hundreds of thousands of these buildings. These were one of the most common types of architecture in Virginia. Let me give you the running dimensions. But now these buildings are rare, with fewer than 1,500 believed to be still standing.

And Pogue and Sanford started a project to search for them. So one, two, three, four. Fred and Karen invited them to come investigate. They examined, measured, and searched. for clues. You can see the siding is...

They showed us some of what they found. These are the kind of nails that we expect to see on buildings before 1800. Handmade, wrought nails. Handmade. You can actually see the hammer strokes on the head. Is this the original siding? These are remnants of the original siding, absolutely. They worked from noon to dusk and finally gave Karen and Fred their conclusion.

It's got a complex history, but we think part of the end. of that history, a big part of that history, was it was a quarter for enslaved folks. They say it's one of the best preserved they've seen. They believe it was originally built in the late 1700s as a house for a white family. That's where the original door was.

And was later divided into two separate, single-room slave dwellings. Two families. Yeah, one household here, another enslaved household over there. It just so, there was two different worlds. This front big, beautiful world here and lavish, and you go right behind the house, and it was a whole different story. It's kind of crazy for me, just to even walk around out there.

Do you own that? Do you own the slave house, too? I own the slave house, too. That's mine. Wow. Yeah. Fred Miller's purchase continues to surprise his family and intrigue historians when we come back. Hey there, I'm Kendra Adachi and my show The Lazy Genius Podcast helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't and you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see.

Episodes of the Lazy Genius podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. When Fred Miller unwittingly purchased what he now knows to be the Sharswood Plantation House with slave quarters just behind it, he knew virtually nothing about his own family history. He'd always assumed his ancestors had been enslaved, but it felt to him like an unknowable part of a distant past. Learning about his great-grandmother, Sarah Miller, whom his mother had known as a child, peaked his interest.

So when he found out that her house was still standing, just a few miles away from Sharswood, he asked his mother, Betty Dixon, to go there with him. All right, we're going to walk down through here. Betty's grandmother, Sarah, had been the first of their ancestors to be born into freedom shortly after the Civil War. That's not my daughter's cabinet that had no light, no electricity.

Betty remembers visiting and spending the night. with her grandmother and cousins. Whoa. This is the one room? Sarah's house didn't look much bigger than the slave dwelling. Just a single room with a smaller one above it, and no indoor plumbing. Come along ways, huh? Sure did.

Glad I didn't have to live in here. Well, it had to make it work. You want a piece of this wallpaper to take with you? Yeah. I hope the landlord don't say nothing. Oh, Lord, there you go. Sarah Miller is buried in the cemetery of the church the Miller family still attends.

I'm glad now I can actually come in and see you. But unbeknownst to this Miller family, just five miles up the road in a different church cemetery, was a tombstone that also read Miller, a far older one, with names Fred and his family had never heard of, but were about to. In Karen's search for information about Charzwood, she found a document that mentioned them.

It gave the names of the original owners, who was Nathaniel Crenshaw, Miller, and also Charles Edwin Miller. Miller? Yes, Miller. Any light bulbs? Any wires connect? No, not at that point. Not at that point. It did not.

But others had suspected a connection between the two sets of Millers. Because I was telling Dexter back in 88, I knew... Bill Thompson says he had mentioned the thought to Dexter 30 years ago. What we had been taught in high school was that when they freed the slaves, they just took the last name of the person that was there, which was Miller. I just had told Dexter, Dexter, it's a good chance that your ancestors came off of this phone. He did. He said that. So you knew that this was a plantation?

I did. Well, Fred, you said you didn't know. I had no idea. Dexter, you didn't tell Fred. I did not tell Fred. I did not tell anyone. Dexter says he'd kept it to himself because he hadn't found any way to prove it.

And that's where this becomes a detective story. With the Miller cousins now on a mission to figure out whether it could be possible that their own ancestors might have been enslaved enslaved on the very property Fred now owned. The first step was figuring out who their last enslaved ancestors were. And Sarah Miller's death certificate held the answer, the names of her parents, David and Violet Miller,

who would have been adults at the time of emancipation. Did you know anything about them? Not at all. Not at all. I didn't know anything about them. We didn't. Even Marion Keyes, who knew Sarah Miller, had never heard their names. Nothing. Wow.

Sure didn't. I just, I want everybody to know. Enter Carrease Luck Brimmer, a local historian and genealogist. Karen reached out to her to see if she could help. What are the special challenges looking for the ancestors of African Americans? African Americans were not listed by name until the 18th. until the 1870 census. So before that, they were just a number.

I mean, if they were enslaved, they weren't listed at all. So really, you're just looking for any type of tips and clues that you can. She started by looking at 1860 records for Scharzwood's then owner, NC for Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller. There he is. NC Miller right there. Okay. He had 58 slaves here.

But with only age and gender listed... You have enslaved people 69, 44, 34, and not a single name. No names. There was no way of knowing whether Violet and David were among them. So Carrease looked up David and Violet Miller in the 1870 census, the first one after the Civil War, where they finally appeared by name. name. It showed they were farm hands that they couldn't read or write, and it listed their children, including, as Karish showed us, a very young Sarah Miller.

There's Sarah. She's one year old. One year's old. And this looks like Emily. Yes. She's three. And here's Samuel. Yeah. He's five. To Carisse, that meant Samuel, Sarah's older brother, was born before a emancipation. So Carrease searched for him in another historical record called the Virginia slave birth index, where slave owners had to list births on their property. This document... And there, under N.C. Miller's name... N.C. Right. And there's Samuel.

Oh. Was Samuel. And look at that. Oh, my God. It was the genealogy equivalent of a small... smoking gun. So this is proof that Violet, Sarah's mother, was enslaved by N.C. Miller. Yes. And this is absolute proof. This is absolute definite proof. And you were able to tell Karen that her ancestors, David and Violet, were enslaved at Sharswood. That was tough. So did you call Fred?

I did. I don't think he believed me in him again. So the connection suddenly is made with your family slavery in this house. In this house. And you own it. Once I realized that it was actually my blood that was here, it took on a whole any meaning for me. It really saddens me sometime when I, you know, and a lot of times I'm up, a lot of times I'm up wee hours of the night now just thinking about what happened here.

As news spread through the family, there was sadness. But that's not all there was. I almost felt like I was losing my breath for a moment. It was almost like a feeling of being found. Yes. This is where I started. And as black people, we don't always know where we started. So here we are sitting in this house.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it that I'm in the plantation house. Of the plantation that my family was enslaved. You're laughing as if this cannot be true. Cannot be. That's right. But it is. I felt, I feel complete.

Wow. I'm not half of a human being anymore. They make me whole. Even if I don't know them, I felt a connection to them at Sharswood. I touched the tree. I hugged the tree. And I said, oh, my God. You was here when my ancestor was here.

I wonder which ancestor of mine touched the tree. I didn't know what to say or do. I just hugged the tree and felt like I'm home. He shared the news with Bill Thompson, who had had that hunch all those years ago. I look at it that I've been a servant to this farm and this house my whole life. and for the Miller family to come back home, to my home, our home. Our home, absolutely. It's great.

It's a celebration of coming home. This is God. This is where we're supposed to be. It's like a full circle. Like, it was meant to happen. To me, it was like it was meant to happen. The Millers also see the hand of their ancestors in all of this. I think there had to be because I did everything.

I did everything in my power to make the smell. Did not make it happen. I tried to mess it up at every angle. But those ancestors had one more surprise in store. With all the revelations, there was one question that continued to gnaw at Dexter. Where were his enslaved ancestors buried? So months later, he asked Bill. I said, Bill, there's one question that's been bothering me.

Where is the slave cemetery? He said, actually, it's right over there. I said, right over there. He said, you see those trees over there? So did you just go right up there then? We went right up there. The trees Bill Thompson pointed to, just beyond Fred's property,

sure didn't look like a cemetery. That is, until you start to look closely. Is that one of the... That's one of them right there. Oh, my gosh. As you can see, this is the indention right there. The headstone there, maybe this is the foot stone on the other end. Yeah.

There's always seem like to be there as one. Yeah, absolutely. Poking up through the leaves all around us were pointed rocks, some small, some medium-sized. No names, no engraving, just plain anonymous markers of many, many lives. Wow. This is astonishing. It's kind of overwhelming, isn't it? It is. It really is.

I mean, we all live in the same area. We come past this place, and we would not know that our ancestors were right there beside us the entire time. Fred, if you hadn't bought that house? Right. You're right. If I hadn't bought that house, we never know. Never? Never. So how has all of this affected you? It's changed me. It's definitely changed me. You ever angry?

I get a little bit upset sometimes when I find out things that I should have known already. Angry at yourself? At myself and at the system, because I think that we should have known more. What about the school system? Should have known more. Family? Should have known more. Absolutely.

You want the story of slavery told. I want the story of slavery told. It's important. So this is converted from a door to a window? Yeah. Fred wants to do whatever's necessary to preserve the slave house. You know, this has been exposed for 200 years. He's in the process of setting up a nonprofit to make that possible.

That's important to me, too, because I know a whole lot of emphasis on that big White House there. Exactly. But this right here is really near and dear to me. This is the story. This is the story. Yeah, absolutely. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There's eight right here.

And he's been thinking about the cemetery, too. I've got imagine this being someone young. We have to do something about this. Yeah, have to. And I will. I'm going to fix it. Do you think you might allow historians to come? Absolutely.

Absolutely. This place will be open to anyone who wants to learn. Anyone. Anyone who come here. But for now, Sharswood is serving the purpose Fred bought it for in the first place, gathering the Miller family together in celebration. What do you think Violet and David would think they could see that you own this place? Yeah, I'm hoping they would be proud of us, and I think they would be.

They endured a lot. I mean, I can't even imagine what they went through. Looking down on us now, they must be smiling at us. Since our story first aired, Fred Miller created a non-profit Sharswood Foundation and is applying for grants to make. maintain the slave quarters and cemetery. Earlier this summer, the Millers held the fifth annual Sharswood Juneteenth celebration with more than 3,500 attending. These can be unnerving times for American comedy. The TV sitcom is going by way of the Cannes laugh track, while the president

tries to heckle late-night comedians out of jobs. But as we reported earlier this year, Funny persists, and funny travels internationally. In the early 90s, two opportunistic comics decided to open an English-language improv joint in Amsterdam. It sounded less like a winning business idea than a punchline, given the Netherlands's reputation as a comic, well, Netherlands. But 30-plus years later, their club, Boom Chicago, has imported American Funny Folk and then exported them back as future stars, including Seth Myers, Jordan Peel, Amber Ruffin, and Jason Sudecass. Could it be that America's ultimate laugh factory is an improv theater position near an Amsterdam canal? Yes, and...

The Bush days seem quite good now, in retrospect, don't they? WND's Colin Powell, Comedy Rice, what a lark! Comedy, they say, is hard. Improv comedy, harder still. Then, imagine doing it in a country not generally known as a barrel of laughs. Dutch people, not the most giving laughers. I was going to ask you about that. Dutch people laugh like this.

Ha ha! And they immediately get quiet. Seth Myers needs no introduction. He and Peter Gross, actor and Emmy-winning comedy writer, were college pals who then developed their comic chops in Amsterdam. They so lovingly tell you they didn't like things. The honesty, the Dutch honesty. Withering candor.

Exactly. It's so funny. I've never been in a place where there's less malice behind deeply cruel. Yeah, it's not rude at all. It's not rude at all. I'm doing you a favor. This part was not good. I did laugh a little bit at that part,

so do more of that. No, but when he came out, and the guy was like, hey, yeah, can I buy you a drink? And I was like, oh, yeah, of course. Did you see the show? He goes, yes, I did. And I said, did you like it? He goes, no, I did not care for it.

And I was just, I go, why are you buying me a drink? And he goes, well, maybe I will like you. Are you ready? Improv is not stand-up. You're not performing a pre-written routine. You're working in real time. What's something you have at home that you care about? A watch.

My shoes. I hear a watch right here. You're relying on the audience for material and direction. I got a watch on my wrist. It looks so fine. It helps me when I don't know what's the time. Chicago has Second City. L.A. has the groundlings.

And New York has upright citizens brigade. In Amsterdam, there is Boom Chicago. Last summer, hundreds gathered outside a charming Dutch theater, which stands as a national treasure of sorts. Though it's unclear if the true benefiting nation is the Netherlands or the U.S. This is part of your commute. This is part of my commute just about every day. The setup. It's the early 90s.

Pep Rosenfeld and Andrew Moskos, recent Northwestern grads, are struggling to make it in the Chicago comedy scene. Do I even ask what drew you to Amsterdam when you were in your early 20s? Oh gosh. Fresh out of college. Yeah, fresh out of college, 23 years old. I mean, sex, drugs and rock and roll, I mean. Right.

What brings anybody to Amsterdam when they're young? Along with a third classmate, Ken Schaeffel, they cooked up a half-baked idea, as one does in Amsterdam. Man, you know what this town could use? An English-speaking comedy club. It was probably the best stoner idea ever. You know, let's quit our jobs and move to Amsterdam and start a business. Aware that good comic acts often require a straight man, a straight woman in this case, they soon roped in Saskia Moss, a local who, amid the yucks, brings a measure of sobriety and savvy.

She also became Andrew's wife. I mean, these are two goofballs, and I'm the businesswoman, so... But that worked out perfectly. 30-plus years later, seems like the dynamic still holds. Still, still holds, yes. Accidental entrepreneurs, they wrote to the local tourist board asking for advice, seeking validation. What'd they say? Said this won't work here. Don't do it here. It's not an Amsterdam kind of a thing.

The Dutch don't want to see a show in English. The tourists don't want to see a show at all. Andrew ridds the letter and goes, yeah, based on this, I feel like we should definitely do it. They named the club Boom Chicago, a nod to their hometown. They found a stage in the back of a bar, and eventually their own proper theater. off the Times Square of Amsterdam, the Lides supplied. And our little summer project became a year-round business. As for the small matter of recruiting talent, Moskos and Rosenfeld went back to Chicago

and made their pitch to two recent Northwestern grads, Myers and Gross. What was your level of knowledge about the Netherlands? It was so bad that I think my first thought was, I think Hamlet takes place? Is Hamlet? And then the other thing I did was I remember, just in my head, I think I pictured just sound to me, And I was like, well, first thing I got to do is get some hiking shoes.

And then the next thing I'll do is I'll buy a guidebook. So it was like, bought the shoes, and then the next thing was like, flat as place on her. Once they assembled a cast, it was time to assemble an audience. So the way it worked was that before the show, I'd be there selling tickets. And we didn't have a bank account. So the money went in my boots. I wore cowboy boots.

He was eccentric. I was eccentric. I still am. I would go out on the Lides Appline, which is a big square. and just tell people, what are you doing tonight? Oh, yeah, well, we don't know. Now you know you come to Boom Chicago. Can we just discuss you talked about the finances of this club

being stored in his boot without irony? We just glossed over that. Oh, this is so funny. I was in my room after a show. It was evening, nighttime. I get a knock on the door. And Peppa's over there and goes, yeah, I brought this girl home.

And I don't know if I want to leave her in the room with the boot. And he handed the boot over to me. me for safekeeping that evening. Business before pleasure. That's right. Back in U.S. comedy circles, word spread. Josh Myers, Seth's younger brother, and Ike Barronholz, were hired 25 years ago.

I had extensions put in, Dad. Oh my God. I'm sorry, Dad. Today, Baronholtz is an actor in a scent. Do I smell? I didn't go home last night. Yes, you really smell like vodka. Oh, just vodka? That's fine. who was nominated for an Emmy for his role in the Apple TV show, The Studio.

The Pope on a roller coaster. In early Boom Chicago comedy lesson, avoid cheap jokes. The references to the Cleveland Browns or the Olive Garden don't cut it. When you get here and you're playing for 300 people or so and their English isn't all their first language, you have to learn how to be bigger. You have to learn how to own a room and make references that are a little more universal

and deal with concepts and themes that someone from Australia or someone from Finland or someone from New Jersey can all relate to. Yeah, I remember in an early show, I said I was going to key someone's car, and then our director's like, people don't know what keying a car is over here. Meat sloten and alto?

Yeah, you can't need slotho and alto here. If you happen to live here long enough to have like one or two Dutch words in your pocket and can throw one Dutch word into your improv, you were a god to them. We want you to know that Americans aren't about hate. We're about love. Brendan Hunt arrived to boom in the late 90s.

Like many other comedians, moving to Amsterdam sounded like a risky career move. Or maybe not. When I was doing improv in Chicago in the late 90s, there was this thing called Boom Chicago that you would hear about, and it was sort of in hushed, mythical tones. Like apparently they do improv in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam? You've been there? You've been there? You've been there? None of us ever been there. We're like, wow, that's cool. But, I mean, no one would ever do it, right? I mean, some people do it, but we can't do that, right? You've gone for a year. And our flourishing careers will be interrupted, where we're making $10 a show twice on a Friday.

If you want to be in the Netherlands, you've got to behave. Do no more! Then, as now, the 10 or so comedians in the troop commit to one year, minimum, and are paid enough to make it a full-time job. Performing six shows a week means a lot of reps on stage, with little time to wallow after the inevitable rough nights. Even if all you don't understand sports. Oh, get them, what are they?

Stacey Smith was in last year's Boom Chicago Troop. Our ensemble works together so often that we can at intermission also discuss, like, what's working, what's not working, what kind of crowd are they, what are they resonating with? You do that? Yeah, absolutely. It's like half-time. Well, because, yeah, exactly like halftime. When I say meow, you say cat.

Stacey also led Booms Comedy Academy, which teaches improv to more than 200 students. Improv has an unpredictability and reliance on teamwork that makes it the ultimate building block of true humor. Less joke-telling than acting and reacting. When you're working on a team, you do need to come in with the mindset that you're building that piece from start to finish as a unit.

You want to be the class clown, go do 10 minutes on open mic. Yeah, because we do believe that if you are a good improviser, then you already have the tools to be a good stand-up comedian. And action. To wit, Seth Myers, in 2000, a touring show he developed with Boom caught the eye of Saturday Night Live. He was offered a writing job. It was like a baseball player getting called up to the big leagues. Huh?

Huh? Chris? No. It was also a Boom Chicago moment of arrival. It was really special to know it was the sort of thing that made people want to see more of you. That was a great source of success, right? Totally. And you can draw a direct line to Boom Chicago. 100% direct line.

So too for Brendan Hunt. At Boom, he became obsessed with European soccer. He and two other Boom cast members, Jason Sudakis and Joe Kelly, began to develop a partnership. It's going out to the pitch. Yeah, the grass here, to watch practice. Training. The co-practice training. Oh, it's miraculous.

It won't be tough. You know what? I'm going to get it though. Because training makes perfect. There you go. You don't need wise coach beer to tell you where this story is going. Does Ted Lassow happen but for Boom Chicago? No, I don't think Ted Lassau does happen without Boom Chicago.

It opened us up to the view of Americans abroad and like viewing yourself outside of your own home. You know, one of the rules of Boom Chicago was, because we'd make fun of all countries, basically, But like the rule was, we make fun of ourselves first, we earn it, and then we go out. So it turns out key mint, pale. The Boom Chicago footprint goes well beyond the five days of shows each week. Our opening speaker is a veritable superhero of management thinking. In fact, one of Booms' biggest sources of revenue has long been global corporate events that brayed banter with business.

You've got two cats. With annual earnings measured in the millions, no longer kept in a lot. boot. The business formed in the 90s in a haze, well, booms. Shut of it, Bra! Last June, Boom Chicago held an alumni reunion. From the back, may we please have a suggestion of another object. A can opener. Sex with me is like a can opener.

You're better off with the electric version. Former cast members came back. Sorry, I kind of forgot your name again. What was it? Jois. No, joie. Like joie de peace. Not just to reminisce, but to perform. I'm so grateful for Jeff Bezos.

Yeah, me too. I think it's cool that he's sending people up in space to work out their problems. And, of course, rib each other on stage. I don't think you guys look alike. Okay. Okay. I don't. All right, you're the one.

I think you look like a Jewish orthodontist in upstate New York. And you look like you were born on a fjord. Which of those two is handsomer? Both handsome. One of you just might be more prone to stomach trouble. All those laughs from such an unlikely windup. We've heard people say, you carry something from this place with you when you leave no matter what. Yes.

Yeah. Just don't put in your suitcase. Fly home without it. From Amsterdam to S&L. He had too long of hair at the time. It was going to curl out like a little Dutch boy. At 60 Minutes Overtime.com. Paramount Plus is your streaming home for the NFL on CBS every Sunday.

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