60 Minutes - 09/24/2023: Care Court, Bankrolling the War, Hanging On

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Cecilia Vega reports from California on Governor Gavin Newsom's CARE Court - a bold, new strategy set to revolutionize the state’s approach to homelessness and the mentally ill with court-ordered treatment plans. Vega interviews Gov. Newsom on his passion project, investigates the broken system it hopes to mend and looks at the controversy surrounding it. As Congress considers financing another $20 billion in aid to Ukraine, Holly Williams reports on the impact and oversight of U.S. tax dollars in the country as it fights to survive. Sharyn Alfonsi reports from Costa Rica on sloths and their superpower of slowing down. Alfonsi examines how these mammals have mastered the art of survival for more than 60 million years and the new threats of climate change to the species. 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

You've used words like you're outraged, you're disgusted by what's happening on the streets. I am because I see what everybody else sees. I try to walk my kids to the park and have a difficult time navigating the sidewalk. That's California Governor Gavin Newsom talking about the largest homeless population in the country. One in four of California's homeless has a serious mental health issue, and the crisis has bred fear in communities as violent crime rises. What can be done about it? The state has a plan called CareCourt, and that's our story tonight. The U.S. has spent more than $70 billion on Ukrainian aid. We were surprised to learn that, among other things, that funding covers the salaries of 57,000 first responders

and the teams that train the rescue dogs who help look for survivors after Russian airstrikes. The US is also subsidising Ukrainian small businesses so they can pay their employees, many of whom have family members on the front lines. How do you feel about that? Grateful. Great.

So the two toads, I always say, look like a cross between a Wookiee and a pig, because they've got that sort of beepable nose. And then these ones have the sort of, you know, Beatles haircuts and Mona Lisa smiles. Behind that ringer for Ringo, Cook says, is a secret. Being nature's couch potato is the reason sloths have survived for more than 60 million years in spite of, well, themselves. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John 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 and more tonight on 60 Minutes. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning.

You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for,

Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. On any given night, more than 170,000 people are living on California's streets or in its shelters. It's the largest homeless population in the country, fueled by a lack of affordable housing and the state's failure to provide adequate mental health care. One in four has a serious

mental illness. It's a crisis that spread fear in communities as violent crimes rise. And this past week, Sacramento's top prosecutor sued California's capital city for allowing it to, quote, collapse into chaos. That's the landscape Governor Gavin Newsom says he's trying to change, starting this fall with a controversial new plan on track to cost billions. It's called CareCourt because it brings mental health care into the courtroom. Now judges will order people to get help and counties to provide it under a new law that emphasizes accountability and consequences. We met with Governor Newsom and found him to be fired up and fed up. Change has its enemies. I get it. But one thing you cannot argue for, with all due respect to all the critics out there, is the status quo. You can't. And in the absence of alternatives, what the hell are we going to do to address this crisis? It is a crisis overwhelming cities across the country.

But California has been hit the hardest. And Governor Gavin Newsom says it is desperation born out of scenes like this that drove the idea for CareCourt. You've used words like you're outraged, you're disgusted by what's happening on the streets. I am, because I see what everybody else sees. I try to walk my kids to the park and have a difficult time navigating the sidewalk.

It's a fail-first system, not a care-first system, which means you have to end up in the criminal justice system before finally someone provides support and a bed and a solution. We've got to change that, and that's what we're doing. Here's how it will work. A person referred to care court for a severe mental illness is evaluated. If they have an untreated psychotic disorder like schizophrenia, a judge can order a mental health treatment plan, including medication, therapy, and a place to live. The governor believes the new civil court system will help thousands get off the streets and make everyone safer by helping people before they become a danger to themselves or others. You think care court could be the solution that could save someone's life? I don't think it. I know it.

It's very familiar what we're doing, even though it's novel and new and bold. Novel, new and bold. So it's an experiment? No, it's not. When people get their meds, when people get support, we know we can turn people's lives around. This is eminently solvable. But what if someone ordered by a judge to get help doesn't think they need it? They'll have access to a public defender and can refuse treatment. They won't be sent to jail. But there is a catch. If someone in care court does refuse, a judge could

refer them for conservatorship, an extreme outcome that strips them of rights and forces them to comply with treatment. This is where he would go. Anita Fisher hopes Care Court will be a lifeline for people like her son, Farrow Degree, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia while serving in the Army 22 years ago. He's now 45. Tell me a little bit about Farrow.

Farrow is the kindest. Even from a little boy, his report card used to say, joy to have in my class. And some of the things that we've gone through, you couldn't have paid me to believe. For nearly two decades, Fisher has worked as a mental health advocate in San Diego. My son is one of those individuals. Running support groups and classes for hundreds of families when their lives are derailed by a loved one's those individuals. Running support groups and classes for hundreds of families when their lives are derailed by a loved one's mental illness. A lot of times he even can get

very agitated and then he starts to self-medicate, whether it's alcohol or street drugs, and that takes it to a whole different level. You sometimes feel like your son goes missing. Yes. In those moments. Yes. We would try to have the conversation with him about, you know, have you stopped your medication? And he said, well, they said, I don't need this medication. I was like, okay, who is they? And I know that it's the voices. What's this like as a mom for you? Ah, it's devastating. Supporters back care court because the new law allows families and others, like law enforcement and first responders,

to petition a court to help them get someone into treatment. Until now, Fisher says there has been little recourse, like last year when her son stopped taking his medication. For seven months, she called for a psychiatric intervention, but without her son's consent, she says her attempts were ignored. When I saw him, I had to call his name. He'd be wrapped in blankets. Farrow became homeless, and Anita spent days searching for him at local spots near their home. When you would find Pharaoh on these days,

what kind of condition was he in? He was just very psychiatrically ill. He would be, I'm fine, but no, he wouldn't look fine at all. Your son would be convinced that he was fine mentally, that he didn't need his meds. How do you convince him otherwise? What has to happen? He ends up arrested. It's almost we have to wait for that to happen.

And last October, he was arrested for vandalism. In custody, he received medication and enrolled in a treatment program. Farrow declined to be interviewed on camera, but he described to us on the phone how difficult it can be to live with his illness. Constant overthinking. Your brain is always racing. Your inner voice is always talking, racing, racing. No peace. Never any solace and peace. What do you think would have happened to him had he not had that treatment? Every single time, I have to start, in my mind, preparing a funeral. I have to get my heart and myself and my family ready, you know, that will he make it this time? It's not easy.

With California voters overwhelmingly ranking homelessness as a top concern, we have a crisis. Last year, the CARE Act sailed through the state legislature with near unanimous and bipartisan support. It's the main thing to do. But opponents point to the threat of conservatorship, where people can be locked up and treated without their consent. And more than 50 advocacy groups condemn CARE Court as a costly mistake likely to do real harm. Some of the words that have been used to describe CareCourt, coercive, backwards, harmful. Are any of those fair?

You laugh. I laugh. I don't laugh dismissively. Those are talking points that have been on rewind for decades and decades, and I'm frankly exhausted by them. Someone could end up in conservatorship, and that is a very big deal. Isn't care court saying comply or else?

We have people end up in conservatorship all the time. And I get why people don't want to see more of those, but we have that system already. And here's all I ask. Prove us wrong. Don't assume us wrong. Your compassion is not superior to our compassion. But that's a big gamble when you're talking about conservatorships, people's lives. Prove us wrong.

Exact opposite. Wait and see. The gamble is allowing more people to die under our watch. The gamble is more families struggling, suffering. How dare we? We see it as a pipeline to conservatorship, the greatest deprivation of civil liberties short of the death penalty. Eve Garrow is a homelessness policy analyst for the ACLU of Southern California.

What are the individual rights that you think someone would be stripped of under care court? The right to determine, for example, what medications go into your body. There's no forced medication in care court. There's no forced medication, but when there's pressure and coercion, you're more likely to potentially comply with treatment that actually isn't meeting your needs. Governor Newsom says that you're defending the status quo. The administration likes to propose this false dichotomy

that either we force people into treatment or we let them die on the streets. You don't feel like that's what's at stake here? I don't feel like that's what's at stake because obviously there's a third alternative. Garrow says that alternative is for the state to provide comprehensive care for all Californians with mental health disabilities.

Is that realistic? Yes, it is. If we invest in those services instead of investing in a new court system, of course it is. A lot of people will hear you and say, Eve, clearly the current situation is not working. Aren't we at the point where we have to try something else? I agree completely with that. But the point where we have to try something else? I agree completely with that. But the something else we need to try is not a civil court system.

We went with Garrow to the notorious Skid Row in Los Angeles, a county where one in eight of the nation's homeless people live. For years, on and off, that included Markeisha Babers, a 28-year-old who told us she has several serious mental health conditions, including bipolar disorder. When we met her, she lived in a shelter. I go almost every day to ask if I could speak to a therapist or if I can, you know, get some mental health services or help, and there are really none. Or if you do find one, it's like, oh, well, the waiting list is six months before you can actually talk to a therapist.

Six months? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like you're getting medication that you need? Absolutely not. What has to happen in order for you to get that? Honestly, I would have to be committed into a mental health hospital because going into places that offer, like, volunteer services, or they're backed up, or they don't have enough space,

or my insurance doesn't cover some of the stuff that I need. When I say the word care court to you, what comes to your mind? Medical incarceration. It's just another way to mass incarcerate people. And instead of it just being like criminal, it's medical now. What would you like to be done? I think there just needs to be way more attention to services and prevention rather than the consequences of not having those services. This year, the Newsom administration invested about $17 billion to fight homelessness and treat mental illness. Chance, there's hope. But leaders in many counties say money earmarked for care court is nowhere near enough for the thousands of people expected to land in

the system. Spare me. Honestly, I'm a little indignant by this rhetoric. The only thing limiting people is an unwillingness to be accountable, and I'm just done with it. But are you overly optimistic on this one? This is a very taxed system, and you're expecting it to take on a lot more. I'm done with the excuses. You should be done as a taxpayer. Everyone watching should be sick and tired of the excuses. There's plenty of money in this space. Yet even with California facing the highest debt in the nation, Governor Newsom is asking voters to approve billions more for housing.

And he admits that without enough, care court will not work. You're promising here that anybody who goes into Care Court will have some kind of housing attached to them. Well, I'm not promising anything here. I'm promoting a promise where there's accountability at the local level. I'm not the mayor of California. I'm the governor. And those local governments, if they don't comply, will be held accountable. Absolutely.

Foundationally, what Care Court is about is about accountability at all levels. Those local governments, if they don't comply, will be held accountable. Absolutely. Foundationally, what CARE Court is about is about accountability at all levels. Worth the billions of dollars that you're going to end up spending on this? We're spending more on the back end. We could save taxpayers billions of dollars and save lives. By December, CARE Court will launch in eight California counties, including Los Angeles and San Diego, where Anita and Farrow live. By the end of next year, it will be statewide. What does a successful care court look like for Farrow?

I hope he will never have to use it. And I hope that if it does, that he even sees it as a positive experience where his voice is heard. If you have to, will you initiate care court proceedings? Absolutely. I have no hesitation. It is trauma for the family to keep going through that with their loved one. Is part of this that voters are so fed up

with what they see on the streets of their cities that as a politician, you've gotta clean up those streets? Well, that's generally the case, but that's not the inspiration for CareCourt. But is there a political factor in this for you? As an electoral strategy, I'm turned out. That's not the issue. The politics here is compassion. The politics is purpose. What happens if CareCourt doesn't work? Then we learn from it. Biggest risk is that we don't take one. Last month, Markeisha Babers, the woman who was living in a Los Angeles shelter and told us she struggles with mental illness, was reported missing by her family. From early morning workouts that need a boost to late night drives that need vibes, a good playlist can help you make the most out of your everyday. And when it comes to everyday spending, you can count on the PC Insider's World Elite Mastercard

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But now a battle is brewing in Washington over the Biden administration's request for over $20 billion more. Many Republicans in Congress are opposed. Hardliners in the House want to cut off all funding. Others are demanding more oversight. We went to Ukraine to get some answers for the people who are bankrolling the war. American taxpayers. How exactly is your money being spent? And who's watching the weapons and the cash to make sure they end up where they're intended? Our first stop, a forest 15 miles from the front line in eastern Ukraine. These are US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles, steel-clad behemoths hidden beneath the canopy

in a makeshift workshop that's difficult for Russian drones to spot. Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade was only formed last year, but its soldiers have seen some of the deadliest fighting in this war. The Bradley's armour was designed to protect American infantry troops moving through combat zones. Now it's doing the same thing for Ukrainians. Wow, look at that. This machine survived a landmine and shrapnel from a Russian missile. Yeah, it's done some damage, but it's still in one piece. What happened to the guys who

were inside? Are they safe? Yeah, I suppose they are they are safe in their life the u.s has sent 186 bradleys here at a cost of around two million dollars a piece so it's saving your guys lives do any other vehicles save lives in that way in my opinion and from my experience, this is the best vehicle I have ever seen. You're all hidden here in the forest? Yeah. Lieutenant Alexander Shershon is a former sales manager and a father of two who enlisted on February 24th, 2022, the same day Russia invaded his country. What are those US weapons doing to the Russian military? What impact are they having?

We can destroy them faster. We can see them far away. They're afraid really. They're afraid of the American weapons? Yeah, of course. How do you know that? Sometimes we can take prisoners and they tell what people are talking about inside their companies, their brigade. The US has spent just over $43 billion on military aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded. That's equivalent to about 5% of the American defence budget. European countries combined have contributed around $30 billion. American rocket launchers are now reaching deep into Russian-occupied Ukraine. And the Patriot air

defence system is shielding millions of Ukrainian civilians from airstrikes. Where would the Ukrainians be right now without U.S. weapons? How much of their country would they have lost? Without that sort of aid, I think Ukraine would have been probably overrun, defeated, certainly would have lost a lot more. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges served as the commander of the US Army in Europe. He retired in 2017 and is now an advisor to NATO. Hodges told us the Biden administration has failed to explain to Americans

what they're getting for their dollar in Ukraine. If you think about it, Russia has been for decades and still is an existential threat for Europe and the United States. I mean, just listen to what their leaders say. Look at the thousands of nuclear weapons. They clearly will keep going if they're not stopped. It sounds like you're saying stopping Vladimir Putin in Ukraine directly benefits every American. Absolutely. This war is about so much more than just Ukraine.

Is this a high point for American foreign policy? It will be after Russia has been defeated. American taxpayers are financing more than just weapons. We discovered the US government's buying seeds and fertilizer for Ukrainian farmers and covering the salaries of Ukraine's first responders, all 57,000 of them. That includes the team that trains this rescue dog, named Joy, to comb through the wreckage of Russian strikes looking for survivors.

ROOFY DOGS ROOFY DOGS And the US also funds the divers, who we saw clearing unexploded ammunition from the country's rivers to make them safe again for swimming and fishing. Russia's invasion shrank Ukraine's economy by about a third.

We were surprised to find that to keep it afloat, the US government is subsidizing small businesses, like Tatiana Abramov's knitwear company. These are Ukrainian towns. That's Kiev, I recognise. Yeah, you see, yeah. Especially in the condition of war, we have to work.

We have to pay taxes. We have to pay wage, salary to our employees. We have to work. Don't stop. Why does that help Ukraine win the war? Because economy is the foundation of everything. American officials from USAID, the agency in charge of international development, helped Abramova find new customers overseas. In the midst of war, her company is supporting over 70 families. We realise that it's the aids from government,

but it's the aids from the heart of every ordinary American person. How do you feel about that? Grateful. Great. In total, America's pumped nearly $25 billion of non-military aid into Ukraine's economy since the invasion began. And you can see it working at the bustling farmer's market on John McCain Street in central Kiev.

People of Ukraine, this is your moment. The late senator is revered in Ukraine because he pushed the US government to start sending arms to the country after Russia first invaded back in 2014. While in Kiev, we learned that three of McCain's former colleagues were also in town. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. They don't normally agree on much. Together, though, they're some of the staunchest supporters of US funding for Ukraine's resistance.

They're on track to break the Russian army. And the only way they could possibly lose is if we pull the plug on them. The wreckage of Russia's war machine was on display for Ukraine's Independence Day celebrations, even as almost a fifth of the country remains under occupation. People ask me, is it worth it? Here's what we've gotten for our investment. We haven't lost one soldier. We reduced the combat power of the Russian army by 50%. Not one of us has died in that endeavor. This is a great deal for America. You've previously said that it's the best money we've ever spent.

That's still true? Since we helped Churchill stand up to the Nazis. We have to have confidence that the dollars we're spending are actually being spent in defense of the nation. All of that is important, but that's why we're here. The senators and other U.S. officials told us there have been no substantiated cases of American weapons being diverted. The United States Department of Defense ought to be telling the story about oversight. We're monitoring, we're following every piece of equipment. There has been no diversion, no evidence of misappropriation.

This is an American success story on aiding a partner fighting for freedom. But Ukraine is a young democracy with a history of corruption. According to the monitoring group Transparency International, it's ranked the second most corrupt country in Europe. Only Russia scores lower. You have to get rid of this cancer, which is corruption, because otherwise we're not going to survive. Oleksandra Ustinova was an anti-corruption activist and is now an outspoken member of Ukraine's parliament.

She chairs a government commission that tracks all military aid coming to Ukraine. These javelins provided by the United States. She filmed this video for us inside what she called a top-secret warehouse storing American javelin anti-tank missiles. We have online databases with the serial numbers of every American piece of weapon that your embassy has access to. They can come, type in, let's say, a Javelin or a HIMARS and see in which brigade it is,

and then go check it if they don't believe. So the US officials are going to the front line? We are letting them. Sometimes they may be sending people. Sometimes they are going to the logistics centres to see whether it is there or not, whether it's available. That may be true now, but a report from the Pentagon's inspector general last year found the US government was unable to monitor weapons transfers

in the early months of the war, in part because the American embassy staff was evacuated. Criminal groups in Ukraine stole some weapons and equipment from the country's military, though they were later recovered by Ukrainian intelligence services. Ustinova claims that today systems are in place to make sure that never happens again. So what are the stakes for Ukraine in making sure that US-supplied weapons don't go missing? I can tell you that this is the number one priority for us

because we're not stupid to shoot ourselves in the leg. We understand we would never have made it without the United States and we're not going to make it without the United States. An American hotline for Ukrainians to report misuse of assistance from U.S. aid saw a tenfold increase when these posters went up across the country earlier this year. American officials are now investigating four criminal cases involving non-military aid. And 170 Ukrainian government officials, including high-ranking military officers, have been charged in corruption cases so far this year for crimes like embezzlement and accepting bribes.

Yustanova told us she considers that good news. If we didn't have anyone arrested, then that would be a question when people see all these corruption scandals, but nobody goes to jail. So this life or death battle that Ukraine is fighting has made people here less tolerant of corruption? Yes. One hundred percent of the Ukrainian budget now is being spent on the army. It's someone's bulletproof vest, it's someone's helmet, or someone's armed vehicle that was not there in time to save the lives.

I think this tolerance is close to zero because they understand that now corruption kills. Ukraine is losing US weapons on the battlefield. But Lieutenant Shershon told us that's the only way they're losing them. Has anything gone missing? In my situation, in my company, in our battalion, I don't know the case like this. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

As the war grinds towards its third year, Ukrainians are dying in trenches, in the streets of their cities... ..and in their own homes. SHE SCREAMS The country's fighting for its survival, bankrolled in large part by US taxpayers. The outcome may be decided by America's willingness to keep paying.

SHE SCREAMS Some Americans say, we're very sympathetic to you Ukrainians, but we're going through tough times at home and we just can't afford to keep on supporting you. Ukrainians pay their lives. And I believe and I hope that their lives cost much more than money, much more than taxpayers' money. 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. The stopwatch has long been the symbol of 60 minutes, but any measure of time is pointless for the subject of our next story, the slow-moving sloth. You might think these distant relatives of the armadillo would make the perfect meal for just about anything faster. And yet, somehow, sloths have been hanging on, in one form or another, for 64 million years. To understand this quirky animal, we hung out with a quirky zoologist. Lucy Cook has been documenting the strange lives of sloths for 15 years. Cook was our guide on a trip to Costa Rica, where scientists are making new

discoveries about a creature that's turned survival of the fittest upside down. This is an area where there are lots of sloths, so that we have that on our side. The first thing we learned about sloths is that it's hard to spot them in the wild. We were warned to keep our eyes on the ground for poisonous snakes as Lucy Cook scanned the treetops. The sloth is a master of disguise. It blends into the canopy and can easily be mistaken for a tuft of leaves. They tend to hunker down when it rains, so making it even harder to see them. Our luck improved on the beach. Oh, there's one up there.

She's in the nook of the tree looking a bit like a termite hump. And she's hunched over, so what we're looking at is her back. That is not the side of the sloth we went all the way to Central America to see. So Lucy Cook took us to an animal sanctuary to get a better view of the two species of sloth that live here, the bradipus and the two-toed. So the two-toed, I always say, look like a cross between a wookie and a pig because they've got that sort of beepable nose. And then these ones have the sort of, you know, Beatles haircuts and Mona Lisa smiles. Behind that ringer for Ringo, Cook says, is a secret. Being nature's couch potato is the reason sloths have survived for more than 60 million years in spite of, well, themselves.

Their eyesight is lousy. They're hearing not much better. In a tree, they can move like a Tai Chi master to avoid the eyes of hungry birds of prey. But on the ground, Cook says gravity removes any shred of dignity. Even with a hurricane-strength tailwind, a sloth will top out at a half mile per hour. The first people that described the sloths, the conquistadors that first observed them, they said terrible things. One said it was the stupidest animal that he'd ever seen, and another said one more defect would make its life impossible, and they just didn't understand them, you know. Cook says what those early explorers didn't understand, and what is frankly hard to believe when you watch the effort it takes for a sloth just to blink

is that this hairy ninja is uniquely built to survive. Why so slow? Why do they move so slow? Because they're saving energy. They're vegetarians. And leaves don't want to be eaten any more than antelope do, right? So they create a lot of toxins. So the sloth can digest those toxins, but only very, very slowly. They don't want to process them fast. And so

they're all about burning as little energy as possible. Sloths spend about 90% of their lives hanging upside down and typically only climb to the ground for bathroom breaks once a week. With habits like that and nails like this, you can understand why they are solitary creatures and prefer to be alone until they don't. What they do is the females will climb to the top of a tree when they're in heat and scream for sex. Really low key. Really low key. But they scream in D sharp. Like that's the, they make this, and I'll do it and he may well, on the strength of my impersonation, let's see if Teddy, who's a boy, he's twice right. Exactly. Let's just see if he goes, okay, I'm gonna do it. I've actually seen bradipusses having sex. It's the only thing they do quickly.

I mean, I was shocked. But then afterwards, both male and female retreated and had the deepest snooze. Behind Lucy Cook's cheeky sense of humour is a hefty resume. She has a master's degree from Oxford and published four books, including two on sloths. She's also hosted wildlife programs for the BBC and National Geographic. The photos Cook takes on her expeditions have gone viral, leading to donations for conservation and crowds at lectures that mix biology with stand-up. We humans are obsessed with speed. We idolize animals like the cheetah,

capable of doing 0 to 60 in three seconds flat. Well, so what? Are they cute or are they so ugly they're cute? Oh no, they're cute, surely. But then, I mean, I think a naked mole rat's cute, so you're asking the wrong person. You like a beetle-ist animal. Yeah. Bats, hyenas.

I mean, there's a whole list of animals that I think, you know, just have extraordinarily strange and wonderful lives and just, to me, just add to the richness of the universe. Just look how one of those B-list animals can leave Lucy Cook starstruck. You guys have got to see this! As we were making our way through the Costa Rican rainforest, Cook noticed this. What looks like fluffy golf balls, she realized was a cluster of something we'd never heard of.

Come and have a look, Sharon, Sharon. The elusive Caribbean white tent-making bats. Look. They're bats, but they're white, and they live in these leaves. Like, my heart rate's gone right up. I'm gonna start pouring in sweat, and I might start crying, actually,

because it's just so... I mean, it's just a miracle of evolution. I mean, it's just why? Like, why? That sense of wonder. That's about as exciting as it gets. Has made Lucy Cook a compelling advocate for sloths. Like them, she looks at the world from a different point of view. Your latest book is called Bitch.

I do apologize. I really like you and your work, but yeah, my book is called Bitch. I do apologize. I really like you and your work, but yeah, my book's called Bitch. In it, Cook challenges the narrative that in the animal kingdom, males are usually dominant and promiscuous, while females are submissive and monogamous. She traveled the world to collaborate with scientists and study dozens of animals, reporting how killer whale pods are led by postmenopausal orcas

and how tyrannical matriarchs control meerkat society. Her re-examination flips parts of Charles Darwin's theories upside down. Charles Darwin's a hero of mine. I studied evolutionary biology, but he was a Victorian man. And so when he came to brand the female of the species, she came out in the shape of a Victorian housewife. Passive, coy, chaste. You know, we were sort of a feminine footnote to the macho main event, basically. I can hear people saying, is this biological wokeness? Well, it would be if it wasn't true. So you just have to ask the hyena, for example,

the female spotted hyena, if she's passive and coy and she'll laugh in your face after she's bitten it off. You know, it's like... Challenging conventional wisdom is a large part of Lucy Cook's crusade to improve the reputation of sloths. But there is a more somber kind of rehabilitation she wanted to show us. This is the Toucan Rescue Ranch near Costa Rica's capital, San Jose. So sloths are incredibly strong. They care for sloths nearly killed by power lines.

How are the sloths injured? So most of the time it's through electrocution, where it'll just look like this straight vine, you know, going through the forest, and so they'll grab a hold of that and then become electrocuted. Leslie Howe was an occupational therapist who started the ranch 19 years ago. Now she has a team of six veterinarians to treat the electrical burns. Millions of years of evolution could not prepare the sloths for human sprawl. But the vets told us they believe the sloth's slow metabolism somehow allows them to recover from injuries that might kill other creatures. The Toucan Rescue Ranch also takes in orphans. This is little Gio, and this is Marilyn, and then we have Landon here. Oh he's a toddler?

He's a toddler and this is our tiniest little Benji. Okay now my ovaries have cracked. It can take up to two years for the orphans to be ready to go back into the wild. We watched as a female named Nasara was prepared for release. She was given a final checkup and a tracking collar before getting a lift to a promising tree. Off she goes. And if she falls asleep in the middle of the release, is that a bad thing? There she goes. It's a scary moment. Is that a bad thing? There she goes. Oh! Ooh!

It's a scary moment. Oh! Mission Impossible has nothing on this. Like, woo-hoo! With that high drama behind us, we headed down the Caribbean coast with Lucy Cook to visit another British scientist. Becky Cliff is conducting the first population study of sloths ever. That might seem like low-hanging fruit. It is not.

Why is it so hard to get scientific data on sloths? They've evolved over the last 64 million years to be masters of disguise, right? They are so good at pretending to be coconuts and bird nests, then they're hiding from the very people who are trying to help them. Neither of the sloth species in Costa Rica is officially considered endangered but Cliff says her staff is suddenly seeing fewer sloths and some are suffering from an illness she suspects may be related to climate change. We're getting extreme periods of hot dry weather and then extreme periods of prolonged cold and rain.

And that is not what sloths have evolved to survive in. What we're discovering is that the microbes in the sloth's stomach that they use to digest the leaves they eat, when the sloth gets too cold, those microbes die. So even though the sloth might be eating and looking well, it's not digesting its food properly. So they're losing energy and they're getting very weak. It sounds like they're starving to death, but with a full stomach. That's exactly it.

It's a really strange phenomenon that I think only happens in sloths, but it's happening here. For Cliff to collect data, she has to collect sloths. Which branch is she? That's the full-time job for her colleague, Debar Leon. To collect data, she has to collect sloths. Which branch is she? That's the full-time job for her colleague, Debar Leon. He climbed barefoot up a three-story high tree covered in biting ants,

snatching the sloth, then lowering it in a bag. Come on, little one. Hi. That's impressive. So do you have to do that every time you want to get a sloth down? And this is easy. The stuffed sloth she's holding is not a gimmick. It was used to comfort the real one, as we helped replace a memory chip in a tiny backpack the sloth wears. Oh, you're very strong. Very strong. And then lean her back a little bit. Come on, sweetie. I'm going to clip those little things up.

This is like dressing a baby. Yeah. Done. Wham bam. What kind of information does this give you? We collect a lot of manual data in terms of what type of tree she's in, how high in the tree she is.

There's also a data logger inside here, which collects a lot of information about her behavior. So even her micro body movements are being recorded inside there. There we go. Yeah, that's a girl. 32 sloths will get backpacks and be returned slowly to the wild. Lucy Cook told us she hopes this study will provide a deeper understanding of an animal we can be too quick to judge. What can we learn from the sloth?

We can learn how to be more slow and sustainable ourselves, because we need to. You know, we're destroying this planet at an alarming rate. And part of that is because of our addiction to speed and convenience. So if we took a few carefully, slowly digested leaves out of the sloth's book, you know, we might save this beautiful planet and all of the amazing creatures that live on it. Now, an update on a story we first reported in April. Bill Whitaker spoke with January 6th rioter Ray Epps. Epps and his wife were in hiding after the former Marine and Oath Keeper became a target of TV conspiracy theorists. Offering no evidence, they painted Epps as an FBI informant inciting the crowd.

Did anyone from the federal government direct you to be here at the Peace Circle at this time? No. No one from the FBI? No. Your old comrades with the Oath Keepers? No. Conspiracists called it suspicious

that Epps wasn't charged for his role. That changed this past week. Ray Epps pleaded guilty to entering a restricted area on the Capitol grounds. I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.