60 Minutes - 10/4/2020: Cause and Effect, Talent on the Spectrum, Seinfeld in 2020

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

Before his interview with California fire chief Thom Porter on the wildfires, Scott Pelley provides an update on President Donald Trump, who was diagnosed with the coronavirus this past week. Some people on the autism spectrum have conditions that preclude them from working or caring for themselves, but many have unique talents and capabilities. Anderson Cooper speaks to adults on the autism spectrum whose skills landed them jobs.  In an interview with Jon Wertheim, comedian Jerry Seinfeld explains why he wrote an essay on LinkedIn this past summer, arguing New York City is "dead forever" in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Those stories on this week's "60 Minutes." 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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Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. 2020 has been a terrible year, especially for climate change. California has endured the largest wildfires in its history. And to the east, twice the number of powerful storms as usual. Tonight, 60 Minutes reports from ground zero and asks, is there still a question about climate change among scientists? This is a scientific consensus. There's about as much a scientific consensus

about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity. In the model, we put things like... Many adults with autism are unemployed or work in low-skill positions. But as you'll see tonight... I think my greatest skill is I see things differently from other people. That may be changing. Dan may be too modest to tell you, but he is the inventor of record of this platform,

and NASA has licensed it. NASA is using FilterGraph that you invented? Yes. You have to see people walking on 60 Minutes. We want to know how that... Can this person walk?

Let's see it. I don't know why. You never do a thing on 60 Minutes without watching them walk. Look at that. They're walking. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, Jerry Seinfeld. It's so beautiful. Are you seeing comedy in this mess? The first thing they told us, remember, they don't say it anymore,

but they said, don't touch your face. Okay, so we're going to stop the whole world, and you can't do this. But don't do this. But don't do this. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley.

Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper 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. President Trump has been at Walter Reed Military Medical Center for two days under

treatment for COVID-19. His doctor said today he may be ready for discharge as early as tomorrow to continue his therapy at home at the White House. They've had him on a five-day regimen of the antiviral drug remdesivir, as well as a mix of monoclonal antibodies, a therapy which is still in the testing phase. More than a dozen people in the president's orbit have now tested positive for COVID. In a video late yesterday, the president reported he's feeling better and predicted he will be back soon. When he returns to the Oval Office, many crises await him, including the wildfires in the West. At least 31 have died in the largest wildfires in California history. The east is defending itself against twice the usual number of tropical cyclones. And what may be the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth came in August in the United States.

It's a torrid 2020, and it was forecast 32 years ago. In the 1980s, a NASA scientist named James Hansen discovered that climate change, driven by carbon emissions, was upon us. His graphs of three decades ago accurately trace the global rise in temperature to the year 2020. Last week, we had a lot of questions for Hansen. Are these disasters climate change? Do things get worse? Is it too late to do anything? But before we get to the causes, let us show you the effects. Butte County, California, Volunteer Fire Station 61. How long has the fire station been here?

About 35 years. And how long have you been here? 28 and a half years. Reed Branken is chief of what was Station 61. He's spent his life in the community of Berry Creek. He's on the school board and built his home with his own hands. Tell me what your home looks like right now. Nothing but a foundation with metal roof on top of it. It's completely burned out. School burned down? Yeah, completely. All the buildings on it burned down. Nothing left.

Fifteen people died in that inferno the second week in September, north of Sacramento where the Central Valley folds into the Sierra Nevada. These are fires that nobody, when I started in this business, ever even dreamed of happening in California, not even close. California State Fire Chief Tom Porter started in this business in 1999. That year, just over one million acres burned. By 2007, it was a million and a half. In 2018, two million.

This season, nearly four million acres have burned so far. Climate isn't the only reason. Decades of aggressively putting out every forest fire allowed brush to pile up like kindling. But the warming climate has intensified heat and drought. Chief Porter showed us the length of the fire lines he's defending right now would stretch from L.A. to New York. They talk about career fires, and a career fire was sometimes on the order of 10,000 to 50,000 acres. 50,000, that's crazy. The kind of thing a firefighter would see once in his career. Correct. Once in a career. It dawned on me at one point that career fires are happening every single year.

Right now, today, there are 10 fires in California that are 100,000 acres plus and one that's 850,000 acres plus. Four percent of the state has burned in total. The largest fires were ignited by storms, but because the air is so dry, the rain evaporated before it reached the ground, leaving Chief Porter fighting dry lightning. I'm afraid without significant change in the moisture that we get from the atmosphere, we're going to continue to see this getting worse and worse and worse. How much of California can burn?

Every acre in California can and will burn someday. California smoke blew more than 2,000 miles to the east and drifted over the Pennsylvania farm of retired NASA scientist James Hansen. His 1988 paper on carbon and climate accurately predicted temperatures up to the far-off year of 2020. Yeah, we're seeing exactly what we expected, but I expected that governments would be wise enough that they would begin to adopt policies to preserve the future for young people, but they haven't done that yet. Hansen is the father of climate change science.

For 32 years, he was director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Today, at 79, he runs the program on climate science at Columbia University. What is your forecast for the next 30 years? Well, if we don't change anything, then we're going to continue to see more and more of these extreme regional events because the physics is quite simple. As you add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, you increase the heating of the

surface. So at the times and places where it's dry, you get more extreme droughts, the fire seasons become longer, the fires burn hotter. But at the times and places where it's wet, you get more evaporation of the water, and you get warmer, moist air, which provides greater rainfall, and it's the fuel for storms. This summer, the Atlantic Basin has soaked beneath 23 tropical storms or hurricanes, double the usual number. Death Valley, California hit 130 degrees, now being evaluated as a world record, and Los Angeles reached 120. People ask, are we dealing with a new normal? And the sobering answer is, that's the best case scenario. A new normal is the best case scenario,

because that sort of means we've got a new situation and we just have to learn how to deal with it. But it's much worse than that. So there are surprises in store and we're seeing some of those surprises play out now. Michael Mann is a geophysicist whose work on past climate showed today's rate of warming began with the Industrial Revolution. Man is a lightning rod for deniers, but his research has been verified again and again. Man is director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. But there have always been fires in the West. There have always been hurricanes in the East. How do we know that climate change is involved in this?

Well, there are a number of independent sources of information, lines of evidence, that tell us that this isn't natural, that this is human-caused. Let's look at the big picture, the warming of the planet. A little less than 2 degree Fahrenheit warming of the planet since pre-industrial time. Now people ask, well, couldn't that happen naturally? Well, it turns out that if you look at the factors that are driving natural changes right now, small but measurable fluctuations in the brightness of the sun, volcanic eruptions. They tell us that Earth should have cooled slightly over the past half century. Here's what he means. In that yellow line at bottom, NASA has measured a steady decline

in heat from the sun since the 1950s. But the red line, the temperature of the Earth, has only increased. We can only explain that warming when we include the human factor of increased greenhouse gas concentrations, in particular carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Well, the president says about climate change science doesn't know. The president doesn't know, and he should know better. He should know that the world's leading scientific organizations, our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the national academies of every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that's weighed in on the matter, this is a scientific consensus. There's about as much a scientific consensus

about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity. That's what President Trump heard last month from Wade Crowfoot, head of California's Natural Resources Agency, which includes firefighting. Because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's all about vegetation management, we're not going to succeed together protecting Californians. Okay, it'll start getting cooler. You just watch. I wish science agreed with you. Well, I don't think science knows, actually. Well, with respect, I think he's wrong and he's on the wrong side of history. This is the unmasked Wade Crowfoot, who reminded us California emerged from a five-year drought in 2016. In that drought, which we call the mega drought, hasn't happened at that level in a thousand years. We experienced communities in California literally running out of water.

And where California dried out is now the site of the largest single fire in state history called the Creek Fire. So that's an existential challenge. We lost over 160 million trees in the Sierra Nevada mountain range as a result of that drought. The fire that burned the hottest and most dangerous, the Creek Fire, was in the epicenter of that tree mortality. It ran so hot that it created a smoke cloud 50,000 feet in the sky. What was the impact of all the smoke? So consider this. 50 million Americans on the West Coast suffered through weeks of the worst air quality on

the planet. You didn't have to live anywhere near the fires to be affected by them? Not at all. Throughout California, the smoke was so bad that our kids couldn't play outside and folks were discouraged from even spending any time outdoors. I did my first climate story more than 20 years ago and I remember at the time being told that there would be terrible fires and terrible hurricanes in a hundred years, that this was a problem for our great-grandchildren. What changed? What we're finding is that many of these changes can happen faster than we thought they could. We didn't really expect to see substantial loss of ice from the two major continental ice sheets, the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet.

But now the satellite measurements and in situ measurements tell us that they're already losing ice. They're already beginning that process of collapse. It's already contributing to sea level rise, decades ahead of schedule. Still, geophysicist Michael Mann told us warming can be stopped. Oceans and forests would begin to absorb excess carbon in a matter of years if emissions, principally from coal-fired power plants, are reduced close to zero.

Former NASA scientist James Hansen believes the way to do that is for governments to tax cheap fossil fuels to make them more expensive than clean alternatives. They have these wishful thinking agreements like Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Every country says we'll try to do better. That won't work. What we need is to have an increasing price on the fossil fuels and do it in a way that the public will accept. At what point does it become too late? It becomes too late if you get to the point that you cannot stop the ice sheet disintegration. That's the biggest point of no return. We can get to a point where we're going to get several meters of sea level rise out of our control. That's too late. We would lose our coastal cities, and more than half of the large cities in the world are on coastlines. If we don't start to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, 50 years from now, someone doing research on this time might look at this interview,

and I wonder what you would like to say to them. That's a tough question. I would say we did everything we could, and we're sorry. We're sorry that we failed. But I don't think that's our future. I don't want that to be our future. That's a possible future. We have to recognize that. The worst visions that Hollywood has given us of dystopian futures are real possible futures. If we don't act on this problem, the greatest crisis that we face as a civilization. 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. Autism is a developmental disorder that can affect how the brain processes information. People with autism have a spectrum of abilities and disabilities. Some are unable to speak or care for themselves, while others can live on their own and have unique skills like excellent memory or attention to detail. No matter where they are in the spectrum, many adults with autism have a difficult time finding a job. Even making it past her first interview can be challenging. But that may be starting to change.

As we found out, more companies are discovering the potential of people with autism, and some are now actively recruiting for talent on the spectrum. All right, and then just head on over here. Doing a television interview can be nerve-wracking for anyone. But for people with autism, it's potentially overwhelming. The cameras, lights, microphones, not to mention having to shake hands with a stranger. But last winter, before the pandemic, five adults on the autism spectrum agreed to talk with us about their struggles finding work. I was unemployed for three years. I just kept receiving

one rejection after the other. Eric Rolon has a bachelor's degree in sociology. How many jobs do you think you applied for? Countless. I can't even count. About hundreds. How did that feel to get so many rejections? Well, I felt useless. I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere with life. Brian Evans and Philip Mitchell were diagnosed with autism as young children. Sarah Kleitsch and Brennan Novak, not until high school. How does being a person with autism make you different than a person who doesn't have autism? Do you see differences? Oh, yes, I do see differences from person to person.

With me, for example, I'm good with numbers and I'm good with mathematics. Differences in communication are pretty common from what I've seen, like, especially with, like, nonverbal communication, like body language and stuff. What would you like people to understand about autism? The lack of or the ability to communicate doesn't equal intelligence. Clearly they have talents and skills. Dave Friedman hired Sarah and the four others at Autonomy Works, a tech firm he started in 2012 to proofread digital content and manage data for dozens of companies like Nike and Nissan. There are 32 adults on the spectrum here now working from home due to COVID-19, including Friedman's 25-year-old son, Matt. Let's try 700.

Nothing beats sort of sitting in my office and looking over here and seeing Matt at work. And the job has really given him sort of a whole nother purpose in life. Do you like the job? Yeah. I like that it's a quiet office environment. Do you remember getting your first paycheck? June 22nd, 2015. You remember the date.

Did you worry a lot about what would happen to Matt when he became an adult? For a long time, we didn't. He's really talented with numbers, really good with detail. So we figured that there had to be jobs out there for him. What we found was horrifying. Like, there are no jobs. A child with autism reaching 18 or 21 and suddenly it's... A cliff.

People have talked about a cliff or graduating to their parents' couch. What ends up happening is they transition from a structured school setting into their parents' house with really very few prospects. Back in 2011, I was... The idea for Autonomy Works came to Friedman when he was head of marketing at Sears. He oversaw hundreds of employees checking the accuracy of advertisements in newspapers. And the thought occurred to me, Matt could do this. This appeals to exactly the kind of way

that Matt thinks and processes information. It's a lot of very small, detailed information. Yeah, it seems like a small thing. It seems like $21.24 versus $29.24, but there's tens of thousands of dollars of costs that sit in that error. Autonomy Works employees monitor more than 2,300 websites a month for accuracy and quality. Friedman says their extreme attention to detail has led to a 90 percent reduction in product and pricing errors, and they're so good at sustaining focus, productivity is up 30%.

I have a great memory, and so when I do a task once, I can usually produce it exactly the same way. Do you get bored? For me, I don't get bored at all doing our work. Part of it is the repetition. I can get into like a rhythm with certain tasks. You like the rhythm. Yeah. If I was in a job that was constantly changing, it wouldn't fit me very well because like my mind would be all over the place. Let's look over here and see which one. Not all people with autism would be able to work in an office environment like this. Centers for Disease Control estimates about a third of people on the spectrum have significant intellectual disabilities. Autism is a spectrum. It impacts people in a wildly different array of ways,

from people who are unable to feed themselves or care for themselves, all the way up to people where you would never even know that they were on the spectrum and can get through life without any sort of supports. At Autonomy Works, employees can wear noise-canceling headphones and take breaks in a quiet room where lights are dimmed to reduce sensory overload. Friedman says the most important accommodation companies can make is to change the way they interview applicants on the spectrum. For a person with autism, the first 15 or 30 seconds of an interaction are by far their worst. They're high anxiety about meeting a new person, trying to interpret interpersonal cues,

trying to plan out a conversation to have with that person. And those first 15 seconds, that's when the other person, a job interviewer, say, is making their first and lasting impression about something. Exactly. Hiring managers just aren't taking the time to go past that first 30 seconds and understand the skills, the talents, and the capabilities that exist within those individuals. There are complexities that are inherently inside of these very large data sets. At the global accounting firm Ernst & Young, they've scrapped the traditional interview process for applicants with autism. They've replaced it with a series of problem-solving challenges.

And so if I can ask you all to come up. Testing aptitude, creativity, and teamwork. I think for the social group, like, you know, announce. In a demonstration last February in Chicago before the pandemic required they work from home, four current Ernst & Young employees on the autism spectrum were given millions of lines of data to quickly analyze and explain how they'd present it to a client. If we find that there are errors, we can loop back over to this step. Ernst & Young has used this technique to hire dozens of employees with autism who work around the world in fields like artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and cybersecurity.

Is this about corporate responsibility doing the right thing, being altruistic? Make no mistake about it, this is absolutely a business imperative, and it makes great sense from a business perspective. Kelly Greer, Ernst & Young's U.S. chairwoman, says the employees they've hired have saved the company millions of dollars by looking at problems in a different way and creating algorithms to shortcut and automate processes. That is one of the things every one of our clients is focused on right now. How do they use data differently to create competitive advantages or to save up vulnerability?

And it is a very, very rare skill set in high demand. There's still so many people on the spectrum that are underemployed or unemployed, and they've got this incredible talent that is going unused at the moment. This is a place where we could bring autistic staff and interns. Last year, Vanderbilt University opened the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, a groundbreaking research center where scientists and others are developing tools and technology to transform the workplace for people on the autism spectrum. What subject did you most enjoy in school? They're creating computer simulated job interviews, especially design driving challenges, and a block design test to help a company assess a potential employee's

visual problem-solving abilities. So people have done research on this for a few years. Maidili Kunda is a computer scientist at the Frist Center. So this is a wearable eye tracker. Right here and here are two little tiny cameras, and they're actually facing inward, and they're recording your eyes. The infrared cameras detect where your pupils are pointing. You can start as soon as I turn the page. Okay.

Dan Berger, a data scientist at the Center who's on the autism spectrum, volunteered to take the block design test to compare his visual problem-solving abilities with mine. Great. For 10 minutes, he assembled a series of increasingly complex block patterns. Can I go? Yes. Next, it was my turn. Dan made it look easy. For me, it wasn't. At this point, my head is hurting. Should it be hurting? I completed the puzzles,

but Dan did them faster and was more efficient. How can you tell? Look at the square on the right of your screen. Dan methodically placed the blocks left to right, line by line. And amazingly, he usually only had to look at the sample pattern once before placing a block. Why am I not?

I wasn't organized at all. I placed blocks randomly and had to look back and forth 13 times at the sample pattern before figuring out how to place the last block. My mind is a sieve, essentially. Like, I'm not holding on to any of that information, so I'm constantly having to refer back to the original, whereas Dan, he memorizes it. Yeah, it's very interesting. So it's a completely different way of processing information or trying to solve problems. Yes, yeah, it is. Maitali Kunda hopes employers might

use tests like this to more accurately assess the capabilities of people on the autism spectrum. You know, you imagine like TSA baggage screening is something that's super visual, or when you're inspecting batteries coming off the line for quality control. So there's lots of different jobs that this is relevant for. In the model, we put things like... Dan Berger's unique abilities caught the attention of Kayvon Stassen, an astrophysics professor at Vanderbilt. His son is on the autism spectrum, and Stassen helped start the Frist Center.

Why did you want Dan here at the center? I brought him on board with my astrophysics research group originally because we were dealing with these massive amounts of data from space telescopes, and I needed help from someone who had Dan's unique talents to help us look for patterns in data. So one of the skills that you have is looking at large amounts of information? I think my greatest skill is I see things differently from other people.

This is a picture of the seven sisters. Dan's challenge was to make sense of data from NASA's Kepler telescope. His solution? He built an interactive software program called FilterGraph. Using Dan's software tool, we were just able to slice and dice the data, spin it around in different ways, until something

visually popped. What popped was a breakthrough in astrophysics. Dan's FilterGraph produced a new way of judging the size and age of stars based on how vigorously they flicker in the night sky. Dan may be too modest to tell you, but he is the inventor of record of this platform, and NASA has licensed it. NASA is using filter graph that you invented? Yes. I mean, the brilliance that, Dan, that you have, that's going to become increasingly

important. There's only going to be more and more data coming down the road. And I feel like people who can understand the data, that's going to be more important. There's a lot of people who are unemployed who are on the spectrum. Do you have any advice for them? Oh, gosh. I feel like there are a lot of strengths to being on the spectrum. And I think imagination is a huge key trait. So that's the kind of opportunity that we...

We found about 30 large companies actively seeking employees on the autism spectrum, including Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, and Ford. But there are still so many people with autism who are unemployed, and the numbers are growing. In the next decade, researchers at Drexel University estimate as many as 1.1 million Americans with autism will turn 18. Back at Autonomy Works outside Chicago, Brian, Sarah, Brennan, Philip and Eric told us they hope more companies will start to recognize the untapped potential of people on the spectrum. What does having a job mean to you? For me, having a job is important because it provides me with much-needed structure in my life. Having a job is important to me because otherwise I would become very financially dependent on my parent

asking them, can you buy me this, can you buy me that. It's just been nice to be able to go home and talk to my parents about what I did during the day. They must be very proud of you. Yeah. They always say they're not surprised, so. Did you ever hear the one about the New Yorker who, even in the best of times, was famous for focusing on life's little annoyances? A global pandemic hit, and here's the punchline,

he turned into a pillar of optimism. So it goes for that titan of comedy, Jerry Seinfeld. Now 66, Seinfeld has halted his sold-out stand-up tour due to COVID. His latest successful show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, is also on hiatus. Like many of us, he's been sheltering at home with family. But that hasn't stopped him from doing what he's always done, helping himself to life's absurdities and meticulously spinning them into comedic gold. The observational comic, almost by definition, sees the world differently.

We spent a day in September with Seinfeld and found out how he sees things in the year 2020. Hey, John. Nice to see you. Greeting Jerry Seinfeld can be uncomfortable under normal circumstances. Do you want one of these? I don't know. That doesn't do anything. Then you factor in COVID.

No more handshakes, no more hugs. You're not into the elbows? Nah. It's a poor substitute. Are you seeing comedy in this mess? I did write some things down. Oh, the thing about, that the first thing

they told us, remember, they don't say it anymore, but they said, don't touch your face. Okay, so, we're going to stop the whole world

and you can't do this. But don't do this. How do you not do this when they tell you we're shutting down the world, but don't go, oh, my God. Oh, my God. When we asked Seinfeld where he'd like to spend the day, he said Queens, halfway between his hometown of Massapequa, Long Island, and his current address in Manhattan. This park was the site of the 1964 World's Fair,

which Seinfeld visited as a boy. You know, the World's Fair was always about, we're going to perfect the world. It's going to be easy, and we're going to do it, and here's what we're going to do, and it's going to be great. And when you're 10 years old, you believe that. And I don't think that completely foolish optimism has ever left me. We found Jerry Seinfeld downright upbeat to be out of the house and in front of a camera for the first time since COVID. Are we okay with this? Even with the aggravation of planes flying overhead. Now we're in show business.

Now we're back. See, we thought they were going to call off the... This is really being back. Call for plane. Show business has been his business for five decades. When 60 Minutes checked in with Seinfeld in the 90s, he was in the thick of his wildly successful sitcom. Ladies and gentlemen, Jerry Seinfeld.

The series grew out of Seinfeld's observational style of stand-up. What a proof watch. That's important. Gee, I'm completely out of oxygen. And look at the time. Now I'm dead and I'm late. He first honed his craft on Manhattan's comedy club circuit. What was it like coming into the city to perform? It was like when the doors open on the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, and I would gulp so hard, oh my God, I'm going into the grown-up's place.

And not just going in there, I'm going to go on stage there. Did it live up to your expectations? Sure, still does. I am so madly in love with New York City. I didn't know how to be. And in New York, they tell you, this is how you do, this is what you do. Here's how to be. Be cranky and be loud and be funny and complain and suffer and make fun of everything and everybody. That's how you be.

This city he romanticizes, Seinfeld remembered seeing a miniature replica of New York at the World's Fair as a kid. The model is still on permanent exhibit at the Queens Museum, and since we were right there, he wanted to take another look. We were allowed past the perimeter through a hidden entrance for a VIP perspective. I guess this is the way God looks at things. My first apartment would be right there. His civic pride is such that when a local comedy club owner posted an essay on LinkedIn this past summer claiming New York City would never bounce back from COVID, Seinfeld was moved to write a rebuttal. Is New York dead?

Are you asking me? I'm asking you. When you were a kid, remember kicking over the anthill? That's what just happened to us. They just kicked over the whole anthill. And what do the ants do? All right, hand me the next crumb let's get back to work and by the way i have nothing against that guy he's fine i didn't like that nobody was rebutting it and i realized oh i guess that's my job somebody a real new yorker has to answer this you called him some putz on linkedin i don't even know what linkedin. That's who that guy is for the rest of his life. Oh, look who's here. The putz from LinkedIn.

But you felt the need to defend your turf? I just don't want New Yorkism to die. I don't want it to be replaced by... By what? Deep concern. And over-sentimentality. You can have those things, but, uh, be a little badass, too.

We don't care that things are tough. Everything's always tough. It's tough to live here. Got a little blowback for that. Oh, he's out in the Hamptons writing about New York. Oh, shut up. Mm-hmm. Sorry. Sorry I did better than you. Got a little blowback for that. Oh, he's out in the Hamptons writing about New York. Did you expect that? Sorry. Sorry I did better than you.

My apologies. Got a laugh from the camera guy. Getting a laugh was the ultimate currency for Seinfeld, growing up as he did in a middle-class Jewish household. Were your folks funny? Yes. My dad particularly. Wildly funny. Like if there'd be a fly, it would land on your soup, and somebody would go, ooh, and he'd go, how much could he eat?

What was their parenting style? Complete neglect. Absolute, total neglect. It worked for me. It made me very independent. They were both orphans, so they had a natural independence. Both your parents were orphans? Yes.

What impact do you think that had on your family growing up? It was fantastic. Complete self-reliance. That was expected. Now, you know, you end up having to raise yourself in a lot of ways. You know, I don't know how to hold a fork or I can't make a sandwich. You know, 18 years, not a hint of what to do. For someone who couldn't make a sandwich, he's done all right. I could see directly into the eye of the great fish.

Mammal. Whatever. Seinfeld the series has made more money in syndication than any other comedy. Who's driving? You are. I can't get that thing in my car. My parents, they did not know where my school was. In 2017, Seinfeld signed an estimated 100 million dollar deal with Netflix to run two comedy specials and a series no streaming service wanted at first. Why does comediansians in Cars Getting Coffee work? I think it works because comedians don't like to chit-chat.

We like to really talk about something. People say disgusting things to me because they think I'll like it. And I wanted to show this other part of my world, of hanging out with these people and how fun it is. His latest project, The Guy Who famously did a show about nothing, has a new book titled Is This Anything? Seinfeld explained that's what comedians ask each other when they're working on new material. Published by Simon & Schuster, part of ViacomCBS, the book is a primer on joke writing. I'm not an autobiography kind of guy, but what I'm interested in is craft and technique

and approach to doing an art. And being able to look at how these bits are built, you could kind of learn, oh, I see why that word is here. Are there words that are objectively funny? Oh, LinkedIn see why that word is here. Are there words that are objectively funny? Oh, LinkedIn. Puts. I mean, LinkedIn, if I was to break it down, it's the Ks and the Ns and the Ls,

and it's new, and, I mean, if you want me to go further, I will. You're taking a Yiddish word from the 18th century and you're putting it with LinkedIn. That's what a laugh is. It's a chemical explosion. A little shtetl, a little Silicon Valley. A little shtetl, a little Internet. The Yiddish language is the greatest goldmine of comedy ever. Every word is funny. Putz notwithstanding, Seinfeld has always kept his act clean.

The buffet is like taking your dog to Petco and letting your dog do the shopping. At a time when many comedians have had to apologize for causing offense, he considers it part of his job description to accommodate changing standards. What do you say to some of your colleagues who say, like, everyone's so sensitive, you can't joke about anything anymore? They're always moving the gates, and you got to make the gates. And it is always difficult, changing, sometimes unfair, sometimes not right.

You know, Lenny Bruce dealt with what he had to deal with, and we have to deal with what you have to deal with. It was time for a break in our interview, and Seinfeld focused his powers of observation on us. Well, we've got to do the walk and talk. You have to see people walking on 60 Minutes. We want to know how that... Can this person walk? Let's see it.

I don't know why. You never do a thing on 60 Minutes without watching them walk. Look at that. They're walking. And, sure enough... It's so beautiful. Seinfeld has spent the last two decades growing into another role. Hello. Hello. You look so perfect.

Thank you very much. Family man. Very nervous here, Jerry. He and his wife, Jessica, have three teenage children and lead a largely private life. Are you wearing your white socks on TV? Yeah. She is more complimentary of his co-parenting skills. Stand-up seems like such an individual sport. How is he as a teammate?

I will tell you that it was a slow build. It wasn't natural. And when we first had children, he had absolutely no idea what to do. The look on their face was, is anyone helping you? Because I didn't seem to be connected to anything that was going on. But you say he's hit a stride now that he's parenting teenagers. He wasn't one of those dads who wore a front carrier. He grew up in the 50s, but now he is much better at this age than I am at this age. Yeah, that's true. I never looked at it that way.

We've kind of switched roles. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Jessica runs Good Plus, a foundation she started almost 20 years ago as a used stroller and baby goods drive. Good Plus now helps 50,000 low-income families with a focus on engaging dads. And she does it despite some household distractions. I think maybe that he misses being on stage. And when he and his friends are on the phone, they just yell. And it is something to live with. You know, a lot of times when you can say the same thing louder,

it's funnier when you say it louder. Why would you do that? It's stupid. Right? Yeah, it's that. With the home of his other great love just a few hundred yards away, we asked Seinfeld if he had considered putting in a bid this year when the New York Mets were up for sale. I don't have the money.

Would you if you did? No. Absolutely not. Why? Why? So I could have more people yelling at me on the street when they lose? The ultimate peak experience of a baseball game is a seat, a hot dog, and a beer. There's nothing above that.

He'll have to wait to sit in the stands with a hot dog, just as his fans will have to wait until the pandemic is over to watch Jerry Seinfeld perform in person. This will be funny. Comedians will figure out what we can say and can't say when we get back in front of audiences. How's this going to work? I don't think it's going to work for a while. I don't like compromised versions of things. I want the real thing, the authentic thing.

I want the pure hit. I want the real drug. I want real New York pizza. So I'll wait. We all live with uncertainty in this time of COVID. For example, I was certain that tomorrow morning I would be seated in the West Wing, across from President Trump, for a tough, timely 60 Minutes interview. We plan to broadcast it next Sunday, along with an interview with former Vice President Joe Biden. Tonight,

instead of sharpening our COVID questions, we find ourselves offering the President and First Lady, as well as each American infected with COVID, a speedy and full recovery. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week, but now stick around for a special edition of 60 Minutes.