60 Minutes - 10/7/2018: The Kavanaugh Vote, John Green, The Pavarotti of Pasta

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

The controversial Senate vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was mostly partisan and set the stage for the upcoming midterm elections. Scott Pelley sits down with two female senators from both parties to talk about their crucial undecided votes that could threaten their careers. Author and YouTuber John Green has reminded his young audience across the globe "don't forget to be awesome." He opens up about living with obsessive-compulsive disorder and how he copes with it. Plus, Chef Massimo Bottura introduces Lesley Stahl to the world class menu offered at his restaurant Osteria Francescana on tonight's "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 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

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. There's no do-overs. The important thing for me is to be able to get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and know that I didn't take a shortcut, that I didn't do what was politically expedient. Two senators, known for weeks as undecided, cast their votes yesterday, ending uncertainty over Judge Kavanaugh's fate, but leaving questions about their own political futures. Senator, you came to this interview on Capitol Hill with a security detail. This has been unlike anything I've ever been through. I love the book. It's amazing.

Oh, thank you so much. If you don't know John Green, the teenagers in your life do. Hi. As an author, he dominates the young adult bestseller list. Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. author, he dominates the young adult bestseller list. Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. Online, he has millions of YouTube subscribers. But here's what some John Green fans don't know and will learn tonight.

He has a serious mental health condition. I had a lot of self-destructive impulses and I felt scared all the time. What were you scared of? The short answer is everything. The restaurant ranked number one in the world is in the little-known town of Modena, Italy, Osteria Francescana, where you have to wait months to get a reservation.

Caesar salad in bloom. Chef Massimo Battura says it wasn't always like this. Those are flowers? All flowers, edible flowers. That his avant-garde eatery might never have become number one if not for a simple and spectacular dish of old-fashioned tagliatelle. So that turned everything around? Totally.

You are known as the maestro. Now, before they want to crucify me in the main piazza. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Bill Whitaker.

Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's on the media specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Last night, Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The bitter confirmation debate in the Senate ended with the closest vote in well over 100 years. When the roll call was taken, two senators cast votes that could threaten their careers. They were undecided until the final days and might have voted either way. These two women, a Democrat and Republican, came out of the battle with opposite views. Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, sat down with us to explain their view of Judge Kavanaugh, his accusers, and why they may have voted against their own political interests. November is coming! November! We will be the right! We will be the right!

We are the majority! The majority dissents! We are the majority! Yesterday, outside the Capitol, more than 160 protesters were arrested. The clerk will call the roll. Mr. Alexander. Inside the Senate, the vote was interrupted again and again. Restore order in the gallery. Vice President Pence and his role as president of the Senate

tried to control the chamber as late deciding senators attempted to vote. Shame! Shame! Shame! Among those voting through the protest was Republican Susan Collins of Maine. Ms. Collins. Senator, you came to this interview on Capitol Hill with a security detail. What has all of this been like for you?

Well, it's been very difficult. I've had the honor of serving in the Senate for nearly 22 years, and this is as ugly a situation as I've ever seen during that time. Don't put a liar on the court. Don't put a liar on the court. I have had to have security because of threats against me and family members and staffers, and this has been unlike anything I've ever been through.

Senator Susan Collins had been the hope of both parties. She's the most moderate Republican who often votes against the GOP. Thank you, Mr. President. Senator Collins, please vote no. Friday, protesters shouted for a no at the moment Collins revealed her decision. I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. I am comfortable with the decision that I made. I spent an enormous amount of time in the first part of the confirmation process, studying the judge's 12-year record as a circuit court judge.

I was satisfied at that point, started working on the speech, and then these devastating allegations are made that sends the whole thing into a tailspin. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. It was the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that left Republican Collins with severe doubts. her anonymous letter or her redacted letter and questioned Judge Kavanaugh about it over the phone in a subsequent interview. When you talked to Judge Kavanaugh privately on the phone about the letter, what did he say? He categorically and emphatically denied the allegations. When you saw Dr. Ford's testimony, what did you think? She was clearly

terrified, traumatized, and I believed that a sexual assault had happened to her. What I think she's mistaken about is who the perpetrator was. I do not believe her assailant was Brett Kavanaugh. Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is close to Republican Collins, but far removed from her friend's decision. When this nominee was announced, I had a completely open mind, had a chance to meet him, in fact, liked him. I had a chance to begin to review his judicial record, and there was really nothing at that point

that I believed was disqualifying for him to serve. You were going to vote yes? Probably, yeah. I do. That is, until the fateful hearing. Two things stand out. First off, I think that her story was completely believable, and I found his performance to be disturbing.

This is a circus. I think, you know, you can understand the anger, especially if you believe you're wrongfully accused. But as the questioning went on, and really at the point that he had his interaction with Amy Klobuchar, it was jaw-dropping for me. So you're saying there's never been a case where you drank so much that you didn't remember what happened the night before or part of what happened? jaw-dropping for me. So you're saying there's never been a case where you drank so much that

you didn't remember what happened the night before or part of what happened? You're asking about blackout. I don't know. Have you? Could you answer the question, Judge? That's not happened. Is that your answer? Yeah, and I'm curious if you have. And I thought, I have a responsibility not only to find someone academically and intellectually qualified, but qualified by temperament, impartiality, and by, you know, what we see, empathy. With what degree of certainty do you believe Brett Kavanaugh assaulted you? 100%. I think when Senator Durbin asked her how certain she was, and she looked at him and she said, I'm 100% certain.

I believe her. The senators who have decided to vote in favor of Judge Kavanaugh's nomination seem to believe that he was wrongfully accused. Everybody's going to make their own judgment. And I have to tell you, my judgment on her experience is based on a lot of experience working with domestic assault victims, domestic violence victims. Did you read the FBI report? I did, but I didn't find the information there particularly enlightening.

Even after the FBI has interviewed everyone whom Dr. Ford has named as present that horrible night that she remembers. Every single one of them, including her best friend, has no recollection of anything like this. Democrat Heitkamp and Republican Collins often meet in the middle, on common ground. They also share a political vulnerability. Heitkamp is a Democrat in conservative North Dakota. Collins is a Republican in a state with many independent-minded voters. Your decision is not going to play well back home in Maine. That is likely true.

I did not try to weigh a political calculus to this decision. It's too important for that. I just had to do what I think is right. for whoever your opponent may be in 2020. And the deal was that if you voted for Kavanaugh, then the credit card pledges would be processed. If you voted against Kavanaugh, they wouldn't process the credit card numbers. And something over $2 million was raised. This is a classic quid pro quo as defined in our bribery laws. They are asking me to perform an official act, and if I do not do what they want, $2 million plus is going to go to my opponent.

I think that if our politics has come to the point where people are trying to buy votes and buy positions, we are in a very sad place. Collins doesn't face re-election for two years, but Democrat Heitkamp's situation is much more perilous. She's up for re-election now. And in August, Judge Kavanaugh's support in North Dakota was running 60 percent. At this moment, about four weeks before the election, you are running behind your Republican challenger in North Dakota.

A political consultant would have told you that voting for Kavanaugh would have been better for you. Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. I think that the politically expedient vote here was a yes vote. Why not then? Because this isn't about politics. This is about a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. This is about a responsibility that we have as leaders, a responsibility that we have to exercise the judgment that we were sent here to exercise. I have too much respect for the institution of the Supreme Court, and I'm

not going to be the person who makes a decision based on whether I get six more years in Washington, D.C. I'm going to make the decision based on what I think about the institutions. That may make you rare in the Senate. In 2000 when I was running for governor, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And it was serious. You know, my doctor afterwards told me, you have a 28% chance of living 10 years. That was 18 years ago. And so I tell young people, I say, you have two accounts.

You have a bank account, but you have a time account. What are you going to do with your time? Do I have work that I want to continue to do? Absolutely. Do I want to compromise my principles and my conscience for that job? No. And do I want to compromise the Supreme Court for that job? No.

You are rare for many reasons, but one of the reasons is you're a pro-choice Republican. Many of your opponents are going to say she's pro-choice, she is pro-women's rights, and she just sent a man accused of sexual assault to the Supreme Court of the United States. I would never vote for someone who had committed sexual assault or who had lied about sexual assault. That's not a hard call for me. I would have voted no if I disbelieved Judge Kavanaugh. But given his denials and the lack of evidence that this happened, I just did not think that it was fair to ruin the life of this distinguished judge and his family over allegations that cannot be proven. There are many who believe that Judge Kavanaugh will be the vote

that results in abortion becoming illegal in the United States. And I wonder if you're concerned about that. I could not vote for a judge who had demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because it would indicate a lack of respect for precedent. What Judge Kavanaugh told me, and he's the first Supreme Court nominee that I've interviewed out of six who has told me this, is that he views precedent not just as a legal doctrine, but as rooted in our Constitution. On this vote, the ayes are 50, the nays are 48. The nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh of Maryland to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed. The vote was the closest for the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice since 1881. Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in hours later. The Senate is left riven by partisanship.

While across the street, the Supreme Court's new term will try to reconcile a shift in philosophical balance among the justices with the words carved above the door, equal justice under law. chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. While you may not have heard of the author John Green, be assured that the teenagers in your life have.

He's America's answer to J.K. Rowling, with his mega-bestsellers spawning blockbuster movies. Green has become wildly popular thanks largely to his loyal teenage audience. Green is also the rare literary talent who doubles as a podcaster and a YouTube star. His success stems from his intuitive understanding of adolescence, his ability to meet them on their level and on YouTube star. His success stems from his intuitive understanding of adolescents, his ability to meet them on their level and on their devices. To those who consider today's teens a disaffected tribe rarely glancing up from their phones in video games, John Green offers a counter-narrative.

Let's talk about teenagers. 60 Minutes core audience, I understand. It's a trending, well, you know. You write a lot about teenagers. 60 Minutes core audience, I understand. It's a trending, well, you know. You write a lot about teenagers. Yeah. Why this cohort? They're doing so many things for the first time, and there's an intensity to that. You know, there's an intensity to falling in love for the first time,

and also there's an intensity to asking the big questions about life and meaning that just isn't matched anywhere else. You've said before that adults underestimate teenagers. about life and meaning that just isn't matched anywhere else. You've said before that adults underestimate teenagers. Well, I think sometimes teenagers maybe don't have the language to talk to us in ways that seem compelling to us, and maybe that makes it easy for us to dismiss them or think of them as less intellectually curious or intellectually

sophisticated than we are, but I don't think that's true at all. I love the book. It's amazing. Oh, thank you so much. John Green's books in the YA, or young adult genre, dominate bestseller lists. And while the stories take place in the U.S., They echo worldwide, having been translated into 55 languages. Lithuanian, Slovenian, Croatian. Yeah, yeah. It's really wonderful to have your books travel to places you've never been.

I mean, it's a weird but really beautiful experience. His most famous book, The Fault in Our Stars, was a bestseller for more than three years. It's down to you, Hazel Grace. And adapted to a hit film in 2014 that grossed more than three years. It's down to you, Hazel Grace. And adapted to a hit film in 2014 that grossed more than $300 million. I guess this water was the star-crossed love of my life. Tinged with tragedy,

the story follows two teenagers with cancer who fall in love. I love you so much. Heavy and heady stuff for an adolescent audience. The subjects you deal with are quite weighty. Death and suicide and cancer. A lot of teenagers haven't had these experiences per se, but these books resonate with them.

How is that? Maybe lots of teenagers haven't had these particular experiences, but I do think they know of loss and they know of grief and they know of pain. Maybe the particulars of an experience aren't universal, but the feelings are. Okay, I'm going to need you to hit this button. One reason he connects so well with teenagers, at age 41, Green is still a kid at heart. I love that you're just staying in that corner. It's a smart start. His youthful spirit drives more than book sales. It made him a YouTube star.

Hi there, this is John Green. And I'm Hank Green, and we are the Vlogbrothers on YouTube. In 2007, the early days of YouTube, John Green and his kid brother Hank began sharing videos as a way to stay in touch with each other. Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. In short order, and in lockstep with the growth of YouTube, the Greens' videos amassed a huge audience, now nearly a billion total views strong. Oh, yeah.

This online video platform, in turn, has fueled John Green's readership. They play off each other. Yeah, in a way, they're different sides of the same coin, right? Because what interests me really is the idea of connecting with a viewer or with a reader without having to like actually talk to them and look at them and all of that. This preference, Green said, is the legacy of his own socially awkward adolescence. Who do you envision are your readers? I don't envision a reader. You don't? I think in some ways I'm writing back to my high school self to try to communicate things to him, to try to offer him some kind of comfort or

consolation. Who was that guy? I had a difficult time in high school. I wasn't a very good student and I had a lot of self-destructive impulses and I felt scared all the time. What were you scared of? The short answer is everything. He explores those fears in his most recent book, Turtles All the Way Down, a bestseller for 50 straight weeks since it debuted at number one. Its theme, obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD, based on Green's own.

For this book, he obeyed that time-honored rule of the craft, write what you know. I wanted to try to give people a glimpse of what it is. I wanted to try to put them, you know, at least a little bit inside of that experience. You use the word thought spiral. Mm-hmm. What does that mean?

The thing about a spiral is that it goes on forever, right? Like, if you zoom in on the spiral, it can keep tightening forever. And that, for me, is the nature of obsessive thought, that it's this inwardly turning spiral that never actually has an end point. So it might be, I'm eating a salad, and it suddenly occurs to me that somebody might have bled into this salad. Now, they probably didn't.

This is what you're thinking. But this is what I'm thinking. And instead of being able to move on to a second thought, that thought just expands and expands and expands and expands. And then I use compulsive behaviors to try to manage the worry and the overwhelmedness that that thought causes me. So how do you get out of this coil? How do you break this infinity? I have a few strategies. I exercise.

That's probably the biggest thing. Dashed a Bloomington last night. Oh, did you? Exercise is pretty magical in my life. I don't enjoy it. I don't relish the thought of going for a run, but it is very helpful because I can't think. I do feel lucky to have some distance from it sometimes. John Green lives in Indianapolis, where his life comes short on stress, long on anonymity.

It is very funny. He and his wife, Sarah Urist Green, a curator and online art educator, are parents of a son age eight and daughter five. Sarah began reading his manuscripts when they started dating 14 years ago. And I was really nervous because I really liked John, and I knew that if the book was bad, it wasn't going to work. The relationship wasn't going to work. The relationship wasn't going to work. Not the book wasn't going to work. No, no, no. The book might have worked or not, but I couldn't be dishonest about that. And if I didn't like it, sorry.

I mean, I'm super glad I didn't know that at the time. I don't think I'm going to handle that pressure. Unfiltered criticism. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. John, do you remember when you told Sarah about your OCD? I don't know that it was an event so much as it was a process. And part of getting to know me was understanding that I had problems with anxiety.

There was never a moment where John kind of sat me down and said, I have OCD. It was more of a gradual process where we were able to kind of put this label on it. And so I can't say that I would ever wish it to go away because it's a part of him. I'd like it to go away, for the record. So much so that in 2015, fresh off the spectacular success of The Fault in Our Stars, Green decided to take a chance and go off the anti-anxiety medication he had been taking for years. Why did you do that? Well, because I bought into this old romantic lie that in order to write well,

you need to sort of, like, be free from all of these mind-altering substances or whatever. And the consequences were really dire, unfortunately. And I'm lucky that they weren't catastrophic, but they were serious. And coming out of that experience, I found myself wanting to try to give some sort of form or structure to this fear that I'd lived with for most of my life. Hello, and welcome to the annual Nerdfighter gathering. These John Green fans call themselves Nerdfighters,

part of a community that now includes hundreds of thousands of members around the world. The Nerdfighters formed in response to Green misreading the name of this video game, Arrowfighters. This game seems to be called Nerdfighters. That's my favorite kind of fighters. What's a Nerdfighter? A Nerdfighter is a person who fights for nerds. Not against nerds. No.

They're empowered nerds. Yeah, obviously we're pro-nerd. Really what it's about is being enthusiastic. Being nerdy is really about how you approach what you love. Unabashedly. Yeah. All five of you, proud, unapologetic nerds. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. We take the name of pride. We, unapologetic nerds. Oh, yeah. We take the name of pride. We met these nerd fighters last June. They were attending the ninth annual VidCon, a YouTube conference John and Hank Green created to help online video fans and creators meet in person. These five told us they were especially grateful to John Green for writing about his anxiety in Turtles All the Way Down. It's reassuring, for sure.

For someone who does experience anxiety, he articulates things I could never articulate before, which both makes me feel seen, but also helps me understand and feel better from different things. Yeah, there's this metaphor of a spiral in the book. That was one of the most useful things I've ever come across in describing my own anxiety, and we use it in the house all the time. And being around this community of people that was so loving really made me grow to be a better person than I would have without it. I am a homeschooled child. This was her, Presley Alexander, when she was just seven years old and she first came into the John Green orbit. And you are my favorite teachers.

Not by reading one of his books, but by watching him on Crash Course. Hi there, my name is John Green. This is Crash Course World History. The educational YouTube series that he started with his brother Hank in their manic signature style. Writing and the ability to read it are so-called markers of civilization. I mean, I don't want to get all liberal artsy on you, but I do want to... The videos offer lessons in the humanities and sciences. Our nervous system is divided into two main networks that work in harmony. The central nervous system...

With more than 8 million subscribers, they're now offered as part of the curriculum in classrooms around the country. On account of its popularity across platforms, Green cuts a figure that he never would have imagined when he was a teenager, something akin to a rock star. I want to know what your high school self would have thought if they saw you now. My high school self would be very, very happy and excited. I'm embarrassed to admit. I wish that weren't the case.

That's a great way to put it. I agree completely. Hi. The Green brothers are exceptionally supportive of each other. I've got a costume change ready. Especially when it comes to John's OCD, described so vividly in his latest book. Turtles all the way down. What was it like for you to read that? It did help me understand John better,

but in general be more empathetic toward people who deal with anxiety and OCD. What did you learn about him? The extent to which sometimes he is at the mercy of his own mind. But did it cause you to re-examine or reassess moments in your childhood? Yeah, I mean, there have definitely been times in, you know, when John had a less stable life where I think, like, the family was worried about him. With good reason. Hello! Hi, everybody! Lately, there's a lot less to worry about. How are you? With his multimedia, multi-million dollar empire, John Green is using his pen, his keyboard, and his video camera to normalize teenage social awkwardness and also to destigmatize mental illness.

You've said that it's important for young people to be able to see successful, productive adults challenged by mental illness. Yeah. Expand on that. Well, I have challenged by mental illness. Yeah. Expand on that. Well, I have a really wonderful life. I have a really rich, fulfilling life. I also have a pretty serious chronic mental health problem. And those aren't mutually exclusive.

And the truth is that lots of people have chronic mental health problems and still have good lives. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Today, when chefs can be as famous as movie stars and their creations in the kitchen as admired as original works of art, there are few who rival the success and celebrity of Massimo Bottura. His restaurant, Osteria Francescana, has three Michelin stars and ranks number one on this year's list of the world's 50 best restaurants. It's located in northern Italy, in a city called Modena, where the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti was born. When we went to Modena to meet Chef Batura, we were struck by how operatic he is. Imagine, imagine, imagine, dream. You have to dream about food, okay?

Do you dream about food? I always dream about food. I always dream. We first met Massimo Bottura shopping for food in Modena, the home of Italy's finest balsamic vinegar and Parmesan cheese. He buys the freshest vegetables, like green tomatoes, that he likes to top off with 25-year-old balsamic vinegar. Are you ready? I can't wait.

Okay. It's an experience that is going to stay with you for the rest of your life. I'm telling you. This is a huge moment. It's a huge moment for you. The whole thing, just like that? Yeah, just one bite. Okay. huge moment for you the whole thing just like that just one bite and close your

eyes connect your mental palate and understand that your perception your receptor are talking to you right now there are so many different things going on in my mind it is it is it is. And that's his signature as a chef. And what's he making? He's making risotto, toasting rice with orange juice. Dishes that are complex mixtures of unexpected flavors. Two people, two super menus, don't go! Don't go! In his kitchen at Osteria Francescana, he oversees a staff of 35

as they build his beautiful avant-garde masterpieces that he says are inspired by contemporary art. His creations are like canvases, and he christens them. He calls this camouflage made of wild hair, juniper berries, and cocoa powder. Oh, that's spectacular. Some of his dishes are beautiful. Some are whimsical. And then there's his version of popular Italian cuisine.

That's chicken cacciatore. This is chicken cacciatore. Oh, my God. You wouldn't recognize most of his Italian dishes. This is the crunchy part of lasagna. Spaghetti with tomato. Spaghetti with parmigiano. Spaghetti with fresh herbs.

Battura is one of the most successful chefs in the so-called deconstruction school, where food is presented like abstract art. What do you call this dish? In three parts. I don't know. His culinary creations are rooted in the traditions of northern Italy and his hometown, Modena, an ancient city of narrow streets and grand piazzas

where they've been making Parmesan cheese and balsamic vinegar the same way for centuries. It's where Battora's love of food began when he was just a little boy hiding under the kitchen table. I remember my grandmother was rolling pasta. In the meantime, what I was doing, I was stealing the tortellini from under the table and eat the raw tortellini. That's how you were beginning to develop your palate, was for raw tortellini from from under the table and eat the raw tortellini that's how you were beginning to develop your palate was from raw tortellini yeah from a raw tortellini you can understand a lot you can understand the amount of spices they use the amount of parmigiano the amount of ham you know those kind of things even as a? Balance. How old are you at that point?

You're a kid. Yeah, like seven, six. And you're falling in love with food. In that moment, exactly. He started cooking for his friends when he was in high school. But his father wanted him to become a lawyer in the family's lucrative fuel business. I have to show my dad he was wrong because he tried to convince me not to get into that business.

Being a chef. Yeah. He didn't respect that as a serious profession. No, no, no. No, no, no. He didn't. No more money from daddy. Nope.

That was it. No, no, that was it. Cut you off. And you're saying to yourself, I have he didn't. No more money from daddy. Nope. That was it. No, no, that was it. Cut you off. And you're saying to yourself, I have to show you. I don't want to say it. Revenge is a very strong word. It's more like... Show that you were right.

Show that I was right. But he wasn't right right away. When he and his American wife, Laura Gilmore, opened Osteria Francescana in 1995, amidst all that tradition in Modena, they were offering Batura's minimalist rendition of a bowl of tortellini, just six little pieces of pasta. Six little, tiny, and that was it. That's the biggest provocation of all.

A tortellini is something, it's comfort food for modernies. It's like a religion. If you don't believe in God, you believe in tortellini. But you don't want six. You want a nice, big, abundant bowl of tortellini with the hot broth. And he was serving this sort of room temperature broth gel, and the tortellini were there. And there were six of them, and the modernists were like putting their hands like, what did I come here for? Why am I here?

Food critics ask themselves the same question. A very important modernist food critic came and ate. The modernist food critic. The modernist food critic came and ate at our restaurant. Of course, the review was terrible. The review was like, please don't go there. Don't go there. And hardly anyone did.

His food was seen as a sacrilege in a country that reveres mothers and their home cooking. Did you ever say to yourself, okay, I'm going right back to the old Italian cooking. I can do it. I know how to do it. Never. No, you can't do that. But after six years of bad reviews and empty tables, he gave in and introduced a handful of traditional Italian dishes, including an old-fashioned tagliatelle.

And then a prominent national food critic happened by, ordered the tagliatelle and then a prominent national food critic happened by ordered the tagliatelle and wrote but these are the best tagliatelle in the world he said that yes so that turned everything around totally you are known as the maestro yeah now before they want to crucify me in the main piazza now they call me maestro. That's the difference. Some of the maestro's dishes are improvisations born out of accidents, like his, oops, I dropped the lemon tart. That's a classic. The story begins when his pastry chef, Taka, was making a lemon tart.

I saw Taka completely white. He dropped one of the two tarts in the plate, upside down, just like that. Oh, God. Taka was like ready to kill himself. And I said, Taka! Taka, no. Please don't. Don't kill yourself.

Don't, don't. Look at that. That lemon tart is so beautiful that we have to serve the second one exactly the first one. We did it. We rebuilt in a perfect way the imperfection. We smashed the other tart exactly as the first one. I can't believe we did that. If I think now, I was like, we were crazy. I was like, totally out of mind. Fantastic.

Oops, I dropped the lemon tart. It's Jackson Pollock on a plate. And it's one of the most popular dishes on a tasting menu of 12 courses that with wine can cost more than $500 a person. They serve lunch and dinner five days a week, and it's always booked. Reservations open three months in advance and fill up in minutes. Are you prepared for the best salad of your life? He invited us to sample some of his other signature dishes in his well-stocked wine cellar.

Caesar salad in bloom. Those are flowers? All flowers, edible flowers. All edible flowers. But there are 27 elements in that dish. It takes two chefs to build a salad leaf by leaf, petal by petal. And for this dish, it takes a splash of seawater. This is seawater transformed into paper.

You make paper out of seawater? Yes. It may not look like it, but this is Bottura's Filet of Soul, topped off with wisps of dehydrated seawater. He calls it Mediterranean combustion. How am I ever going to eat normal food again, ever? But you feel how light you feel? Very light. Yeah, but totally delicious. How long did it take you to create this one dish? Was it months? 32 years. 32 years of experience. Now 56, after all his hard work, Bottura is riding high, sometimes on his customized

Ducati motorcycle. But a few years ago, he began to feel something was missing in his life, that serving fancy food to international foodies wasn't enough. So like other celebrity chefs, he began to think about helping the poor by feeding them. This is late 2013. We had just sort of one year into having our third Michelin star that we had worked 20 years to get. And I'm thinking, now you want to start doing this? I thought it was a terrible idea. But she relented and helped him open a number of what he calls refatorios, kind of souped-up soup kitchens.

But he didn't want them to feel like down-and-out, stand-in-line cafeterias. So partnering with local charities, he created warm, inviting dining rooms in old abandoned theaters or unused space in churches where the working poor and homeless Italians and refugees from Africa sit side by side with volunteers who serve them three-course meals like in high-quality restaurants. The food donated by local grocery stores would have been thrown out because it's slightly damaged or near its sell-by date. We are Italian, so we're going to make pasta. He's opened six refatorios so far, in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and three in Italy, with more to come.

Where did that inspiration come from? The numbers are mad numbers 33% of the world production are wasted every year 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted every year you know think about 1 trillion of apples goes in the garbage. Think about how many, you know, apple pie you could create with those, with trillions of, you know. That's insane. The man who has for decades insisted on the oldest balsamic, the finest parmesan, the freshest tomatoes, now realizes their salvation in discarded leftovers. If cooked well, they can nourish

the poor, as he says, by filling their stomachs and lifting their spirits. Massimo Bottura, number one. And his as well. It's absolutely necessary to give back some of the lucky life you're living. So this is about giving back. It's what we need. We need dreams. If you don't dream and you don't dream big, you know, you cannot change the world. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives

that led us here, and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.