60 Minutes - 12/12/2021: Negotiating With the Taliban, Let There Be Light, An Island Off an Island

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

On this week's "60 Minutes," Sharyn Alfonsi reports from Afghanistan where one of the worst humanitarian crisis' is happening. Scott Pelley tells us about the 10-billion dollar Webb Telescope, that NASA hopes will reveal the mysteries of the universe. Finally, Jon Wertheim travels to Fogo Island, where visitors feel like they have stepped into the 18th century. 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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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. 60 Minutes has just returned from a trip to Afghanistan, its capital and remote provinces. There are obvious examples of the new Taliban control everywhere and signs of a country in crisis. But we were surprised to hear from aid workers that they're in regular negotiation with the Taliban as they try to help the most vulnerable Afghans.

When you say you have to reach out to the Taliban and talk to them, how does that work as a woman? NASA is preparing, at a cost of $10 billion, to look back in time with the revolutionary Webb telescope. What might it see? How about nearly all the way back to the Big Bang? Everything we know about, everything we can see, me and you, everything on the planet, all the hundreds of billions of other galaxies, all of that only makes up about 5% of the universe.

The rest of it, that other 95%, we have no idea what it is. The saying here goes, you'll know the Newfoundlanders in heaven. They'll be the ones who want to go home. And the adage comes to life on Fogo Island, a 90-square-mile patchwork of 10 minuscule fishing villages where clapboard houses the color of jelly beans cling to rock 400 million years old. Among its quirks, Newfoundland has its own time zone, half an hour ahead of the mainland. But wander through Fogo Island's villages and you might as well set your watch back to the 18th century. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. When the U.S. pulled up stakes in Afghanistan this past August, the Biden administration didn't expect the Taliban to seize control of the country so quickly. 20 years of nation-building and an Afghan military crumbled within days. To contain the Taliban's power, the international community acted quickly,

freezing Afghan assets, shutting down foreign aid, and extending sanctions. Now, the country is facing mass starvation and economic collapse. We went to Afghanistan, reported from its provinces and capital, and had a rare conversation with a Taliban minister. We also met with humanitarian groups who've been left to pick up the pieces while negotiating with the Taliban. As our team arrived into the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, we weren't sure what we'd find. It was just four months ago that the world watched as scenes of unforgettable desperation and chaos flayed out here after the Taliban seized control. The lucky escaped. But for the 38 million Afghans that remain, the anguish continues.

Right away, we saw their new reality. Armed Taliban forces are everywhere. We noticed many of them have abandoned their traditional turbans. now wear the uniforms and gear that Western forces left behind. We see women and children dodging traffic to beg for cash, and men waiting in long lines for free food. I've been with WFP for a long time, 20 plus years, and I've never seen a crisis unfold and escalate at the pace and scale that we are seeing. Mary Ellen McGruarty is the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Afghanistan. From its warehouse in Kabul, she's overseen the delivery of over 117 tons of food to nearly 9 million Afghans since August.

She explained to us why the country is now facing mass starvation. 72% of the population were already living below the poverty line before August, before the fall of the government. And now, what is the need like? Now it's just staggering. You know, we have 22.8 million people in what we call severe food insecurity. That's more than half the country right now. That is more than half the country. People don't have jobs. They can't access cash. You know, food prices are going up. The currency is depreciating.

So for us, we're now really in a race against time. Ravaged by war, drought, COVID, and the economic crash that followed the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan is on the verge of collapse. According to UNICEF, one million children in Afghanistan are now at risk of dying of starvation. Inside the children's hospital in Kabul, the beds were full and rooms quiet. This mother told us her five-month-old daughter was starving. She weighs just seven pounds. Doctors say all of the children in this room are suffering from malnutrition. They can't offer them medicine because they've run out. They can't offer them food because even the hospital doesn't have any.

None of the staff here has been paid in four months. The hospital had been supported by international aid that was cut off when the Taliban took over. Thirty years ago, the Taliban first rose to power, after a 10-year war with the Soviets and a collapse of the country's communist regime. Islamic extremists, they ruled with an iron fist, banishing women from the workplace, schools, and public life, executing those who didn't follow their strict laws. Today, there are women on the streets, but not many.

When the Taliban marched into Kabul, they urged women to stay home until they taught their fighters, quote, how to deal with them. Which makes what Mary Ellen McGorchie is doing even more surprising. She's been personally negotiating with the Taliban so her drivers can deliver food to the needy. When you say you have to reach out to the Taliban and talk to them, how does that work as a woman? Being a woman in Afghanistan at the moment is, yeah, it's challenging. But I think they realize I'm the head of a UN organization, so they do have to meet with me, and that's the way it is.

And for the person sitting at home who says, well, how could they be engaging with the Taliban? They're an extremist group. How do you answer that? With humanitarian work, you know, the humanity comes first and being able to save lives come first. We remain impartial with a clear focus

on the humanitarian imperative. McGruarty told us humanitarian groups have worked with the Taliban for much of the last decade. They had to, because even when there was a democratically elected government sitting in Kabul, the Taliban controlled 60 to 70 percent of the country. Manuel Fontaine, a director for UNICEF, first came to Afghanistan after 9-11. He explained how their relationship with the Taliban has evolved over the years. Has the Taliban said to you, we want you here, we need

you here, help us? Yes, absolutely, from the beginning. And we've said from the beginning that we would be uncompromising when it comes to girls' education, when it comes to making sure that women can work. Since August 15th, have they been more or less receptive to what you have to say and what other NGOs have to say? They are receptive now in the sense that they realize that with power comes the responsibility to do something for the population of Afghanistan. They realize they have that responsibility, and in that sense they're willing to have those discussions.

Because of those discussions, UNICEF is now able to access communities previously off-limits. We traveled with them and their government-mandated Taliban escorts to one of those places. So we are in Mordak province, which is about two hours from Kabul. And the reason that this road is so bumpy is because there were so many IEDs here. This was a Taliban stronghold for about a decade. So groups like the U.N. would never have dreamed of coming out here. It was the first time UNICEF had been to this rural area in 12 years. What's the theory about... And the first time they were able to lay eyes

on one of the results of their negotiations with the Taliban. It's a little such a... This community-based school for girls. Mr. Dimash? Hi, Mr. For how many of you girls is this your first year at school? Raise your hand. The four of us, they lost all of us. Wow! For how many of you girls is this your first year at school? Raise your hand.

Wow! The youngest girl here is six, the oldest 12. Many of them told us they hope to be doctors. The school, and 4,500 like them, operate with the Taliban's blessing. How did that happen? You know, this was a province that was controlled by the Taliban for a decade. How do you get to them and say, we want to have a school here? Talking to them, explaining the difference it makes. The discussions we're having with Taliban

don't start from scratch. That confidence that was built over the years in the areas they controlled, you know, that trust is starting to build. What we saw in that school was heartwarming. But we know there are a million girls in high school who are not going to school. We know that there are no women being allowed really to attend college in any way. Are you making any grounds in that area? We are making some grounds, but not enough. That's obvious. What we hear from Taliban is they want to do that in a way that is keeping with the culture of the country.

And so we need to find a way to do that. This country needs everybody's strength. After months of negotiations, we were granted access to meet Dr. Kalander Abad, the newly appointed health minister of the Taliban. A 41-year-old physician, he was educated in Pakistan. We were a little uneasy when he invited us to eat with him and other Taliban leaders in the basement of one of their buildings. He agreed to speak to us about the health crisis facing the country, but he told us he didn't want to discuss politics. Taliban gunmen kept watch over the interview.

Some of the humanitarian workers we spoke to said that the country is on the verge of its worst humanitarian crisis ever. Do you believe that to be true? We are on the edge of this crisis. Everyone knows that the funds are freezed by the international community. I think they can unfreeze the funds for the health sector of Afghanistan. It is very important and it is the need of the time. The international community has spoken pretty clearly and said they're not going to unfreeze funds unless there's a guarantee that all girls will be educated in Afghanistan. Is the Taliban willing to consider any kind of

movement in that area? I think it's a political issue. Education is a separate chapter and a department, and health is a different department. What I hear you saying is you want to keep health separate from the idea of education. Yeah, why they are mixing the two different topics? Well, because I think the idea that, you know, educating women is good for the health of the country. Yes, there's no doubt. But the minister would not go further on concessions for girls' high school and university education. Nine days ago, the Taliban issued a decree

banning both forced marriage and treating women as property. But there was no mention of allowing women to work outside the home. Soon after, the World Bank released $280 million in aid for Afghanistan, a small portion of the $1.5 billion frozen by the World Bank. Vicki Aiken has led the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee in Afghanistan for four years. We need to figure out a system for continuing to support just basic services like education and health care. I mean, the previous government, 75% of their budget was funded by development donors. 75% of the government budget was funded by donations.

Yeah. And so health care, education have dried up. Yeah, and there's still no clear way forward. Her staff of 1,200, mostly locals, interview families in the neediest neighborhoods. That's how they found Myra. 19 years old, she fled eastern Afghanistan three months ago with her two children. What kind of challenges have you faced? I faced a lot of problems.

I couldn't support my children to buy something like food or clothes. The International Rescue Committee gave her about $400 to get blankets and food for winter. But they are fearful their funds could run out. If the aid wasn't here, what would that mean to your family if there wasn't this help? I wouldn't be able to support my family or children. I'm really thankful for them. What does $400 mean to a family in this moment?

It means everything in this moment. We see a lot of cases where people might send their children off to work, including as young as five or six. You know, they might sell their daughters into marriage. And I know it sounds horrendous, but when you have a family of, say, eight people, and you have no means to feed everyone, and they see that as their only option. Humanitarian leaders say without swift action, more people in Afghanistan could die of hunger next year than from the violence of the past 20 years of war. If you look at what the effect of sanctions have been,

they're really hurting the people of Afghanistan more than they're hurting anyone in the Taliban. The Talibans have had sanctions on them for quite some time, and they've always managed to survive those sanctions. But now they have to run a government. I think a lot of people will say, well, we don't want to see aid go to Afghanistan because we don't want to give money to the Taliban. That's an extremist group.

So you want to make 38 million people suffer because of a few thousand? That math doesn't work for me. chart-topping, history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck.

Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. This December 22nd may become known as the day the universe changed. That Wednesday, NASA expects to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most expensive instrument ever flown. 100 times more powerful than the 31-year-old Hubble telescope, Webb can see back in time all the way to the let-there-be-light moment — that instant when a cold, dark universe ignited into stars. Wow.

Well, somehow that's a lot bigger than I imagined. She's a lot bigger than I imagined. She's a vegan. A year ago, we were among the last humans to see the telescope, much as it will appear in space. After our visit, it was packed away for a journey of a million miles, far beyond the moon, to lie forever in the grasp of the sun. The operating life is how long? It's designed for five and a half years with a goal of the sun. The operating life is how long? It's designed for five and a half years with a goal of 10 years. So that means we carry enough stuff on there to last for 10 years. Amy Lowe

is a systems engineer who took us up in the clean room at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. We had to invent it, design it, build it, and hand put it together. At the bottom of the spacecraft, that silver shroud, is a parasol, big as a tennis court, to shield Webb from the sun. Above, there are 21 feet of gold-plated mirrors, six times bigger than Hubble's mirror, to catch the earliest starlight in creation. There are 18 of these hexagonal mirrors, but when you fold them out, they all work in concert as one mirror. That's right. All 18 images will form one very nice, solid image. That image would be invisible to the human eye.

Like a night vision camera, Webb is designed to see heat, infrared light, because that's the only signature left from the stars at the edge of time. Even that glow will be so dim, the mirrors will have to squint for hours to expose an image. How much confidence do you have? Um, you know, my job is to worry. I personally feel confident that we have thought of everything. Thinking of everything took more than 25 years and 10 billion dollars. Engineer Amy Lowe explained the challenge. In my mind, the biggest engineering challenge was to build a sun shield capable of shielding the optics, the mirrors, and the instrument on Webb. How do you build something big but lightweight? The sunshield keeps Webb cold and dark.

Any infrared heat from the sun or Earth would blind the telescope. The five layers are made of gossamer sheets not unlike mylar birthday balloons. The layer facing the sun is layer one, and layer one reaches about 230 degrees Fahrenheit. So a pretty warm oven, like if you wanted to cook a meringue or something. And on the telescope side? On the telescope side, it gets to negative 370 degrees Fahrenheit. There's a roughly 600 degree difference. There is.

Between one side of the heat shield and the other. Yes. It's amazing that it's able to do this with nothing more than these layers. The engineering is amazing, but the science may reveal the universe. Since the beginning, the Big Bang, the arrow of time has flown nearly 14 billion years. Webb may see all the way back to the first 100 million, the baby universe. Powerful telescopes. Amber Strawn is an astrophysicist on the project. Telescopes really are time machines. They literally allow us to see into the past. And the reason for that is just due to the nature of how light travels. Light from the sun takes about eight minutes to get to the Earth.

So we're seeing the sun as it was eight minutes ago. And you can sort of think about stepping that further out into the universe. So when we walk out under the stars and look above us, we're not seeing the stars as they are today. We're seeing them as they were perhaps millions of years ago. Absolutely. Because it took that long for the light to reach the earth. Yes, for sure. How much do we know about the universe? Everything we know about, everything we can see, me and you, everything on the planet, all the hundreds of billions of other galaxies, all of that only makes up about five percent

of the universe. The rest of it, that other 95%, we have no idea what it is. That 95%, the unknown, is all around us like a ghost. Nearly all the cosmos is made up of what physicists call, in desperation, dark matter and dark energy. Never seen, scientists infer they must exist because they're the best explanation for how galaxies form and move. So we know that dark matter is sort of the scaffolding of the universe. It's the structure on which galaxies sit. And if there wasn't dark matter, there wouldn't be galaxies and there wouldn't be us. What might the Webb Telescope reveal about dark matter? It's like we have this 14 billion year old story

of the universe, but we're missing that first chapter. And Webb was specifically designed to allow us to see those very first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. Now, galaxies are born and then they evolve, they change over time. And this way that galaxies change must rely critically on dark matter. And Webb is going to allow us to observe that process of galaxy evolution in much more detail. The promise of discovery shielded Webb on what's already been a treacherous journey.

It was to launch seven years ago, but delays come with a machine this ambitious. Because of cost overruns, Webb was canceled in 2011 by the House Appropriations Committee, but it was saved in the Senate. Its namesake is James Webb, head of NASA in the 1960s, who made science a top priority. What are the stakes? What's riding on that rocket with Webb? When you talk about what's at stake, it really is NASA's reputation to take on a mission that is as challenging as Webb and be successful. Bill Oakes and Greg Robinson run the program.

Oakes was an engineer on Hubble. Robinson has supervised NASA quality and performance. If you want to be bold and get the kind of science we're after, you have to make the investment. And it's going to answer two big questions for astrophysics. Where do we come from and are we alone? And we're looking forward to getting those results. Is Webb going to work? Yes, it's going to work. I have very high confidence. I am 100% confident. Why 100% confident? Because when I look at the testing that we have done over the years and the type of engineering that went into it, you build a sense of confidence that you know it's going to work. What are you most concerned about? Unfolding the entire telescope is what you worry about.

The observatory had to be folded into an Ariane 5 rocket just 16 feet wide. It's wrapped today tight as a rosebud. In flight, more than 40 systems must blossom with perfection, including Amy Lowe's never-invented-before Sunshield. All five layers will be folded up and held in place by pins. How many pins are there? There's 107 of these membrane release devices and pins that hold all five layers pinned to this structure here called the UPS.

All total, 107. And as you're unfolding, how many of those can fail? None. None? None. Not one? Not one. There is literally no room for error.

We test and we do a lot of analysis to ensure that each and every single one of these will release on orbit. Ten billion dollars rides on those pens. The Hubble telescope, 340 miles up, could be reached with a wrench. Webb, at a million miles, is beyond repair. Bill Oakes told us that if something does get stuck, there is an emergency plan. We've developed algorithms to essentially, maybe we call it the shimmy. We do a little shake on a telescope and we can rock it back and forth. If that doesn't work, we have another one we call the twirl,

which can actually spin the telescope either clockwise or counterclockwise to help shake things loose. So you're going to do what I do with devices when they're not working, you're going to shake it. Yeah, yeah, can I do the same thing? Yes. If 107 pins release, the mirrors synchronize, and 10,000 things go right, Webb will be limited only by about 10 years of fuel for pivoting and pointing. Canada contributed the aiming system

that will guide Webb to wonders far and near. More than 1,000 astronomers around the world are competing for telescope time. Heidi Hamel was granted 100 hours. I have so many questions. My particular focus is objects in our solar system. Hamill told us that light is full of information. Webb can define the chemistry of a place by analyzing its wavelengths of light.

What is the atmospheric water content of Mars, and how does it change with time? What drives the chemistry in the upper atmosphere of Neptune? Can we see if there's water coming out of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn? There are just an infinite number of questions I want to answer. Astrophysicist Natalie Battaglia also has time on Webb. She'll be looking at planets beyond our solar system. On average, every star in the galaxy has at least one planet. That means that there are more planets in the galaxy than there are stars. Hundreds of billions of planets.

And with that many planets, Battaglia is sure Webb could find some with the chemistry and conditions of life. There happens to be one planetary system, the star has seven planets orbiting it, and the star is only about 40 light years away. So it's a great target to study, and it has three Earth-sized planets orbiting in what I would call the Goldilocks zone, where life could potentially exist. Not too hot, not too cold. That's the idea, yes. And so this is also one of the very first targets that we're going to observe with Webb. And what we'll be able to see is, is there carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere? What are the greenhouse gases? Is there carbon dioxide in combination with methane? Because that's what Earth has. So by looking at these chemical constituents, we might be able to piece together if it's not just a planet in what we call the habitable zone, but if it's truly a habitable environment. And somebody might ask, why does it matter? The end point is to put an end to our cosmic loneliness. We want to know if there's life out there. From a researcher's perspective, is Webb evolutionary or revolutionary? Every time you put a new piece of technology into space or you look at the universe with different eyes, you learn something revolutionary, something that you couldn't have even predicted. I don't know what those surprises are going to be,

but the technology is revolutionary, and there will be tremendous surprises that will astound us. Webb is on the doorstep aboard a European space agency rocket. Some, including Amy Lowe, may hold their breath as it unfolds itself on the month-long journey to its station around the sun. The first images, in six months or so, will be converted from invisible infrared into pictures suitable for headlines. Chances are what we see, we will not understand. The very definition of wonder. A remote jewel of land off the coast of Canada, Fogo Island floats in the northeast corner of the northeast province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the outstretched right fingertip of this continent. The place might be drop-dead gorgeous, but it wasn't immune to the fate

befalling so many small and isolated communities in North America. Its one and only industry went into steep decline, and so in turn did its population. Then, about a decade ago, a local returned home, fresh off making a fortune in the tech sector. Her pockets were deep. So was her desire to lift up the place and bring people back. So she unleashed a sort of economic experiment. We took two planes, a long drive, and a ferry to reach Fogo Island and check on the early results. The saying here goes, you'll know the Newfoundlanders in heaven. They'll be the ones who want to go home.

And the adage comes to life on Fogo Island, a 90-square-mile patchwork of 10 minuscule fishing villages where clapboard houses the color of jelly beans cling to rock 400 million years old. Among its quirks, Newfoundland has its own time zone, half an hour ahead of the mainland. But wander through Fogo Island's villages and you might as well set your watch back to the 18th century. Back then, all you needed to get by here was a pig, a potato patch, and something called a punt, a small wooden fishing boat used in pursuit of North Atlantic cod, the species that once kept this place afloat. Seemingly every

structure on the island was built in service of catching and preserving fish, with one gleaming exception, a 40 million dollar luxury inn. Part edge-of-the-earth destination, part economic engine on stilts, the inn is the brainchild of eighth-generation Fogo Islander Zita Cobb. And locals gave her a funny look when she first floated the idea. What kind of reaction did that get? Why would anyone come here? We love this place, but it wasn't obvious when, you know, there are fancy places in the world that people go. Our assumption is everybody wants to go where it's warm. Someone suggested to us it looked like a ship. The architecture of the inn was obviously

a topic of much conversation. I think about it as a metaphor. It's about people from here and people from away. It's about the future and the past. The past looms large on Fogo Island. To fully appreciate the inn, even as a metaphor, you have to understand Fogo's history. Just something. Zita Cobb took us through dozens of tiny islands that dot Fogo's waters to a place called Little Fogo Island. And for those keeping track, that's an island off an island off an island. This is a slip. Her ancestors landed here from Ireland and South England. They came for one reason.

Fish, fish and fish. When you say fish, is it just a given? It's a given. So yes, when we say fish, we mean cod. Is it possible to exaggerate the importance of cod to this place? No, it's not possible, because everything that you need to know about someone from here, you can figure it out by just studying that lowly fish. It's actually quite a noble fish. A noble fish?

It asks very little and gives so much. They exist on almost anything. I mean, I think a cod could eat a rubber boot if it had to. Not unlike the noble fish, Zita Cobb's family survived without fuss. In cod they trusted. Families worked side by side here, trading their fish for goods. No bank accounts, no cash. Cobb's parents could neither read nor write.

She and her six brothers grew up in a house with no electricity. She says it was a happy childhood, until it wasn't. What happened? The worst of the 20th century came down on top of us very quickly in the form of the industrialization of the fisheries. So these enormous factory ships showed up here all along the coast of Newfoundland and fished day and night until just about every last fish was gone.

With one small punt launched from this one dock, Cobb's father couldn't compete with commercial vessels that had come to the North Atlantic from all over the world. How bad did things get for him? He would go out and come back with nothing. But one day in particular, he came back with one fish. And he brought the fish into the house and he slapped it down onto the kitchen floor and said, well, it's done. And it was the

next day he burned his boat. He burned his boat? He burned his boat. It's almost like a sacrifice. It was. He did it as a statement. He did it as an expression of pain and anger. Lambert Cobb made this sacrifice once he realized that those big boats were, in his words, turning fish into money. He said to me, as a 10-year-old, you have got to figure out how this money thing works, because if you don't, it's going to eat everything we love. He wasn't wrong. As fish stocks dwindled, so did the island's population, from 5,000 to 2,500.

The Cobbs left grudgingly for the mainland in the 1970s. Zita Cobb's father died shortly thereafter, but she heeded his advice. She got a business degree, worked in fiber optics, landed in Silicon Valley, and before long was the third highest paid

female executive in America. In her early 40s, she cashed out tens of millions in stock options, dropped out of the winner-take-all economy, and took her business savvy home, determined to revitalize Fogo Island. Instead of writing a check, she posed a question. What do we have, and what do we know, and how can we put that forward in a way that's dignified for Fogo Islanders and creates economy and connects us to the world? Spend one night at what the locals call a shed party, and the answer emerges. When you think about the people of this place, if there's one thing we're really good at, it's hospitality. What does hospitality mean here? Hospitality in its purest form is the love of a stranger. We didn't get a lot of strangers,

and when they arrived, as my mother used to say, it's always better to see a light coming into the harbor than a light going out. So in 2013, Cobb built the biggest beacon in the harbor. She made the Fogo Island Inn the centerpiece of a charitable trust called Shorefast, with profits reinvested in the island. At $2,000 a night, the inn does turn a profit. But there were other considerations. We're going to put a 29-room inn on an island that's never had an inn. What are the consequences of that? Well, more people will come.

Well, how many more people? As one woman said, well, you know, we're only 2,500 people. We can only love so many people at a time. Shorefast and the inn employ more than 300 islanders. But the real payoff is the ripple effect. For starters, all the furniture at the inn is locally made. Same for the pillows and quilts. It so happens the women of Fogo Island have been making them for their own homes for 400 years.

We're getting there. We got half done. Word is out now, this quilt is destined for a customer in Baltimore. We joined the quilting bee, but didn't last long. It was all very nice except for this one square. This is our lettuce room. Shorefast puts up seed money for new businesses too, a quarter of a million dollars so far. And then you put your plant in.

A $7,500 microloan went to Dwight Budden and his father Hayward, a former fisher who left Fogo Island when the industry collapsed. He's back now as a hydroponic farmer, growing greens for the inn. There's our kale. Does Hayward eat kale? Not too much. Beyond the kale, new culture is taking root.

Futuristic-looking studios now speckle the landscape, part of Shorefast's ambition to bring artists in residence to Fogo. And back at the inn, a chef turns cod into haute cuisine. If your dad saw cod with magnolia oil and seafoam... And porcini. And porcini, what would he say? Yes, first thing he'd say is, can you really eat that? You can do more than eat cod.

You can fish for it again. Now that a decades-long ban has been eased, Fogo Island's fishers are backhauling cod. We ventured out of Fogo Harbor with brothers Glenn and Jerry Best. I ain't got no better fish than that. The fifth generation of their family to harvest these waters. You go east, your next stop is Ireland. Ireland. We're not going there today. Man, overhand like that, right? The Best Brothers showed us the traditional Newfoundland way of fishing with a hand line. 150 feet down,

no rods, reels, or nets. Now we're talking. That's a beauty. Up comes cod without much of a fight. Now that's a nice cod. That's probably a 20-pound fish. Cod is making a comeback in the North Atlantic. Canada still imposes catch limits. But when the best get down to business, they use an automated system to drop thousands of hooks in the water at a time. We watch them offload 20,000 pounds of cod from a single trip.

What's more, shellfish has done the unthinkable and dethroned cod as king. Crab and shrimp now make up 80% of Glenn Best's business, and he's never had a better year. You told me you caught 400,000 pounds of snow crab. At 760 a pound is 3 million bucks. That's pretty good. Yeah, it was a good year. But a thriving fishery isn't always enough to keep the kids around. Best three children have moved away from FOGO to pursue other careers.

Your family's been doing this for generations. You named this boat after your dad. So the sad part about it is that Jerry and myself, we probably could be the last generation that will fish within our family. When the day comes that that happens, that will probably be a sad day. Still, Fogo Island's population has stabilized. There's hope the next census will show an uptick. Babies are the island's

biggest celebrities. But as ever, with growth come growing pains. It's already become one of those islands where you have to pray to get a spot on the ferry. Jennifer Sexton spent summers on Fogo Island visiting her grandparents. She recently moved here from Western Canada to open this coffee joint, where locals mix with those who come from away. Everybody asks about the inn. What do you tell them? Well, it's a blessing and a curse.

Her regulars grumble that not long ago, they could get a home for $25,000. Canadian. Now, homes cost 10 times as much. For somebody from away, that wouldn't be a lot. But for somebody from here, that is a lot of money. Zita Cobb, the woman who turned this tide, says she doesn't want unchecked growth either. As the economy grows, we will be smaller as a percentage of the whole economy. A rare business leader that wants less market share. We want less market share, exactly.

You said it with a smile on your face, but there's a lot of responsibility here. Yeah, I mean, the consequences are huge because, as my brother says, yes, our parents will get out of the graveyard and wring our necks if we mess this up. What's your response to the capitalist who would say, why are you limiting your growth? That is the techno-economic question.

But I start with a different question. What are we optimizing for? We are optimizing for place. We're optimizing for community. The pillars of this community have been won over. If Cobb's experiment helps diversify the economy, Glenn Best says he's all in. It's not like we're overrun by tourism.

That's not the way it works here. We're not the Venice of Newfoundland. We're not out of patience with people yet. On our last night at the Shed Party, we got the full sweep of Fogo Island, its hospitality and its contrast laid out on the table. Cod and crab, young and old, warmth, wit, and this. Don't tell me...

A traditional song delivered with a handshake, a kind of hope that comes tempered by history. The undoing of this traditional way of making a life was very painful. I think I still carry those broken hearts. I think that kind of pain doesn't go away. To what extent has that been repaired by the work you've done since you've come back? Yeah, I think it actually does help.

You can heal a broken heart. Be satisfied with what you've got. Live well enough alone. Next Sunday on 60 Minutes, the science behind this weekend's catastrophic storm. What spawned one of the most devastating swarms of tornadoes ever to tear through the United States? More than 80 people have been killed, and many are missing,

across Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. There are billions of dollars in losses. Next Sunday, the new science of superstorms. For the latest on the search and rescue, be sure to watch CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.