60 Minutes - 12/19/2021: Tornadoes, America's Dirty Secret, Trevor Noah

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

On December 10, one tornado generated winds as high as 190 miles per hour and left a path of devastation more than 165 miles long across Kentucky. Scott Pelley reports from Kentucky, By some estimates, more than half the impoverished, rural residents in one Alabama county have raw sewage running onto their property. One community advocate is turning the spotlight on this long-standing public health crisis. Bill Whitaker tells us more. "The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah grew up in South Africa during apartheid. As he tells Lesley Stahl, the comedian now connects American politics to his background. 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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When it cleared, a 15-month-old and a three-month-old were delivered into the world again. Oh, praise God, Lord Jesus. It's hard to imagine that on the eve of 2022, many Americans still live without sanitary sewage systems. Not only that, in many cases, impoverished residents are breaking state laws by piping untreated waste directly from their homes onto the ground. I have seen things like this in Haiti and parts of Southeast Asia. I've never seen anything like this in the United States. That's why we call it America's Dirty Secret. Trevor Noah has become one of the most successful and highest paid comedians in the world. Pretty good for a guy who was born in South Africa and was a virtual unknown here when he took over the Daily Show from Jon Stewart in 2015.

What's the secret to his success? Maybe it's his outsider mentality or his ability to handle most any topic, cancel culture, and the recent Dave Chappelle controversy. In your mind, did he cross the line? 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. The devastation is so severe across such an expanse that we still don't know the toll of the southern and midwestern tornadoes. Starting the night of December 10th, at least 59 twisters carved through 10 states, a swarm you wouldn't expect two weeks before winter. We spent the last several days in Kentucky, where it was still strangely warm, and questions of climate change are being asked. The answers aren't clear, but we do know what we saw is rare. The storm threw down one twister that cut a path of destruction of more than 165 miles. One meteorologist we talked with called that tornado the Beast.

All that rises from a leveled landscape are bonfires of memories. On the Rickard Farm in western Kentucky, they burn what they can't save from the two-story brick home that seemed unshakable on that foundation down there on the right and the garage by its side. It sounded like ten trains on a track coming towards you full speed. Your neighbor shot a video of the tornado. Their neighbor turned his phone toward the Rickard cattle farm and framed lightning catching history. It had been viewed many times on Facebook, I believe.

That video is basically as it's hitting our farm. That's the beast. A mile wide, spinning counterclockwise around 190 miles an hour. Sean and Mindy Rickard bolted for a church. Why did you go to the church? Why not stay in your brick home? I guess the good Lord told us to leave, and we left. He was taking care of us. I can't tell you other than that. I don't know. Seems likely, had they stayed, they would have been among at least 90 dead. No one remains missing. It was a beast of a storm. It was big, it was persistent, and it wasn't going to stop. Nothing's going to stop this thing.

Hours before the storm, Pat Spoden was already worried. The 73-degree day his neighbors enjoyed made his stomach churn. And I've been doing this for 34 years. You have that gut feeling like this is not good. It's not going to be a good day. It was too warm for December. Spoden was working that night at the weather service in Paducah, Kentucky, where he dreaded these images of the storm. Where red meets green, there is rotation, but what caught his eye was an area of

high density in the sky. It was debris, trees and homes and lives spiraling to astounding heights. And it was up to 20 and 30,000 feet. The debris was reaching 30,000 feet, about where airliners fly. Yes. On the screen, Spoden saw the twister close in. He knew the tiny word Mayfield meant 10,000 people. He typed the first tornado emergency alert in his career. I remember saying, I can't spell Mayfield because I'm nervous. I know what's going on and what is at stake. Tornado watches and warnings have been buzzing phones all day, but after 9 26 p.m., the weather

service sent its final warning, startling words in digital deadpan. You are in a life-threatening situation. Mobile homes will be destroyed. Considerable damage to homes, businesses, and vehicles is likely and complete destruction is possible. It was nearly complete destruction in half of Mayfield, Kentucky. This is where the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory was destroyed. The company says eight died, but more than 100 survived. They had a 22-minute warning, the time to take cover. Just 90 miles north of Mayfield, and nearly 100 years ago, the record for the longest tornado path ever was set in the spring of 1925. Before radar and warnings, nearly 700 were killed along a stretch

of 219 miles. Back then, government forecasters were not allowed to use the word tornado. The term was considered too frightening, the phenomenon too poorly understood. You need to look at other debris in the area, nearby debris, and see if damage is uniform. Karen Kosiba is a leading scientist who has studied tornadoes for 16 years. Her work at the University of Illinois uses sophisticated radar trucks to scan tornadoes for 16 years. Her work at the University of Illinois uses sophisticated radar trucks to scan tornadoes up close and in unprecedented detail. What are the big questions you would like to answer about tornadoes? Some of it is the very basic question of why some storms will go on to produce a tornado and some storms won't, even though they look identical on radar, they look identical to the eye, they look

identical in models. Also, what intensity a tornado is going to be. We don't really have any predictive power about how intense that tornado is going to be or how long it's going to last. The United States has by far more tornadoes than any place else on Earth, and I wonder why that is. Because it has either, I'll say lucky or unlucky geography. We have the Gulf of Mexico which is an ample source of moisture that helps bring in warm moist air at low levels. We have the Rocky Mountains which adds a nice cool air

up at sort of mid-levels and what that does is that gives you an unstable atmosphere as these systems move through. This happened on a 73-degree day in December. And I wonder, what effect does climate change have on this? Certainly, we know that our climate is warming, but how that actually manifests itself into tornado outbreaks or tornado intensity or tornado location is difficult to determine. There's a lot of research going on.

There are indications that potentially the tornado threat's moving farther east than it normally is, or that it might be occurring later in the year during these cool seasons, so these November, December, January, February, that that might be more prolific for tornadoes than previously. But the effect of climate change is unclear. Tornado formation is fleeting, complex, and not completely understood. 2020, for example, was one of the three hottest years on record, and it was an off year for tornadoes.

There's a lot we don't know about climate change and the weather. But there's a lot of research being done trying to figure out what's happening with climate change and the weather. And really, I mean, there's no indication that any of these things are going to go away. So I think it's really what needs to be the focus is being prepared for these types of events. JOHN DAVIS, Preparation, adequate warning, is no longer the problem. The Weather Service gets it right nearly 90 percent of the time. On this hillside of mostly mobile homes, residents knew it was coming, but there was no place to hide. James Pendley

threw himself on top of his son. I knew things were gonna start flying, so I decided that my son needed to be shielded because he's only 20 and I, I'm in my 50s, so I figure two choices here, him or me, and I figure he'd be the one that needs to make it through this. You'd lived your life. I've lived it. I've had 35 good years with her, and I figured if anybody needed to make it, it was going to be him. Timmy Vinoy came to check the hill for his aunt and uncle. He found most every home destroyed amid shouts of missing children.

Over here, over here. Hold on, hold on. You know, of course, it was pitch black, and a few of the deputies and me, we had flashlights, but that didn't help much. 329, can you get down here? We need help. We got somebody under this debris. He searched with two sheriff's deputies who were wearing cameras. We're looking for a 15-month-old. And so we moved all the debris off the shire, and we lifted the shire up, and there are the little 15-month-olds laying there crying, little boy.

Hey, baby. Deputies Trent Arnold and Troy Blue delivered the boy into the world again. Hey, baby. Hey, hi. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Move easy. Hey, baby. Hey, hi. Oh, my God. Don't jump. Move easy.

Hey, move easy. Get that one in. Move it easy. Come here. Good deal. And over to the side of it was, they had a little three-month-old. He was up in there, all the debris laying on his belly. Those children.

Both of them are okay now. Praise God. his belly. Those children, everyone on the hill survived. Here's the little one. You see where it just broke off the rebar here. Yeah, so that snapped it like a toothpick. This week, the path, power, and duration of the beast are being measured by teams, including the Weather Service's Pat Spoden, Christine Welgus, and Steve Eddy. It's estimated 15,000 buildings were shredded across the region at a cost of $3.5 billion. The interesting point of this thing being lofted up the hill and what kind of energy it took to lift it. What impressed them were the scattered rail cars, tossed and capsized. Tank cars were flared to burn off the remains of their combustible cargo.

Normally, that would be a great place to be. And you got crushed here. Steve Eddy was amazed that this University of Kentucky building couldn't stand up to the fight. That's where I would have told people to go, to go in and seek shelter, because it was so well built. It was only 18 months old. Eddy and Christine Welgus told us that even with their radar and supercomputers, the most accurate way to measure the power of a tornado is by appraising what is left behind. The day after the event, I was able to take a ride in a helicopter, and we flew the entire path.

When the helicopter kept going and I kept seeing damage and I kept seeing trees down, I'm like, this isn't going to end. We're talking about 1 to 2 percent of the tornadoes that occur. 98 percent of them are on the ground for about a minute and are about 100 feet wide. Very short, brief, is a normal tornado. Wind speeds 70, 80 miles an hour maximum usually. How is this different? Abnormally, in the very high range. Yeah, historic, I like high range. Historic. Yeah, historic.

I like that word. Historic. Historic event. This is hot pepper jelly. Her brick home destroyed, Mindy Rickard found jelly she canned in a glass ball jar. Another memory from what has already been a long life with her husband, Sean. They met when they were four years old. What have you found that has meant something to you?

I'll let you take that one. So, um, as a family, we had three children, Chloe, Chase, and Caleb. And in 2011, our youngest, Caleb, passed away in a tragic swimming pool accident. I'm so sorry. There was a blanket that all three of my kids used. We used it with all three of them, but Caleb was the one who just really seemed to latch on to that blanket, and he packed it with him everywhere he went. Caleb's blanket was found by a friend about 150 yards away, somehow still folded.

The Rickerts plan to rebuild on the old foundation. The bonfire will not erase the history of the family's three generations on this hill. Roots that not even a storm called the Beast could sever. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a 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. basic right, access to sewage treatment. By some estimates, more than half the impoverished rural residents have raw sewage running into their yards and even their houses. Catherine Coleman Flowers,

a White House advisor and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, is turning a spotlight on this long-standing public health failure. She says it's a problem found in other parts of Alabama and all over the country, which even the millions of dollars in new infrastructure spending are unlikely to fix. Flowers brought us home to Lowndes County to see what she calls America's dirty secret. We warn you, it can be hard to watch. Lowndes County is in one of the most neglected corners of the country. The poverty rate in this majority black county is double the national average. Cell phone service is a luxury, and so, incredibly, is sewage treatment. Like most states, Alabama requires sanitary sewage disposal. But outside a handful of small towns here, sewage treatment is not provided.

And for many people, private systems, usually a septic tank, are unaffordable. It's a public health crisis one community advocate, Kathryn Coleman-Flowers, has been raising hell about for 20 years. We don't expect this to be a U.S. problem. Is it just the woods behind your house? Yes, sir. She took us to Emma Scott's home deep in the woods, where even light rain can create pools of fetid waste. When we arrived, the smell of raw sewage hung heavy in the air. Is this the runoff from your house? Yes, sir.

And it just empties right into this little drainage area in your backyard? Yes, sir. This is straight piping. And when one flushes the toilet and it goes through a pipe, instead of going into a sewage treatment plant or an on-site septic system for the sewage to be treated just ends up on top of the ground. I have seen things like this in Haiti and parts of Southeast Asia. I've never seen anything like this in the United States. That's why we call it America's dirty secret. And it's not something most people here care to talk about, especially with outsiders.

A little embarrassed and a lot nervous, Scott explained to us why she has no proper waste disposal for her mobile home. How many hours a week do you work at the chicken plant? I work eight or nine hours, work six days a week. So you work six days a week? Six days. And you can't afford to put in a septic tank? No, sir. Scott just told us she was laid off after 10 years at the chicken processing plant due to automation.

It's expensive to be poor in Lowndes. Septic tank systems can cost as much as $25,000. That's one reason straight piping is so common around here. But the state of Alabama considers this a crime. The state says it's your responsibility to have a sewage system. I can't afford any. With my income, I can't afford no suffrage. So what, you have no choice but to break the law? No, I have no choice but to break the law. And I'm sorry, but I ain't got no choice. If this was a community of more fluent people, this would have made headlines 20 years ago

when I first started doing the work. The reason that the situation has continued for so long is because of the type of benign neglect that has happened to black communities, poor communities, and rural communities across the United States. What I have witnessed this week is not benign. It's horrible. It is horrible. What I have witnessed this week is not benign. It's horrible. It is horrible. But the neglect is obvious. That somewhere along the way, that there's been a serious disconnect in terms of who should have access to sanitation and who shouldn't.

Why did you choose to focus on this problem? Because it's so basic. We all go to the bathroom So we all should have access to sanitation, but I've had people to tell me It's it's not sexy. The media is not going to be interested in that. It's difficult. It's difficult to discuss It's difficult for us to cover. But somebody has to do it. So the house was right here? Yes, the house was right here. Flowers knows about this problem firsthand.

The 63-year-old took us to the site of her childhood home. When we first moved to Lowndes County, we didn't have indoor plumbing. We had an outhouse. She says this fight is about basic human rights, a long tradition in Lowndes County. The march from Selma to Montgomery passed through here. Flowers' parents registered Black voters. Their home was a meeting place for civil rights activists. Did they encourage you to speak up when you saw something wrong? You know, when you grow up in a situation where your parents are constantly speaking up, you don't learn to be quiet. Now, Dante, what's your last name? To make sure the voices of the marginalized are heard, Flowers founded the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice. She has testified before Congress. Rural communities should no longer be

left behind. Brought in politicians, anyone she thinks can help. The state doesn't know exactly how many people have this problem, so Flowers went door-to-door in Lowndes County to try to find out. Of the 3,000 or so homes that we surveyed, at least two-thirds of them had failing systems or no systems at all. And the difference between the failing systems and the straight pipe systems are that the straight pipe systems take it away from the home. When the systems fail, it brings it back into the home. Septic systems often fail because of the same rich soil

that made this region perfect for growing cotton. This is clay like. Look at that. So it's hard for water to seep through. Yes. I mean, if you look at it, it looks like Play-Doh. The dense soil can't absorb liquids drained from septic tanks, causing waste to pool in yards and back up into homes. Charlie May and Willie Holcomb say raw sewage has flooded their property for the last 30 years. All these years we've been here, my kids have never,

now a year, been able to go out there and play in their yard. And even when it wasn't flooded, let me tell you something, the ground stayed so soft you could walk out there like you're sinking. It's mushy. Yes. And mud and waste. The retired couple live on a fixed income in Hainville, the county seat. Incredibly, they pay monthly sewage fees to have waste from their septic tank empty into this municipal lagoon. Roughly eight football fields of sewage. So where's the lagoon? The lagoon across the road over there?

Right behind those houses right there. Everybody smells it. I got central air. You can have the windows down with the central air on, and the smell will wake you up. Did you hear me? The smell will wake you up? Yes. When it rains, they tell us sewage frequently backs up into their house catherine flowers asked a team of doctors to check out the unsanitary conditions they tested my home and my grandson for some kind of parasite. Both of them came out positive with it. Man, it's like a horror movie.

It's like a horror movie. A horror movie. The conditions were very similar to very poor countries that I traveled to in Latin America and even Africa. Dr. Rogelio Mejia is a tropical disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine who studied infectious diseases in 34 countries. He and his team collected stool and soil samples from the Holkams and other residents. Using a PCR test like those used to detect COVID-19, they found small amounts of DNA from hookworms,

a parasite that can cause stomach problems, anemia, and developmental delays in children. So our study in Alabama was a small study, about 55 patients, and the results were we found over 30% of people in at-risk situations with poor sanitation had hookworm. Were you surprised by these findings? We were very shocked. We actually had to run the sample several times to prove to ourselves that we found these numbers.

Dr. Mejia's 2017 findings are controversial. Hookworm was long thought eradicated in the U.S. The Alabama Department of Public Health couldn't confirm Mejia's results. The CDC and the University of Alabama are now following up, testing hundreds of children in the state for hookworm. Have you gone to the county to ask for help? Sir, I have been to the county,

I've been to the board of education, I wrote Washington, D.C. Why do you think nothing's been done? Because we're black. There ain't no secret. Do any of y'all realize this hasn't been a white neighborhood? All this would have went on all these years with your children around here. No! Oh, Jesus have mercy. I get upset even just talking.

It's a mess. We tried to find who in Alabama is responsible for fixing this public health mess. Lowndes County officials told us they don't have the money. The governor and the head of the State Department of Public Health declined to speak with us. But someone else at the department did. The governor and the head of the State Department of Public Health declined to speak with us. But someone else at the department did. Sherry Bradley's office regulates septic systems in rural areas, among other things. She said it's not the department's job to build infrastructure.

Who is responsible? I can tell you who's not responsible, and that's the Department of Public Health. We're not responsible. But the U.S. Department of Justice has some questions. Last month, just days after we spoke with Bradley, the DOJ launched an unprecedented civil rights investigation into whether the Alabama Department of Public Health is discriminating against Black residents in Lowndes, denying them access to proper sanitation. So every so often it overflows?

Yeah. The department says it's cooperating. We couldn't find a single state program devoted to remedying the sewage problem in rural areas. This year, Sherry Bradley started a pilot project on her own, seeking outside grants and donations for septic tank systems that can work in the soil here. The governor and the state health department coughed up about $450,000. So why are you doing this? Because nobody else stepped forward.

That's the reason I'm doing it. This is not technically a state-funded project? It's not even a state project. It's state-supported. I have big money from a whole lot of people. This is a big problem. Why is the state not taking the reins on this to solve a statewide problem? I don't know. Would you like the state to step in and solve this problem? I would like to see Lowndes County, the people there, the majority, say, I'm not going to put sewage on the ground. I'd rather put an outhouse out there.

So these people should put up outhouses? Yeah, they can. And it's approved. You do know this is 2021. It's 2021. But do you want sewage on the ground, or would you rather dispose of it properly? Until I can get to you with a system, there's nothing wrong with an outhouse.

Could you handle everybody in the state who needs help? No. No, I can't do that. And not work my job. What do you say to people who say, just clean it up? Why do you live like this? We just try. Do the best you can.

That's all I can tell them. I do the best I can. You feel forgotten? Yes, sir. Look across the landscape of late-night television, and you'll see that most of the hosts are white men in their 40s and 50s. Not Trevor Noah. He's biracial, he's not American, and he's only 37. But he's a certified

celebrity with a global following who has brought an international dimension to Comedy Central's The Daily Show. He's from South Africa, where he grew up under apartheid. He called his memoir Born a Crime because it was illegal for a black woman like his mother and a white man like his father to mix. Trevor says he always felt like an outsider, but his humor, making people laugh, has been his ticket to belonging. Trevor Noah is back on tour with his comedy show in a different city practically every weekend yeah like when you're in Texas they'd be like you got any weapons in the vehicle you're like no sir they're like all right here's one here you go

you all have a good night now he loves owning the stage the roar of the big crowd typically 15,000 in giant arenas like this one in Washington, D.C. It's a far cry from his more confined TV studio day job on The Daily Show, where he had a shaky start when he took over six years ago from Jon Stewart. And now it feels like the family has a new stepdad. And he's black. Was it a good decision? Terrible initially.

I know. Awful. Don't take the Daily Show, Leslie. When they offer it to you, whatever you do, don't take the Daily Show. Well, what happened in the beginning? Oh, I mean, everybody hated me. People didn't even know me, and they hated the idea of me.

But you did have a savior, Donald Trump. Once you realize that Trump is basically the perfect African president, you start to notice the similarities everywhere. Once he found his foil, his ratings began to improve, and he realized he could connect American politics to his background in South Africa. He grew up in Johannesburg and its black township of Soweto during the strict racial separation regime of apartheid. outsider, not quite black like his Xhosa mother, not quite white like his Swiss father, who he has seen infrequently in his life. To be with your father who was white, that was a crime. Yeah.

This was the law that forbade anybody of different races from mixing. There's something I heard, I'm not sure I believe it, but your grandfather used to call you Master? Yeah. Because of the color of your skin? That's how he referred to me, Master. And he'd always force me to sit in the back of the car. Be like, Master, what can the police say if I say the Master is sitting with me? Your parents, your grandmother particularly, was always afraid the police were going to come and find you.

What would have happened if they found you? I probably would have been taken away to an orphanage. No. Yeah. Your grandmother was always hiding you. Yes. You were in lockdown. Right. I was in pandemic before pandemic even existed. But you were poor. You write in your book about eating worms and having a toy that was a brick. Here's the thing that I always say to people Being poor in a group or in a community that is poor is not as bad as being poor When you know what you're missing out on so when I grew up We played with bricks as cars and you'd smash them into each, and it was one of the most fun games I've ever played. The same thing with eating mopani

worms. What I didn't like was when we couldn't eat anything else, and my mom said, we're going to have to eat these mopani worms for longer because we don't have money to buy chicken. Spending time indoors, he became a voracious reader. He wrote about his mother, Patricia Noah, in his memoir

Born a Crime, saying she raised him almost as if he was white, with no limitations on what he could achieve. He wrote it was just the two of them, him and his mom, against the world. But then she married a man named Abel, who he said beat up his mother, then shot her in the head. The head bullets didn't hit anything vital, other than the head, obviously. But it missed her spinal cord, missed the nerves, didn't touch the brain, and all it did was it cut a piece of her nostril off,

just one side, and the bullet went out clean. And my mom looks at me and she goes, shh, shh, shh, Trevor, Trevor, shh, shh, don't cry, baby. I said, no, mom, I'm going to cry. You were shot in the head. And she says, no, no, no, no, look on the bright side. I said, what bright side? She says, no, at least now because of my nose,

you're officially the best looking person in the family. You did say you had the black world and you had the white world. And this is a quote from you. All I wanted to do was belong. Everybody wants to belong. Half of our fights in life are because we want to belong. And so I grew up in a country where I was told

that your belonging was defined by the shade of the color of your skin. And that never worked for me. You know, I found my greatest joy was with the people where we shared interests and the way we spoke and the way we laughed, etc. So I always wanted to belong. And that, I think, has been a gift and a curse in life. I have a funny feeling that you did belong because you were funny. Funny is something that I developed as a tool, yeah, to belong. He was funny back in

Johannesburg, but became a professional comedian by accident when he was 22 and took the stage at a comedy club on a dare from his cousin. Yeah, you laugh, but it's true because I'm like mixed, you know, I've got like a percentage share, like it's that type of thing. He killed it, gave up his plan to go to college and soon was touring all over the world as a stand-up comic according to Forbes he's one of the highest paid comedians today he first started touring the United States in 2011 and a year later from the time I was a young child I've've always wanted one thing, and that is, I've always wanted to be black. He was on The Tonight Show

and caught the attention of Jon Stewart's producer at The Daily Show, a ViacomCBS property. When he was eventually offered the host chair, he said it would have meant taking a pay cut and giving up his life on the road. So Stewart had to talk him into it. He said, I'm not offering you the glitz and glam of your life. I'm offering you a home for a while that I think you will come to enjoy.

That intrigued me. I was like, I've always wanted to have home. I've always wanted to belong. And so I thought, well, this could be the chance. From Trevor's couch in New York City. And the chance to weigh in on serious topics. When COVID hit and he was broadcasting from his apartment, nearly 11 million people watched his monologue on race and George Floyd. There was a black man on the ground in handcuffs and you could take his life so you did,

almost knowing that there would be no ramifications. And it wasn't funny. And now we have a new dimension to Trevor. I guess. I guess you've seen a different dimension to Trevor. I've always had the different dimension. Well, you showed it to the public. That's true. Some of the funniest people we know on the planet have depression. You come to mind. Well, I think over the years, what I've come to learn, thanks to some great therapists, is my depression is created by a severe level of ADHD. ADHD looks like depression? What do you mean? So it can be different for

different people. I'm not, you know, but like, so for myself, it means that if I'm not careful in how I sleep, how I eat, how I manage my routine, I can become overwhelmed and it can just feel like the whole world is just too heavy to bear. You said something that sticks with me. You said it wasn't till you came to the United States that real hate started coming at you. Oh yeah, definitely. What was the hate that you felt? Did the cops ever stop you? I've been pulled over quite frequently by the cops, yeah. One of my best friends, David Meyer, you know, would drive all over the West Coast to these comedy shows. If I was driving, we would get pulled over. And if he was driving? And then he would drive, we wouldn't get pulled over.

But you did say you experienced hate. Yes, but I mean, that's... that's welcome to America, you know? Ooh, that's harsh. Yeah. There's a lot of hate in America, because there's a lot of anger in America. How is it changing you? For me, I'm always trying to figure out,

how do I speak to somebody who hates me? This is where we are for now. Because of his childhood, growing up between two different worlds, he tends to see both sides of an argument. Take his reaction to the trouble his friend, comedian Dave Chappelle, got in over his Netflix special, The Closer, that was criticized as homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic. In your mind, did he cross the line? Did Dave Chappelle cross the line? Yes, no. It immediately puts me in a position where I have to choose a side when I think that the matter is a lot more complex than that.

I think everybody is defining the line for themselves. No, society defines a line. You see what you're saying now is you're saying society has decided. But America is clearly divided in that half of society has gone like, no, Dave Chappelle, we love what you said. We're sick of wokeness. We're sick of people being told what to say. We're sick of not knowing how to use the right pronoun. You're right, Dave Chappelle.

So then if half of society is saying Dave Chappelle is right and half of society is saying that he's wrong, then that means there is no line. It means society is seeing the line from two different sides. And so that's why I say you cannot say, did he cross the line? Because which side are you looking at the line from defines whether or not he crossed it. Are you still learning things all the time? Yes.

Well, he's had to learn about New York City, his new home since 2015, buy an apartment here, make new friends. Let me ask you about your personal life for a minute. Do you want to have children? I go back and forth. Sometimes I will meet kids who make me go, I want a kid. And then sometimes I'll meet children where I go, I hope that my sperm doesn't do anything

because this person is a terror. You're 37. Okay. You're right there. That's the clock. It's ticking. Okay. But you don't feel it.

No, I don't. You have a girlfriend now. Maybe. Well, I read page six like everybody else in this room. The tabloids. You don't like to talk about your girlfriends. No. What is Trevor like with his girlfriends?

It's a trick. You don't have to answer that question. Trevor introduced us to comedy producer Ryan Harduth and comedian David Kibuka, now a supervising producer on The Daily Show. They're among his oldest friends from South Africa. You don't have to answer any questions about personal relationships.

Who told you that? Okay, what is Mitch McConnell like with his girlfriends? Do you know the answer to that question? I don't know. Exactly. Because he didn't answer it.

Because they don't even ask him. And also because people don't want to know. This is what I'll say about Trevor with his girlfriends. Is that... So you're just fully going ahead with it.

Of course he is. Wow. Of course he is. Is that he is very,, like a great boyfriend. So what are the qualities that you like most about Trevor? He's a great boyfriend. Yeah. Trevor told us he hangs out with these guys often and talks with his mother every day.

Things he says that keep him grounded. Is he a perfectionist? No, I wouldn't say he's a perfectionist. Workaholic? Yes. Yes, I would say so. 100%. He sure is. Even though he does the Daily Show during the week, and he'll be hosting the Grammys on CBS again in January,

he refuses to give up his comedy shows. Genuinely, I just love the feeling of a laugh. I think when we laugh as human beings, that's when we're our most authentic selves. That's why your real laugh is so ugly. Do you know what I mean? It's not filtered in any way. It's just...

I love that. It's like pure joy. Forget what people think. Just laugh, you know? We need it. Every single day. Every single day. In dark days, it can be helpful to remember that brighter times are on the way.

This year, with more than its share of natural disasters, $4 gas, ever-evolving pandemic variants, and political turmoil, it may not be easy to see brighter days emerging from the shadows. Take a pause Tuesday morning just before 11 a.m., look up at the sky, and rest assured, everything has changed. The northern hemisphere has stopped its tilt away from the sun. Slowly, nearly imperceptibly at first, the days will grow longer. Cold darkness will once again give way to a kinder light. And at least until June, we all have a brighter future. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Merry Christmas.