60 Minutes - 5/30/2021: Attack on the Judiciary, 90+, Notes of Grace

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

On this week's "60 Minutes," judges say it's time for more security in the face of mounting violence. Bill Whitaker reports. Six years after our initial report, Lesley Stahl visits surviving members of the 90+ Study and finds out what scientists have learned from following the study's participants. And Jon Wertheim interviews pianist Igor Levit. 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

I'm Jane Pauley. Listen up! Every Monday, tune in to our Sunday Morning Podcast, offering extended interviews, in-depth conversation, and inspiring stories on arts, culture, travel, and more, along with features that make you smile, because there's always something new under the sun. Follow and listen to our Sunday Morning podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. This federal judge's son was murdered, her husband wounded in a brazen and well-planned attack on her home. 60 Minutes has learned that same gunman had another jurist on his hit list. They found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor. What's going on, Lou?

60 Minutes has been following elderly participants in a study called 90 Plus. And as you'll hear tonight, what they're finding out about the science of longevity is evolving and amazing. Half of all children born today in the United States and Europe is going to reach their 103rd or 4th birthday. Half? Yes. As concert halls in the U.S. and Europe begin slowly to reopen, we bring you the story of pianist Igor Levin,

a 34-year-old classical colossus. During the pandemic, he told us he has missed his audiences dreadfully, so tonight we thought we'd introduce him to ours. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Nora O'Donnell.

I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. I'm Jane Pauley. Listen up. Every Monday, tune into our Sunday Morning Podcast, offering extended interviews, in-depth conversation, and inspiring stories on arts, culture, travel, and more, along with features that make you smile, because there's always something new under the sun. Follow and listen to our Sunday Morning podcast on the free Odyssey app or

wherever you get your podcasts. Half the time someone is unhappy with a judge's ruling. The normal recourse is an appeal. But in the caustic atmosphere of today's politics, there's a real chance the disgruntled party will threaten the judge. In the last five years, threats of federal judges have jumped 400 percent to more than 4,000 last year, many of them death threats, sometimes ending in violence. As we first reported earlier this year, judges are breaking with tradition and publicly calling on lawmakers to provide more protection. One of the strongest voices is federal judge Esther Salas. Last July, she was at home in New Jersey in the basement with her son Daniel,

cleaning up after his 20th birthday party, when a man disguised as a FedEx driver pulled up outside. Danny turned around and he said, Let's keep talking. I love talking to you, mom. And it was at that exact moment that the doorbell rang. And before I could stop him, he just shot up the stairs. The next thing I hear is boom. It just sounded like a mini bomb. And then I hear no. And then I hear boom, boom, boom. And I just screamed, what is happening? When I got upstairs, it was something no mother should ever see.

Daniel lying bleeding by the door. Mark, her husband, on his knees, holding his side. Daniel was barely clinging to life. I didn't even know what to do. I remember picking up his shirt and seeing the bullet hole. You know, we were screaming, Daniel, hold on, and don't leave us. And then I just, as I think about that day, I just, I realized I was watching my only child fade away. Daniel died on the way to the hospital.

Mark is lucky to be alive. How seriously injured was he? Mark was shot three times. In the right chest, the left abdomen, in the arm. A close-knit family, they called themselves the Three Musketeers. Judge Salas told us Daniel, a college sophomore, was the center of their universe. From his wounds, the FBI said it appeared Daniel had tried to block the gunman. When did you realize that the attack was meant for you? It wasn't until the FBI

debriefings. They've looked at this case inside and out. Tell me, ma'am, you were the target. He wanted to get you. The shooter was Roy Den Hollander, a 72-year-old lawyer. He harbored deep hatred for women and left behind a bitter manifesto. He accused Judge Salas of being, quote, a lazy Latina, dragging her feet on his lawsuit. Police found his body the next day. He had shot himself. The FBI discovered he had killed another lawyer a week before. Then he went hunting for Judge Salas. He knew where, obviously where I lived. He knew my routes to work. He knew the church we attended.

He had Daniel's school. He knew baseball games. Just a complete workup on me and my family. The information that he got, all from legal sources? All open sources, they call it. We met Judge Salas outside her home six months after Daniel's murder. She told us her husband needed additional surgery. The house has been sold. 20 years of wonderful memories, she told us, and one that's excruciating. We are living every parent's worst nightmare, making preparations to bury our only child, Daniel. Last August, in a highly unusual move

for a federal judge, Judge Salas made a personal plea to lawmakers on YouTube. We may not be able to stop something like this from happening again, but we can make it hard for those who target us to track us down. Since Daniel's funeral, Judge Salas has become a crusader for federal legislation to scrub judges' personal information from the Internet. Her mission became more urgent when the FBI discovered a second locker in New Jersey belonging to her son's killer.

What did they find? What was in the locker? They found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor. Yes. Chilling. What do you think? You find that a Supreme Court justice was on his list.

More than on his list, on his sites. They had her favorite restaurants, where she worked out, her friends. Our report was the first time that plot was revealed. Who knows what could have happened? But we need to understand that judges are at risk. We need to understand that we put ourselves in great danger every day for doing our jobs. This fact has to wake us up. As the first Hispanic woman to serve as a district court judge.

Judge Salas told us she never dreamed she'd be putting her husband and mother shot dead by a disgruntled plaintiff. The new legislation to be taken up by the Senate is seeking more than $250 million for home security and 1,000 more deputy marshals. It would erase a long list of personal data online, such as a home address, driver's license, and property tax records. You chose to be a judge, and in becoming a public person, don't you have to give up some of your personal details for the sake of accountability. You're right. I did choose to become a public servant. And if anyone has a problem with what I've ruled in a particular case, they can appeal. If anyone is upset, the courthouse address, you know, it's known to everyone.

Come to the courthouse. But why do you need to come to my house? We can't show you, but U.S. Marshals now provide round-the-clock security for Judge Salas. She told us judges are increasingly threatened online. Last year, there were 4,200 threats against federal judges. She read us a few of those. We, quote, must start killing these corrupt politicians and judges and their families, end quote. Another one. The judge is a traitor and has a death sentence.

And this is since the death of Daniel. This is since Daniel's murder in this very house. One other one, just in Mississippi. Quote, I will kill you. I just want to get the gun and come down there and blow all their brains out. State of Washington versus Donald J. Trump. But perhaps no judge in the country has felt the heat of online threats more than senior U.S. District Judge James Robart. Emotions were already running high when Judge Robart temporarily blocked former President Trump's first travel ban, barring some Muslim travelers. Critics posted his home phone and address online, but nothing prepared him for the tsunami of hate when President Trump used his

Twitter bully pulpit to scorn him as a so-called judge. When you call someone a so-called judge, what you do is you attack the judiciary. You may not even have wanted to convey that message, but that's the message which your 40 million Twitter followers took down, which was you were never authorized to issue this decision. Death threats flooded in. Then President Trump tweeted again. If I recall, he also said to blame you if there should be a terrorist attack on the country. People took that as somehow I was giving permission

for their families to be endangered. And then the tone for a number of the messages turned into, you must be stopped. What did you think about that when the president attacks you? I thought he had a right to attack my decision. I don't think that criticizing a judge is acceptable. I recognize there's a dispute on that. There is no dispute at the point that you start to talk about, I'm going to kill you, or I'm going to hurt you, or more importantly to me, I'm going to hurt your family. That's over the line and can't be tolerated. Judge Robart was bombarded with 40,000 messages. 1,100 were serious enough to be investigated. There were so many death threats that U.S. Marshals set up camp around

the judge's house. The idea of needing a bomb-sniffing dog to go into a restaurant before we could have lunch impacts you, but you just try to, you know, not let that bother you. That actually happened? Yes. If you want to know how to be really unpopular with restaurant owners, show up with your dog, which runs around the restaurant barking, and a number of U.S. Marshals who are noticeable. You're chuckling now, but I take it that at the time you didn't see the humor in this. No, I didn't. Then federal investigators uncovered something more ominous. Thousands of threats that

looked to be from Americans were actually from Russia, part of a long game by Vladimir Putin to splinter American democracy. If Putin can undermine a significant segment of the population's willingness to accept a court's decision, then he can cause chaos in this country. Suzanne Spalding ran top cybersecurity operations for both Democratic and Republican administrations. She told us Russia undermines the justice system by fanning some American suspicions that judges are partisan. What did Judge Robart do to put himself in Russia's crosshairs? They attacked him, his decision as reflecting his personal political preferences, as opposed to following

the rule of law. And that leads people to conclude that it is appropriate to make threats of violence, and as we saw in the tragic case of Judge Salas, to actually carry out an attack of violence. How big a threat do you think this is? You know, I think we got a taste of that on January 6th. Spalding told us since the siege of the Capitol, there's more pressure on law enforcement to determine which online threats might turn into physical attacks. Take the example of this Alabama man who answered the online call with a truckload of weapons and a hand-scribbled hit list, second from the top, an Indiana judge. So how do you answer people who will say that what I say online, even if it's

aggressive, it's my First Amendment right? So you do have a First Amendment right to express your opinion, even if it's an unpopular opinion. But threats of violence, incitement to violence, those are things that law enforcement can legitimately look into, particularly when it's against our public servants. Judge Salas lives with those threats. And now that the courthouse has reopened after COVID, she told us Daniel would want her to keep going. Will you be concerned when you reenter this courtroom?

No, we're changed forever. You know, Mark and I are different people today, sadly. But as far as what I do on the bench, no, that's not going to change. I'm not going to let Mr. Hollander take that away from me, my integrity, my work ethic, and my pride. No, he won't take that. Despite promises to fast-track the new legislation, the Senate still has not taken it up. Threats against federal judges have jumped 25% so far this year to over 1,200. Sometimes historic events suck.

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. We're a nation living longer and longer.

Over the next 30 years, the number of Americans age 90 and above is expected to triple. And an NIH-funded research study called 90 Plus at the University of California, Irvine is trying to learn all it can right now from a group of men and women who've already managed to get there. In 2014, we reported on their first set of findings, factors that are associated with longer life, exercise, moderate drinking of alcohol and caffeine, social engagement, and our favorite, putting on a few pounds as we age. The 90-plus study's focus is now on memory and dementia. What they've learned and what they haven't, drew us back last fall, as did the 90-plussers. Take a quick look at when we first met them in 2014.

My birthday is February 7, 1918. I was born on August 25, 1920, and I'm 93-plus. June 15, 1918, and it was, I'm sure, a lovely day. The men and women we met six years ago had all agreed to be checked out by the 90 plus study team top to bottom every six months. Big smile. Their facial muscles. Excellent. How they walk. How fast they can stand up and sit down. Fantastic. And critically, how they think. Now spell world backwards. D-L-R-O-W.

Three. They were an impressive and active group, a B-17 gunner in World War II, a fellow World War II vet who drove a convertible, a 95-year-old speed walker, ballroom dancers. I asked them, why aren't you going to ask us any questions about our sex life? And they said no. And sadly, some who had begun to struggle with dementia. What is today's date?

Today's date? Mm-hmm. Today's date. What's the oldest person you have seen? I've seen several 116-year-olds. Neurologist Claudia Kawas, the 90-plus studies lead investigator, says studying the oldest old is increasingly important. Half of all children born today in the United States and Europe is going to reach their 103rd or 4th birthday. Half? Yes. Half the

children born today are going to live to 100? To 103 or 104. You know, I don't feel a day older than I was yesterday. They invited us back six years later, and we found some study participants, like Helen Weil, the ballroom dancer, thriving. Then I do like so ten times. Now 99, Helen showed us how she exercises in her chair. Stuff like that. How you doing, Jeff? Good to see what's going on, Lou. Lou Tirado, the World War II gunner, turned 100 in August. Lou was using Zoom. When he was a kid, most homes didn't have a radio. Do you have an iPhone? I have an iPhone, yep. You on

Facebook? Yes. Do you use Siri? Yeah, I tell her every evening, wake me up at 6 30 tomorrow morning, and she does. Yes. Who is our current president? President is Trump. Who was the president before Trump? Obama. Because of COVID-19, the 90-plus study is doing cognitive tests by phone. To subtract 7 from 100. Lou and Helen ace them. And keep subtracting 7. 93. 86. 79.

Her memory is better than mine. But one of our favorite 90-plussers from six years ago, Ruthie Stahl, is not so lucky. Back then, at 95, she was zipping around in her lime green bug. I am flying all over the place. But today, at 102, she didn't remember our having met. What is your first name? Leslie. That's a nice name.

Thank you. Ruthie is as charming and upbeat as ever, but her memory is failing. The current president or the president before him? I'll take either. No, I can't. Do you remember your parents? No. No? It just passes on to something else. Dr. Kawas says most people, probably even most doctors, would assume Ruthie's memory problems stem from Alzheimer's disease. But scientists are finding out more and more about the complexities of what causes dementia. You hear people say, she got Alzheimer's, he has Alzheimer's, when they really should say dementia. That's exactly right. Dementia is a loss of thinking

abilities that affects your memory, your language. It's a syndrome. It's a syndrome kind of like headache is a syndrome. You can have a headache because you've got a brain tumor, or you can have one because you drank too much, and it's the same with dementia. We were sad to learn that some of the 90-plus participants we met in 2014 have passed away, but by donating their brains, as Ted Rosenbaum did, they are very much still part of the study, contributing some of its most fascinating and confounding results.

After a participant dies, the 90-plus team gathers to review mounds of data. Now, because of COVID, they gather on Zoom. Videos from visit two. So tell me what you're going to do when you go home today. Ted's test results showed years of memory problems, as we had seen six years ago. Give me a hint. The 90-plus team concluded that Ted probably had Alzheimer's disease, but then awaited results from their

collaborators, a team of pathologists at Stanford University who independently examined Ted's brain. They don't know anything except the brain they've got in front of them. And then you come together. And then we come together and it's like a reveal party. The definition of Alzheimer's disease is having the proteins amyloid and tau, often called plaques and tangles, in the brain. Okay, the home stretch. But when the Stanford team made their report, Ted's brain didn't have either.

As you may see without even zooming in, the section is clear, it's clean. We're negative for beta amyloid here. It actually looks awfully good. It actually does, yes. You sit around, you look at that. What do you conclude? The only pathology we found in his head, actually, was TDP-43. TDP-43, a breakthrough.

It's a newly identified cause of dementia, a protein originally found in ALS patients that KWAS now believes accounts for up to one in five cases of dementia in people over 90. Can you find out if you have TDP-43 while you're alive? Not yet. And you can't find out if you have two other dementia-causing conditions either, tiny strokes called microinfarcts, the damaged brain tissue, and hippocampal sclerosis, a shrinking and scarring of part of the brain.

So it's likely that many people in their 90s who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's What year? Oh. may actually have something else. There's a whole lot of stuff that goes on in the brain that we have no way of diagnosing during life. So we get a lot of those surprises. But we also get surprises where people have an awful lot of pathology in their brain, a lot of Alzheimer's disease, a lot of TDP disease,

and they still turn out to be normal. Let me hold a chair for you. That's what happened with Henry Tornell, Helen Wild's ballroom dancing partner, who joked about studying sex over 90. Henry died at 100 of cancer, mentally sharp as ever. We should all be so lucky. But his brain told a different story. Beta amyloid, I don't even have to zoom in. Fluorid, very positive, positive as well. The Stanford team found the highest level of plaques and tangles and TDP-43. TDP-43.

Especially stunning, since more than one pathology typically means more severe dementia. So he was a huge surprise. He was one of our surprising 90-year-olds who managed to have good cognition in the face of things in their brain that should cause dementia. It used to be that when a person like Henry with clear thinking was found to have plaques and tangles, scientists assumed dementia was just a matter of time. But now they're thinking about it in a new way, that maybe certain people have protection against dementia, a phenomenon they're calling resilience. To prove it, though, they need to follow people who are still alive.

Enter convertible-driving Sid Shero from our story in 2014. Let's see. Sid had a PET scan back then for the study, which revealed significant amounts of amyloid in his brain. The question was, would dementia be around the corner, or might Sid somehow be resilient? Happy birthday to you. Thank you. Sid turned 99 this summer. How old do you feel?

I always say 69. Sid has circulation problems that affect his breathing. But his memory? Well, he told us about buying his first car 80 years ago for $18 in a pool hall. A 31 Chevy convertible with a rumble seat. A rumble seat. And I didn't know how to drive. You won it in a pool hall.

Did you win it on a bet? I didn't win it. I bought it. You bought it? I gave him $18. Who sold a car for $18? He needed the money to shoot poles. So I know he's got at least two pathologies in his head.

I know he's got probably high amounts of Alzheimer's, and I know he's got some vascular disease. And we tested him just a couple weeks ago. Good morning. He did great. Please tell me how many nickels in a dollar. 20. How many quarters in $6.75?

27. Wow, you are quick. So is that resilience? I think that is definitely resilience. It might be what resilience is all about. Could it be a gene? It absolutely could be, or maybe even more likely, multiple genes or combinations of genes.

Here's my observation. Okay. You knew more six years ago than you do now. There are just so many questions that we don't know the answers to, more questions. That is really a brilliant observation. And what science is all about. For every new answer, two new questions. For every new discovery, like TDP-43 dementia, and especially resilience, new mysteries to solve.

So like its participants, the 90-plus study is keeping at it, trying to help the rest of us make it to age 102 with Ruthie's spirit, but memory intact. It's a shame. It's a shame. Because there's a lot I could remember. And I'll bet you had a wonderful life. Oh, I have. It's still going on. Thank goodness.

We're sad to report that Sid Shiro passed away in January, six months shy of his 100th birthday, still cognitively sharp. The 90-plus team will review his years of data in their quest to understand what resilience like Sid's may mean for the rest of us. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. When the German pianist Igor Levitt was featured as the soloist at the Nobel Prize ceremony last December,

it marked yet another grace note in a career that's quickly grown filled with awards and honors. Levitt is 34 and already among the brightest stars in the classical music cosmos. But as the pandemic muted and muffled so much music, Levitt's performances with some of the world's greatest orchestras have been mostly streamed without a live audience. Others have been solo recitals over Twitter from his Berlin living room. As we reported in January, while Igor Levitt plays in a new way to a new audience, he's reached a conclusion. Music is not an extravag musical genres, a rock star. ¶¶ Here he is inside London's Royal Albert Hall

for the opening at the Proms in 2017, one of the oldest and most anticipated festivals on the concert calendar. A typically glowing review described the performance as fiery, magical, and elegant. Take a look at how Levitt curls over his instrument. At odds with every piano teacher's demand for perfect posture, it's almost as if Levitt is physically becoming part of the music he is conjuring. We sometimes think of musicians as, they don't mind the isolation. They can be disengaged. I get the feeling you need that connection with an audience. I couldn't live without that since my very childhood. What I care about are people. Always. Always. Even in this vast and venerable concert hall,

this German musician has a way of creating an intimacy with his audience. Then, when the pandemic hit, his tour dates canceled. That intimacy evaporated. In many ways, the lockdown turned your world on its head. It's a disaster. Technicians and the lighting. Disaster. Agents, managers. What happens?

They lose everything from one day to the other. The loss is by 100%. It's a total disaster. It could have been a disaster for Levin, a hipster suddenly grounded at home in an edgy pocket of Berlin. I can't just make music for myself. It's just not the way I operate. I can't emotionally.

So I had this idea to bring one of the most classic ways of music making, which is the house concert, to try to bring it into the 21st century. So how do I do it? So I invite the people into my living room in the only way possible, which is through social media. First, he tweeted out an invitation to his followers. Like, that's it. Next, he rushed out to buy a cheap camera stand, hastily rigged his iPhone, self-administered a tutorial in live streaming, and then it was showtime. The first house concert grew a virtual crowd of 350,000.

It sounds kind of liberating. It completely transformed me, who I am, how I see the world. That would seem to dramatically change the boundaries between a performer and the audience. Yeah, it was just me. No hall, no questions about acoustics, no questions about an instrument, no questions about, you know, pre-printed programs, nothing.

No boundaries, just myself and the people. He had his classical repertoire, but added soul and jazz and rock. For 52 consecutive nights of live concerts, his followers joined from all over the world, unbothered by the tinny sound of his piano when it lapsed out of tune. They kept coming, he kept playing. Because of the pandemic. And so what usually must be right was wrong. And it didn't matter. Because just the fact that there was music, no matter how it sounded,

just the fact that there was some kind of togetherness, just this was enough for people to feel better. It was enough for me to feel better. So much better, he next streamed what was less a challenge to his musical talents than to his musical stamina. The Vexations is not exactly a reliable crowd pleaser. The Vexations, which is a very odd, very weird kind of non-music piece, doesn't really make sense.

It starts with one hand alone, then you play a weird variation, then you play the same thing again, one hand alone, then you play another variation. French surrealist composer Eric Satie intended this piece to be played through 840 times. The repetition can be almost hypnotic, known to cause performers to hallucinate. One complained of seeing bugs crawling between the keys. Levitt played this piece for 16 hours straight. Igor, that sounds like torture and not music.

Well, vexations, right? I rest my case. And so I thought, wow, that's the perfect match for this time. And I could focus with this performance on the emotional and mental state of mind of my world, of the performance world, which is hopelessness, confusion, and give like a silent scream, like the end of the third part of The Godfather.

You survived. I not only survived, I was high as a monkey afterwards. I mean, I was just flying. Levitt took flight early, playing Beethoven's Sonata No. 2, winning a prestigious Rubinstein Prize as a teenager. He was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. That's where he played his first concert with a full orchestra.

When he was eight, he and his family moved to Germany as Jewish refugees. His mother was a piano teacher, but paired her talented son with a taskmaster who demanded Levitt practice that same Beethoven Sonata No. 2 for years on end. Levitt says he was an angry and unhappy adolescent who flirted with quitting piano. I was a 15-year-old boy. I wanted to do all kinds of things, but not play the same piece over and over and over again.

Because I am whatever you say I am. So how does a burned-out piano prodigy get his mojo back? Channeling Eminem and his single, The Way I Am. I am who I am, and I am the way I am. Just deal with it and sort it out for yourself. So I would listen to a song like Non-Stop, Walkman, in my hand. It was like in a loop. The rhythmical persistence, the lyrical persistence,

it's so Beethovenian in a way. Slim Shady's helping you understand Beethoven. Understanding myself, yeah. Beethoven obviously means a great deal to you. You said he's around you, he's in practically everything you do. In a weird way, Beethoven's music is my safe zone. It's music which gives me, which gives the audience,

the feeling of participation. At some point, you get this feeling like, oh, this is about me. This is about me. Like, you know... Right? That's how you feel? This feeling of SOS, help. What is happening here?

Both for me as a player and for the listener. So I'm not trying to explain something to you. I want to encourage you to understand, hey, whatever you feel, it's you. It's your music. It's your piece. And so Beethoven's music kind of creates this link between the player, the music, the audience. This triangle is enormously intense. And yet you could have played a different piece

with that same triangle and a completely different range of emotions. I could, yeah, anything, yeah. What about sadness? Well, that's a wide topic. I mean, what kind of sadness? Say, mournful sadness. In a part of the world that knows a bit about musical genius,

Levitt may be consumed by a composer born 250 years ago, but he is also the quintessential creature of the present. Levitt doesn't drive, but in between lockdowns in October, we tooled around with him

on one of his many bikes. When did you feel like a German here? You came when you were eight years old. Immediately? When I felt like a German? When did you feel? Oh, wow. That Mr. Wertheim is a very German question.

Levitt takes his citizenship seriously. At a protest in December against the destruction of this forest, Levitt bundled up and played in solidarity. The environment is one of his many causes. He's adamant, as he puts it, not to be the guy who just pushes piano keys. When a neo-Nazi carried out a deadly attack outside a synagogue in the German city of Halle in 2019, Levitt used his appearance at Germany's most prestigious music awards ceremony attack outside a synagogue in the German city of Halle in 2019, Levitt used his appearance at Germany's most prestigious music awards ceremony to speak out against right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism.

Levitt has been told to his face that he has no right to be in Germany. More alarmingly, before the pandemic, he received online death threats, forcing him to take the stage under armed police guard. His activist politics have provoked attacks on multiple fronts. As a Jew, you were an outsider. I will find you on that day in Wiesbaden and will kill you while you're on stage. Both of them take a rubber and try to erase you from Mother Earth. Both of them.

One of them intellectually, the other one physically. The sedate cocoon of classical music isn't accustomed to death threats and talks of erasure. But then again, Igor Levitt cuts a singular figure. And in the days of soaring COVID rates and depleting concert dates, he played on. In Munich, we caught up with him for a rare performance that wasn't canceled. There was no hum of anticipation in the lobby, no bustling coat check. In the audience, it was restricted to just 50 people.

Mozart was on the menu. A canopy of notes, sharply rendered, filled the air. A measure of comfort in these uncertain times. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Jane Pauley. Listen up every Monday. Tune into our Sunday morning podcast, offering extended interviews, in-depth conversation, and inspiring stories on arts, culture, travel, and more, along with features that make you smile because there's always something new under the sun. Follow and listen to our Sunday morning podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your