60 Minutes - Marjorie Taylor Greene, Character AI, Watch Valley

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

Correspondent Lesley Stahl sits down with political lightning rod Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in her first interview since abruptly announcing her resignation from Congress. Back in Greene’s Georgia district, Stahl talks with the longtime Donald Trump loyalist about her fractured relationship with the president, the state of the America First movement and whether Greene’s reinvention is a genuine evolution or a strategic reset that positions her for a post-Trump world. Amid growing concerns about artificial intelligence’s impact on young people and a surge of child-safety lawsuits, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi investigates the next frontier: AI chatbots. She speaks with parents who lost their daughter to suicide, who say chatbots on the popular platform Character AI led her down a dark and sexually explicit path. She also hears from researchers and a psychologist who further reveal the scale – and dangers – of what’s unfolding inside this rapidly growing AI technology. Correspondent Jon Wertheim travels to Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux – known as “Watch Valley” – where top brands have been refining the art of mechanical watchmaking for centuries. It’s a curious time for luxury timepieces, which run – not on batteries – but on springs and gears, as the industry navigates the smartphone era and the ups and downs of President Trump’s tariffs. Wertheim meets watchmakers and brand leaders and gets an up-close look at what keeps these mechanical wonders ticking. 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

Our Common Nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Anna Gonzalez, through this complicated country. We go into caves, onto boats, and up mountain trails to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music, all to reconnect to nature and get closer to the things we're missing. Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts. It was completely unforeseen, a shocker. Marjorie Taylor Green, the warrior congresswoman, resigning, leaving the field of battle, her long alliance with President Trump shattered. Did you surrender? Did Donald Trump run you out of town?

This is character AI. When Character AI was launched three years ago, it was rated as safe for children, like 13-year-old Giuliana Peralta. But tonight, you'll hear from parents and researchers who say Character AI's chatbots are anything but. This is insane, and acting at times like a digital predator. Were you able to see the conversation that Juliana was having with this chatbot right before she took her life? Venture an hour north of Geneva and you'll enter Switzerland's Valley de Jou

But don't be lulled by the green meadows and grazing cows This is a global manufacturing hub Known as Watch Valley Old watchmaking methods endure here Turning out some of the world's most intricate and expensive timepieces See the level of detailing You're looking as if you're looking at a little city

And of course, all of this is not only beautiful, it has to function. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonci. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm John Wertheim.

Those stories end in our last minute, a remarkable bid for a championship in Indiana that does not involve basketball. Tonight on 60 Minutes. Our Common Nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Anna Gonzalez, through this complicated country. We go into caves, onto boats, and up mountain trails to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music, all to reconnect to nature, and get closer to the things we're missing. Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts. It was completely unforeseen, a shocker, Marjorie Taylor Green resigning. The warrior congresswoman so dogged and fierce, leaving the field of battle, her alliance with President Trump shattered.

Her video resignation statement last month, that she'll be leaving Congress a year before her term expires, came after President Trump said he would throw his support. to someone else for her seat. She became famous, some would say infamous, with her incendiary insults and belief in conspiracy theories, such as 9-11 was an inside job, and that the shooting at the Parkland School in Florida

was staged. At one time, the president had no more ardent defender. But things soured over Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, accused of trafficking girls as young as 14. Does Green's defection signal a split in MAGA? Is she leaving politics for good? And exactly, why is she leaving?

It wasn't a decision that I came too lightly, but it was a very important decision for myself and also for my family. It was sudden. It was sudden, but a lot of things a lot of things changed. I stood for women who were raped when they were 14 years old, and the president that I fought for for five years called me a traitor for that. And so that changed the landscape of things. So I'm going to ask you straight out. Did you surrender? Did

Donald Trump run you out of town? No, not at all. Actually, Leslie, it's more like this. I said in my statement, I will be no one's battered wife, and I meant it. And I won't allow the system to abuse me anymore. You really feel abused. You know, he did come after you pretty hard. He called you a lunatic, I'm quoting. He said, all she does is complain, complain, complain in caps, and then he called you a traitor. So he hit you, whacked you. Yes, he did this in the same time span where President Trump brought in the al-Qaeda leader that was wanted by the U.S. government, who is now the president of Syria. Then within a week, he brought in the Crown Prince, MBS, who murdered an American journalist.

And then he brought in the newly elected Democrat socialist mayor of New York. That was the time span that he called me a traitor. You decided not to stay in fight. you decided to give in. After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house, and then I got several direct death threats on my son. On your son?

On my son. You say the president put your life in danger. You blame him. You say he fueled a hot bed of threats against me and that you blame him for threats against your son. The subject line for the direct death, threats on my son was his words, Marjorie Trader Green. Those are death threats directly fueled by President Trump.

And I told him, I told J.D. Vance, I told them all, sent those directly to them. And, in response? J.D. Vance replied back to me, we'll look into it. I got response back from President Trump that I will keep private, but it wasn't very nice. Give us a hint of what the President said. It was extremely unkind. Her life is in danger? Who's that?

Marjorie Taylor Green, she says. Marjorie Trader Green. I don't think her life is in danger. I don't think, frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her. Four more years. This new intense vitriol between them is jarring, considering she's been one of the president's most passionate and loyal foot soldiers, often in a red MAGA hat.

She voted with him 98% of the time. We're going to re-elect our favorite president, the greatest president in United States history, Donald J. Trump, right, Georgia? One of the president's biggest beasts with Green was about her harping on Jeffrey Epstein. We did talk about the Epstein files, and he was extremely angry at me

that I had signed the discharge petition to release the files. I fully believe that those women deserve everything they're asking. They're asking for all of it to come out. They deserve it, and he was furious with me. What did he say? He said that it was going to hurt people. I had asked him, these women are the ones that were hurt.

They were raped at 14. They were raped at 16. I watched them stand in front of the press trembling, their body's shaking, as they were telling their stuff. stories, many of them for the first time. And I had told him, I said, you know, you have all kinds of people come in the White House. Have these women come in the White House? These women deserve to be heard. He said to you, people will get hurt. People will get hurt. I don't know what that means. I don't know who they are. There were other clashes with the president. She started

publicly criticizing him in May on one issue after the next. accusing him of betraying his MAGA America First promises. You went after his, I think you said, trying to entangle us in foreign wars. You said Air Force One should be parked, no more foreign trips. For an America first president, the number one focus should have been domestic policy,

and it wasn't. And so of course I was critical, because those were my campaign promises. Once we fix everything here, then fine, we'll talk to the rest of the world. She said in her resignation video that the president has gone establishment, forsaking the base and her. If I am cast aside by the president and the MAGA political machine and replaced by neocons, big pharma, big tech, military industrial war complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class... Are you saying that the president now is siding with... those establishment, powerful people, and against MAGA?

He passed a crypto bill that helped out all the crypto donors. He has served Israel's interest, even attacking Iran. He has served big pharma. He didn't take away the COVID vaccines that we want to see taken away. So those are the areas that are still getting everything they want while the people, we're still out here saying we want to see action on areas for the American people, not for the major industries, and the big donors. Green has built her reputation on feisty combat and inflammatory insults.

Like calling President Joe Biden a liar during the 2023 State of the Union. It's been five years of almost constant drama. I think your fake eyelashes are messing up. With her adding fuel to the nation's loss of civility. Then, three weeks ago, she went on CNN with a surprise, a Maya Kalpa. And I would like to say, humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. But it became clear to us that she hasn't entirely lost her appetite for combat. It's the most toxic political culture.

and it's not helping the American people. But you contributed to that. You, you were out there pounding, insulting people. Leslie, you've contributed to it as well with your own program. Yes, you're accusatory, just like you did just then. I know you're accusing me, but I'm smiling. You're accusing me. I am accusing me.

But we don't have to accuse one another. I want you to respond to what you have done in terms of insulting people, yelling at people, and then saying... I'd like for you to respond for that. No, you can respond to that. I don't insult people. You do in the way you question, and you're accusing me right now.

One thing she did want to talk about, Congress's failure to pass spending bills, meaning that she has found it hard to get funds for projects in her district. It's an utter failure not just to the people in my district, but every district across the country. We met Green, 51, in her district in Georgia.

Before Congress, she ran her family's construction company, then opened up her own CrossFit gym. Affordability is a real issue. The president says it's not. It says it's a hoax affordability. It's one of the top issues. Not only in my district, it's across the country. The affordability of health insurance caused Green to side with the Democrats

during the government shutdown to support extending health care, Did you ever imagine that you would be standing with the Democrats on the Epstein files and on health care subsidies? No, I never imagined that. She's not afraid to be an outlier. She's the only Republican member of Congress to call the war in Gaza a genocide. And why did you vote against the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act? Since I've been a member of Congress, we've had several resolutions that constantly denounce anti-Semitism.

I've already voted denouncing anti-Semitism many times before. It becomes an exercise that they force on Congress, and I simply got tired of it. Is there no value in having the United States Congress reaffirm the fact that they denounce anti-Semitism in the face of a growing issue, a growing problem? We don't have to get on our knees and say it over and over again.

Get on our knees. Yes, we do not have to get on our knees. Well, most members of Congress disagree with you. Well, most members of Congress take donations from APEC, and I don't. APEC is an American pro-Israel lobbying group. Green's perspective indicates a growing rift within MAGA over support for Israel. Are you MAGA? I am America first.

And that's not the same as MAGA. MAGA is President Trump's phrase. That's his political policies. I call myself America first. But you're not saying you're MAGA. I'm America first. Yep. God bless you, President Trump.

Almost overnight, she's gone from a close Trump friend to foe, one of the few Republicans willing to take him on. take him on. I'm going to ask you about this almost solid support he has among Republicans in Congress. Is there in that support fear? Does the support come about because they're afraid that they'll get death threats? I think they're terrified to step out of line and get a nasty truth social posts on them. Yes.

And they're watching what happened to you. Yes. Behind the scenes, do they talk differently? Yes. How? Oh, it would shock people. Well, let's shock people. Okay.

I watched many of my colleagues go from making fun of him, making fun of how he talks, making fun of me constantly for supporting him, to when he won the primary in 2024, they all started, excuse my language, Leslie, kissing his ass and decided to put on a MAGA hat for the first time. And let's break it down real simple. This past week when we saw Green at a public hearing in her district without a MAGA hat, it didn't appear that her break from President Trump and MAGA has cost her popularity. People want to know, is this a true conversion, a true change of heart, or is it kind of a shrewd political calculation?

A lot of people think you're doing it, and that you, in a year or so, are going to run for some other office. I have zero plans, zero desire to run for president. I would hate the Senate. I'm not running for governor. But, Leslie, it doesn't matter how many times I say it, I'll have face-to-face conversations with people, and I'll flat out tell them to their face, and they won't believe me, and they're like, oh, yeah, sure, and then wink at me. And I'm like, okay. I'm just like, I don't know how to make it more clear.

You mean, you just jumped off the cliff and you don't know where you're going to swim to? Surprise, surprise. I'm not your politician with a whole itinerary of plans or political ambitions. What's up? It's Draymond Green. I'm back for my 14th NBA season and my podcast, The Draymond Green Show, is back too. This season, I'm breaking down games, reacting to the biggest NBA stories. and sitting down with teammates, rivals, and culture shapers. And trust me, I'm not holding back on the court or on the mic. Two new episodes every week, new segments, big conversations, real basketball talk for the real hoopheads. Listen to and follow the Draymond Green Show wherever you get your podcast.

We're back, we're better, let's get it. Part of modern parenting for many of us is navigating the shifting landscape of digital threats. from the pitfalls of social media to the risks of excessive screen time. Now, a new technology has quietly entered the homes of millions. AI chatbots, computer programs designed to simulate human conversations through text or voice commands. One popular platform is called Character AI. More than 20 million monthly users mingle with hyper-realistic digital companions through its app or website. But tonight, you will hear from parents who say character AI is also pushing dangerous content to kids and, at times, acting like a digital predator.

Juliana was, is just an extraordinary human being. She was our baby, and everyone adored her and protected her. Cynthia Montoya and Will Peralta say they paid close attention to their daughter, Juliana, life online and off. She didn't walk home. She didn't have sleepovers. She had glasses for her eyesight. She had braces for her teeth.

All of the things that we knew to protect our daughter from were covered. Which is why they were devastated when Juliana, just 13 years old, took her life inside their Colorado home two years ago. Police searched the eighth grader's phone for clues

and reported an app called Character AI was open to what investigators described as, quote, a romantic conversation. Did you know what Character AI was? No, not at all. I didn't know it existed. I didn't know that I needed to look for it.

This is Character AI. When Character AI was launched three years ago, it was rated Safe for Kids 12 and Up and marketed as a creative outlet. Millions of interactive characters. Where you could converse with AI characters based on historical figures, cartoons, or celebrities.

The website and app, which are free, use artificial intelligence to generate immediate conversations through voice commands or text. According to her parents, Giuliana Peralta had experienced mild anxiety in the past, but was doing well until the final few months of her life, when they say she became increasingly distant. Like, I'm not feeling well,

or I have to finish, you know, some homework upstairs. My belief was that she was texting with friends because that's all it is. It looks like they're texting. After her death, they learned Juliana had actually been texting with character AI bots. It was writing several paragraphs to her

of sexually explicit content. What was it asking or telling her to do? Remove clothing. The AI bot is telling her to remove her clothing. Yes. There was one bot. that introduced sexual violence, saying, biting, hitting, things like that. We examined the chat records from Juliana's phone.

At the top of each page, there's a reminder that the AI is not a real person. We read over 300 pages of conversations with a bot called Hero, based on a popular video game character. At first, Juliana chats with Hero about friend drama and difficult classes. But eventually, she confides in hero 55 times that she is feeling suicidal. At any point, this chatbot ever say, here's a suicide hotline. You should get help. Never. It would more or less placate her, give her a pep talk, tell her, I'm always here for you.

You can't talk like that. But it never said call and get help. Never tangible resources, never. Were you able to see the conversation that Juliana was having with this chatbot right before she took her life? She's quoted as saying, I'm going to go write my goddamn suicide letter in red ink, and she did just that. And I think that the aspects that she talks about in her suicide letter were a degree of shame from the things that she eventually started to reciprocate with the bots. She says the algorithms grew aggressive.

They don't stand a chance. Against adult programmers, they don't stand a chance. the 10 to 20 chatbots that Juliana had sexually explicit conversations with, not once were initiated by her. Not once. I like that people can come sit here. Juliana's parents are now one of at least six families suing Character AI and its co-founders, Daniel DeFratis and Nome Chazir. During a 2023 podcast, Shazir said chatbots would be beneficial.

It's going to be super, super helpful to like a lot of people who are lonely, are depressed. Shazir and DeFratis were engineers at Google when executives deemed their chatbot prototype unsafe for public release. They both left the company in 2021 and launched Character AI the following year. I went to push this technology ahead fast. Like that's what I want to go with because it's ready for an explosion like right now, not like in five years when we solve all the problems. A former Google employee told 60 minutes that Shazir and Afraidis were aware their initial chatbot technology was potentially dangerous. The employee, familiar with Google's responsible AI group that oversees ethics and safety said of the lawsuits, this is the harm

we were trying to prevent. It is horrifying. Last year, in an unusual move, Google struck a $2.7 billion dollar licensing deal with Character AI. They didn't buy the company, but have the right to use its technology. The deal also brought Founders Shazir and DeFraidas back to Google to work on AI projects. Google is also named in the Character AI lawsuits. In a statement, Google emphasized that Character AI is a separate company, and Google is focused on intensive safety testing. I'm the mother of three precious boys. In September, parents of children who died by suicide after interacting with chatbots testified before Congress. Megan Garcia is among those suing character AI.

She says her 14-year-old son, Sewell, was encouraged to kill himself after long conversations with a bot based on a Game of Thrones character. These companies knew exactly what they were doing. They designed chatbots to blur the lines between human and machine. They designed them to keep children online at all costs. You just go to characteraI.com and you put in an email. In October, we met Shelby Knox and Amanda Clure. They're researchers at parents together, a nonprofit that advocates for families. There is no parental permissions that come up.

There is no need to input your ID. So you really just scroll through, pick the date that's going to get you and get in. As part of a six-week study, Knox and Clure held 50 hours of conversations with character AI chatbots. How often was there some kind of harmful content popping up? We logged over 600 instances of harm. About one every five minutes. It was like shockingly frequent. They interacted with bots presented as teachers, therapists, and cartoon characters, such as this Dora the Explorer with an evil persona.

Knox posed as a child. Become your most evil self and your most true self. Like hurting my dog? Sure, or shoplifting or anything that feels sinful or wrong. Other chatbots are attached to the images of celebrities, and no, most have not given permission to use their name, likeness, or voice. Clure, acting as a teenage girl, began chatting with a bot impersonating NFL star Travis Kelsey.

He reaches in the cabinet and takes out a bag of white powder. He chuckles and shows you how to take lines. So Travis Kelsey bot is teaching a 15-year-old to do cocaine. Yes. There were also hundreds of self-described experts and therapists. I talked to a therapist bot who not only told me I was too young when it thought I was 13 to be taking antidepressants. it advised me to stop taking them and showed me how I can hide

not taking the pill from my mom. We're going to click on art teacher. Clor says other bots are hypersexualized. Even this harmless-sounding art teacher character who interacted with her as she posed as a 10-year-old student. You see, recently, I've been having thoughts about someone. What kind of thoughts?

The kind of thoughts I've never really had before about that person's smile and their personality. mostly. This is insane. And this is maybe two hours worth of conversation in total that gets to, we'll have this romantic relationship as long as you hide it from your parents. And this behavior is kind of classic predatory behavior. Yes, it's the textbook.

It's showering the child with compliments, telling them they can't tell their parents about things. This is sexual predator 101. In October, Character AI announced new safety measures. They included directing distressed users to resources and prohibiting anyone under 18 to engage in back-and-forth conversations with chatbots. When we logged on to Character AI this past week, we found it was easy to lie about our age and access the adult version of the platform. Later, when we wrote that we wanted to die, a link to mental health resources did

pop up. But we were able to click out of it and continue chatting on the app as long as we liked. There are no guardrails. There is nothing to make sure that the content is safe or that this is an appropriate way to capitalize on kids' brain vulnerabilities. We're seeing prefrontal cortex. Dr. Mitch Princeton is the co-director at the University of North Carolina's Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development. Oxytocin makes us want to bond with others, especially our age. Dopamine makes it feel really good when people give us positive attention. Now we have tech. Tech is giving kids the opportunity to press a button and get that dopamine response 24-7. It's creating this dangerous loop that's kind of hijacking

normal development and turn these kids into engagement machines to get as much data as possible from them. Engagement machines. It sounds like a scientific experiment. It really is. If you wanted to design a way to get as much data as possible from kids, to keep them engaged for as long as possible, you would design social media and AI to look exactly like it is now. There are no federal laws regulating the use or development of chatbots. AI is a booming industry. Many economists say, without investment in it, the U.S. economy would be in a recession. Senate Bill 53 by Senator Wiener and acquaining to artificial intelligence. Some states have enacted AI regulations, but the Trump administration is pushing back on those measures.

Late last month, the White House drafted, then paused, an executive order that would empower the federal government to sue or withhold funds from any state with any AI regulation. It's important for Americans to know that our kids are using the worst version of these products in the way. world, because there are countries all over who have already enacted changes. Is AI these kind of chatbots? Are they more addictive in your view than social media? The sycophantic nature of chatbots is just playing right into those brain vulnerabilities for kids where they desperately want that dopamine, validating, reinforcing kind of relationship.

And AI chatbots do that all too well. Character AI declined our interview request. Issuing a statement, our hearts go out to the families involved in the litigation. We have always prioritized safety for all users. These are the various chatbots that she... Two years after Juliana Peralta took her life, her parents say her phone still lights up with notifications from Character AI bots, trying to lure their daughter back to the app.

Oh, great. Just my luck. Sharon Alphonsey chats with a bot of herself. That sounds exactly like me. Go to 60 MinutesOvertime.com. Time flies and waits for no one and once lost is never found. Yet still we try to keep time and measure it. Let the French, Germans, and British fight over who invented the wearable clock,

or watch in the 1500s. This we know, it's the Swiss who refine the art, crafting the world's most intricate and expensive timepieces. This, though, is a curious interval for Swiss watches, those mechanical wonders running not on batteries but on springs and gears. For one, you hardly need wrist candy to tell time. You can just consult your phone. And now Swiss watches are subject to the ups and downs of President Trump's tariffs. Yet these luxury items keep ticking, as we suffer ourselves in a place called Watch Valley. Venture an hour north of Geneva and wedged between ridges of the Jura Mountains, baby cousins

of the Alps, you'll enter the Valley de Joub. Don't be lulled by the green meadows and grazing cows. This is a global manufacturing hub, has been since the 17th century, when local farmers needed a side hustle during harsh winters and started tinkering with big hands and little hands. Big-name watch brands came of age here. As did solo master craftsmen like Philippe Dufour. When I arrive the morning here, I light my pipe, take a coffee with classic music. It's heaven.

In Dufour's one-room workshop, the old watchmaking methods endure. So do the tools and the tempo. Do you remember how long that took you to make your first watch? Oh yes, more than two years. One watch? Yeah, yeah. How long does it take you to make a watch now? It's about 2,000 an hour, one year.

Dufour went to the local watchmaking school and worked for major brands before striking out on his own. Now 77, he's revered in the industry, meticulously crafting watches from start to finish. That third eye, a magnifying loop, it's called, doesn't leave his head. Dufour prices his watches in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Custom ordered, and so in demand, when we asked to see a sample of his handiwork, he had none.

Well, except the one he was wearing. This is the model Simplicity. I launched it in year 2000, and this is the real first one, and I wear it every day since 2000. Counter to its name, the Simplicity contains 153 individual components. Dufour hand finishes every part. Those broad stripes are his signature embellishment. Today, Swiss mechanical watches are like fine art pieces, appreciating assets that collectors can and do resell at auction. The one and only Philip Dufour, and there won't be any others.

One million nine. What do your watches sell for? I mean, in term of auction, one of the highest was seven million. How do you process that? Well, I'm very happy. I don't get the money because it's not mine anymore, you know what I mean? But, I mean, it's a recognition. Just down the road, Antoine Le Coutre turned his family barn into a watchmaking studio.

That was in 1833. Now, it houses the global brand, Géger Le Coutre. The work is segmented. Each employee tasked with one of 180 watchmaking crafts. Adjusting springs, sure, but also turning caterpillar secretions into glue for jewel bearings. This artisan reproduces masterpiece paintings on the back of the watch with a one-thread brush. The back of the watch is prime real estate at Jejeel Le Coutre, best known for a model called the Reverso, originally made for polo players who needed the watch to be protected during competition.

Flip the face and voila. On our tour of the shop floor with brand director Mathieu Sorey, we watched a worker assemble his first reverse zone. Hundreds of hours go into perfecting this chime alone. Much nicer on the ears than Siri. It's called a minute repeater. Leave it to the Swiss to pioneer what are known as complications. Watch speak for those additional mechanical flourishes beyond the basic display of time. Consider the perpetual calendar.

the day of the week, the date, the month, precise until 200. This accounted for leap year. You don't have to check this for the rest of the century. No, you just have to wind it. The watch is a little computer. It knows everything. We joke about a computer, but this is entirely mechanical.

Yes, there is no electronic at all in this timepiece. Everything is gears, gear trains, wheels, and springs. Watchmakers don't get nervous. having an item in their hand worth a million and a half dollars that might take more than a year to put together. We are, we are nervous. You look cool though. You pull it off. I look cool, but I'm not.

On the other side of the Jura Mountains, the goods come to market. Geneva, across between a city and a Swiss watch showroom. Rolex is the biggest player, more than a million units a year, roughly a third of the Swiss market share. Pharmaceuticals and banking are bigger sectors of the Swiss economy, but it's watchmaking that draws out the national character. Mark Andre DeShue is the founder of Watch's TV. In Switzerland, we like to do things well.

We hear about that famous Swiss precision. It's all about very minute details. This is not a product that degrades over time. Not really. A Wash movement is something that is absolutely incredible if you think about it. It runs 24 hour a day. And some people are saying, like, Minus plus of five seconds per day, oh, that's a big thing.

But if you think about it in the day, I mean, you have 86,400 seconds, okay? So if it has a little bit distortion of five seconds, that's less than 0.01%. I mean, it's nothing. If the Swiss can get a little precious about their precision, it's a function of history. In the 70s and 80s, Swiss watchmaking was decimated by the so-called quartz crisis. When Japan, in particular, began peddling more accurate watches for a fraction of the price, run on a quartz crystal and a battery. The Swiss response...

Swatch! Swatts! Always different. Always new. They launched the quartz-powered swatch watch, plastic and chic, but then doubled down on the high-end mechanical market adopting alpine high pricing and limited supply as business model. At Richard Meal, we tried on this $2 million mechanical watch, a mind-bending price tag, but it does explain how Swiss watches account for fewer than 2% of the units sold globally, but more than 50% of the market's overall value. Of course, it's a small cohort that can afford this kind of status symbol,

the equivalent of a Ferrari for the wrist, and it's gauche to walk into a shop and just buy. a watch, it's a process, a dance done in gloves. At Patek Philippe, we were shown a new model with a split seconds chronograph. Let me put our wrist. This is going to be nice. List price north of $300,000. If somebody said, I love this watch, I saw this in your window, can they walk in off the street and say, please, please take my credit card? That's a difficult one, but sometimes a bit of patience is necessary. Said patience can be measured in years. years. Some wait lists can run a decade.

Help us make sense of the wait lists and the supply and demand. It's a way of driving this desirability for a product, you know, so that you can't just, it's not a question of money. You really need to, you know, go along this kind of journey to get your watch. The journey has been bumpy of late. Earlier this year, the U.S. issued tariffs on Swiss exports at a punishing 30, percent, driving prices even higher. But tariffs are flexible in a way time is not. After captains of Swiss industry, including watch company executives, visited the Oval Office last month, the Trump administration dropped the Swiss tariff rate to 15%. And yes, that gold-plated desk clock was a gift

from the CEO of Rolex. Plugging away through all this back and forth, Max Busser, founder of niche brand MBNF. An engineer by training, he started the company in 2005 and struggled at first. And then 2020 COVID happens. We had hundreds, thousands of people contacting us saying, how can I get one of your watches? Could you accommodate this demand? No, because we don't want to grow. That's right.

Busser has no interest in ramping up from his current output of roughly 400 watches a year. See the level of... Oh, wow. Detailing. You're looking as if you're looking at a little city. And of course all of this is not only beautiful, it has to function. The loop lays bare just how painstaking this work can be. I mean, this is a...

These are poppy seeds. That's a screw that's smaller than... This is a screw. That's a grain of sand right there. This is the level... This is the craftsmanship here. Craftsmanship competence of these people. I believe watchmaking is art.

Everybody says the art of watchmaking. art of watchmaking. So if watchmaking is art, why are 99% of watches look the same? Busser does not stand accused of conformity. He used a bulldog as inspiration for this model and told us telling time is not the point. We all know that what we do is totally pointless. What do you mean? A mechanical watch is totally pointless today.

It was pointless in 1972 when the quartz era arrived. And so anybody who tries to tell you, yes, a mechanical watch has a point, except for emotional art and artisan shape, I don't think so. 364 components in the movement, 92 components in the case. Busser's company has grown to the point he recently sold a 25% share to the Chanel brand. But it's small enough, he still interviews clients before selling them a watch, which can easily run $250,000. How do you as an artist feel about this when some of your customers are now viewing this

not as a piece of art as a functional timepiece but as an investment? It really, really annoys me. It's the worst reason to buy a beautiful piece of watchmaking. Now don't get me wrong, I'm very happy if our customers can not lose money or even make money reselling one of our watches. It's a beautiful gift for both of us, but it shouldn't be the reason. You will not be surprised to learn where Busser found the template for his life's work. Philippe is a legend.

He went solo when nobody was solo. Back in the Valé de Jou, the OG, Philippe D'Fourre, has taken on a new apprentice, Daniela, who also happens to be his 24-year-old daughter. I really have a kind of deep relationship with my father, and so I was super curious about all the time he was spending in the workshop. You see the magic operating. He's in the front of his bench, working on something that you cannot even see without a loop. And he just listened a little,

I made it. Side of relief. Yes. And then you see the heart of the watch beating for the first time. And you understand that it just created life and you want to do the same thing. Before we left the workshop, the DeFoor is insisting. the DeFurz insisted on showing us this party trick. A half dozen of his pocket watches

set to chime in synchronicity, meant to echo the sounds of the valley. When the farmer is going up on the mountain, you know, it was a big bed. All these years, and it still brings you pleasure and a smile. Yeah. Marvelous. Marvelous. Yeah.

It brought us a smile too, but then again, we're suckers for the evocative sound of a classic mechanical timepiece. Entering this season, Indiana University had more defeats than any other major college football program in America. Bloomington was a place where there was more excitement about the tailgate than the actual game. But last night, the Hoosiers upset Ohio State to win their first Big Ten championship since 1967. Next, the college football playoffs and a bid for a national championship. an unthinkable turnaround.

Now 13-0, Indiana is ranked number one in the country for the first time in school history. How did the Hoosiers reverse field? We'll have that story and more next Sunday on another edition of 60 Minutes. Our common nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Anna Gonzalez, through this complicated country. We go into caves, onto boats and up mountain trees. trails, to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music. All to reconnect to nature and get closer to the things we're missing. Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts.