60 Minutes - Sunday, July 7, 2019

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Sharyn Alfonsi joins Steve Case, the CEO of AOL, on a bus tour to find the next great business. Scott Pelley travels to Siberia, where the Arctic temperatures are rising. Anderson Cooper introduces us to French artist who goes by the name of JR. His name may not be familiar, but his work is. His story and more on this week's "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you. Have a great tour. Steve Case is a billionaire with a bus on a mission, steering venture capitalists and their money to areas they've typically overlooked. I started this company with only $500 in my pocket. Places like this old church in Memphis have become the stage for entrepreneurs to pitch their products The winner of the pitch competition is Soundways!

and hope to get a share of Case's $150 million fund. Our adventure led us high above the Arctic Circle to find out why the Earth is warming so fast, so far below. How far below the surface are we right now? Right now we're about 10 meters. So about 30 feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Russian vodka, smokes like a Soviet steel mill, and believes these massive bones exposed by warming could bring the extinct woolly mammoth back from the dead.

That's amazing. That word dignity to you is important. You know, the people made me realize it's important in every single place. Dignity is something that all of us want. All of us. No matter what. No matter the background. That's the little girl.

Why? Because the issues people are facing are life and death. Yeah, of course. Dignity goes through the way we're being seen by the others, the way we portray ourselves. I think some people hearing that are going to say, look, you're telling me that people, you know, who don't know where their next meal is coming from are struggling to survive, care about art? You know what? Yes. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Pacific Life has a variety of financial solutions that can help you complement your life goals and passions while managing the uncertainties. Backed by more than 150 years of experience, you can count on Pacific Life to be there so you can go out and keep living your best life. Pacific Life is one of the most dependable and experienced insurers in the industry and has been named one of the 2019 World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. The freedom to go after whatever is next for you? That's the power of Pacific. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help give you the freedom to do what you love. Or visit www.pacificlife.com. For years, pundits have declared the United States is split into two Americas,

a nation divided by politics, geography, and the economy. But as we first reported in March, one tech icon believes he can help even out the playing field. Steve Case, the man who co-founded America Online and injected the jingle, you've got mail, into the American lexicon is now trying to steer venture capitalists and their money to areas they've typically overlooked, mostly small towns and cities in the middle of the country. His vehicle to do that is a $150 million investment fund and a 35-foot long bright red bus. We joined the billionaire on his bus for a recent road trip. All right, let's go.

And soon found ourselves aiming for the edge of a wheat field in Tennessee. Steve Case is here to meet a few entrepreneurs who say they've created a new technology that could revolutionize the way America farms. These robots are actually miniature tractors that are operated remotely. What you're able to do is cut that travel time down to one-third and maximize productive time in the field. The entrepreneurs are looking for a cash infusion from Case to jumpstart their business.

Case is looking for the next big idea and is knee-deep in his quest. Typically, how hard has it been for these guys out here to get the attention of? Super hard, super hard. Right now, 75% of venture capital goes to three states, California, New York, and Massachusetts. Most of the venture capital is on the coast, not in the middle of the country, and we just have to change that. Tech behemoths like Amazon and Google have doubled down on big cities. But Case believes the best opportunities are off the beaten path. And that's where the bus comes in.

Thank you. Have a great tour. Case and his team are scouring the middle of the country looking for promising ideas overlooked by Silicon Valley. They've traveled to 43 cities and 27 states, thousands of miles, often spending 12 hours a day on the road. You're a successful guy. You've made a fortune. Why in the world do you want to ride around on a bus in the middle of the country for 12 hours a day, day after day? Because I believe in these entrepreneurs. I believe in these. But you could believe in them from Washington, D.C. and send your people out. But you go there and you get on the bus and you drive around. So why are you on the bus? I want to get everybody on the

bus. There are entrepreneurs like me all over the country. Most people are not paying attention to them. Most people in their communities don't believe in them. Most people in their communities don't believe in them. Most people on the coast don't think there's anything interesting, innovative happening in the middle of the country. So convinced there is money to be made in the middle of America, Case raised 150 million dollars to create what he calls the Rise of the rest fund. The rest referring to entrepreneurs in cities like Indianapolis, Detroit, and Birmingham, areas usually overlooked by venture capitalists. If you care about this city, you have to invest in startups. Today's stop, Memphis.

I started this company with only $500 in my pocket. Dozens of entrepreneurs have gathered in a dusty church to pitch Case and his team their ideas. Among the competitors, the inventor of a new headlight. This technology converts the high beam into a low beam illumination. The maker of a biodegradable medical device. We are the first to encapsulate the benefits of honey, create a solid product, and deliver it as an implant to heal you internally. And a former musician who has come up with a better way for fellow musicians to get paid for their work. We've built an IMDB-style database for the music industry

that helps give credit where credit is due. Sweet bile. Backstage, Case and his team quickly vote. Six, seven. Minutes later. The winner of the pitch competition is Soundways. Come on up. The winner gets $100,000 to grow their business. Pocket change for Case, but a shot of adrenaline for the city's struggling economy.

The poverty rate in Memphis is almost two times the national average. Crime is rampant, and 30,000 people have left the city in the last decade. Steve Case, how you doing? Memphis is a hard sell to investors, and entrepreneurs have paid for it.

I realize it because I spend a lot of time traveling around the country. Most people in this country wake up in the morning anxious, fearful about the future. Fearful? Fearful. Why? Because the things they see happening,

mostly on the coast, are hurting their family, hurting their community. They see these Silicon Valley companies bragging about disruption. Sometimes that's code words for job destruction in their backyard. And that troubles them. They're losing jobs, not gaining jobs. And do you feel that when you go there? Do you feel that they think we've kind of been forgotten here in the country?

They have been forgotten. It's not about a feeling about being left behind. They have been left behind. We have to kind of level the playing field so everybody everywhere really does feel like they have a shot at the American dream. Right now, they don't. J.D. Vance agrees. It's the reason he became Case's partner in the Rise of the Rest Fund. Vance wrote the New York Times bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy. Do you still consider yourself a hillbilly? I certainly do. I certainly do, and it's the thing I'm proudest of. A hillbilly in a blue blazer now.

Yeah, well, my wife dressed me, so you can talk to her about that. Vance's book details his upbringing in Appalachia, surrounded by heartbreaking poverty, drug addiction and instability. After a stint in the Marines, then earning degrees from Ohio State and Yale Law School, Vance began a career as a high tech investor in Silicon Valley. I definitely get a little bit skeptical when somebody is developing a new app for parking and they tell me they're changing the world. So I do think sometimes folks in San Francisco

can drink a little bit too much of their own Kool-Aid. Discouraged by so-called transformational technologies that weren't, two years ago, Vance moved back to Ohio to help run the Rise of the Rest Fund. He says many of his Silicon Valley friends had preconceived ideas about people from small towns. Did you ever feel like you had to be defensive about where you were from? Oh, sure, sure. I felt like I definitely had to defend this part of the world, had to defend

some of the people who lived here. Defend them from what? I think defend them from the assumption that they're all stupid and that they don't know what they really want in the world. I think defend them from the assumption that they're all stupid and that they don't know what they really want in the world. I think there is this presumption that the only people who live here are the people who are forced to live here, they can't get out, or they're too dumb to know that they should leave. And that's just not true. I think people are here because they care about their communities and they want to build something special here,

just as folks in San Francisco want to build something special there. Kentucky native Jonathan Webb wants to build something special in his home state. We met him in Pikeville, Kentucky. Once a thriving coal town in the heart of Appalachia, it's been hemorrhaging jobs and residents. One in three people here make less than $12,000 a year, living below the poverty line. Webb thinks Kentucky is the perfect place to build high-tech greenhouses, and here's why.

Most U.S. produce comes from the West and Mexico, traveling thousands of miles to get to our plates. Webb says Kentucky's central location means he can save on fuel costs and get fresher products to stores faster. We can get to 70% of the U.S. population in a one-day drive. Rise of the Rest has invested in Webb's idea. I want to be a high school student in eastern Kentucky right now. Now he's trying to convince the local high school students here there's a future in eastern Kentucky. There's not anything here right now, and I hope and pray for our community that something does come back here.

But as of now, it's impossible for all of us to stay, even though 90% of us want to, and be able to live the kind of lives where we could support ourselves and our family too. My whole family's here, they've been here, but there's just, there's nothing here, no jobs, nothing. You worry about your parents. Yes. And like you worry, how are you going to make it? I mean, how can they live paycheck to paycheck? And you want to help, but there's just no future for you. Pikeville, like much of the region, has been gripped by the opioid epidemic. Our overdose rate is huge. So many people, that's what they die from around here. I mean, that's what it is.

Jonathan Webb has contracts with local rehab centers to hire recovering addicts. Starting salaries will be $13 an hour, nearly double Kentucky's minimum wage. Folks need opportunity, and if they don't have opportunity, we're going to continue in that cycle here. This Walmart is the town's biggest employer, and the hills here are scarred with ads for personal injury attorneys. We counted 15 of them in town. And eastern Kentucky has one of the highest rates in the country for people who've stopped looking for work. I'm going to play devil's advocate. People who say this is an area that's been riddled with a drug problem,

they don't really have the desire to work. What do you say to that? How do you answer that? We shouldn't just accept that the story should be one of decline. And that's what I think, you know, at its core, what Rise of the Rest is about is refusing to see the worst in any place. We want to see the best. I'm a venture capitalist, so I'm pretty comfortable with risk. If you look, even the best venture capitalists, a very large share of the companies that they invest in fail. And to me, what we ultimately want is to recognize that just because

a place is risky doesn't mean it can't ultimately be productive. But it's not easy. No, it's certainly not easy. And I don't think that five years from now we're going to completely change the economy of Appalachia or any other part of the country. But I do think that what you're seeing is some real long-term momentum to bring more economic prosperity to broad parts of the country, not just a few cities on the coast. In the past year, the rise of the Rest Fund has invested in 125 companies in 63 cities. Some of the biggest names in business are investors. Members of Walmart's Walton family, former Facebook president Sean Parker, and Google's Eric Schmidt. Give the one thing.

Not just offering cash, but advice to the entrepreneurs. They've had some success. Watchmaker Shinola, who they discovered on their first bus tour through Detroit, now has more than 30 stores. In Baltimore, a city that has long struggled with pockets of extreme poverty, they invested in Catalyte, a company that developed an artificial intelligence test to identify people with aptitude for software development. No experience or education required. Pass the test and Catalyte will train you.

Company president Jacob Su says about 90 percent of their trainees land six-figure jobs as software developers. Our people come from all walks of life. We have fast food workers, we have teachers, musicians, artists, truck drivers, security guards. We have people who come from all over into these positions. Catalyte is rapidly expanding and plans to open in 20 cities in the next two years. This isn't kindergarten engineering. This is the real deal. We're not doing it just for charity. We're doing it because we found a better way. Back in Pikeville, J.D. Vance and Jonathan Webb are hunting for a second greenhouse site on top of an abandoned mine. Do you think you're going to make money? I mean, is this just something that feels good for the region, or is this a good investment?

We're doing this certainly because it feels good, but we think it'll work, too. The stakes are high, not just for the entrepreneurs, but Steve Case says, for the country. For the skeptics, you see, this is just a vanity project for Steve Case. They can say whatever they want. I think it's important. Why is it important? Why does it matter? If it doesn't happen, then what? I think we're going to take what's already a pretty big divide in this country, and it's going to get a lot worse. To get the attention of those venture capitalists, you have to be successful.

You have to make money. Right. So how much pressure is there to get this right? Well, you've got to get this right. You two get the medal here. This, to me, really is about the future of America. Temperatures in the Arctic continue to warm twice as fast as the rest of the world. That's according to the U. fast as the rest of the world.

That's according to the U.S. government's latest climate report. The past five years in the Arctic have been the warmest there since records began in 1900. Decades ago, an eccentric Russian geophysicist warned that frozen soil called permafrost contained enough greenhouse gas itself to pose a threat to the climate if it ever melted. As we first reported in March, science scoffed at Sergei Zimov's warning, but now that the permafrost is collapsing, the world is listening. We traveled last summer to the Siberian Arctic to meet Zimov, who has devised a scheme to save the world in a place that he named for the last ice age, Pleistocene Park. Our trip took three days, and our final leg in an adventure of geoscience was on an aeronautical fossil, a Soviet-era Antonov.

We approached a Siberia we had never seen in our imaginations, a forest touching the horizon in a land sequined with lakes. This was far north even by a Siberian compass, above the Arctic Circle where the Colima River fills the East Siberian Sea. Fifteen time zones from New York, we found the aspiring ghost town of Chersky, a trading port in Soviet times. Chersky was gutted by the fall of communism, losing 80% of its residents. There's not much reason to visit, unless, like many scientists today, you're beating

a path to the Northeast Scientific Station to meet its founder, 63-year-old Sergei Zimov. Hello. Hello. I'm Scott. I'm Sergei. Nice to see you, Sergei. He welcomed us in summer, when fireweed enjoys a few weeks of liberation. But 40 Siberian winters remained indelible on Zimov's face,

the price of solitude for a geophysicist who longed to be remote from his communist bosses. When people hear the word Siberia, they think about exile, but it sounds to me like exile is exactly what you had in mind. Yes, only one problem, so long winter. The winter is long. Winters are long as ever, but not as cold. This ground was once so icy, humankind named it permafrost. But in the 1990s, Zimov noticed it wasn't so permanent.

Frozen ground, do you hear? Yep. It's roof of permafrost. He can remember when his shovel wouldn't bite the frozen surface. But now he's down more than six feet. In the past, all our soil, which was melted in summer, freeze. Everywhere, totally, and it's happened usually in November, December. Now, in all winter, it did not freeze. What does that tell you? It means permafrost is melt.

This is a warning to the world because organic matter in the permafrost, plants and animals, has been frozen for hundreds of thousands of years. As it thaws, microbes consume that organic matter and release carbon dioxide and methane, greenhouse gases, which contribute to a warmer climate. We just pulled this up out of the hole, and it's burning my fingers it's so cold. Yes, soil with water, and water is ice. In five minutes it will be melt. Years ago, Zimov calculated there is enough carbon in permafrost to threaten the world. But big science gave that idea a cold shoulder, maybe in part because of Zimov himself. He endures Siberian winters when most Russians head south. He enjoys a refreshing

vodka from time to time, smokes like a Soviet steel mill, and often just lies down to think. I sometimes describe him as somewhere between a madman and a genius. Max Holmes is a leading climate scientist and deputy director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. He told us Zemoff's key discovery was that Siberian permafrost held far more carbon than anyone knew. When Zemoff made this observation, he couldn't get his papers published in scientific journals. It can take a while to get papers published that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. But science warmed to Zemoff's theory,

and now he's published dozens of papers in science journals. Max Holmes has made several visits to Zemoff's station. The estimates of how much carbon is locked up in permafrost keep going up, and most of us were probably thinking about the upper meter. The upper three feet much carbon locked up in permafrost keep going up and most of us were probably thinking about the upper meter. The upper three feet or so of the soil. Yeah, if you go down much deeper than that, the carbon content's very low. But what's special about this area where Zemoff is, the carbon content of the permafrost extends to much greater depths. So consequently, there's an awful lot of carbon that's locked up there.

Scientists estimate there is more greenhouse gas in permafrost than in all of the world's remaining oil, natural gas, and coal. There's no consensus about how much of it could be released. How far below the surface are we right now? Right now we are about 10 meters. So about 30 feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ten times deeper than originally thought, we found the remains of Ice Age plants and microbes.

Let's see if we can take some samples. With Zimov's chief collaborator, his son, Nikita. It's a ticking carbon bomb, as it's called. A carbon bomb. Yeah. Nikita Zimov grew up here with his father and sensibly moved south for college, leaving behind the old man in the river. But Nikita's plan to be a mathematician melted away when Sergei asked his son to return to

see what he had seen. A few hours from the research station, there's a vast subsidence of permafrost, sort of a rolling landslide called Duvany Yar. Geology is a slow science, but here it's almost a spectator sport. The bones of extinct woolly mammoths are thawing after more than 12,000 years. The collapse of frozen earth is happening in much of the Arctic, including Alaska. 25% of the northern hemisphere is permafrost. The Zemoffs have a theory, many would say a crazy idea, for diffusing the carbon bomb. They want to cool the permafrost by returning part of Siberia to the Ice Age, or at least what it looked like in those days, known as the Pleistocene era.

If we were standing on this hill in the Pleistocene era, what would we see? No any trees. It looks like grasslands and savanna. And you will see around 1,000 of mamas, around maybe 5,000 of bison, around maybe 10,000 of horses around this place, and also lions. Lions? Yes, the main predator was lions here. Sergei Zimov told us when man became the main predator, the woolly mammoth and other large grazers were hunted to extinction.

Forest replaced grasslands, and that made Siberia vulnerable to a warming climate, because trees trap more heat than grass. And winter temperatures of 40 below can't freeze the permafrost if there are no herds of animals to trample the insulating snow. So this is what you use instead of a mammoth? Yeah. As a demonstration project they call Pleistocene Park, Nikita Zimov is knocking down trees over 54 square miles and restocking the big grazers. Zimov's believe returning the land to its Ice Age appearance will cool the permafrost even in a warming world.

You're trying to bring the animals back now. How can you do that? Physically, I mean, or morally? Or financially? All three, but let's start with physically. You need what? Hundreds of thousands, millions of these animals? You need to start with something. Second, you need to prove people that the concept works. And to prove that concept works, for many things, you don't need millions of animals. You brought up the moral issue of bringing the animals in here. What do you mean by that? I mean, some people say you're playing God. You know, I think it's not me playing God. It was our ancestors who were playing God 15,000 years ago. Humans came and they dropped the number

of animals worldwide. And we are just trying to get it back. This is where the Zimov's experiment gets crazier. What they need is the greatest tree crusher of the last 20,000 years. And they are surrounded with evidence of the once abundant woolly mammoth. That's amazing. It's a young female. Young female mammoth. This weighs at least 20, 25 pounds. Do you need the woolly mammoth to bring all of this back in the park? It's like, do you need your right arm to live and do your job? No, you don't need it,

but with your arm, you will do it better. So same with mammoths. Today, one place you might get a woolly mammoth is in Boston, Massachusetts, specifically in the lab of Harvard geneticist George Church. Sergei is hoping that you're going to deliver a mammoth to him. Can you do that? I think he's hoping that we will deliver an animal that is very similar to the ones that used to roam there. We need cold-resistant elephants. That's what he would like. Church is another scientist who's made the trek to Zimov's world.

He returned to his renowned genetics lab with DNA from mammoth bones. If you look at the 23 genomes of the elephants, there's lots of evidence of lots of interbreeding all over the place among the different so-called species. So in a way, we're just recreating a hybrid that could easily have existed. When do you imagine you might be able to pull up a truck and deliver this creature to Pleistocene Park. I would say that probably in five years we'll know whether we can get this to work for mice and maybe pigs and elephants. And then if we can get embryos to grow in the laboratory all the way to term, then it's probably a decade.

The Zemoffs have not convinced everyone in climate science. Critics say they lack long-term temperature records of the permafrost, and their work is restricted to a relatively small area. You know, to the untrained eye, someone could come away from a meeting with Sergei thinking that he's a crackpot. Yeah, that's right. I mean, he kind of plays the part. But as a climate scientist, how do you evaluate him? I think he's usually right. Certainly he has controversial ideas, and a lot of them, I think, end up being supported over time.

What do you think of his concept of Pleistocene Park. Fascinating theory. I'm fascinated by the science that can be done to figure out if it's correct. I'm glad he's pursuing this. We need to think about solutions. The Zemoffs have little funding for their big idea. The government donated the land and their income flows from the rent that they charge visiting scientists for the research station. Theirs is science on a shoestring with a very long timeline. Sergei, you've devoted your life to this, but I wonder why you thought it was important that Nikita devote his life to this.

Why it's important? Our experiment, it's a long time experiment. Decades. Decades. It'll take decades? Yes. And it's also, you think about my grand-grandchildren. They have some intriguing results in the early days of Pleistocene Park. Data show the permafrost is becoming colder where heat-trapping trees have been cut down. It's a little more weight on the genius side of the

madman scale and perhaps early evidence that resurrecting the future of the world may depend on burying Siberia's past. New animals have arrived at the park since our story first aired in March. Not mammoths, but a dozen bison from Denmark. It took Nikita Zimov and his crew more than a month to bring them by land and river to their new home. When a giant photograph of a child appeared looming over the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego almost two years ago, art aficionados knew right away it was the work of an artist who calls himself J.R. You may never have heard of J.R., but his giant photographs have appeared in some 140 countries, sometimes in fancy art galleries,

but more often than not pasted illegally on sidewalks and subways, buildings and rooftops. Plenty of famous artists like Basquiat and Keith Haring started off scrawling their work on the streets, often in the dead of night. But as we first reported last year, few have continually displayed their art in public spaces on the scale of JR. This is the photo that popped up in September 2017 along the U.S.-Mexico border, a 64-foot-tall picture of a Mexican child named Kikito who lives on the other side of the fence.

Built on scaffolding on Mexican soil, there was nothing U.S. Border Patrol agents could do about it. It was classic J.R., a person's picture pasted in a public place that made everyone stop and stare. J.R. has been doing this kind of thing all over the world for the past 15 years. He put the faces of Kenyans on rooftops in a Nairobi slum. In Cuba, where oversized images of Castro and Che are the norm, JR put up enormous pictures of everyday people. On New York's sidewalks and Istanbul buildings, in Tunisia during the Arab Spring and a looted police station,

JR has pasted his pictures, often without permission and at risk of being arrested. We met up with JR in a suburb of Paris in front of a giant mural he'd made out of photographs of more than 700 local residents. We don't know his real name, and that's just how JR wants it. In public, he never takes off his glasses or hat. There's a practical reason for it, but a little mystery also builds mystique in the world of art. What we do

know is that JR is 36 years old and was born in France, the child of Tunisian immigrants. I don't think I've ever done an interview for 60 Minutes when I didn't actually know the name of the person I'm interviewing. You're not going to tell me your name. Would it help, you know? I mean, in a lot of countries... It would help me. In countries where I got arrested... It's important for you to be an anonymous.

Yeah, because, unfortunately, when I travel in a lot of other countries where what I do, just paper and glue, is not considered as art, I get arrested, deported, put in jail. What's art in one country is a jailable offense in another. Exactly. JR has been committing jailable offenses since he was a teenager. He says he was repeatedly kicked out of high school. He would sneak out at night with friends, spray painting graffiti in hard-to-reach areas. Graffiti or tagging, what was the appeal of that?

We all have that sense of, I want to exist. I want to show that I'm here, that I'm present. Graffiti was saying, I am here. I am a person. Exactly. I'm here. I exist. His foray into photography began, he says, by accident.

I found a camera in the subway. A tiny camera. You really just found it? Yeah, no, it's true. And it's funny because a lot of friends tease me. Yeah, right, you started your career found a camera in the subway. A tiny camera. You really just found it? Yeah, no, it's true. And it's funny because a lot of friends tease me. Yeah, right, you started your career stealing a camera. I'm not sure the police would believe that story, but... I know, but, you know, I...

Some things are true. Exactly. And at some point I realized I was not the best in graffiti. You know, I had the balls to climb any building you want, but I would not do the craziest piece. But I was with friends who were amazing. Then I realized, wait, let me document the journey. The journey of it. Yeah. And so I went from I exist to they exist. And I realized the power of that. Once photography got into the picture, it was

about these other people exist. Exactly. They exist. They exist. Many of JR's friends in this Paris suburb, whom he began taking pictures of, felt they didn't exist in the eyes of French society. Most of those who live in this neighborhood are of African or Arab descent, first or second generation immigrants, and few wealthy Parisians ever venture here. In 2005, riots broke out in this neighborhood after two kids died while being chased by police. The violence spread across France. Riots broke out in this neighborhood after two kids died while being chased by police. The violence spread across France. JR saw how the young people in the suburb were being portrayed on television.

He decided to use his camera to tell a different story. You would see the riots. Everyone had hoodies. And then, so any kids coming from the suburb would look like a monster to you. So that's when I started photographing them from really close. And I said, I'm going to put your name, your age, your building number on the poster. And I'm going to paste it in Paris, where they see you as a monster. And actually, you're going to play your own caricature. Why play your own caricature?

Isn't that feeding a stereotype? It's actually, by feeding it, it breaks it. And I wanted them to be in control of their own image. And you wanted people in Paris who maybe had never been to this neighborhood to understand what? The humanity, when you look at this face, makes you want to smile by playing the monster that don't look like monster anymore. J.R. enlarged the pictures and printed them out, and with friends began pasting them up illegally at night around Paris. Most were immediately taken down, but the mayor of one Parisian district gave J.R. permission to paste them on a wall outside a museum. It was J.R.'s first official public art exhibit.

He was 23 years old. The people from Paris would go in front of those pictures and take a photo of themselves with them. And people were trying to find who is who and get a photo with them where they're supposed to be the monsters that are about to invade Paris. So it kind of break the tension that there was. The idea of breaking tension through photography was a revelation to JR. In 2007, with money saved from odd jobs, he decided to head to Israel. It was after the second Intifada, and his plan was to paste photographs on the wall separating Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank. So I started making

a list of people doing the same job on each side, hairdresser, taxi driver, security guard, teacher, student. And then I would go, and I would say, say look I want to paste you playing your own caricature of how the other sees you but I would paste you with the other taxi driver oh yeah sure yeah take my photo but the other guy he's never gonna accept they're really close-minded they're never gonna accept that when I go there same thing each person on each side said I'll do it but the person on the other side exactly before he could begin pasting the photographs, JR and his team were arrested by Israeli authorities for not having a permit. They were loaded into the back of a wagon and hauled off to jail.

After some questioning, they were released and given 15 days to leave the country. Instead, JR went to the Palestinian side of the wall and began to paste. I paste a giant photo of the taxi driver and a second photo of the other taxi driver. And, you know, a crowd of people, very quickly, big crowd. And then the first guy asks a question. But, my friend, who are those people? I say, oh, one is Israeli and one is Palestinian. And then you have a big silence in the crowd. And I say, so, one is Israeli and one is Palestinian. And then you have a big silence in the crowd. And I say, so who is who?

And they couldn't even recognize their enemy or their brother. On the Israeli side, to ensure he wouldn't be arrested again, JR announced the day and time he was going to put up his photographs. He says so many reporters and onlookers showed up to watch, the authorities decided to just let him go ahead with his project. The attention he got from his work in the Middle East and France led to some sales of his photographs, which then allowed him to begin to travel further afield. Over the next few years in Kenya, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,

he focused his lens on women, heroes, he says, who are often treated as second-class citizens. He photographed women's faces and placed them where they could no longer be ignored. A Kenyan woman named Elizabeth Kamanga asked J.R. to paste her picture for all the world to see. The woman asked me, make my story travel. Have my eyes, have my story travel around the world. There was someone that they never heard of to hear, like sending a bottle in the water. Her story did travel thousands of miles around the world. J.R. pasted her eyes onto a container ship called the Magellan that spent months at sea. In 2008, he ventured into Providencia, the oldest favela in Rio, a slum perched on a

hillside controlled by a well-armed gang of drug dealers. J.R. photographed an elderly woman whose grandson was murdered by a rival gang. She agreed to let him paste her image on the stairs leading into the neighborhood. Did you have permission from any of the gangs? From nobody. We start pasting the stairs like that. Great vibe, kids playing, you know, we're just pasting on the stairs. After 10 stairs, huge like fights of guns. And like it started going from all over. JR and his team were caught in crossfire between police and gang members. We run and we hide like it's the last day of my life.

And the next day, we came back and we kept on doing the stairs. And I think that's what made the people in the community realize that, OK, we're not just here for a minute. And that first time when that woman was pasted on the stairs, everybody in the community understood what the project was about. It was her. She was standing there straight and looking strong. Her photo covered 80 steps. And after that, other residents allowed JR to post their faces and eyes on the sides of their homes. A display of strength and dignity, he says,

that could be seen from the wealthier neighborhood below. That word dignity to you is important. You know, the people made me realize it's important in every single place. Dignity is something that all of us want. All of us. No matter what. No matter the background. Why?

Because the issues people are facing are life and death. Of course. Dignity goes through the way we're being seen by the others, the way we portray ourselves. I think some people hearing that are going to say, look, you're telling me that people, you know, who don't know where their next meal is coming from are struggling to survive, care about art? You know what? Yes. If you're wondering how JR pays for all these projects, so were we. He now has a team of about 16 people working for him out of studios in Paris and New York.

He doesn't like to give details of how much his projects cost, but some of the money comes from the sale of limited edition prints of his work. He doesn't accept any sponsorship from corporations, but he does have wealthy art patrons who help him out. There's amazing people out there. There's people that support me. There's someone that gave me a building to put my studio that I don't pay rent, so I don't have to look for sponsors. There are amazing people that I call the shadow philanthropists, the people who really want to change. Shadow philanthropists. Yeah. And that don't look for return. They don't get into philanthropy to get more credit.

JR's work may focus on other people, but it's also made him a celebrity in his own right. He has more than a million followers on Instagram and routinely is seen in the company of rock stars and other artists. A documentary JR directed called Faces Places was nominated for an Oscar. Fame has its benefits. J.R. doesn't always have to sneak around now. He's often allowed to display his work. So when were you doing the work inside?

Two years ago on Ellis Island in New York Harbor, the National Park Service let him paste old photographs of immigrants at this abandoned hospital. That's the leader girl. And what does it mean? You know, I just try to do art in places that it would raise questions rather to give answers. J.R. is now encouraging others to raise questions by pasting their own photographs. He has a website where groups of people with an idea or a cause

can send in their pictures. He says he'll enlarge and print them and ship them back. JR-inspired images have so far been pasted on walls in dozens of countries around the world. Are you still an artist if you're not taking the photo and you're just printing stuff up and sending it out to people and they're putting it up? I don't know. I mean, I am. As much as a printer, I'm a photographer, and I'm a wallpaper man. You're a wallpaper man? At the end of the day, I wallpaper buildings,

you know? That's what I do. So that's why I think the title artist is the most prestigious title I'll ever get, because, you know, the truth is I paste building. JR's latest project, Chronicles of San Francisco, opened in May in that city's Museum of Modern Art. The digital mural is JR's first exhibit in a major American museum. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.