60 Minutes - Sunday, November 17, 2019

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Several sheriffs in Colorado are digging in their heels against a gun law allowing temporary confiscation of firearms -- if a gun owner shows dangerous or threatening behavior. Scott Pelley reports. China and other countries -- minus the United States -- are racing to be the first to mine trillions of dollars worth of metals used in cell phones, supercomputers and more. Bill Whitaker has the story. And "Sesame Street" launches a new program for Syrian refugee children. Lesley Stahl has the story on this week's "6o 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

There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. 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. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. We've got an active shooter at Saugus High School. Thursday's high school shooting renews the debate over gun legislation. 17 states believe one answer is the red flag law.

It's a temporary intervention to get the guns out of someone's hands who's in crisis. You may be surprised by those who oppose it. There are portions of the law I just flat out can't and won't do. This is a law that was passed by the legislature. It's signed by the governor. Nobody asked you. It looks like a lunar landing, but it's actually three miles deep in the Pacific.

And while those may look like moon rocks, they're called nodules, and they're worth trillions of dollars. What makes them so valuable? What is in that? Well, that is a electric vehicle battery in a rock. The world's most powerful countries are preparing to harvest them. So why isn't America? That's our story tonight. Nearly half of all Syrian refugees are children, more than 3 million of them. How old are you guys? We visited refugee camps in Jordan when it was 111 degrees. There was no running water, no indoor plumbing. But there was a brand new Sesame Street produced with characters that these young refugees can

learn from, as so many kids in America have for years. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. What's your next adventure? Everyone deserves a chance to do what they love. Pacific Life helps you reach financial goals while you go after your personal ones. Plans change over time and your financial solutions can too. 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. Thank you. Pacific Life can help give you the freedom to do what you love. Or visit www.pacificlife.com. Thursday, a high school in Santa Clarita, California, was the scene of the 366th mass shooting in America this year. Each seems to reignite the debate over gun legislation. In recent years, 17 states and the District of Columbia have adopted red flag laws, which allow the confiscation of firearms if a gun owner raises a red flag with threatening behavior. California adopted red flag in 2016, and there's been a big movement toward the law recently, with 12 states adopting it in the 21 months since the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Colorado was one of them. But in defiance, nearly half of the state's counties have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. Colorado's red flag law takes effect New Year's Day. The story of how it works and why it's fiercely debated begins with a tragedy, New Year's Eve 2017. Apartment 24 was a headache for Douglas County Sheriff's deputies in the suburbs of Denver. What's going on tonight? They'd met the resident, Matthew Reel, before. Right! Right! With each dispatch, deputies were reminded Reel was mentally ill, hostile, and armed.

If you keep yelling like that, I will take you to jail for disorderly conduct. He hadn't been violent, but that morning, he live-streamed threats and talked of guns. Yes, I do have some weapons. I own firearms. I have been, you know, I've had some scotch. Deputies believed Real was suffering a mental breakdown. They were stalking. Why are they knocking? They're still knocking. Real hadn't broken the law, so deputies could only take him into protective custody for a mental evaluation. Instead, Reel barricaded himself. Go away. Open the door. I'm calling you. Identify. Deputy Zach Parrish hit the door. Sheriff's office.

What's your name? door. In a 96-minute shootout, five officers were hit. Reels' bullets flew through walls and wounded two neighbors. Deputy Zach Parrish was killed, leaving a wife, a four-year-old, and an 18-month-old. Matt Reel died with 19 legally owned firearms, including assault rifles, a combat shotgun, and pistols. He had fired 185 rounds. He had 1,067 left. We had been dealing with this individual for almost two months. We had done a lot of things to try to intervene, but there were no tools available to us to do that. The casualties Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock suffered made him a leading advocate for the red flag law, which allows law enforcement to ask a judge for an extreme risk protection order. The order requires a gun owner to temporarily give up his weapons. If the extreme risk protective order had been available to you then,

do you think you would have asked for one? Probably a month before we would have been able to intervene and, in my opinion, most likely would have saved two lives. We would have saved the suspect's lives and we would have saved Zach's life. The red flag movement began after Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Mental health experts and gun safety advocates wrote a model law which most of the red flag states adopted. Among the authors was Josh Horwitz, who leads the coalition to stop gun violence. This is a law that is a temporary civil restraining order that allows family members

or law enforcement to go to court and remove the most lethal means, a firearm, before a tragedy occurs. And if the judge agrees and issues the order, law enforcement will go and serve the order on the respondent, remove the firearms, and then somewhere between seven and 21 days, everybody will come back to court. There'll be a full hearing. If the person in fact is dangerous to suffer others, the firearms will be kept by law enforcement and that person won't have access to them for a year. Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give? This is a red flag hearing in the state of Washington. I do.

All right, thank you. Okay, whenever you're ready, counsel. Officer Coles, can you tell the court why you petitioned for an extremist protection order in this case? Yes. As with most red flag cases, the police have filed a sworn affidavit alleging threatening behavior by a gun owner. The respondent was now making threats that if police showed up to the house, he would kill them first and then take his own life.

We have search warrants and search premises. On the judge's order, weapons are taken into police custody, and the gun owner is temporarily banned from buying another gun. They have the right to testify. They have the right to testify. They have the right to cross-examine witnesses. This is something with court rules, with rules of evidence, with judicial oversight. This is the kind of thing which is a thoughtful, well-developed process to intervene when it matters most.

The law requires the gun be returned to the owner in no more than one year. During that year, the owner can appeal. If there is still a concern at the end of the year, a judge can renew the order based on new evidence. How does this law compare to the kind of temporary restraining orders that we see when a spouse is concerned about being beaten or killed by their loved one. In a domestic violence law, you can not only lose your firearm, but you can be prevented from going into your own home. You can be prevented from seeing your kids. What we're dealing with, the extremist law, is very narrow. Get the firearm out of an explosive situation before it's too late. If only we could have kept those guns away from him until he could grow up a little bit.

Mark Dreher knew about red flag laws, but Colorado didn't have one in 2017 when mental illness overwhelmed his son. There you go, Chris. Chris Dreher's family near Boulder was devoted to his care. Psychologists, psychiatrists, medication. But Chris was tortured by anxiety. He worked at a place and he bought a pistol from one of his co-workers. His long-term psychologist said that he should not have any guns

because he had suicidal ideation at that point. So we took him away, took it away and locked it up. have any guns because he had suicidal ideation at that point. So we took him away, took it away and locked it up. But then he started telling me that he, well, he could just go out and buy another one. And so you were faced with the reality that he could have a gun at any time he wanted. Yes. I made a deal with him. I said, I'll give you the guns back, but you have to let me put trigger locks on the guns, and I'll have the keys. And he found a way to get them off. And one night, you know, when he was having some issues, he went to a place by his apartments, and he committed suicide that night. How old was he? 20.

20? 20. 20 years old. Suicides and memories of massacres, including Columbine and the Aurora Theater, pushed Colorado's red flag law forward against heavy resistance. You just take away people's guns. The bill failed in the Republican Senate. We need to save some lives. Then it passed when voters gave both houses to Democrats. Now, the law has become Colorado's political great divide. You've got the people who live in the city that has this idea that it is a good thing. But I think more importantly, this is a political issue where it's a vote-getting issue. Steve Wells' family has been ranching since 1888.

He's among those who feel politically powerful cities are trying to corral the countryside. So what's a better idea? Well, I think one of the things you really got to start looking at is individual responsibility. If I have a family member and I think for any reason that family member is going to be an issue with the firearm, we're going to go take him away from him. We've become so dependent on government making all the answers for everybody. The Second Amendment is what gives us the power to stand here on the steps of this Capitol and push back. Dozens of sheriffs in Colorado have dug in their heels, including Bill Elder and Steve Reams. There are portions of the law I just flat out can't and won't do. This is a law that was passed by the legislature. It's signed by the governor.

Nobody asked you. You're just expected to do your job, and enforcing the law is your job. Right. And I also take an oath of office that says I'll support the U.S. Constitution, the Constitution of the state of Colorado, and then I'll enforce the laws of the state of Colorado. When those things are in conflict, you know, you have to decide which one you're going to adhere to. Are you prepared to get locked up in your own jail? That is something that could happen. A judge could order me to my own jail? That is something that could happen. A judge could order me to my own jail. You know, I would be the one litigating that issue, and we'll determine at that point if this red flag

law is constitutional. Opponents say red flag violates the right to bear arms, the right to due process, and the right against unreasonable search and seizure. Some sheriffs say they won't ask for a red flag order, and if they receive one from a judge, they won't enforce it. If you decline to enforce one of these orders and people die, won't the county be liable for the damages? If law enforcement's only objective is to go take someone's firearms and that person still goes out and commits violence, do you think that we would then be off the hook for any damage that they would inflict? No, people would still look at law enforcement and say, why did you only take their guns? Why didn't you deal with the person? Bill Elder told us the legislature aimed at the wrong target.

We need to have funding for meaningful mental health assessments and treatment. There just are no programs. The state hospitals are full. The local hospitals are not equipped for it. Jails tend to be the warehousing for people in crisis. Jails are the new asylums. I have 1,700 inmates. Anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of those inmates suffer from some form of mental health issue.

In protest of the law, nearly half of Colorado's 64 counties have declared themselves symbolically Second Amendment sanctuaries. County commissioners passed a Second Amendment resolution even in the county that lost Zach Parrish, Tony Spurlock's deputy. They do not agree with you. No, they don't. But I asked them, and they have yet to answer me this question. What does a Second Amendment sanctuary county mean? Does that mean everybody gets to carry a gun, those who already have restraining orders,

the sex offender that's registered down the street here from my office? It's a clever term, but it literally means nothing. the sex offender that's registered down the street here from my office. It's a clever term, but it literally means nothing. The laws of the state of Colorado and the United States are laws that should be followed by all elected officials. There have been court challenges in other states based on the Second and Fifth Amendments, but so far, red flag laws have been ruled constitutional. You are required to relinquish the firearm. Yeah, I understand.

A study in Indiana, published this year by the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, estimates that for every ten red flag orders, one life is saved. Springfield, that's it. Perfect. All right. We've got an active shooter started at high school. Police in California are investigating whether any threats were made by the 16-year-old behind Thursday's high school shooting.

But a study from the University of California, Davis, credits red flag with stopping 21 potential mass murders in California over the last three years. In Colorado, a lawsuit is attempting to prevent the Red Flag law from taking effect January 1st. The name of the law is the Zachary Parrish Violence Prevention Act, in memory of Tony Spurlock's fallen deputy. Would you describe yourself as pro-gun rights? I am pro-gun rights. I'm a second amendment. How can you support this? This is not about taking guns away. This is about giving a respite time, a time for someone who is in danger and may not be making rational decisions at this point, an opportunity to stay alive, the opportunity not to kill their family members,

an opportunity not to hurt some unknown citizen. Let's eliminate as much danger as we can so we can get that individual some care and treatment. Picture a lump of rock about the size of a potato. Now, pack it with some of the most valuable metals on Earth, like nickel, cobalt, and other minerals known as rare earth elements. There are trillions of these nodules. That's what they're called, just waiting to be picked up.

The problem is, they're on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The nodules were discovered more than a century ago. Now, new technology has triggered a fierce competition to go get them. These metals are critical for modern life, cell phones, electric cars, and supercomputers. Nineteen countries, including China and Russia, have already jumped into the deep. But the one country on the sidelines? The United States. More on that in a moment. But first, we wanted to take a look at this new frontier. Our adventure began at three in the morning. Loading up our tugboat, we pulled out of San Diego. The harbor lights sank quickly behind us. Ten hours later, we were cutting through the chop of the

Pacific with nothing to see but the tossing ocean. So it wasn't hard to spot the Maersk Launcher, a 300-foot mining research vessel that we'd come to join. All we had to do was get on board. While the launcher dangled a rope ladder above us, the tugboat backed in. With swells over 10 feet, timing was everything. At the top of the wave, we took a leap of faith and landed in the new world of deep-sea mining. We were traveling with Gerard Barron, the CEO of Canadian company Deep Green Metals. He was eager to catch up with the launchers' crew. They'd been at sea for five weeks on a test run, mapping the sea floor and fishing for nodules.

This was the sunken treasure we had come to see. What makes them so valuable? What is in that? Well, that is an electric vehicle battery in a rock. It looks like a lump of charcoal. It does, but it's a beautiful lump of nodule. The amazing thing is it's filled with nickel and cobalt and copper and manganese, and that's everything we need to build a battery. All right, start coming up.

To get the nodules, the crew hoists a three-ton rig called a box core over the side. Bunging into the ocean, it begins its three-mile descent to the seafloor. Hours later, it neared the bottom. It felt like watching a new lunar landing. And there they were, giant fields of nodules covering an alien landscape. Millions of years old, the nodules grow by absorbing metals from the seawater, expanding slowly around a core of shell, bone, or rock. The potential is staggering. Estimates of their worth run from $8 to more than $16 trillion. They are primarily found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ, about 2 million square miles of ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. On this research trip, Deep Green scooped up over 100 helpings of the seafloor, each box reeled back on board heavy with the catch of the day,

thousands of nodules. In 30 years as a geologist, Warwick Miller told us he'd never seen anything like it. Great day to be a geologist. He said it was a great day to be a geologist. What did you mean? We were standing by the box core. I remember holding my hand up. It was covered in mud. It's nice that I get to touch them. You know, it's better than looking at them in a glass case, for example. They're in all sizes, all different sizes like this? There's different types. The type you're holding there would be a type 3 nodule, which is larger, and it's got a characteristic sort of cauliflower texture to it.

Miller told us each nodule has the same proportion of metals. After they're weighed and measured, they're stored in a refrigerated container. It will be further analyzed onshore to help Deep Green figure out where to mine first. They hope to start in three years. There's that many of them down there. Exactly. If they found deposit with this much metal concentration on land, it would be a bonanza that nobody would stop talking about for years. The rules for deep sea mining are set by an obscure UN agency called the International Seabed Authority. It's already divided the CCZ into dozens of concessions.

Deep Green operates two. The company calculates the nickel and cobalt in their patch of ocean alone is enough to make batteries for 150 million electric cars. I love the fact that they're the way we're going to get away from fossil fuels. I love the fact that in these are all the metals we need to go and build those batteries. I mean, it's the most amazing coincidence that I've ever encountered. Mother Nature made these nodules. They're just sitting there. It's like, okay, you guys, you've messed up planet Earth. Come and get me. So you call yourself an environmentalist, but you're also a miner. How do you combine the two?

Well, you know, I don't call myself a miner, but we are collecting nodules off the ocean floor. So if you're not a miner, what do you call what you will be doing? Well, we call it harvesting. Harvesting. Harvesting nodules from the ocean floor. Unlike on land, there's no drilling or digging. Instead, enormous deep-sea robots will do the heavy lifting. To see one of the most advanced, we traveled to Antwerp, Belgium. In a country better known for beer and chocolate, we met Petania. It's a caterpillar. It's a caterpillar track. So we said, what is the fastest caterpillar on Earth?

And it's called the Patania ruralis. Chris Van Nea, the managing director of Global Sea Mineral Resources, or GSR, told us Patania costs $12 million. It's what you might expect if you crossed a bulldozer with a giant vacuum cleaner and then stuffed it with electronics. The nodules are sucked into a stream and they go into the system. It's got the capacity to store three tons of nodules. Three tons? Three tons of nodules. How many nodules are down there? It is estimated that there is more nickel, more

cobalt and more manganese than on the rest of the planet. In 2017, GSR was the first to put a robot on the seafloor. Last summer, expectations were high for Petania's second plunge into the Pacific. A specially built frame swung the 35-ton machine over the edge of the ship, a fiber optic umbilical cord unspooling as it sank from sight. But then something went wrong. The crew lost the signal to Petania. The test was called off. Was that a big setback? A very big setback. You have said that the deep sea has no mercy. Is this what you mean? That's exactly what we mean. It has no mercy. It has to be 1,000 percent perfect or it won't work.

GSR hopes to take Petania back to the Clarion-Clipperton zone soon. When mining begins, Van Ney had told us, the nodules will be pumped to the surface to a waiting ship before they are processed on shore. With supplies of some critical metals running low, the race to develop underwater crawlers like this one, led by a Dutch group, is in high gear. But some scientists fear that deep-sea mining will wreck the seafloor, a world not fully understood. This rare albino octopus, nicknamed Casper, a species only discovered three years ago. When we go out and collect a sample on the seafloor, we collect hundreds of new species. Things that you've never seen before. Sure, oh yeah, yeah. Craig Smith is an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii. He told us he was surprised at how much life could survive three miles deep. His expeditions to the CCZ

have turned up fantastical creatures like this squid worm or a fluorescent sea cucumber dubbed a gummy squirrel. There are other deep sea originals too. A foot long shrimp, a ping pong tree sponge, and a galloping sea urchin. Mining companies say that the CCZ is only about one percent of the ocean, that the ocean is so vast that it could absorb the activity in that small portion. Yeah, that's a little bit like saying the Amazon rainforest is only eight percent of the global land area, so we can wipe it out and it doesn't matter. Won't deep sea mining actually be less invasive, have less of an impact than mining on land? I would say no. Mining is mining.

I think it's similar to strip mining on land, and it'll take a really long time for things to recover. Smith is working with the United Nations Seabed Authority, which set aside nine protected areas that will be off-limits to miners. And Chris Van Naya has invited independent scientists to monitor GSR's work. If you find that the environmental impact is severe, would this stop the project? Absolutely. I don't think we're not into this project to come up with a means to produce metals worse than what is being done today. We're in it because we believe it can be done better. So far, 19 different countries have licenses in the Clarion-Clipperton zone. China has more than anyone else. Russia and Japan have also jumped in. So has France, Germany, Korea, even Cuba and

Tonga have stakes. Who's missing? The United States. It's not for lack of trying. The UN's Law of the Sea covers deep sea mining, and in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the treaty. But it was dead on arrival in the Senate, despite repeated attempts to ratify it, including this past July. Is that doing us harm? Absolutely. We don't have a seat at that table. Jonathan White is a retired rear admiral who now runs a non-profit to protect oceans.

He told us that being outside the treaty means the U.S. has no say in how this new gold rush is being run. It's a law, and if we're not going to be part of that lawful system, doesn't it make us sort of outlaws of the sea? With the U.S. on the sidelines, China has poured hundreds of millions into its deep sea ambitions. Last month, China unveiled its new weapons that included an underwater drone that will patrol the ocean. If you're in the military, a weapons system, the guidance of our weapons, X-ray machines, microwaves, they all rely on elements that are hard to come by. So China controls most of these elements from terrestrial sources? Yes.

And now they're going after the lion's share of the seabed sources? They certainly are. Does that concern you? It absolutely concerns me. It concerns me. It concerns me with relation to our national security going forward. We need to be in this game. My problem is with sovereignty.

So we called the 22 senators opposed to the treaty, all Republicans, to ask why. None would appear on camera. Those who wrote us said that ceding any control to the United Nations was a deal breaker. But Rear Admiral White worries if the U.S. doesn't ratify the law of the sea, it will soon be too late. And if we don't, what does that mean for us? I think it means that, again, we become more isolated, especially in terms of a growing global economy. And more dependent on China. And absolutely more dependent on China. So what sense does that make? It makes no sense. The country that made it to the moon first may now miss the race to this new frontier and the untold riches of the deep.

There are more people living as refugees around the world today than at any time since the Second World War. And with conflicts dragging on for years, being a refugee now often means not going home for decades. That's literally a lifetime for millions of young children. The refugee crisis has sparked a partnership between two of this country's leading non-profit institutions, Sesame Workshop, creator of Sesame Street, and the International Rescue Committee, the IRC, a refugee assistance organization originally founded by Albert Einstein. For 50 years, Sesame Street has been teaching young children that one plus one equals two. But by teaming up with the IRC to help the youngest refugees, it's hoping that one plus

one can now add up to far more. This is the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. It houses 77,000 Syrian refugees. This is Azraq camp. It houses another 35,000. It's hard to fathom that these tens of thousands are just a fraction of the more than six million Syrians now living as refugees, most of them for the last four to eight years, and nearly half of all of them are children. So this is the big waterhole. The first thing we noticed when we arrived at Azraq camp with our guide, Laila Hussain of the IRC, was the kids. Little kids carrying the water. There's no running water here, no indoor plumbing.

Toilets are outside and shared by six families. The day we visited, it was 111 degrees. Ask these young fellows if they come to get water every day. They carry the water. You carry? How old are you guys? Six. Eight. Meeting the needs of kids like this

is not what the humanitarian aid system was set up for. The humanitarian sector has prided itself on keeping people alive. David Miliband is head of the International Rescue Committee. Traditionally, I guess that refugees flee war, go home when the war ends. Yeah, the theory is that you just keep people alive until they can go home. But we know now that the average length of displacement for a refugee is close to 20 years. 20 years? Close to 20 years.

And that's why it's a total tragedy that less than 2% of all humanitarian aid funding goes on education, even though half of the world's refugees are kids. And only a tiny sliver of that 2% goes to educating young children. And that's a problem because we know that it's the earliest years that count the most. No one knows the importance of those earliest years and how to reach and teach kids in them better than Sesame Street. It's been using television to educate kids in the U.S., including tackling tough subjects like racism and death for five decades. And it's done local versions in other countries. In 2016,

Sesame Workshop and the IRC had been strategizing about how they could collaborate to help refugee children when a new competition was announced. The MacArthur Foundation is launching a new competition. The prize? A stunning $100 million. The MacArthur Foundation offered $100 million to any organization who was ready to, quote unquote, solve a big global problem. A global problem that was intractable. Well, we defined the global problem we wanted to tackle was trauma, toxic stress among refugee children in the Middle East. We can reach literally millions of children. In the final pitch to the competition's judges, Miliband and his Sesame Workshop counterpart, Sherry Weston, presented a two-pronged plan.

Sesame Workshop would create a new show for the Middle East. We will introduce new local Muppets. And the IRC would dramatically expand its services to young refugee kids directly, including where they're living. And they gave you $100 million. Yeah, $100 million is not as much as it sounds. It isn't. It sounds huge. It's over five years, and we're delivering in-person services to over a million kids and educational content via TV to nearly eight million kids.

So it's a big enterprise. Production of the new television show, Alain Sim Sim, meaning Welcome Sesame, is well underway in Jordan. It stars a spunky purple girl Muppet named Basma, a boy Muppet, Jad, who has just moved into the neighborhood, and their pal and comedic sidekick, a mischievous baby goat. Jad isn't labeled a refugee on the show, but there are hints. He's voiced by a Syrian puppeteer. And in this episode, where the other characters are showing each other their favorite childhood toys, Jad can't. My toy is not with me. I left it behind in my old home when I came here.

This was one of the more challenging episodes to craft. Scott Cameron, a longtime Sesame producer who's running this new show, explained that the primary focus is not on letters and numbers, but on emotions like fear, anger, loneliness, and determination. This episode deals with Jad's sadness about his lost toy drum. But also Basma's feelings of caring for her friend. We want every episode to identify an emotion, but then give really concrete actions so that children can learn what to do.

So what does she do? So she decides she's going to make a drum to replace the drum that Jod no longer has. It's so sweet. The show will air in 20 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf, starting in February. And if you're wondering how refugees will see it, we were surprised to see that satellite dishes are prevalent in the camps where the IRC has been ramping up its part of the

plan, direct services to young refugee children. As we saw in this early childhood center the IRC runs in the Azraq camp, where preschool-age kids can come to play and learn. Video clips and storybooks featuring Basma and Jad will soon be part of lessons here. Given these children's age, Leila Husain told us it's likely none of them has ever been outside this camp. When I meet children in the camp, I notice that they have very limited imagination. And very limited information. I met children, they don't know that the egg is coming from the chicken. Really? They don't know that the fish live in the sea.

It's our responsibility to bring the world inside the camp. We can't, like, take them out, but we can bring the world inside. And bring the world inside their makeshift homes. The IRC runs a home visit program that sends trained volunteers, refugees themselves, like this woman, to visit 3,000 refugee families once a week, each time with an age-appropriate educational activity. Here, a homemade picture book for 20-month-old Balao. Bissa, he says.

Cat. What does the cat say? Meow. The idea is to teach the child and, more importantly, encourage essential one-on-one interactions with the parent. Balal is one of nine children in this family that was driven from their home in Syria by intense shelling and now live, eat, and sleep in two adjoining metal structures, brutal in the 110 plus degree heat. So how many years have you been in this camp? Five years. The older boys told us they still remember life back in Syria. What do you remember? I remember our home. I also remember my friends, the school I attended, my granddad's house. But the younger kids only know this life.

Their mom told us the home visits have been a huge help as she tries to parent under these conditions. Before, I didn't give Bilal enough praise because I was always busy with housework, cooking. You pay more attention to the children after these visits. For sure, even the children with one another, they developed a closer bond. Like if one hands the other a glass of water, the other would go, thank you. She now forgets to give me attention. Not at all. He's getting all the attention.

How would you describe the pressures that these parents are under? The pressures that these people face are not just the material deprivation. Lost everything. But the greatest danger they face is hopelessness. These are people who want something, if not for themselves anymore, then at least for their children. Some of the most vulnerable refugee children are those whose families live outside the refugee camps in what are called informal tented settlements, basically tents on the side of the road. Tens of thousands of families live this way,

and the IRC is bringing its home visit program to them as well. We watched as this volunteer worked with year-and-a-half-old Mohammed and his dad, a day laborer on a nearby farm, on the concepts of in and out. Mohammed's mother didn't want to be filmed, but his grandmother was eager to speak with us. Their smiles and welcome were warm, as was their pride in showing us the home they left behind in Syria. But the pain of living this way for the last five years was never far from the surface. Sometimes I am able to hold myself together, but sometimes I can't. I sometimes wish I was in the desert with no one around me to scream out all the negative energy inside of me.

Their despair was palpable, which is why one goal of these visits is to help parents keep from passing it on to their young children. I see you with your sons. I can tell that you don't want them to feel any of your unhappiness. You're absolutely right. Even sometimes when I'm troubled and I see them, I smile for them. I want them always to feel happy and reassured. Like the homemade drum Basma gives Jad to replace the one he left behind,

the hope is that the combination of this show and the array of services along with it will give these kids a fighting start. Studies to measure the impact are already part of the plan. So if it works, you're going to have this model for refugees around the world. There's no reason not to take this to refugee communities from Myanmar who are in Bangladesh, from South Sudan who are in Uganda, because this is a model that should work for every child who's forced to endure the trauma of being a refugee.

You know, when people see the footage that we shot, they're not going to see how hot it was. They're going to see children well-dressed, obviously fed. You're not going to be able to see the moments of hopelessness. But I hope that by seeing the smiles, you'll see the potential. And you'll come away thinking, what a waste not to give these kids every chance and to give more kids the chance of what these kids are getting. Next Sunday on 60 Minutes, mind reading. Research scientists are learning to read a person's thoughts and feelings by scanning patterns of electrical activity in the brain.

Each emotion had its own characteristic values, and you could tell which one was which. And it's the same in every head. Amazingly, it was common across people. I'm Scott Pelley. That and more next week on another edition of 60 Minutes.