JON WERTHEIM: Tonight, on this special edition
of 60 Minutes presents the 60 Minutes book club.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Here she is, taking a flamethrower to her own book.
Margaret Atwood was firing back at would be book burners.
Her books have been banned for content
deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, anti-Christian.
The government put out an edict to all school boards,
saying that they couldn't have any books in the library that
had either direct or indirect sex.
What is indirect sex?
I don't know.
[LAUGHS]
ANDERSON COOPER: Did people try to kill you?
Yes.
JON WERTHEIM: Author Salman Rushdie
has been a marked man for nearly half his life.
And in 2022, a knife wielding attacker almost killed him.
This is his first television interview.
One of the surgeons who had saved my life said to me--
he said, first, you were really unlucky,
and then you were really lucky.
I said, what's the lucky part.
And he said, well, the lucky part
is that the man who attacked you had no idea how
to kill a man with a knife.
CECILIA VEGA: Whether it's this attempt at the biggest pizza
party ever, or trying to eat an airplane,
there's a method to the madness of getting into Guinness World
Records.
As many as 95% of submissions get rejected.
We do validate people that do things
that others might seem a bit weird,
like eating aircraft and stuff.
Do you not see that as weird?
I see it as really interesting.
Good evening.
I'm Jon Wertheim.
Welcome to the 60 Minutes Book Club.
Tonight, we'll hear author Salman Rushdie discuss Knife,
his book based on the near fatal attempt on his life
at a literary event in 2022.
Then we'll tell you about the book that has sold more than 150
million copies worldwide.
But we begin with a question of sorts.
You're an 86-year-old titan of literature,
have been for a half century now.
You're Canada's best known author.
64 books and counting.
And increasingly, you find your work
on lists of banned books, scrubbed from 135
American school districts.
Yes, that includes your breakthrough work, the dystopian
novel, The Handmaid's Tale.
But you've also been censored for work like The Testaments
and The Blind Assassin, both of which
won the Booker Prize, the top award for English language
fiction.
What to do?
Sure, you take to the keyboard and write sternly worded opinion
pieces.
But as we first told you last fall,
if you're the indomitable Margaret Atwood,
you don't stop there.
Here she is, taking a flamethrower to her own book.
Atwood was firing back at would be book burners by torching
an unburnable edition.
It was all promotion for a charity auction
to benefit PEN America, a nonprofit that champions free
speech.
Atwood's books have been banned for content
deemed overly sexual, morally corrupt, anti-Christian.
She told us she was particularly peeved
when a recent ban came from Edmonton, Alberta,
in her own country.
The government put out an edict to all school boards,
saying that they couldn't have any books in the library that
had either direct or indirect sex.
What is indirect sex?
I don't know.
[LAUGHS] You had any indirect sex lately?
Second wave feminism here.
JON WERTHEIM: Atwood speaks as she writes,
with a mix of wisdom and deadpan wit.
Last fall, she invited us into her Toronto home.
Do you know offhand how many languages your books
have been translated in?
Well, we say over 50 for everything.
How old are you?
Over 50.
How many books have you written?
Over 50.
How many awards have you won?
Over 50.
I thought so.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
Under his eye.
JON WERTHEIM: Published in 1985.
The Handmaid's Tale depicts a near-future America
overtaken by religious dictatorship, where
a dwindling number of fertile women
are forced to cloak themselves in red and bear
children for the elite.
Give me children.
Or else I die.
JON WERTHEIM: The book would sell more than 10 million copies
and spawn an Emmy winning Hulu series.
Beyond that, its scarlet costume would
become a uniform of real life protest and resistance.
ALL: Shame, shame!
JON WERTHEIM: Handmaid's Tale is your magnum opus.
You think?
Your Great Gatsby.
How are you with that?
Well, I would question the premise.
You would?
Yeah.
It's not due to me or the excellence of the book.
It's partly the twists and turns of history.
JON WERTHEIM: With the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights,
and the eventual overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022,
The Handmaid's Tale began, for many readers,
to feel eerily prescient.
Had it been so that none of this ever got enacted,
then it would probably be sitting on a shelf somewhere
and people would be saying, oh, jolly good yarn,
but it didn't happen.
JON WERTHEIM: Or didn't it?
In 2003, Oryx and Crake, for instance,
Atwood wrote of environmental collapse and a global pandemic.
Pick a catastrophe, any catastrophe.
Before the real world did its thing,
she warned about it in her fiction.
It wasn't this is going to happen without a doubt.
This could happen.
This might happen.
So you should be on the watch for it.
What is your relationship with this idea
that you're the prophet of doom, this Cassandra,
the forecaster of dystopia?
I think I'm very positive I didn't kill everybody off
at the end.
Some people do.
These are rare books.
A lot of them are pretty obscure.
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): If Atwood can see around corners,
it's because her visions have historical precedent.
They come rooted in actual events.
At the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto,
Atwood has archived stacks of her research.
That is, the hundreds of news clippings
that substantiate her plots.
So this is folder upon folder of your research
for Handmaid's Tale.
Oh, yeah, lots of it.
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): She writes by a strict rule--
if it didn't happen somewhere at some time,
it doesn't make it into the pages of her fiction.
Women forced to have babies.
Communists are making women have babies.
Persistent non-pregnancy will be considered
a crime against the state.
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): It's not all doom and gloom.
Atwood showed us the cover she designed
for her first volume of poetry.
She also writes short stories and children's books.
For her new book, a new genre, her memoir, Book of Lives,
published last November, takes the full sweep of her life,
starting with a free range childhood
spent in the deep wilderness of Quebec.
She was homeschooled until the age of 12,
while her father did fieldwork on insects as an entomologist.
You wrote, some families stop for ice-cream
on the side of the road.
You stopped for infestation.
We stopped for infestation.
So what was that like?
You screeched to a halt. Father would get out
of the car with his tarpaulin and his ax.
And he would go to the infestation.
He would spread the tarp out under the tree
and hit the trunk with an ax.
And then the things would fall out.
And he would collect them.
And you're in the backseat thinking what?
Oh, no.
We were usually out of the car, watching him do it.
JON WERTHEIM: What did you learn watching him go to work?
Well, I think probably growing up with a biologist
makes you quite particular about details,
because you're not saying that's a butterfly.
You're saying, what kind of butterfly.
You're not saying that's a tree.
You usually know what kind of tree.
That's what draws people to reading.
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): Intent on spinning details into prose
and becoming a writer, Atwood enrolled at Victoria college
at the University of Toronto.
Well, poetry was the big form in Canada in the '60s.
JON WERTHEIM: A young poet, she hit the reading circuit
and performed in student plays and revues here at Hart House,
one of Canada's oldest theaters.
Here in front of--
I'm just a show off.
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): And when
Margaret Atwood wants to show off, you surrender the stage.
You have to stand over there.
Hold my purse.
Ready?
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): Here's not just any curtsy,
but she informed us the 17th century Jacobian court curtsy
she learned for a college production.
We told you she's a stickler for detail.
How do I respond to that?
You bow.
Thank you.
You remember that?
Why are you so surprised that I remember things?
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): Before we left the theater,
Attwood showed us another party trick.
I'm not getting vibes.
You're not getting vibes from me?
No.
We're doing the classic Renaissance hand reading.
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): Yes, she
reads palms, another mode for investigation.
People might think that you're just a very reasonable sort
of rational person.
But in fact, you have this other--
Oh, dear.
--this intuition.
So some people stop there.
And they're very logical and that's it.
You are not one of those people.
And we can see that you will never
be a murderous dictator, for which we are pleased.
I got that going for me.
[LAUGHS]
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): Back to our protagonist.
When she graduated in 1961, Canadian writers
were encouraged to pursue careers outside the country.
Give us a sense of the Canadian lit scene
when you were in college.
What Canadian lit scene?
[LAUGHS] Still, Atwood stayed and helped
found the country's now thriving literary institutions.
Along the way, she met another writer, the late Graham Gibson,
who would become her longtime partner.
So quintessentially Canadian, their courtship
peaked with a canoe trip.
We were both the kinds of people
that if the canoe trip hadn't worked out,
that would have been it.
Good barometer for a relationship.
MARGARET ATWOOD: Yeah.
If you can deal with the canoe trip,
you can probably deal with lots of other things, too.
JON WERTHEIM: And they did.
Gibson came to the relationship with some baggage.
A, quote, undivorced wife and two kids.
In her memoir, Atwood confronts the complications
of the blended family.
Could I ask you to read a bit for us?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Yes.
There are several letters in this book for me
to my inner advice columnist.
Everybody has one.
"Dear inner advice columnist, sorry to bother you."
JON WERTHEIM (VOICEOVER): Atwood uses the columnist device
to confess that though she and Graham have
a daughter of their own, she wants more children.
MARGARET ATWOOD: "We are back at the farm after Scotland.
And I have brought up the subject of a second child.
I would like one.
But Graham has said that a total of 3 is enough for him.
I feel deprived, resentful, and disrespected."
JON WERTHEIM: If that sounds harsh,
listen to the columnist's response,
the advice she gave herself.
"Oh, for heaven's sakes, count your blessings.
Some people don't know when they're well off.
Many would give the shirt off their back
to have your luck in men.
Suck it up.
Cherish your child.
Get another cat.
Your inner advice columnist."
You can see she's rather severe.
That's very get over yourself advice you gave yourself.
Very get over yourself advice.
But Canadians are pretty get over yourself people.
The Handmaid's Tale!
JON WERTHEIM: Humility aside, Canada's leading literary figure
has become something of a cult figure
and a leading voice on all things Canadian.
We asked her about the recent chill between her country
and the United States as President Trump raises tariffs
and threatens to turn our Northern neighbors into a 51st
state.
Atwood says the Canadian response is
best summed up by one phrase.
MARGARET ATWOOD: It's a hockey thing.
And it was this character called Gordie Howe, who
was very revered hockey player.
And elbows up is when somebody gets you into the corner,
and you block them by putting your elbow up.
And it means, don't mess with me.
And for those who speak of the 51st state,
I do point out that it wouldn't be just one state.
What do you mean?
MARGARET ATWOOD: It's very big.
You can't make the whole thing just one state.
And anyway, Quebec would never stand for it.
You think you're going to make them part
of a unilingual big entity?
Think again.
JON WERTHEIM: Atwood is a student of government power
and the overreaches of both.
She wrote much of The Handmaid's Tale
on a rented typewriter in 1984 West Berlin.
She recalls hearing sonic booms from the other side of the wall.
In her ventures to the Eastern Bloc,
she witnessed policing, paranoia,
and the absence of freedom.
In her memoir, too, she addresses
the erosion of democracy.
You say the overriding ordinary civil liberties
is one of the signposts on the road to dictatorship.
Do you see the US on that road right now?
I don't think I would be wrong if I said, it's concerning.
There are certain things that totalitarian coups always do.
Like what?
MARGARET ATWOOD: One of them is trying
to get control of the media.
But the other thing is making the judicial arm
part of the executive.
In other words, judges just do what
the chief guide tells them to.
If you're saying the signposts, the signifiers
of totalitarian society are--
There are some warning lights flashing for sure.
JON WERTHEIM: Amid the warning lights,
a series based on The Testaments, her sequel
to The Handmaid's Tale, will begin streaming on Hulu
this year.
But just when you think you can predict
on which side of the political divide Atwood falls,
she confounds by saying something like this.
Just for the record, I've always
been attacked more from the left than I have from the right.
Why is that?
Well, I think the right thinks I'm irrelevant.
And the left thinks that I should
have been preaching their sermon, whatever
it may happen to be.
And that I am, therefore, a traitor for not having done that
which they themselves would do.
And what's your response to that?
It's unprintable.
It involves a finger.
[LAUGHS] Do I see a little blush?
Do I see little bit of a blush?
She may turn us red.
She did not turn us to stone.
I'm paraphrasing here.
But in your memoir, you say you sometimes
cut this Medusa-like figure with a Medusa-like stare
with interviewers.
I feel like we're doing OK.
The earlier me.
Now I'm a nice old lady.
So you don't have to be worried.
Why the pivot?
MARGARET ATWOOD: I got older.
[LAUGHS] I became a blonde.
This was my way of saying I enjoyed this conversation.
Oh, is that your way of saying it?
So why aren't you a scary old witch?
Is that your way of saying it?
WOMAN: What inspired the signature red cloaks
from The Handmaid's Tale?
Yes.
Well, if you have a cult, you have to have outfits.
WOMAN: At 60minutesovertime.com.
Salman Rushdie has been a marked man for nearly half
his life.
In 1989, Iran's Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini,
declared Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Versus, blasphemous,
an insult to Islam, and called for the Indian born writer's
assassination.
Rushdie went into hiding with around the clock police
protection for 10 years.
He eventually moved to the US and thought he was safe.
But in August 2022, as he was about to speak
at a literary event in Chautauqua, New York,
Salman Rushdie was attacked by a Muslim man with a knife.
Rushdie, who's now 78, lost his right eye
and came close to dying.
He's come to terms with the attempt on his life
by writing a book about it called simply Knife.
Anderson Cooper spoke with Rushdie in 2024,
in what was his first television interview since the attack.
ANDERSON COOPER: You had had a dream two days, I think it was,
before the attack.
What was the dream?
I kind of had a premonition.
I mean, I had a dream of being attacked in an amphitheater.
But it was a kind of Roman Empire dream,
as if I was in the Colosseum.
And it was just somebody with a spear stabbing downwards.
And I was rolling around on the floor,
trying to get away from him.
And I woke up and was quite shaken by it.
And I had to go to Chautauqua.
And I said to my wife, Eliza.
I said, I don't want to go.
Because of the dream.
And then I thought, don't be silly.
It's a dream.
ANDERSON COOPER (VOICEOVER): Salman Rushdie, one
of his generation's most acclaimed writers,
had been invited to the town of Chautauqua, close to Lake Erie,
to speak about a subject he knows all too well--
the importance of protecting writers
whose lives are under threat.
Did you have any anxiety being in such a public space?
Not really, because in the more than 20 years
that I've been living in America,
I've done a lot of these things.
You haven't had security around you
or close protection detail for a long time.
A long time.
But what happens in many places that you go and lecture
is that they're used to having a certain degree of security,
venue security.
In this case, there wasn't any.
The irony, of course, is you were there
to talk about writers in danger.
Yeah, exactly.
And the need for writers from other countries
to have safe spaces in America, amongst other places.
And then, yeah, it just turned out
not to be a safe space for me.
ANDERSON COOPER: For years, no place
was safe for Salman Rushdie, whose sprawling 600 page
novel, The Satanic Versus, offended
some Muslims for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
[CHANTING]
Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa,
a religious decree calling for Rushdie's death in 1989.
There were worldwide protests from London to Lahore.
The Satanic Versus was burned, and 12 people
died in clashes with police.
The book's Japanese translator was murdered.
And others associated with it were attacked.
Did you have any idea that it would cause violence?
SALMAN RUSHDIE: No, I had no idea.
I thought probably some conservative religious people
wouldn't like it.
But they didn't like anything I wrote anyway.
So I thought, well, they don't have to read it.
Were you naive?
Probably.
I mean, it's easy looking back to think.
But nothing like this had ever happened to anybody.
And of course, almost all the people who attacked
the book did so without reading it.
I was often told that I had intended to insult or offend
people.
My view was, if I need to insult you, I can do it really quickly.
I don't need to spend five years of my life trying to write
a 600 page book to insult you.
ANDERSON COOPER: Rushdie was living in London
when he went into hiding.
And for the next 10 years, the British government
provided him with 24 hour police protection.
Did people try to kill you?
SALMAN RUSHDIE: Yes.
There were maybe as many as half a dozen serious assassination
attempts, which were not random people.
They were state sponsored terrorism professionals.
ANDERSON COOPER: After diplomatic negotiations,
the Iranian state called off its assassins in 1998.
Rushdie finally came out of the shadows.
He moved to New York and, for the next two decades,
lived openly.
He was a man about town.
He continued writing and became a celebrated advocate
for freedom of expression.
So when he received the invitation
to speak in Chautauqua in August 2022, he gladly accepted.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: I was seated at stage right--
ANDERSON COOPER: In his book, Knife,
he described what happened next.
"Then, in the corner of my right eye,
the last thing my right eye would ever see,
I saw the man in Black running toward me down the right-hand
side of the seating area.
Black clothes, Black face mask.
He was coming in hard and low.
A squat missile.
I confess, I had sometimes imagined my assassin
rising up in some public forum or other
and coming for me in just this way.
So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing
towards me was, so it's you, here you are."
"So it's you.
Here you are."
Yeah.
It's like you've been waiting for it.
Yeah, that's what it felt like.
It felt like something coming out of the distant past
and trying to drag me back in time, if you like, back
into that distant past in order to kill me.
And when he got to me, he basically hit me very hard here.
And initially, I thought I'd been punched.
You didn't actually see a knife.
I didn't see the knife.
And I didn't realize, until I saw blood coming out,
that there had been a knife in his fist.
So where was that stab?
Here.
ANDERSON COOPER: In your neck.
In my neck, yeah.
Then there were a lot more.
The worst wounds was there was a big wound
like this across my neck.
And there was a puncture stab wound here.
And then, of course, there was the attack on my eye.
Do you remember being stabbed in the eye?
No.
I remember falling.
Then I remembered not knowing what had happened to my eye.
ANDERSON COOPER (VOICEOVER): He was also
stabbed in his hand, chest, abdomen, and thigh.
15 wounds in all.
He was both stabbing and also slashing.
I think he was just wildly--
ANDERSON COOPER (VOICEOVER): The attack lasted 27 seconds
to feel just how long that is-- this is what 27 seconds is.
That's it.
That's quite a long time.
That's the extraordinary ordinary half minute of intimacy
in which life meets death.
ANDERSON COOPER: What stopped it from being longer?
SALMAN RUSHDIE: The audience pulling him off me.
ANDERSON COOPER: Strangers to you.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: Total strangers.
To this day, I don't know their names.
ANDERSON COOPER: Some of those strangers
restrained the attacker, while others desperately
tried to stem the flow of Rushdie's blood.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: There was really a lot of blood.
ANDERSON COOPER: You were actually watching your blood.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: I actually watching it spread.
And then I remember thinking that I was probably dying.
And it was interesting because it was quite matter of fact.
It wasn't like I was terrified of it or whatever.
And yeah, there was nothing.
No heavenly choirs, no pearly gates.
I mean, I'm not a supernatural person.
I believe that death comes as the end.
There was nothing that happened that made
me change my mind about that.
You have not had a revelation.
I have not had any revelation, except that there's
no revelation to be had.
ANDERSON COOPER: His attacker, the man in black,
was hustled off the stage.
In the book, you do not use the attacker's name.
Yeah.
I thought, I don't want his name in my book.
And I don't use it in conversation either.
But that is important to you, not to give him
space in your brain.
Yeah.
He and I had 27 seconds together.
That's it.
I don't need to give him any more of my time.
ANDERSON COOPER: Paramedics flew Rushdie
to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania,
40 miles away, where a team of doctors battled for eight hours
to save his life.
When he finally came out of surgery,
his wife, Eliza, a poet and novelist, was waiting.
I mean, he wasn't moving, and he was just laid out.
He looked half dead to you?
Yes, he did.
He was a different color.
He was cold.
I mean, his face was stapled.
Just staples holding his face together.
ANDERSON COOPER: Rushdie was on a ventilator, unable to speak.
Eliza and the doctors had no idea
whether the knife that had penetrated his eye
had damaged his brain.
Someone from the staff said that we
would use this system of wiggling the toes.
To communicate?
To communicate.
Do you remember the first question
you asked to get a wiggle or--
I think I said, Salman, it's Eliza, can you hear me.
And there was a wiggle.
And I asked him, I think, do you know where you are.
And he wiggled.
And it was a very basic, simple questions.
Because you can't express yourself
with any subtlety with your toes.
Which is your favorite thing.
[LAUGHTER]
ANDERSON COOPER: After 18 days in the hospital,
and three weeks in rehab, Rushdie was discharged.
One of the surgeons who had saved my life said to me, first,
you were really unlucky, and then you were really lucky.
I said, what's the lucky part.
And he said, well, the lucky part
is that the man who attacked you had no idea how
to kill a man with a knife.
You're not a believer in miracles.
But the fact that you survived, you write in the book,
is a miracle.
This is a contradiction.
How does somebody who doesn't believe
in the supernatural account for the fact
that something has happened which feels like a miracle?
I mean, I certainly don't feel that some hand reached down
from the skies and guarded me.
But I do think something happened which
wasn't supposed to happen.
And I have no explanation for it.
ANDERSON COOPER: His attacker was a 24-year-old from New
Jersey who lived in his mother's basement.
He was believed to be a lone wolf.
He pleaded not guilty to attempted murder.
And when we talk with Rushdie, he was still awaiting trial.
In an interview, he told The New York Post,
he'd only read a couple pages of The Satanic Versus
and seen some clips of Rushdie on YouTube.
He said, he didn't like him very much because Rushdie
had attacked Islam.
Does it matter to you what his motive was?
I mean, it's interesting to me because it's a mystery.
If I had written a character who knew
so little about his proposed victim
and yet was willing to commit the crime of murder,
my publishers might well say to me that that's undermotivated.
You need to develop that character.
Yeah, not enough of a reason.
Not convincing.
But yet that's what he did.
ANDERSON COOPER: Rushdie's Knife, his 22 book,
is one he initially did not want to write.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: That was the last thing I wanted to do.
Because you didn't want this to yet again define you?
SALMAN RUSHDIE: Yeah.
It was very difficult for me, after The Satanic Versus
was published, that the only thing anybody knew
about me was this death threat.
But it became clear to me that I couldn't write anything else.
You had to write this first.
I had to write this first.
I just thought, I need to focus on, to use the cliche,
the elephant in the room.
And the moment I thought that, kind of something
changed in my head.
And it then became a book I really
very much wanted to write.
You say the language was my knife.
If I had unexpectedly been caught in an unwanted knife
fight, maybe this was the knife I
could use to fight back, to take charge of what had happened
to me, to own it, make it mine.
Yeah.
I mean, languages are a way of breaking open the world.
I don't have any other weapons.
But I've been using this particular tool
for quite a long time.
So I thought this was my way of dealing with it.
ANDERSON COOPER: It's been three years since the attack.
And Rushdie is back home now in New York,
still getting used to navigating the world with one eye.
How much time did it take to readjust--
I'm still doing it.
You still are?
Yeah.
ANDERSON COOPER (VOICEOVER): Do you
feel like you are a different person after the attack?
SALMAN RUSHDIE (VOICEOVER): I don't feel I'm very different.
But I do feel that it has left a shadow.
And I think that shadow is just there.
And some days, it's dark, and some days, it's not.
You feel less than you were before?
No, I just feel more the presence of death.
In an interview almost 25 years ago,
you said of the fatwa, I want to find an end to this story.
It is the one story I must find an end to.
Have you found that ending?
And an ending to this story as well?
Well, I thought I had.
And then it turned out I hadn't.
I'm hoping this is just a last twitch of that story.
I don't know.
I'll let you know.
Last year, Salman Rushdie's attacker
was found guilty of attempted murder
and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
With more than 150 million copies sold in 40 languages,
Guinness World Records is one of the best selling
books in history.
In it, you'll find the shortest, tallest, and fastest,
alongside jaw dropping human feats and eighth grade bathroom
humor.
As Cecilia Vega first told you in November,
some achievements are so over the top,
it was hard to keep a straight face during the interviews.
But behind the spectacle, a meticulous system of British
auditing.
So strict, it has crushed many more record attempts
than it has certified.
Even if what you see defies belief,
you can trust that if it made it into the book, it is real
and, as Guinness World Records declares, officially amazing.
Are you ready?
ALL: Yeah!
How are you feeling?
I'm feeling pumped.
Yeah?
Yeah.
CECILIA VEGA: For Colin Kaplan, the stakes couldn't be higher.
Not in my wildest dreams could I
have ever thought that I'd be doing anything like this.
CECILIA VEGA: After a year of planning,
he's about to find out if his city, New Haven, Connecticut,
can eat its way into history by hosting the world's largest
pizza party.
Let's get some pizza.
CECILIA VEGA: Kaplan, a local historian and food tour guide,
is so obsessed with pizza, last year, he
chartered a jet to Washington and got his Congresswoman
to declare New Haven the pizza capital of America.
New Haven pizza capital, baby.
Is this a serious endeavor?
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, I think it is.
I'll tell you what-- it seems light and fun.
But it's serious in a sense of what's on the line.
CECILIA VEGA: What's on the line is the glory
of a Guinness World Record.
And people will do just about anything to get one.
Humans are such an interesting bunch, aren't we?
And record breaking is an innately human thing.
And if that means you do strange things
like swallowing sausages whole, or climbing Everest, or running
a marathon with a milk bottle on your head, then that's fine.
That's great.
CECILIA VEGA: Craig Glenday has been the books editor in chief
for the past 21 years.
I really like that.
So I think we want more of that.
CECILIA VEGA: In his signature Scottish accent,
he recounts with a straight face what
is often a circus of absurdity.
We get things like fastest time to run around my garden,
playing the banjo with a snake on my head.
It's like, next.
They get a nice letter of like, thank you, but no thank you.
CECILIA VEGA: Cutest babies and cutest dogs
don't make the cut either.
Records must meet strict criteria.
They have to be filmed from multiple angles,
verified by independent eyewitnesses,
and measured with precision.
Each year, Guinness World Records receives roughly 50,000
applications.
But as many as 95% get rejected.
The largest number of submissions
come from the United States.
One of my favorite days in the job I was at the X Games
at the Staples Center in LA.
And a dog zipped past me on a skateboard.
And despite the heat, I chased after this dog.
And I found the owner and said, I've never
seen a dog on a skateboard.
He said, oh, this is Tillman.
He loves skateboarding.
I had a tape measure.
We measured out 100 meters of the car park
at the Staples Center.
And we set the record there and then
because I was so amazed by it.
Do you just walk through the world with a tape measure
in your pocket?
CRAIG GLENDAY: Well, I do usually.
Do you?
Yeah, I have a tape measure and a stopwatch,
because you never know.
CECILIA VEGA: Many of the record holders you know,
Usain Bolt for the fastest 200 meters,
Beyonce for the most Grammys.
And many you've probably never even imagined.
Go.
CECILIA VEGA: Like serial record breaker David Rush,
an Idaho tech worker, who has broken more than 350 records
and counting, including most bites
taken from three apples while juggling for a minute.
Just past the two mile mark.
CECILIA VEGA: And most T-shirts worn during a half marathon.
And Monsieur Mangetout.
That's Mr. Eats Everything in French.
He held the record for the world's strangest diet.
The guy-- he'd supposedly eat in a Cessna
because he could eat metal and glass.
A Cessna plane?
Well, apparently, it took him two years.
We couldn't quite--
Doesn't sound very healthy.
Well, I mean, his wife wouldn't
let him use the toilet at home because if he'd
been eating metal, it tends to come out like bullets.
And it would chip the porcelain.
So he'd have to use a hotel with metal toilets near his house.
This is the craziest interview I've ever done.
Just saying.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
Go back to what you were saying that when you--
I mean, for me, it's every day.
So I don't quite get it.
But yeah, OK.
He could do glass and metal.
You couldn't do chains.
But to meet him was a real honor for me
because he was like a childhood hero for me.
You must get this question all the time.
Why?
Why.
I mean, it's different for everyone.
Everyone has a different reason.
Some just want fame.
Some want to be in print.
We do validate people that do things
that others might seem a bit weird,
like eating aircraft and stuff.
Do you not see that as weird?
I mean, I see it as really interesting.
I got to tell you.
I thought it would be a little crazier--
inside the company's London headquarters,
Glenday keeps a cabinet of greatest hits.
--as Craig's cabinet of curiosities.
CECILIA VEGA (VOICEOVER): Like the world's smallest playing
cards, and a giant size 29 shoe.
I'm like the Vanna White of oddities here.
What is this?
If you have a little investigation of that,
it's the world's oldest vomit.
Vomit?
Vomit.
You got me on that one.
CRAIG GLENDAY: It doesn't smell.
It's obviously petrified.
CECILIA VEGA (VOICEOVER): Not everyone
chooses to break records.
I'm 5'10.
So what was she?
She's just on 7 foot.
The tallest and shortest people often
have had genetic conditions.
The woman with the longest fingernails, 43 feet,
Hasn't cut them since her daughter, who painted her nails,
passed away in 1997.
So she still holds the record?
Still has the record.
And I think that's the longest ever measured.
CECILIA VEGA: The idea for the book began during a hunting trip
at this country estate in Ireland,
where the manager of the Guinness Brewery
got into an argument over who could name the fastest game
bird in Europe.
To settle future pub debates, he commissioned a book
of superlatives, which eventually became the Guinness
World Records.
The first one was published in 1955.
The initial reaction from the book trade
was not that positive.
And the first sales meeting ever,
the salesperson wrote 6 on the slip.
And they said, do you mean 6000, 600.
He said, no, six.
They just wanted six--
Six for the whole country.
--copies?
Yeah.
By the end of the week, it was like 10,000.
They sold out quickly.
And it was just blew up.
CECILIA VEGA: 70 years later, it's still
a hit at school book fairs.
But today, the name, Guinness World Records,
is synonymous with viral stunts that become clickbait gold.
Is Google your biggest competition?
I could pull my phone out right now
and search the world's fastest bird.
You might as well open the window
and shout your question into the street.
And you'll get an answer.
Yeah.
But is it the right one?
Well, I can say I know Sultan Cousin's 8 foot 3 because I
was there with a tape measure.
I measured him.
CECILIA VEGA: He's also measured the shortest person, who
he learned about after a woodcutter passed
through a remote village in Nepal
and alerted the team at Guinness World Records.
So it was confidence enough for me to then go to Nepal.
You get on a flight and go to Nepal to measure this person?
And we would never have known about him
had that woodcutter not gone through the village that day
and sent us the video footage.
CECILIA VEGA: And then there are the rules.
So rigid, they've sparked office debates
over who makes the cut for the largest gathering of people
dressed as Smurfs.
So it's like, OK, well, what is
this Smurf, what do they wear, do they all have blue skin.
Yes.
You might have to write guidelines
for any possible topic.
So we've got this huge big book of experts from archeologists--
CECILIA VEGA: To Smurfs.
--to Smurf-ologists.
Yeah, I don't know if that's a thing.
But we've got a myrmecologist, which--
What is that?
Myrmecologist, ant expert.
So if we've got a question about what's the most dangerous ant--
Quick, get the myrmecologist on line 9.
We've just found this big ant.
Is it the biggest?
CECILIA VEGA: For large events like the New Haven pizza party--
I am today's official Guinness World Records adjudicator.
So I'm basically the judge.
CECILIA VEGA: --Guinness World Records sometimes
sends an adjudicator responsible for enforcing
the rules from headquarters.
If you're going to write how many people you disqualified,
hopefully, that is a nice big round 0.
CECILIA VEGA: Thomas Bradford is one
of 81 adjudicators the company employs across six continents.
His day job is as a performer at Disney.
But when it's go time, he puts on his trademark blue jacket.
The largest gathering of people
dressed as dinosaurs was one of my favorite events.
And you kind of expect people to just come
in the classic inflatable t-rex costume.
CECILIA VEGA: What do they come in?
Diplodocus, triceratops.
You name it, we had it.
CECILIA VEGA: Legit gear.
THOMAS BRADFORD (VOICEOVER): Everything.
I had to turn away people that were dressed as Godzilla,
because Godzilla is not a dinosaur.
How do you break it to a dinosaur in a bad costume
that they don't qualify?
You kind of just have to play the role.
I think my accent helps.
And there is a level of authority
that comes with a British accent.
School principal.
THOMAS BRADFORD: Very much that.
The largest pizza party is probably the most competitive
record that I've ever been a part of.
CECILIA VEGA: Is that true?
I didn't think it would be as-- it's a lot.
Yes.
It's stressing you out?
This is one of the most stressful record
attempts I've had.
CECILIA VEGA: Colin Kaplan needs 3358 people
to show up in order to beat the current record.
And you want to beat Tulsa.
We're going to beat Tulsa, Oklahoma.
CECILIA VEGA: Participants get 15 minutes
to eat two slices of pizza and drink a bottle of water.
But here's the catch--
they have to stay until the party is officially over.
And--
They must eat the entire pizza.
No one can leave their crusts.
They have to eat the crust.
CECILIA VEGA: What makes a pizza party like this so difficult?
People.
Yeah, it's-- you don't know if they're going to stay for 15
minutes.
They might wait for 14 and be like, I'm fine.
You're disqualified if you leave after 14 minutes.
So the people is the toughest thing.
This official Guinness World Records attempt has begun!
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
CECILIA VEGA: At first, it was slow going.
What if not enough people show up,
or have you guys already counted?
But then in came the pizza obsessed college students.
Children, those in their finest pepperoni attire.
COLIN KAPLAN: Its 10,000 slices, which is 625 pizzas,
in about 3.5 hours.
CECILIA VEGA: Kaplan's pursuit of a record didn't come cheap.
Brands and businesses chasing titles for marketing
must pay fees.
He said he paid nearly $30,000 and fundraised six figures
to cover all the costs, including eight ovens and all
that cheese.
There you are.
CECILIA VEGA: When Thomas Bradford
wasn't busy being a celebrity--
Awesome!
CECILIA VEGA: --he and a group of 100 volunteers
kept the tally.
Only two didn't finish.
One left.
Perfect.
OK.
CECILIA VEGA: With an hour to go--
It's going to go to the wire, I think.
It's going to be close.
CECILIA VEGA: --Kaplan was still trying
to make the pie calculations add up.
We could actually feed 1,800 people starting at 6
o'clock still.
And that means that we could 100% beat the record and almost
get to 5,000.
CECILIA VEGA: So did they?
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
Finally, the verdict.
And now, New Haven is home to the world's largest pizza party.
CECILIA VEGA: 4525 people gathered for a new Guinness
World Record--
Congratulations, New Haven.
You are all officially amazing.
CECILIA VEGA: --and a slice of history.
Human beings are innately the same everywhere.
They are really, because they're trying
to get through from birth to death and have as much fun
and enjoy life and get all the experiences that you can.
And we see this every day.
The world is full of these amazing, fun things
if you just look in the right place.
I'm Jon Wertheim.
Thanks for joining us.
We'll be back next week with an all new edition of 60 Minutes.