[CLOCK TICKING]
[BELL TOLLING]
ANDERSON COOPER: The vets drank psilocybin,
a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms,
put on blindfolds to shut out distractions, and lay down.
The retreat was organized and paid
for by the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit that's
helped more than a thousand US veterans
with combat-related PTSD access psychedelics.
Them seeking this type of unauthorized therapy
is just another indication of why
we need to study this further and get it
to a safe and effective medical environment.
[CLOCK TICKING]
[SHOUTING]
BILL WHITAKERL Every year on Mardi Gras day,
an eDemondtraordinary sight emerges from the back streets
of New Orleans.
They call themselves Mardi Gras Indians, or Black Masking
Indians, and they roam the neighborhoods
in dazzling hand-sewn suits.
Tonight, we will show you the sights and sounds
of one of America's last true secret societies.
[CLOCK TICKING]
JON WERTHEIM: 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 seDemondual, 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?
[CLOCK TICKING]
I'm Bill Whitaker.
I'm Jon Wertheim.
I'm Anderson Cooper.
I'm Lesley Stahl.
Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.
[CLOCK TICKING]
In 2024, the Veterans Administration announced,
for the first time, it would begin funding its own clinical
trials to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression,
and addiction using two psychedelic drugs--
psilocybin and MDMA.
Even if the trials are successful,
it would be years before the VA could prescribe
either drug for its patients.
But as we first reported last year,
thousands of veterans who are suffering are not waiting.
Desperate for help, they're attending psychedelic retreats
in countries where the drugs are legal to use, mostly
in Indigenous ceremonies.
We were invited to join nine veterans who
traveled to the west coast of Mexico for a psychedelic journey
they hoped would finally help ease their pain.
They came to Mexico from all over the United States--
a group of nine veterans with invisible wounds
that are hard to heal.
Their destination, a remote village
near Puerto Vallarta for a week-long psychedelic retreat.
It was a voyage into the unknown,
but a risk worth taking for TJ Duff, a former Navy sailor.
Are you optimistic?
Being optimistic is hard for me,
because I've been through a lot of therapy,
a lot of different treatments, and not a lot of success.
ANDERSON COOPER: Duff was 18 when he joined the Navy.
Months into his first deployment aboard the USS Cole,
he says he narrowly escaped death
when two suicide bombers attacked the ship in Yemen,
killing 17 sailors.
Everyone around me was killed.
TJ DUFF: There's bodies, alive and dead, being piled up
in the midships, and I think that's really where I just
started holding everything in.
I don't have it where I'm jumping in ditches
when I hear loud noises.
My PTSD is kind of a self-destructive form.
ANDERSON COOPER: Randy Weaver is a police officer in New York.
A former staff sergeant in the Army,
he was diagnosed with PTSD in 2007
after returning home from tours in Bosnia, Iraq,
and Afghanistan.
It's the constant, what if I had done this?
What if we did that?
Are those things you want to revisit while you're
taking the psilocybin?
Yeah, if I could revisit them and see them maybe
from a different perspective, not where I failed somebody.
Is there a particular incident that you
feel you failed somebody?
Yeah.
So March 18, 20 years ago.
ANDERSON COOPER: In 2004, Weaver's platoon
was caught in a firefight in an Afghan village.
Two soldiers were killed, one of them, his friend,
Staff Sergeant Anthony Lagman.
Weaver's, warned this bracelet with Lagman's name
on it since coming home.
You've been wearing that for 20 years?
Yeah, every day.
ANDERSON COOPER: Weaver says he's
tried nearly every treatment for PTSD the VA offers,
including talk therapy, exposure therapy, meditation,
and antidepressants.
You get to a point where you're so mentally exhausted
and you've created so much destruction
that your demons tell yourself that your family would
be better off without you.
And when those demons tell you those things every day,
it's something hard to ignore.
Will this help with that?
I hope so.
ANDERSON COOPER: The retreat was organized and paid
for by the Heroic Hearts Project, a nonprofit that's
helped more than a thousand US veterans
with combat-related PTSD access psychedelics.
I came home super angry, super anxious, hypervigilant.
That led to a pretty nasty divorce.
ANDERSON COOPER: Ed Glover was in Afghanistan with the Marines.
He's been a firefighter for 22 years.
I feel one or two traumatic events
you may be able to recover from, but seeing it day in,
day out really takes its toll.
ANDERSON COOPER: As the vets talked, it became clear,
some of their struggles began long before they
joined the military.
My family life was just always this constant conflict.
ANDERSON COOPER: Navy vet Michael Giardina
had an emotionally abusive father who
killed himself 17 years ago.
His sister died by suicide five months before he came here.
My daughter asked my ex-wife if I was going to kill myself,
and I'm not.
I just want to get better.
ANDERSON COOPER: To qualify for this retreat,
they had to work with their doctors
to wean off any antidepressants or anxiety medication they might
be taking because of how it could
interact with the psychedelics.
They also had to have a medical screening and no family history
of psychosis or schizophrenia.
When we were there, a local doctor
was on site, but no mental health professionals.
I appreciate you guys for putting the faith in me,
the faith in us coming here.
ANDERSON COOPER: Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger,
founded the Heroic Hearts Project in 2017
after he tried another psychedelic, ayahuasca,
at a retreat in Peru.
Gould says psychedelics can help veterans revisit
traumatic moments in ways they may be
unable to with other therapies.
JESSE GOULD: The value of what we're
finding with psychedelics is it's
a very individualistic journey.
It comes at you.
It brings up the emotions.
It heightens your senses.
And so you're having to face it.
And so that's why you see such big revelations,
because it's giving you the tools to actually get there.
Do you worry that some who see this as the last hope
may end up disappointed?
I worry that we're at the situation where
people are having to go to other countries for their last hope.
That indicates a major flaw in the system.
The orange one?
OK.
ANDERSON COOPER: Heroic Heart tired traditional healers
to conduct three psychedelic ceremonies, the first two
with psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found
in some mushrooms.
It's been used as medicine by Indigenous communities in Mexico
and elsewhere for centuries.
You don't need to be strong.
All we need for this experience and to receive the healing
is humbleness.
[BELL TOLLING]
ANDERSON COOPER: The healer stirred ground-up mushrooms
into a tea.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
ANDERSON COOPER: The vets drank it,
put on blindfolds to shut out distractions, and lay down.
[SINGING IN SPANISH]
ANDERSON COOPER: At first, it seemed
like the group might have traveled thousands
of miles for a midday nap.
But then about an hour in, we saw Michael Giardina
raise his hand for help.
His foot soon started to shake, followed by his whole body.
[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
ANDERSON COOPER: By hour three, it
was clear the psilocybin had kicked in.
Randy Weaver and TJ Duff barely seemed to move,
while firefighter Ed Glover appeared
caught between rapture and deep sorrow.
WOMAN: (SINGING) When you let go of fear
The truth will all be so simple and clear
[XYLOPHONE CHIMING]
ANDERSON COOPER: Five hours later,
when the psilocybin began to wear off,
the vets removed their eye masks and found
the heat of the afternoon sun.
The next day, the group gathered to discuss
what they'd gone through.
It literally felt like an exorcism.
My foot was going crazy, and I could feel
like my body was convulsing.
I felt like I was taking every last breath of any victim,
patient, or friend that I had lost.
So I really struggled to breathe yesterday.
I've never done anything like that before.
ANDERSON COOPER: Randy Weaver appeared
to find some of what he traveled all this way for.
One thing that I remember very vividly
was flying back with the guys that we lost.
It's like being on that medevac.
Even though I wasn't there in the real world,
I was there spiritually with them.
ANDERSON COOPER: TJ Duff, however,
found it unsettling and at times scary.
I've heard a lot of your guys' stories,
and I did not get as immersive as you guys did.
I'm kind of glad I didn't, honestly,
because I was kind of afraid of that, but--
ANDERSON COOPER: That night, Duff took part
in another psilocybin ceremony.
But the next day, he left.
He later told us the whole experience
caused a dangerous decline in his mental health.
He's now back on antidepressant medication.
The last ceremony of the retreat was with 5-MeO-DMT,
a powerful and fast-acting psychedelic secreted from
a toad.
After returning home, the vets had several virtual meetings
with a Heroic Hearts Project counselor.
I think my biggest takeaway was
making sure I make the time to take care of myself.
ANDERSON COOPER: The Veterans Administration warns against
"self-medicating with psychedelics"
or using them as "part of a self-treatment program."
But when we spoke to its top doctor, Shereef Elnahal,
in 2024, he was enthusiastic about their potential.
Do these retreats concern you?
They can concern me because there's
no way to monitor, certify, make sure that they're actually
safe environments.
They're seeking these therapies because they do not
see our current options for them to be effective enough,
and they're in a state of desperation.
And that, in and of itself, them seeking
this type of unauthorized therapy,
is just another indication on why
we need to study this further and get it
to a safe and effective medical environment.
ANDERSON COOPER: In 2024, the FDA
rejected a pharmaceutical company's application
to use the psychedelic MDMA in combination
with therapy as a treatment for PTSD
after an FDA advisory panel said there wasn't enough evidence
that it was safe or effective.
The VA is now involved in 20 clinical trials using
psychedelics, including MDMA and psilocybin,
to treat several mental health disorders.
Dr. Elnahal told us a small phase 2 trial by the VA
using MDMA and therapy to treat PTSD, completed two years ago,
showed real promise.
45% have gone into complete remission, which is essentially
a normal emotional state.
That is unheard of with prolonged exposure,
cognitive processing, and certainly
SSRIs, the current standard of care options.
Almost half of the people who came in with PTSD
and did MDMA therapy at the VA were cured?
Yes.
So you have no doubt that this works?
We need to do larger phase 3 clinical trials.
That's the best way scientifically
to understand what the true adverse events are
and whether we can reproduce these results in larger
populations of veterans.
I'm very optimistic we will be able to demonstrate that.
How long do you think it will be
before veterans can go to the VA and get this therapy?
SHEREEF ELNAHAL: It could be another couple of years.
The incoming administration is going to take pretty bold stance
on this.
What makes you optimistic that the new administration is
going to be a believer in this?
We've heard the nominee for HHS, Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., talk about what he thinks the potential breakthrough
therapy is.
We'll see what the stance is of other health officials.
That's really promising.
ANDERSON COOPER: Nearly a year after that retreat in Mexico,
we checked in with the nine veterans who attended.
Eight of them told us their symptoms had improved
and called their experience with psychedelics life-changing.
Ed Glover said he felt like a weight had been lifted off
his shoulders.
How are you doing?
Very well.
ANDERSON COOPER: Shortly after coming home from the retreat,
he decided to retire as a firefighter.
Prior to the retreat, I thought
about taking my life just about every day.
I had a very close call.
The note, the gun.
That is no longer the case.
You haven't had thoughts of killing yourself since then?
Not one.
ANDERSON COOPER: And Randy Weaver
says his suicidal ideations have stopped as well.
I don't have any of those thoughts since going
through this journey.
That's remarkable.
I would say yeah.
You had told the group afterward
that you had visualized people on a medevac helicopter
that you had served with.
Yeah.
ANDERSON COOPER: What was the impact of that?
In combat, things happen quickly.
One minute you're talking to your friend,
and the next minute, you're putting him in a body bag.
That causes a gap in your psyche.
So to be able to revisit those incidences,
seeing those helicopters come back with friends,
it brings a little peace to you, yeah.
In April, President Trump signed an executive order
seeking to accelerate the research and approval
of some psychedelic drugs as mental health treatments,
including psilocybin and MDMA, by directing federal agencies
to ease restrictions that have long limited scientists' ability
to study them.
[CLOCK TICKING]
Every year, on Mardi Gras morning,
something extraordinary emerges from the back streets
of New Orleans--
groups of Black revelers most tourists will never see.
They call themselves Mardi Gras Indians, or Black Masking
Indians, and they roam the city's neighborhoods
in dazzling, hand-sewn suits.
As we first told you in April, the tradition dates to the 1800s
as a way to honor their ancestors and, according
to Mardi Gras Indian lore, is rooted in profound respect
for Native Americans, said to have sheltered enslaved Africans
who had escaped.
It's an expression of joy, protest, and pride, passed
from generation to generation.
Tonight, you'll meet the artists and musicians,
preserving the culture and take in the sights
and sounds of one of America's last true secret societies.
[SHOUTING]
[SHOUTS]
[SCREAMING]
Mardi Gras!
BILL WHITAKER: If you're lucky enough to find them,
you'll discover a vibrant tapestry of African, Caribbean,
and Native American threads--
[NON-ENGLISH]
BILL WHITAKER: --part of the cultural gumbo
that is New Orleans.
[INDISTINCT], Oklahoma.
BILL WHITAKER: These extravagant suits-- plumed, bejeweled,
beaded, and sequined-- are handcrafted
in secret for an entire year to be unveiled on Mardi Gras day.
Chawaa!
BILL WHITAKER: Chawaa-- that's Big Chief Demond
Melancon of the Young Seminole Hunters announcing his arrival.
Chawaa!
DEMOND MELANCON: Chawaa.
Who the best?
Who got the best beadwork?
Who got the best rhinestones?
Who could sing the best?
Who got the biggest tribe?
Who don't?
That's what it is.
BILL WHITAKER: There are dozens of groups calling themselves
tribes.
The leader is known as the big chief, who,
along with his big queen and their crew,
strut through historically Black neighborhoods searching
for other tribes.
When Big Chief Demond meets another big chief--
[INDISTINCT SINGING]
BILL WHITAKER: --they square off in mock battle,
competing to show whose suit is, in their words, the prettiest.
We saw Demond face down tribes all over the city.
What just happened back there?
It looked like he just bowed out.
But you won.
Yeah, I think I did.
You were the prettiest?
Yeah.
Because we on fire.
We on fire.
BILL WHITAKER: Who are you on Mardi Gras day?
When I put that suit on, I'm Big Chief Demond Melancon.
Is that different from the Demond who's sitting here
in front of me now?
Yes, indeed.
How different?
Somebody that's ready to honor everything
that I was taught by my elders.
And I'm ready to kill you dead with the needle and thread.
BILL WHITAKER: Needle and thread to do the work of his heart
and hands.
Big Chief Demond and his wife, Alicia, meticulous as surgeons,
sow beads the size of chia seeds on a canvas and stitch
rhinestones in place with dental floss.
Painting with beads, making artwork for his suit.
What to you makes a suit pretty?
The hookup.
What do you mean?
How it's laid out.
How the velvet gets around it.
How you break the feathers.
How you manipulate the feathers.
How many rows of rhinestones you have around the beadwork.
That's the perfection of knowing your hookup,
if you're that good.
BILL WHITAKER: Oh, wow.
This year's suit tells the story of the Amistad,
a slave ship seized by the captive Africans
in 1839, led by a man called Cinque.
This panel shows when the Africans
won their freedom in a case that went to the US Supreme Court.
Look at this.
DEMOND MELANCON: John Quincy Adam, he
was one of the lawyers on the case.
My god.
So you're doing this nonstop.
I sew from 6:00 in the morning to 12:00 at night.
And this is every day?
Every day.
Why?
Hmm.
Man.
Without these beads, I couldn't breathe.
BILL WHITAKER: And every breath is hard-earned.
It can take thousands of dollars and thousands of hours
to design and sew a suit.
For years, Big Chief Demond was laying concrete and cooking
lobsters, pouring all his spare time and money
into his creations.
He now makes a living as an artist.
This year's suit cost $25,000.
But this flamboyant display is not a beauty pageant.
It's the flowering of deep roots.
DEMOND MELANCON: The community is what makes me.
It's my fuel.
The people.
Your fuel?
DEMOND MELANCON: Yeah.
It fuels the fire.
Because you're doing it for them.
You do this for your community and your people.
The greatest kept secret in America and throughout the world
today is the Mardi Gras Indian culture.
These cultures date back to slavery days.
I have hope--
BILL WHITAKER: Howard Miller is the president of the Mardi Gras
Indian Council, a governing body for the tribes,
and chief of the Creole Wild West.
He told us it's a culture shaped by resistance to oppression
and sustained by resilience.
How would you explain the Mardi Gras Indians
to people who don't have a clue what they're about?
Well, we weren't allowed to go to those parades and stuff.
So this in our community was about uplifting our people
in a proudly manner.
BILL WHITAKER: There's no one definitive origin story,
but historians have found references
to the tradition dating back to the mid-1800s.
According to stories passed down through generations,
when enslaved people escaped New Orleans,
Native Americans in the bayous gave them refuge.
Today, many tribe members claim Indigenous and African roots.
Masking, some say, began as a way
to honor those Indigenous tribes while disguising or masking
their African identity.
Because here in America, especially here in the South,
everything about Africa was forbidden.
So we went behind a mask as Indians to practice our culture.
Was it easy to join a tribe?
No, it wasn't.
BILL WHITAKER: In 1969, it took then-12-year-old Howard Miller
six weeks just to get in the door of a big chief's house,
the tribe's headquarters.
I had a friend of mine.
He was in it.
And I would go around there with him, trying to get in.
But they wouldn't let me in the gate.
Wouldn't even let you in the gate?
No, I had to stay outside the yard while he go in there.
Eventually, I got on the porch.
And I was watching all this magic with the suits
and what they was doing.
And it started rainstorm, thunder, lightning,
raining hard.
I'm getting wet.
And the chief said, that boy is still on the porch?
And somebody said, yep.
Tell that boy to come on in here.
That's how I got in the house.
BILL WHITAKER: We visited the home of Joseph Pierre Boudreaux,
better known as Big Chief Monk of the Golden Eagles tribe.
Big chiefs aren't just heads of their tribes,
they're mentors and community leaders.
And Big Chief Monk is one of the most respected.
But the working-class neighborhoods
that sustain the tribes have been thinned and scattered
by Hurricane Katrina and gentrification.
84-year-old Monk Boudreaux is determined to hold
on to the community and legacy and is preparing for his 72nd
year of masking.
We're going to do it.
Let the world know that we're here, and we've been here.
We ain't just got here.
We've been here.
You ain't going to see that.
BILL WHITAKER: We joined the Boudreauxs in a sewing circle
before Mardi Gras.
For decades, Big Chief Monk sewed suits for his children
and grandchildren.
This year, they gathered and helped him sew his.
MONK BOUDREAUX: My whole family's
talented, by just sitting there watching me for all these years,
as kids.
They were always right there while I was sewing,
sitting right there.
(SINGING) I sew all night long
BILL WHITAKER: All those long hours of sewing inspired a song.
(SINGING) They saw that moment till the break of dawn
Everybody got soul, soul, soul
BILL WHITAKER: In the 1970s--
(SINGING) Fine with the high land--
BILL WHITAKER: --Monk was one of the first to marry Mardi Gras
Indian chants to New Orleans funk.
His albums earned two Grammy nominations.
His son Joseph and grandson J'Wan often sang backup.
We met them, Monk's daughter Wynoka and grandson Marwan,
at one of Monk's favorite New Orleans clubs--
Tipitina's.
What's his impact on the culture?
The impact that Michael Jordan had on basketball.
I'll put it like that.
Yeah, it's like that.
You can't mention Mardi Gras without Monk, our chief.
I never saw him take a break.
I never saw him say, oh, this year I'm not coming.
My father, he took something that
was made for the culture in the streets,
and he was one of the pioneers that took it global.
There's not a person in the city of New Orleans that
sews an Indian suit and they don't put on his music.
(SINGING) Say what you want about--
BILL WHITAKER: Big Chief Demond included.
[INDISTINCT LYRICS]
That man make me cry.
Like Monk.
He do me something.
BILL WHITAKER: He's moved by the music
and the weight of his calling.
The expense almost left him destitute.
You sacrificed a lot to make these suits.
DEMOND MELANCON: Mhm.
You lost a house because you were so
consumed with making your suit?
Yeah, yeah.
Because it's hard.
I know it's hard, but losing the House didn't make you stop?
What?
Why?
Because you got put out of your house.
No, indeed.
I'm preserving the culture.
BILL WHITAKER: And the fine-art world has taken notice.
His suits and beaded portraits have
been displayed in museums and galleries all over the world.
It's allowed him to buy a new house,
every inch of which was covered with plumes and patches
the evening before Mardi Gras.
Y'all ready?
BILL WHITAKER: After working through the night,
Big Chief Demond emerged transformed
in a suit that stood more than 10 feet tall
and weighed 120 pounds.
He used a U-Haul to move from place to place.
But he tells us there was something else carrying him
along.
The spirits come down every time we put it on, especially
with me.
My elders lived through me, and it's an opening of the gates.
What do you mean?
That means they came down.
They coming through me to walk in their shoes
on the streets of New Orleans like they taught us.
So what we're doing is we're preserving it
for that next generation to be able to walk like I walk.
It's going to change my life.
BILL WHITAKER: The spirits, it seems,
are opening up the gates for him.
This suit is currently on display
at the Venice Biennale in Italy, the world's most prestigious art
exhibition.
You think your success in the art world
will encourage a younger generation carry on
with this culture?
I pray it does.
And I pray one of them picks up a needle and won't do what I do.
BILL WHITAKER: Preserving tradition
for the next generation-- we heard that a lot here.
It's what Big Chief Monk lives for.
But this year, he was too weak to March with his tribe.
Just before Mardi Gras, he was diagnosed with cancer.
[CHEERING]
But he came out on his porch to see the tribe off with the Mardi
Gras Indians' most sacred hymn.
[ALL SINGING "INDIAN RED"]
[INDISTINCT SINGING]
What's it like for you to see your tribe march off
and you're not joining them this year?
Well, I knew that time was going to come,
but I didn't know when.
But you got to see this day.
Yeah, right.
Well, I was going to see this day.
BILL WHITAKER: And the day is coming, he told,
us for him to pass his crown on to the next chief.
Like I said, if you don't keep it going, if you lose it,
it's gone forever.
It's finished.
And that thin just disappear?
Not here in New Orleans.
No, uh-uh.
We keep it rolling.
BILL WHITAKER: Keeping it rolling and chanting and showing
off--
a culture in full bloom, too pretty,
too rooted to fade, just yet.
[CLOCK TICKING]
ANNOUNCER: The anatomy of a showdown.
There's a wall fell.
It's basically a battle.
[INDISTINCT SINGING]
ANNOUNCER: At 60minutesovertime.com.
[CLOCK TICKING]
You're an 86-year-old titan of literature,
have been for half a century now.
Your 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?
JON WERTHEIM: Science fiction?
Have 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.
[LAUGHS]
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.
Shame!
JON WERTHEIM: Handmaid's Taleis your magnum opus.
You think?
Your Great Gatsby.
How are you with that?
Well, I would question the premise.
You would?
MARGARET ATWOOD: 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. Wadein 2022,
The Handmaid'sTale 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--
Oh, I think I'm very positive.
I didn't kill everybody off at the end.
Some people do.
These are rare books.
So a lot of them are pretty obscure.
JON WERTHEIM: 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: 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."
MARGARET ATWOOD: Mhm.
Communists are making women have babies.
Persistent non-pregnancy will be considered
a crime against the state.
JON WERTHEIM: It's not all doom and gloom.
Atwood showed us the cover sheet 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 stop for infestation.
We stopped for infestations.
And 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?
MARGARET ATWOOD: I think probably
growing up with the biologists 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: 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.
You're in front of an audience?
No, I'm not.
I'm just a show-off.
JON WERTHEIM: And when Margaret Atwood wants to show off,
you surrender the stage.
You have to stand over there.
Hold my purse.
JON WERTHEIM: 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?
Oh, you bow.
Oh.
Thank you.
You remember that?
Why are you so surprised that I remember this?
JON WERTHEIM: Before we left the theater,
Atwood showed us another party trick.
I'm not getting vibes, OK?
You're not getting vibes from me?
No.
We're doing the classic Renaissance hand reading.
JON WERTHEIM: Yes, she reads palms,
another mode for investigation.
People might think that you're just
a very reasonable, 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.
Well, I got that going for me.
[LAUGHTER]
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?
JON WERTHEIM: 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.
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.
Can I ask you to read a bit for us?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Yes.
There are several letters in this book from me
to my inner advice columnist.
Everybody has one.
"Dear inner advice columnist, sorry to bother you."
JON WERTHEIM: 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 three
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 a 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,
began 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.
[CHUCKLES]
Do I see a little blush?
Do I see a little bit of a blush?
JON WERTHEIM: 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?
I got older.
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?
[CLOCK TICKING]
I'm Jon Wertheim.
We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
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