60 Minutes Overtime: The story behind the story

For more than five decades, 60 Minutes has covered it all—from headline news to quiet human stories—fit neatly in one hour. Now in the digital age, we have more time and use novel approaches to report the news. 60 Minutes Overtime tells the story behind the story.

What it takes to report from Ukraine (2/26/23)

To mark the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine, CBS News producer Erin Lyall and foreign correspondent Holly Williams in February reported from Kherson, the Ukrainian city that had been under Russian occupation for eight months. Although the city had been liberated, Kherson remained under fire from Russian forces that were positioned on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River.

Lyall and Williams have been reporting from Ukraine since 2014. That year, protests rocked the capital city Kyiv, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and Russian-backed separatists took over areas of the Donbass region. The CBS team was there for it all.

Journalists and the hijab debate (11/12/23)

For a 60 Minutes story about Iran's Assassins, correspondent Lesley Stahl met Masih Alinejad, an Iranian activist living in Brooklyn who has been targeted by the Iranian regime for encouraging women in Iran to stop wearing headscarves. Protests over hijab laws took hold in Iran last year after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of Iran's morality police. Amini had been arrested on the charge of wearing a hijab improperly.

In Brooklyn, Alinejad's activism has made her a target of the Iranian regime. As Stahl was interviewing her about the threat against her life, Alinejad brought up another subject: Stahl's interview with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi last year, during which Stahl covered her own head. Alinejad told Stahl she should not have worn a headscarf during her interview with Raisi.

Israelis advocate for hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza (12/17/23)

For the last six weeks, Meirav Leshem Gonen has slept in a makeshift encampment in a Tel Aviv plaza. On the outside of her silver tent, she has hung one of her favorite photos of her daughter. Nearby, a clock with bright orange numbers keeps the only time that matters to Leshem Gonen: how long it has been since her daughter, Romi, was abducted by Hamas militants and taken to Gaza. 

For now, the clock keeps ticking. A temporary cease-fire agreement late last month facilitated the release of more than 100 hostages back to Israel, and although they were predominantly women and children, Romi was not among them. Now, Leshem Gonen has joined the families of some of the more than 100 hostages still believed to be in Gaza to keep attention on their loved ones. The group, known as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, has committed to camping out until the hostages have returned home.

Recreating Notre Dame's iconic spire (4/9/23)

Four years ago, a raging fire burning at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris shocked people around the world. On the streets of Paris, an audible gasp rippled through the crowd as the cathedral's flame-engulfed spire toppled over.

In April, Bill Whitaker traveled to Paris to report on how French engineers are rebuilding the iconic spire of Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral after the devastating 2019 fire—and what Victor Hugo has to do with it.

Searching for Cambodia's stolen crown jewels (12/17/23)

Anderson Cooper and a 60 Minutes team traveled to Cambodia to report on the looting of ancient artifacts from temples across the country and track their journey to prestigious museums.

Crowns and precious jewels believed to have been worn by ancient Khmer royalty were recovered in an unlikely place: a pub parking lot.

White Helmets help rebuild northwest Syria after earthquakes (4/23/23)

A series of powerful earthquakes hit southern Turkey and northwest Syria in the early morning of Feb. 6, causing mass devastation in its wake. These earthquakes further exacerbated the destruction already caused by Syria's ongoing civil war, killing thousands of people, destroying tens of thousands of buildings and costing billions of dollars in damages.

Correspondent Scott Pelley traveled to northwest Syria and revisited the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer organization dedicated to responding and rebuilding after such devastations. The group is better known as the White Helmets. "When we first met the White Helmets, it was sort of a loosely organized group of volunteers. The only thing they seemed to have joining them was the color of their helmets," Pelley told 60 Minutes Overtime. "Now they're one of the bravest organizations I've ever had the pleasure to see working in a situation like this."

The photographer who helped inspire Anderson Cooper to become a journalist (5/7/23)

"There are many ways of telling stories, but a still photo has a power that is unlike anything else," 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper said to renowned war photographer James Nachtwey. For more than 40 years, Nachtwey has used his camera to show humanity a reflection of itself, often photographing war scenes and reporting from areas of conflict.

Nachtwey showed Cooper dozens of photos from his archive that document everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. "Without a doubt you have been the person who made me interested in wanting to do this line of work," Cooper told Nachtwey, discussing the impact the photographer had on his life.

Saving Ukraine's art collections from Russian aggression (11/12/23)

With Ukrainian cultural centers under attack, correspondent Bill Whitaker traveled to Ukraine to investigate what Ukrainians say is Russia's ongoing campaign to deliberately destroy their cultural institutions.

Churches, cathedrals, museums and libraries across the country have been bombed, burned and shelled. Museum employees have been arrested and kidnapped by Russian soldiers. And thousands of paintings, antiques and artifacts have been stolen from museums, looted by invading Russian forces. Whitaker visited one museum in Kviv which is taking extra precautions to guarantee the safety of its collection for future generations.

Following the breakthroughs in prosthetics (3/26/23)

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley has been tracking advancements in prosthetics for more than a decade, watching as artificial hands went from using a rudimentary hook to complex robotics. In 2009 he interviewed engineer and inventor Dean Kamen, whose inventions at that point included the Segway and dozens of medical devices. Kamen and his team of engineers spent a year working on the problem of revolutionizing the prosthetic arm. Kamen quickly saw it was an enormous undertaking. The human hand, he explained to Pelley, is a very complex machine.

Today, the technology has advanced. Now, not only can people with spinal cord injuries and amputations control prosthetic limbs with their minds—including grasping objects—some advanced prosthetics can also return a sense of touch to their brain.

Author Michael Lewis nearly stopped writing after daughter's death (10/1/23)

In October, correspondent Jon Wertheim spoke with author Michael Lewis about his new book reporting on the rise and fall of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. There was an untold triumph in the book: Lewis told 60 Minutes he nearly quit writing after his 19-year-old daughter, Dixie, was killed in a car crash in May 2021.

"I write because it gives me pleasure," Lewis told Wertheim, "and I thought maybe I wouldn't have access to that pleasure anymore." After Dixie's death, Lewis feared the trauma would influence his prose and the words would read differently. With time, Lewis again found joy in writing, and dedicated his latest book to Dixie.

Finding reconciliation for abandoned Black cemeteries (11/27/22)

In Clearwater, Florida last century, segregation followed people into the grave. Now the injustices of the past are resurfacing. After human remains began emerging from the ground at a school, a swimming pool, and an office building, archeologists have discovered that graves from segregated cemeteries had been built over, their previously interred bodies now buried beneath the subsequent development.

To help right this wrong, a Florida state congresswoman is now pushing legislation to find and repair these forgotten historic cemeteries.

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