04/19/2026: Iran's HEU, One Mother's Story, Wild Concerto

Summary

60 Minutes – Episode Summary

Episode Aired: April 20, 2026
Main Stories:

1. Iran’s HEU: Securing Iran's Nuclear Stockpile
2. One Mother’s Story: The Search for and Loss of Hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin
3. Wild Concerto: Drummer Stewart Copeland and Martin Stewart’s Animal Orchestra

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1. Iran’s HEU: The Challenge of Securing Iran’s Nuclear Material

Main Theme

A look into the difficulty and high stakes of preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons by focusing on their stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU). The segment recounts a covert operation from the 1990s as a potential model—and harshly analyzes the feasibility of such an operation today.

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Key Discussion Points

• Scale of the Threat

  • Iran is believed to possess enough HEU to make up to 10 nuclear bombs.
  • International inspectors have lacked access since the prior summer (00:45, 04:34).

• Historic Blueprint: Project Safire (Kazakhstan, 1994)

  • Andrew Weber (then-Foreign Service Officer) details the post-Soviet discovery and removal of bomb-grade uranium from Kazakhstan:
    • "It was a crazy time after the Soviet Union fell apart and we knew that Iran was pursuing nuclear material throughout the region." (05:29, Andrew Weber)
    • Built trust via diplomacy and even a moose hunting trip, receiving a secret note (“U235, 90%, 600 kilograms. And that means what to you?” “Dozens of nuclear weapons.” 06:39–06:52).
    • The operation was covert, handled under the guise of humanitarian aid, and executed in secrecy (08:17, Andrew Weber).
    • Risks included black ice, vulnerability during transport, and criminal/foreign interest (08:38, Andrew Weber).
    • Safely delivered over 1,300 pounds of bomb-grade uranium to the US (09:08).

• Could Such a Mission Work in Iran?

  • U.S. officials (current and former) express deep skepticism.
    • “In Iran, we couldn’t send a team in to do this unilaterally without great risk. You would need to set up... a secure perimeter. It would probably take thousands of U.S. troops.” (09:40, Andrew Weber)
    • Iran’s facilities are deep underground, with entrances now blocked—America’s bunker-busting bombs may not reach some of them (10:10).

• Technological and Intelligence Limits

  • Inspectors and analysts illustrate the limitations of satellite imagery and the advantage Iran gains by operating deep underground (11:23, Dr. Matthew Bunn).

• Diplomacy vs. Force

  • “Never seen it done without [a willing partner].” (13:58, Scott Roker)
  • Prior international removals all required partner cooperation.

• Barriers to Military Success

  • “It's high risk. You have to occupy territory... force your way in.” (15:08, Ret. Vice Admiral Robert Harward)
  • Expectation of casualties and a large military footprint (16:11).
  • The real threat on the ground: drones, missiles, and Iran’s conventional military edge (15:53).

• Verification & Trust

  • Dr. Matthew Bunn warns: No realistic means for the US to eradicate the program by force or mere trust. “Iran has been lying about its nuclear weapons effort for over 20 years now...” (16:30)
  • The need: no HEU, in-depth international monitoring (17:03).
  • He concludes with pessimism: “I think we’re going to be dealing with Iran’s nuclear program with very few realistic tools available to us for a long time to come.” (17:29)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the consequences of inaction:
  “They could have just bought the 90% enriched uranium metal and they would have been able to fabricate bombs very quickly out of it.” (07:15, Andrew Weber)

• On the illusion of total success through strikes:
  “‘Yeah, that statement is just not true. You can't say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is obliterated.’” (11:47, Dr. Matthew Bunn, addressing Trump's claims)

• On the cost of military action:
  “You have to occupy territory. You have to confront. You have to force your way in. So all those risks are inherent in that operation. But we can do it.” (15:08, Ret. Vice Admiral Harward)

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Key Timestamps

• 04:34 – Iran's HEU and the risk of nuclear proliferation
• 05:29 – Project Safire: Removing HEU from Kazakhstan
• 09:40 – Logistical and military realities of an Iran operation
• 11:47 – Limitations of military strikes
• 13:30 – Need for diplomatic cooperation in nuclear material removal
• 15:08 – Military operations: Viability and risks
• 17:03 – What an effective agreement would require

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2. One Mother’s Story: Rachel Goldberg Poland’s Search for Her Son

Main Theme

A deeply personal account highlighting the cost of conflict: Rachel Goldberg Poland, an American Israeli, fought for nearly a year for her son Hersh, who was kidnapped and eventually killed by Hamas. The segment covers her trauma, resilience, and journey through unbearable grief.

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Key Discussion Points

• Personal Loss Amid National Tragedy

  • Rachel’s son, Hersh, was taken hostage during the Nova Music Festival massacre on October 7, 2023.
    • “To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused, is maimed, and that's an excruciating form of suffering.” (19:07, Rachel Goldberg Poland)

• The Beginning: Last Messages

  • Hersh’s final texts to his mother:
    “The first one said, ‘I love you,’ and the second one said, ‘I'm sorry.’ And that was it.” (20:51)

• Day-to-Day Advocacy & Ritual

  • Rachel and her husband, John, became faces of the Israeli hostage crisis—meeting with world leaders, speaking publicly, and keeping tape with the hostage count (23:35).

• Mantra for Survival & Grieving Process

  • “I was always saying, ‘I love you. Stay strong, survive.’ … Was it a command to you as well? Yes.” (23:48–23:55)
  • Rachel describes perseverance through darkness: “How much longer? How much longer? How much longer?” (23:55)

• The End and Aftermath

  • Hersh was executed in Gaza after 328 days in captivity.
  • Rachel reflects on learning the full truth and finding peace that Hersh died knowing he was loved and his family was fighting for him (25:03–29:05).

• Hope, Grief & Meaning

  • Hersh’s resilience: Even in the tunnels, he repeated, “He who has a why can bear any how.” (26:49, quoting Viktor Frankl)
  • Or Levy, another hostage who survived, was saved by Hersh’s outlook and now bears Hersh’s life philosophy as a tattoo—his son is his “why.” (27:27)

• Reflections on Grief

  • “Maybe grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.” (29:47–30:15, Rachel Goldberg Poland)
  • Rachel expresses both pride and heartbreak: “Sometimes 100% is not enough.” (31:16)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On grief’s transformation:
  “I was dreading and uncomfortable with grief. … Maybe grief is just this precious badge of love that you wear.” (29:47, Rachel Goldberg Poland)

• On failing despite everything:
  “These are all symbols of failure. … We wanted them home alive, but they had come home.” (30:53–31:10)

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Key Timestamps

• 19:07 – Rachel’s description of her son’s captivity
• 20:51 – Hersh’s final texts
• 23:35 – Rachel’s role as an advocate; the tape ritual
• 25:03 – Hersh’s execution and Rachel’s reflections
• 26:49 – Hersh’s mantra: “He who has a why can bear any how.”
• 29:47 – Understanding and reinterpreting grief
• 31:10 – Rachel on doing “100%” and still losing

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3. Wild Concerto: Stewart Copeland and Martin Stewart’s Animal Orchestra

Main Theme

Blending wild nature and music: Legendary Police drummer Stewart Copeland teams up with naturalist Martin Stewart to create "Wild Concerto," a symphonic work that fuses animal recordings with orchestral composition—spotlighting both musical innovation and endangered species.

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Key Discussion Points

• Concept Behind ‘Wild Concerto’

  • Copeland collaborates with Stewart, who amassed a 100,000 sound archive of wildlife over 60 years.
  • The project elevates animal “performers” to the role of soloist, with orchestral backing.

• Creation Process

  • Copeland builds musical arrangements from Stewart’s most striking animal sounds:
    • “You put an instrument with them and those animals become Pavarotti.” (35:15, Copeland)
    • Chooses not just birds and mammals but frogs, wolves, hyenas, and more:
      e.g., “First of all, we have the (arctic) wolves on their own...Okay, let’s hear that with the orchestra, that’s a trombone.” (34:48)

• Motivation & Message

  • Martin Stewart’s Mission:
    “I always believe the reason I’m on this planet is to fight for the animals and the environment. And it's kind of my rent for being here.” (39:17)
  • Audio recordings become both a tribute and a warning as many animals featured are now extinct or endangered.
  • “Audio is the barometer of the planet.” (39:28, Stewart)

• Personal Stakes

  • Stewart, now living with cancer, is racing to preserve his massive archive with the hope listeners will fall in love with nature through sound and help prevent further mass extinction. (42:31–43:10)

• Behind the Scenes

  • The chemistry between collaborators is evident, mixing music and nature, humor and urgency:
    • “In fact, I’ll share with you that my wife and I have adopted the hyena love sounds as part of our relationship. Little kinky, but works.” (41:26, Copeland)

• Hope Through Beauty

  • Stewart’s conviction: “…if you show people the beauty of something and get them to fall in love with that, maybe we can tip something.” (43:30)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On mission and legacy:
  “If we keep stealing from nature, then the inevitable is going to happen. We're gonna lose a lot more.” (43:10, Martin Stewart)

• On inspiration:
  “What you want to do as a composer is create parts that are fun to play.” (37:43, Copeland)

• Offbeat moment:
  “I’ll come out there, kiss and hug every single one of you. So pucker up, babies.” (35:45, Copeland in the studio)

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Key Timestamps

• 31:31 – Wild Concerto introduction
• 33:32 – From bird song to orchestral piece
• 34:48 – Wolves as soloists
• 37:06–37:43 – Copeland’s evolution from drummer to composer
• 39:17 – Stewart’s mission to document animal sounds
• 41:26 – Copeland shares about hyena love sounds
• 43:10 – Stewart’s warning about extinction

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

• Unflinching in addressing nuclear risk, military challenges, and geopolitical uncertainty.
• Deeply personal and raw in sharing a mother’s loss and the ache of unresolved trauma.
• Inventive and hopeful in blending humanity’s creativity with conservation and awareness of our impact on the planet.

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Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• “Uranium enriched to 90% is ready to be made into a bomb.” (06:55, Leslie Stahl)
• “So that is enough material for—if you enrich it just a little bit more—for 10 to 11 nuclear bombs.” (12:33, Dr. Matthew Bunn)
• “He who has a why can bear any how.” (26:49, Hersh’s mantra quoted by Orr Levy)
• “Sometimes 100% is not enough.” (31:16, Rachel Goldberg Poland)
• “You put an instrument with them, and those animals become Pavarotti.” (35:15, Stewart Copeland)
• “Audio is the barometer of the planet.” (39:28, Martin Stewart)
• “If you show people the beauty of something… maybe we can tip something.” (43:30, Stewart)

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For Listeners

This episode of 60 Minutes draws incisively on history to illuminate the immense challenge of keeping nuclear material secure, shares an unforgettable story of a mother’s devotion and pain, and closes with an unexpected harmony of music and ecology—driving home humanity's interconnectedness and sense of responsibility for both each other and the natural world.

Transcript

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[Leslie Stahl]

Today.

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[Leslie Stahl]

The war with Iran hinges on three letters, he U, and it's believed Iran has enough of it underground to eventually make 10 nuclear bombs. What would it take for the US to secure that highly enriched uranium? Tonight, you'll hear about a covert mission that took place 32 years ago and why a similar operation in Iran would be so difficult. Would an operation like this be worth risking American lives?

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

In my opinion, yes.

[Bill Whitaker]

Harsh,

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

it's Mama.

[Anderson Cooper]

Tonight, the story of a mother who who would not give up on her son after he was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I was always saying I love you, stay strong, survive. I love you, stay strong, survive. I love you, stay strong, survive.

[Scott Pelley]

Was it a command to you as well?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Yes.

[Bill Whitaker]

If you're a rock fan, you already know Stuart Copeland, acclaimed drummer for the Police. What you may not know is who or what he's making music with.

[Martin Stewart]

Now that's the kookaburra.

[Bill Whitaker]

Hundreds of animals turned into something wild.

[Stuart Copeland]

You put an instrument with them and those animals become Pavarotti.

[Leslie Stahl]

I'm Leslie Stahl.

[Scott Pelley]

I'm Scott Pelley.

[Bill Whitaker]

I'm Bill Whitaker.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

I'm John Wertheim.

[Leslie Stahl]

I'm Cecilia Vega.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm Anderson Cooper. Those stories and in our last minute, chef Jose Andres with some food for thought. Tonight on 60 Minutes.

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[Leslie Stahl]

war between Iran and America hangs on just three he an essential ingredient for nuclear weapons. It's believed Iran currently has enough HEU to eventually make 10 atomic bombs. But international inspectors have not been allowed to verify Iran's stockpile since last June, when the US And Israel struck three nuclear sites over the last seven weeks of war. President Trump has insisted the US Will take whatever is left, whether with boots on the ground, fighting their way in or striking a deal with the Iranian regime to allow scientists to safely secure the stockpile and bring it back to the United States. What you may not know that option has been done before in a high stakes mission that could become the blueprint for how to get HEU out of Iran.

[Andrew Weber]

It was a crazy time after the Soviet Union fell apart and we knew that Iran was pursuing nuclear material throughout the region.

[Leslie Stahl]

In 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Andrew Weber was a young foreign service officer in the newly minted country of Kazakhstan, which held the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Left behind by The Soviets part of it was sitting inside a factory.

[Andrew Weber]

We knew about the factory. We knew it had a purpose in the nuclear power sector. What we didn't know was that they had a cache of highly enriched uranium that was weapons usable.

[Leslie Stahl]

It took several months, but using good old fashioned diplomacy and a moose hunting trip, Weber built trust with the factory director. And one day it paid off in the form of a note.

[Andrew Weber]

And I remember it was one of the first snows that day. And so we're walking in the courtyard and, and he said, Andy, I have a message from Vitaly. And he passed me this little note.

[Leslie Stahl]

Let's see this tiny little piece of paper he hands you. And it says U235, 90%, 600 kilograms. And that means what to you?

[Andrew Weber]

Dozens of nuclear weapons.

[Leslie Stahl]

Uranium enriched to 90% is ready to be made into a bomb. The revelation made it all the way up to President Bill Clinton. Soon both countries came to an agreement. The US would take the stockpile to prevent countries like Iran and North Korea from getting ahold of it.

[Andrew Weber]

They could have just bought the 90% enriched uranium metal and they would have been able to fabricate bombs very quickly out of it.

[Leslie Stahl]

Weber became the point person for the operation codenamed Project Safire. And he took these pictures with his own camera showing canisters holding more than 1300 pounds of the bomb grade uranium. The only thing protecting them was a militia woman with a sidearm.

[Andrew Weber]

And it was protected by a good, a good padlock. Sort of the kind you see in an antique shop.

[Leslie Stahl]

Project Safire was the first of its kind. Three massive C5 Galaxy cargo planes were dispatched to Kazakhstan carrying 31 specialists from the Departments of Defense and Energy. The teams brought 450 drums built to transport nuclear cargo strong enough to survive a plane crash. And the whole thing was covert under the COVID of a humanitarian mission.

[Andrew Weber]

It was all done in utmost secrecy. A team of over 30 people working for about five or six weeks to finish this packaging operation. It didn't leak and nobody knew they were even there.

[Leslie Stahl]

Every gram of HEU was secured and loaded onto rickety Soviet era trucks.

[Andrew Weber]

And that night there was black ice on the roads and the trucks were sliding. That's when the material was most vulnerable. We didn't want the Iranians or organized criminal groups to know that the material was being transported. It was very important that nobody knew that we were going to be moving the material. That snowy cold night the planes were

[Leslie Stahl]

loaded up and the HEU was flown back to the United States, taken to a Department of Energy Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee for safekeeping. Weber went on to become an Assistant Secretary of Defense responsible for nuclear deterrence from touchdown to takeoff. Project Safire took six weeks to remove more than 1300 pounds of bomb grade uranium from Kazakhstan. Would the same mission be possible today in Iran?

[Andrew Weber]

In Iran, we couldn't send a team in to do this unilaterally without great risk. You would need to set up in the middle of the country a secure perimeter. It would probably take thousands of US troops to secure the facility. While our experts excavated the heu, it's located inside deep tunnels at a place called Isfahan.

[Leslie Stahl]

This is the Isfahan nuclear facility, deep in Iran's desert under this mountain. International inspectors say most of Iran's HEU is stored in scuba tank sized containers. It's believed those containers are in tunnels so far below ground, America's bunker busting bombs may not be able to reach them. Satellite images show in the weeks leading up to this current war, the Iranians blocked the tunnel entrances with dirt. Two weeks ago, images showed roadblocks. Nuclear analysts say it suggests Tehran is concerned about a US or Israeli raid on the facility.

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

It's not like Iran hasn't thought about the possibility that we might do this. But U.S. special forces have been training for deep underground facilities of one kind or another for a long, long, long time.

[Leslie Stahl]

Dr. Matthew Bunn is a former White House nuclear advisor who has spent decades trying to prevent nuclear material from falling into the wrong hands. From his perch at Harvard's Belfer center, he monitors Iran's nuclear activity as best he can.

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

So what you can see from a satellite is what's going on on the surface. Right. But what you can't see is anything going on inside buildings, anything going on in other underground facilities.

[Leslie Stahl]

President Trump has said repeatedly that Iran's nuclear program was completely obliterated after the strikes last June.

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

Yeah, that statement is just not true. You can't say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is obliterated. Unfortunately, there's no doubt that the combination of the strikes in June of last year and the ongoing war have seriously set back Iran's capabilities. But the remaining capabilities are substantial. You can't bomb away their knowledge.

[Leslie Stahl]

UN inspectors believe Iran has close to 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%, nearly ready to be used in a nuclear weapon. 970 pounds of 60% highly enriched uranium. What can you do with that?

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

So that is enough material for if you enrich it just a little bit more for 10 to 11 nuclear bombs.

[Leslie Stahl]

Nuclear analysts have become increasingly concerned about another site in Iran known as Pickaxe Mountain. Satellite images from February show an entrance to what's believed to be a massive nuclear facility deep under solid rock. Can you bomb your way to Iran's stockpile and get it and remove it?

[Scott Roker]

I don't think that there is a lasting, durable solution to Iran's nuclear program through military means.

[Leslie Stahl]

Scott Roker was a top official in the NNSA, a $24 billion agency buried inside the Department of Energy. He left in 2021.

[Scott Roker]

If there was a deal between the United States and Iran for the United States to take possession of that material, it would be the National Nuclear Security Administration that would lead that effort.

[Leslie Stahl]

Roker used lessons learned from Project Safire to remove nuclear material from countries around the world and ship it to the US for safekeeping. So far, the NNSA has removed more than 16,000 pounds of HEU.

[Scott Roker]

There was agreement in place with the countries, and so that's a really key fact here. You want to have a willing partner who's working with you hand in hand cooperation. Exactly.

[Leslie Stahl]

Can it be done without that?

[Scott Roker]

I've never seen it done without that. Never in my experience have I seen that.

[Leslie Stahl]

If your phone rang tomorrow and your former colleague said, hey, come back, we're going into Isfahan to package this up and get it out of the country, would you go?

[Scott Roker]

I would go in a heartbeat.

[Leslie Stahl]

This past week, President Trump said Iran agreed to hand over its stockpile, what he calls nuclear dust, as part of a deal to end the war. Hours later, the Iranians insisted their HEU was not going anywhere.

[Jose Andres]

Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

and we're going to get the dust back.

[Jose Andres]

We'll get it back. Either we'll get it back from them, or we'll take it.

[Leslie Stahl]

Would an operation like this be worth risking American lives?

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

In my opinion, yes.

[Leslie Stahl]

Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward is a former Navy SEAL and Deputy Director of US Central Command. He led elite special operations in the Middle east and says an operation in Iran could take many weeks and require a large footprint involving all the branches of the military.

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

It's high risk. You have to occupy territory. You have to confront. You have to force your way in. So all those risks are inherent in that operation. But we can do it.

[Leslie Stahl]

It's been said troops would have to secure a full perimeter around any facility they'd enter. They might have to bring in their own bulldozers to clear rubble, maybe even build their own landing strip in order to pull this off as A successful operation.

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

That's what our military does. When we went into Afghanistan, we built a Runway in the desert and we brought in C17s.

[Leslie Stahl]

What does concern Vice Admiral Harward is the weapons still available to Iran on today's battlefield.

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

The most prevalent threat is their abilities then to respond with drones, kinetic drones, maybe whatever's left in their inventory of missiles. That's your real threat to your time on the ground in the force.

[Leslie Stahl]

Would you expect casualties in an operation like this?

[Bill Whitaker]

Sure.

[Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward]

You have to plan for that.

[Leslie Stahl]

The fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran is set to expire on Wednesday. Dr. Matthew Bunn says any nuclear agreement should not be based on trust, but verification.

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

Iran has been lying about its nuclear weapons effort for over 20 years now. They have always claimed our program was 100% peaceful. We were never pursuing nuclear weapons. That's a lie. And then once the international inspectors got in and started finding some things out, the Iranians kept lying to them.

[Leslie Stahl]

What specifically does the United States need Iran to commit to to deal with its nuclear capabilities once and for all?

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

I think the most important thing is no highly enriched uranium and some in depth monitoring. International monitoring, that's what's most essential. And it's going to be very difficult now given all of the distrust following this war, following Trump pulling out of talks repeatedly to launch more strikes.

[Leslie Stahl]

You don't sound very optimistic.

[Dr. Matthew Bunn]

I'm not very optimistic. I think we're going to be dealing with Iran's nuclear program with very few realistic tools available to us for a long time to come.

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[Leslie Stahl]

I've heard my whole life that she indented the margarita.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true.

[Anderson Cooper]

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[Anderson Cooper]

Since Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel two and a half years ago and the war in Gaza began, far too many mothers, Palestinian and Israeli, have lost children. This is one mother's story. Her name is Rachel Goldberg, Poland. She's an American Israeli who moved to Jerusalem 18 years ago with her husband John and their three children. Her only son, Hersh, was badly wounded and taken hostage by Hamas. On October 7th. Rachel and John worked tirelessly to bring Hirsch and the other hostages home. But on the 328th day of his captivity, Hirsch was executed in a tunnel in Gaza. Now, like so many others, Rachel Goldberg Poland is trying to figure out how to live after her child has died.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused, is maimed, and that's an excruciating form of suffering. And then what's so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hirsch had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part because he was alive. And now I'm in this place, and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here?

[Scott Pelley]

Have you figured that out yet?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I'm trying to re understand what it means to be in this world. There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There's nothing unique about me, but it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.

[Anderson Cooper]

What was Hirsch like?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Easy, easy. The universe really knew what it was doing. When it said, rachel's going to have one son, so this is the one for her, I was really blessed.

[Anderson Cooper]

Hirsch and his best friend, Aner Shapira, were at the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border on the morning of October 7th when Hamas terrorists attacked. They slaughtered 378 people and wounded hundreds more.

[Scott Pelley]

What do you remember about the morning October 7th?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

The siren started and I went and turned on my phone and at 8:11, two messages had come in from her. The first one said, I love you, and the second one said, I'm sorry. And that was it. Everything that had ever happened in my life, from the day I was born until that second was over.

[Anderson Cooper]

Hirsch sent those texts from inside this bomb shelter crammed with more than two dozen people. That's Hirsch against the wall and On Air near the entrance.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Hamas came to the doorway and was throwing in hand grenades. On Air was picking them up and throwing them, picking them up and throwing them out.

[Anderson Cooper]

According to survivors, On Air threw back at least 10 grenades when he was killed. Others took his place. In all, 16 people were killed in the shelter. Hearst survived but was seriously wounded by a grenade.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

There were four young men who were not able to hide underbodies. They were all wounded, and they were taken outside and put on a pickup truck and driven into Gaza. And that footage we saw for the first time when we talked with you.

[Scott Pelley]

We spoke on October 16, Avanta. And you and John, our son, by

[Leslie Stahl]

all accounts of the witnesses, had his

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

left arm blown Off.

[Anderson Cooper]

When John said that, I realized I'd seen their son being kidnapped. Four days earlier at the Nova festival site, Israeli soldiers showed me this gruesome video recovered from a terrorist cell phone. That's Hirsch with the bones sticking out of his left forearm being forced into a pickup truck.

[Scott Pelley]

Since we got off, I said, I need to call you, but I still, To this day, I am sorry that that is how you found out that I was the one to tell you that there's this video.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

But we were so thankful, and it made us know that he was taken alive, that he walked on his own two feet. And we also were really grateful that you did it in such a human way. In this sideways world, when we had the proof that he was kidnapped, that was actually good. The time is running out to save them. The time is running out to save all of us.

[Anderson Cooper]

Rachel became, for many, the face of the hostage crisis. Meeting the Pope, world leaders, and giving hundreds of interviews.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

We want to save Hirsch's life. We want to save all of those hostages.

[Anderson Cooper]

Every day, she wore a piece of tape. On it, she'd written the number of days since Hersh and the other 250 hostages were taken.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I was always saying, I love you. Stay strong, survive. I love you. Stay strong, survive. I love you. Stay strong, survive.

[Scott Pelley]

Was it a command to you as well?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Yes. Because there were times when I would just get seized with emotional and psychological and physical pain, and I would keel over onto John, and I would just say, how much longer? How much longer? How much longer?

[Anderson Cooper]

On the 201st day, Hamas posted this

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

video of Hirsch and we see the stump of his arm.

[Scott Pelley]

It was a propaganda video.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Yes, and that gave us another bolt of adrenaline. Keep going, keep going. This child needs you. It's mama.

[Anderson Cooper]

On the 328th day, Rachel and John joined other hostage families screaming their loved ones names into a microphone towards Gaza. Rachel didn't know it then, but that was the day her son was murdered by Hamas.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

We ended up finding out it killed him that day. And so I wonder, did he hear me?

[Scott Pelley]

Do you think he did?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I think there are other ways that you can hear your parents screaming for you, even if you don't hear them.

[Anderson Cooper]

It was in this underground tunnel in Rafah. On August 31, 2024, Israeli soldiers found Hersh's body. He and five other hostages had been executed. Hersh was shot six times at close range. When his body was brought back to Israel, thousands lined the streets and attended his funeral.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Finally, my sweet boy. Finally, finally, finally, finally you're free.

[Anderson Cooper]

Rachel. And John continued to advocate for the remaining hostages, but they were desperate for details about the last year of their son's life. Then, in February 2025, something remarkable happened. A hostage named or Levy was released by Hamas along with two others. When Orr was reunited with his family and three year old son, he learned his wife Anav was killed. On October 7, he was also told Hirsch had been murdered.

[Orr Levy]

It broke me and I told my parents right away, I want to meet their parents.

[Anderson Cooper]

It turned out Orr had spent three days with Hirsch in a tunnel. And he says something Hirsch told him saved his life.

[Orr Levy]

Seeing this guy without an arm, without a hand. And you know what he did? He laughed about it.

[Anderson Cooper]

About his hand?

[Orr Levy]

Yeah, he laughed about everything. And he smiled the entire time.

[Anderson Cooper]

He wasn't broken.

[Orr Levy]

No, he wasn't. Hersch kept repeating this mantra. He who has a why can bear any how.

[Anderson Cooper]

He who has a why can bear any how is a mantra Hirsch got from this book, Man's Search for Meaning, a 1946 concentration camp memoir by a survivor, Viktor Frankl, who'd adapted a similar saying by Friedrich Nietzsche.

[Orr Levy]

It became our mantra.

[Anderson Cooper]

Everybody there, everybody there, that idea that if you have a why,

[Scott Pelley]

you can

[Orr Levy]

survive, you can do anything.

[Anderson Cooper]

Soon after he was freed, or got Hirsch's mantra tattooed on his arm.

[Orr Levy]

My son, he asked me, what does it say? He doesn't speak English. And I just laughed and I said,

[Scott Pelley]

your name, your name, because that's your why.

[Orr Levy]

This is my why. The only reason why I survived was him.

[Anderson Cooper]

What was Hersh's why?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I asked Orr that and he said, he went like this.

[Leslie Stahl]

You.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

It was this shocking life affirming, CPR from beyond to have Hirsch through or telling us, what's your why going to be? Because you can bear this, even this even losing me, you could do it. And so part of what I'm trying so hard to do now is to figure out what is my why.

[Anderson Cooper]

Rachel was told something else by Orr that gave her tremendous comfort.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

He said, it's important that you know that. He told me that my mother spoke to the Secretary of State in the us.

[Scott Pelley]

Hershey told him that.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Yeah. And I said he heard on the news I had spoken to the Secretary of State, and he said, no, he heard you on the news. And it was like all of a sudden, thank God, first of all, that he heard my voice and that he knew we are nobodies. We are absolute nobodies. I even say the equivalent of John Doe in the Jewish world is Rachel Goldberg. But we tried so hard, and he

[Anderson Cooper]

knew when we met Rachel in Jerusalem in February, days before the new war with Iran, she'd recently finished writing a book called when we see you again, which comes out this week.

[Scott Pelley]

You wrote in the book, people want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear. That's how it feels.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

That's how it feels. Now. I'm open to it. Feeling different.

[Scott Pelley]

Have you noticed a change?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

I think my understanding of grief has changed. I was dreading and uncomfortable with grief. And recently I had this whole different thought of maybe grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.

[Anderson Cooper]

When the body of the last hostage was returned this past January, it had been 843 days since the October 7th attack. Rachel and John finally took down the pieces of tape their family had worn and stuck on a wall in their apartment.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

That's the day we buried Hirsch. So many lives. So many innocent lives on both sides lost.

[Anderson Cooper]

Rachel has kept Hersh's room as he left it.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

And that's the tape that we took from.

[Bill Whitaker]

Oh, my gosh.

[Scott Pelley]

It's extraordinary to see all the pain and everything that is in that ball.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

You know, it's like these symbols of failure, what we were fighting for did happen. We got all of these people home not as we wanted. We wanted them home alive, but they had come home.

[Scott Pelley]

You said it's. These are all symbols of failure. Do you think you fail?

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

Yeah.

[Scott Pelley]

You did more than anybody could possibly do.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

It's true. And sometimes 100% is not enough.

[Bill Whitaker]

If you're a rock and roll fan, you already know Stuart Copeland. Drumming legend Copeland, Andy Summers, and a guy named Sting romped to global stardom as the police in the 1970s. So we were intrigued to learn that Copland had teamed up with celebrated naturalist Martin Stewart for a pioneering album sharing the limelight not with Sting, but with hyenas, owls and howler monkeys. Called Wild Concerto, the album is based on Martin Stewart's life work, an extraordinary collection of audio recordings of the world's living creatures. Some are now extinct or endangered, making Wild Concerto as much a manifesto as a music album. We had to hear more. There's really only one way to start the day at the world's most famous recording studio.

[Stuart Copeland]

Martin in the flesh, at last. So great to see you. We've been so deep into our mission here.

[Bill Whitaker]

Martin Stewart, Stewart Copeland. This unlikely pair the quiet naturalist and the intrepid rock star.

[Stuart Copeland]

I hope you have fun with this music.

[Bill Whitaker]

We're here at Abbey Road to turn animal sounds into a concerto. Here in the same studio the Fab Four made famous. No pressure.

[Martin Stewart]

Unbelievable. The history in here is.

[Stuart Copeland]

Just imagine McCartney running up and down those stairs. This almost makes us Beatles.

[Bill Whitaker]

But today, it's the animal kingdom that gets its shot at stardom. It's superstar time for the wrens, bears, frogs, and hundreds more.

[Martin Stewart]

That's the kookaburra.

[Bill Whitaker]

While the humans play backup.

[Martin Stewart]

That's the wonga pigeon.

[Stuart Copeland]

Even better. We're good.

[Martin Stewart]

Brilliant. Let's move on.

[Bill Whitaker]

Wild Concerto is a groundbreaking album based on the unmatched audio archive of Martin Stewart. He's crisscrossed the planet for decades, collecting nearly 100,000 recordings of its wild inhabitants. Stuart Copeland wrote the music.

[Stuart Copeland]

When you send me your original raw

[Bill Whitaker]

samples, all he had to do was wade through 30,000 hours of field recordings to choose which animals would get the star treatment. The screaming pia was a natural.

[Stuart Copeland]

There is the bird in question. Here is the orchestral version of that bird.

[Martin Stewart]

It's just brilliant.

[Bill Whitaker]

Copeland told us it was the raw sounds of the animals themselves that dictated what instruments he chose. Take this tune by some arctic wolves.

[Stuart Copeland]

First of all, we have the walls on their own. Beautiful, right?

[Martin Stewart]

Still makes my hair stand on end.

[Stuart Copeland]

Okay, let's hear that.

[Bill Whitaker]

With the orchestra, that's a trombone.

[Stuart Copeland]

With the wolves, they're not actual notes, but you put an instrument with them, and those animals become Pavarotti.

[Bill Whitaker]

In the recording studio, the wolves howled into the musicians. Headsets.

[Stuart Copeland]

Yep, we got it. I'm gonna come out there, kiss and hug every single one of you. So pucker up, babies. Thank you so much, everybody. You rock.

[Bill Whitaker]

Copeland should know. You may remember his rock star when he wielded drumsticks as if they were lethal weapons. As one third of the Police, Copeland banged his way to the upper reaches of pop stardom. The Police sold more than 75 million records singing along. Yet by 1986, the party was over. The police were busted.

[Rachel Goldberg Poland]

You don't ever want to see me again.

[Bill Whitaker]

But it didn't take long before Copeland's propulsive drumming landed him a new gig and put him on a glide path to becoming a composer. How did that happen?

[Stuart Copeland]

I blame Francis Coppola.

[Bill Whitaker]

It's his fault.

[Stuart Copeland]

You blame him? Yes. His thing is to find the talent and give him rope. And he got a drummer from a rock band and hired me to score his movie because his concept was all about rhythm.

[Bill Whitaker]

This is rumble Fish.

[Stuart Copeland]

This is Rumble Fish.

[Bill Whitaker]

Copeland told us he knew nothing about film scores, but he knew rhythm. So he arranged barking dogs, clacking billiard balls and pile drivers in rhythmic loops, making music for what he called found sound

[Stuart Copeland]

for horror films. This here is very useful.

[Bill Whitaker]

More movies followed. Then he started writing classical music.

[Stuart Copeland]

This here, it's for an opera that I did with the Deutsch National Theatre in Germany.

[Bill Whitaker]

Copland told us he'd found a new

[Stuart Copeland]

love because the main thing you want to do as a composer is create parts that are fun to play.

[Bill Whitaker]

As he showed us around his Los Angeles studio stuffed with instruments, he says he noodles around on the mall when he's composing. The drummer, who had never followed a sheet of music, had become a maestro. You loved the drums right from the start, the power. What is it about the orchestra you love so much?

[Stuart Copeland]

It's the beauty, you know? My daddy raised me to be a jazz musician. Meanwhile, just quietly, my mother was playing Stravinsky, Ravel, wc. And that hit me emotionally. Now I've got Dun Dun Dun Waa. And I've got, like, in one ear, I got Jimi Hendrix. In the other ear, I've got Igor, Stravinsky. And so they've always both kind of been there interacting in my brain.

[Bill Whitaker]

We will hear these sounds in Wild Concerto.

[Stuart Copeland]

Yeah. As well as all these

[Bill Whitaker]

and these. A world away, different music was pouring into the ears of Martin Stewart. He's been eavesdropping on nature now for more than 60 years. It started when he was 11. Armed with a tape recorder, he'd escape to the bluebell woods near his home in Middle England. His first recordings, this Eurasian blackbird. What started as a boyhood lark became a career with a mission.

[Martin Stewart]

I always believe the reason I'm on this planet is to fight for the animals and the environment. And it's kind of my rent for being here. I feel empowered to kind of give that message.

[Bill Whitaker]

And what is that message?

[Martin Stewart]

We're losing some of the most precious species on Earth. I can go back to places that have been monitored over a period of 20 years, and the change is significant. And audio's done that. Audio is the barometer of the planet. If you want to know the health of the stream or the river, the dipper will tell you, the frog will tell you the health of the marsh, and the birds will tell you the health of the planet.

[Bill Whitaker]

At home in Florida, Stewart told us he still takes his microphone out every day like a doctor with a stethoscope.

[Martin Stewart]

Watch the spiders, bill.

[Bill Whitaker]

He listens to the rhythms of the natural world.

[Martin Stewart]

I hear that white noise of the ocean, the cicada.

[Bill Whitaker]

These days, he's deeply worried about a catastrophic decline in wildlife populations around the world. Stuart has the last known recording of the golden Panamanian frog, here in its digital form. The northern white rhino is also extinct in the wild. Other recordings give no hint of the danger he overcame to get them. Here's a howler monkey spoiling for a fight. And the crocodile that swallowed one of his microphones.

[Stuart Copeland]

We have the hyenas here.

[Bill Whitaker]

Stuart Copeland told us his favorite animal was the hyena, a rare recording from the Skeleton coast in Namibia.

[Stuart Copeland]

Well, they have a very wide vocabulary. They make loving sounds. They make aggressive sounds.

[Martin Stewart]

How does the loving sound sound like? That's interesting.

[Stuart Copeland]

In fact, I'll share with you that my wife and I have adopted the hyena love sounds as a part of our relationship. Little kinky, but works. And then they have the laughing hyena. They actually do.

[Bill Whitaker]

No surprise. The hyenas got their own cut on Wild Concerto.

[Martin Stewart]

How did you come up with a composition that enhanced the sound of the hyenas?

[Stuart Copeland]

I have asked the Lord above that question many times.

[Martin Stewart]

And what did he say?

[Stuart Copeland]

He said, I don't know. Just see if you can make a living out of it.

[Martin Stewart]

Just be you. This is just magic. It's magical.

[Bill Whitaker]

Martin Stewart told us working at Abbey Road was a revelation. He's used to being alone in wild spaces at the ends of the earth. So we wondered what had made Stewart share his life work with a rock star. What made you decide to do that?

[Martin Stewart]

I'm living with cancer. It's hard to talk about that stuff, Bill. But I got ill and my niece Amanda, who works at the BBC, and she said, we have to preserve your archive. You need people to see what you have.

[Bill Whitaker]

Stuart told us his illness is not the only crisis he's dealing with. He fears more animals are facing extinction as the world keeps growing. Part of his audio archive has become a mausoleum to past lives.

[Martin Stewart]

If we keep stealing from nature, then the inevitable is going to happen. We're gonna lose a lot more.

[Bill Whitaker]

What is the inevitable?

[Martin Stewart]

Mass extinction. When you think about what we've lost in my lifetime, there's no change.

[Bill Whitaker]

It's not slowing down, and I don't

[Martin Stewart]

know how to slow it down. But if you show people the beauty of something and get them to fall in love with that, maybe we can tip something.

[Bill Whitaker]

He says he hopes Wild Concerto will. Will draw in those who wouldn't otherwise listen to a screaming pia or a Go away bird. Count Copeland among the converted.

[Stuart Copeland]

Okay, what's the walla walla, Walla walla.

[Anderson Cooper]

Here we go.

[Stuart Copeland]

What's that Walla walla walla walla.

[Martin Stewart]

Which is the marbled frogmouth.

[Stuart Copeland]

Marbled frogmouth. I remember that.

[Bill Whitaker]

Copeland told us he hopes Wild Can Concerto will immortalize those animal songs. A human tribute, a heartfelt elegy to Mother Nature's orchestra.

[Rosetta Stone Announcer]

Take a tour through Stewart Copeland Studio.

[Leslie Stahl]

Sting gave me this little guitar here@60minutes overtime.com.

[Rosetta Stone Announcer]

The last minute of 60 minutes.

[Anderson Cooper]

Chef Jose Andres was born in Spain and became an American citizen in 2014. His relief organization, World Central Kitchen, has served 600 million meals to people in need. We asked Jose Andres, how does food fit into America's story?

[Jose Andres]

America is a food nation founded as a land of longer tables where everybody is welcome. But food is more than our traditions. It is also our future. The strength of America depends on how we feed ourselves, but also how we feed ourselves, the world. How we care for the people who grow, harvest, and cook our food, and how we make sure no child goes hungry. It's our responsibility as the richest nation in history to feed the hungry and care for the poor. It's our legacy. It's our destiny. In our worst moments, the best of America shows up at our long table and reminds us who we are. We the people. Only then, food becomes hope.

[Anderson Cooper]

I'm Anderson Cooper. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes

[Emmanuel Joci]

on big lives. We take a single cultural icon, people

[Bill Whitaker]

like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard,

[Emmanuel Joci]

and we pull apart the story behind the image.

[Bill Whitaker]

And we do this by digging through

[Emmanuel Joci]

the BBC's vast archives, discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture.

[Bill Whitaker]

We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes.

[Emmanuel Joci]

I'm Emmanuel Joci.

[Bill Whitaker]

I'm Kai Wright.

[Emmanuel Joci]

And this is Big Lives.

[Bill Whitaker]

Listen to Big Lives wherever you get your podcasts.