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Anderson Cooper
Parle tu francais habla sepanol Parle italiano.
Scott Pelley
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Anderson Cooper
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Scott Pelley
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Anderson Cooper
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Scott Pelley
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Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
As long as there have been wars, there have been war profiteers, but never quite like this. Tonight, new evidence that betters, including a US soldier may have profited by using inside information to wager on when and how military operations were will unfold.
John Wertheim
A soldier using classified intelligence to trade. Unprecedented. There is nothing to compare that to. This is a new kind of insider trading
Anderson Cooper
on ancient roads in London. A very modern battle is brewing.
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
If we do a left here, the
Anderson Cooper
Goldsmith's hall, black cabs will soon be competing with artificial intelligence powered autonomous taxis. But as we found out, London's cabbies aren't about to hand over their keys. Your knowledge is better than what a Google map will tell you to go.
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
Oh, don't make me laugh. Seriously. You know, it's like comparing a hot dog vendor to a Gordon Ramsay.
Christopher Nolan
I feel a real responsibility to try and get as much on screen for the audience as possible.
John Wertheim
Action.
Scott Pelley
Christopher Nolan is one of the great directors of our time. Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, Interstellar and next the Odyssey.
Matt Damon
I mean, it was the hardest movie I've ever done by far. I mean, not even close.
Anderson Cooper
I'm Leslie Stahl.
Scott Pelley
I'm Scott Pelley.
Anderson Cooper
I'm Anderson Cooper.
Sharon Alfonsi
I'm Sharon Alfonsi.
John Wertheim
I'm John Wertheim.
Takedra Mawakana
I'm Cecilia Vega.
Bill Whitaker
I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories and in our last minute, Nate Bargetzi with something funny about America tonight on 60 Minutes.
Sharon Alfonsi
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Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
the war with Iran and the US Military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro have carried the usual hallmarks of conflict, soldiers, strategy, casualties, cost. But they've also been accompanied by a new feature betting on war. This year alone, more than a billion dollars has been staked online on military decisions and outcomes. As if they were wagering on football games or Oscar winners. Bettors all over the globe have taken positions, some suspiciously timed and with information seemingly too specific for a civilian outsider on when and how an attack might happen, even the fate of world leaders. It's created a whole new category of insider trading. As long as there have been wars, there have been war profiteers. But never quite like this. Cloaked in night, shrouded in secrecy, US Special Operations forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3. He was taken to the US to face drug trafficking and narco terrorism charges.
Mark Bargetze
You need to bring him to the other courthouse. Do not block his way, please.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
As it turned out, the president of Venezuela wasn't the only figure in the operation who would find himself confronting federal charges. U.S. army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who was involved in the planning and execution of the Venezuela mission, was charged last month with using classified intelligence to place bets based on when the surprise raid would unfold.
John Wertheim
If the allegations are true, this is one of the worst betrayals of trust in this area that I can remember and possibly ever. Americans should feel confident the most important little agency they've probably never heard of is on the job now.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
A private lawyer in Washington, Rob Schwartz until last year worked for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency policing fraud in insider trading.
John Wertheim
A soldier using classified intelligence to trade unprecedented classified intelligence that he knew about because he helped plan and to execute the mission. There is nothing to compare that to.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
The Justice Department alleges Van Dyke made a series of wagers totaling roughly $34,000, including a half dozen the day before the raid. He ended up netting more than $400,000. According to the indictment, Van Dyke immediately withdrew his profit, then tried to delete his betting account on Polymarket, the world's biggest online prediction market. The 38 year old army master sergeant has pleaded not guilty. Polymarket says it cooperated with law enforcement.
John Wertheim
If you are a corporate executive and you're privy to non public business information, you go trade on that. That's insider trading. Everybody knows that. But the same thing exists in prediction markets where this soldier is alleged to have traded. You're saying different context from what we usually think. Two guys at the golf course are winking and whispering and tipping each other off. But this is still meeting the definition of insider trading exactly right. This is a new kind of insider trading.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Spiking in popularity. Prediction markets, including Polymarket, offer wagers on the likelihood of future events. Will the Dodgers win the World Series? Will Jesus return in 2026? For that matter, in a 60 Minutes interview, would President Trump say the word trillion more than 10 times? Turned out that one didn't pay off. But lately another kind of wager has found popularity. What will happen in military conflicts? Dates of attack? Will an airspace close? Will enriched uranium change hands? You can bet on it. You can also bet on this. Insiders. People holding non public information will be laying down their money too.
John Wertheim
In the US it's prohibited to make
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
military bets on platforms like Polymarket. Though it's easy to find digital workarounds, as Gannon Ken Van Dyke allegedly did. Here's what's more astounding than the existence of military bets. How often they pay off.
Sharon Alfonsi
It's alarming to see a culture around betting on war.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Michelle Kendler Kretch and her team at the Anti Corruption Data Collective examined Polymarket Bets on military outcomes. She looked specifically at long shot wagers, bets with less than 35% odds. Despite being underdogs, they won more than they lost. A telltale sign, she says, of, quote, systemic insider trading.
John Wertheim
Give me the apples to apples comparison. This military bets versus, say, sports wagering.
Sharon Alfonsi
So military bets are 52% success rate, sports 7%.
John Wertheim
Wildly disproportionate to what conventional probability should be telling us.
Anderson Cooper
Absolutely.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
In Ocean Away, another team of digital detectives say they too have identified crooked betters wagering on war.
Mark Bargetze
This might be the most insane pattern
David Covell
we have found on Polymarket so far.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Based in Paris, Nicolas Weiman's small data analytics firm, Bubble Maps creates visualizations of bets on Polymarket to spot bubbles or clusters of suspect traders. One paradox of Polymarket everything about the trades is totally transparent and public, except the traders themselves remain anonymous.
Nicolas Weiman
This big cluster in the middle, no one talked about it.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
The firm's head of investigations goes by his online handle, deebz. He asked us to obscure his identity over fears of retaliation for his detective work. They shared for the first time what they believe is a more egregious insider trading case than Gannon. Ken Van dyke's.
Mark Bargetze
We spotted nine polymarket accounts, all connected, who made collectively $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military operations. Van Dijk made 400,000 here. 2.4 million. And now here's the crazy part. 98% win rate.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
98.
Mark Bargetze
98.
John Wertheim
98.
Nicolas Weiman
This is like winning the lottery multiple times, you know?
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
The linked accounts made dozens of winning bets on the specific dates of pivotal moments in the war with Iran, even when the odds were low. The first US strikes, the removal of Iran's supreme leader, the announcement of a ceasefire.
John Wertheim
How do we know this isn't just someone who has really good instincts?
Mark Bargetze
Luck alone cannot explain those numbers.
John Wertheim
If you know this, why don't federal prosecutors.
Mark Bargetze
Well, hopefully with your interview, they're going to know this.
John Wertheim
We talked to one source in the Defense Department with relation to Sergeant Van Dyke, and he said, listen, there are dozens more of these. Van Dyke was just a small fish for sure.
Nicolas Weiman
There's so many people involved in the planning and the execution of a military operation.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
A former US military officer, Deeb speaks from firsthand experience when he says military bets are ripe for corruption.
Nicolas Weiman
You have, obviously the government officials, but you also have the military planners, right? You have the military intelligence analysts and even spouses. They. They hear things. And that means that there consequently are a lot of potential insiders.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
And it's not just the voguish high tech online prediction markets where trades based on war have raised intense suspicions. It's happening on the old school and heavily regulated commodities markets, too.
David Covell
I'm highly suspicious at this point, and I'm not the only one. Any trader right now is highly suspicious.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
A former commodities trader, David Covell is now a New York lawyer representing victims of fraud on the same markets he once traded. In 2021, he secured the largest whistleblower award for commodities market manipulation in US History.
David Covell
Well, this is a classic graph that any commodities trader will understand.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Covell walked us through the morning of March 23rd. Fighting had been raging for three plus weeks, and it was a slow trading day in oil futures.
David Covell
If you see the chart, you'll see that no one is trading during that time period. Why would you trade at that time? That doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have a real reason.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Then, according to data the financial firm LSEG provided us, suddenly at 6:50am More than $800 million was staked on the chance of oil prices dropping. Fifteen minutes later, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the White House and Iran had very good and productive conversations about ending hostilities. The news sent the price of oil plummeting more than 10%.
John Wertheim
What kind of profit is that resulting in?
David Covell
We're talking tens of millions. Could be $80 million.
John Wertheim
You see this graph and you think,
David Covell
insider trading, that's a natural conclusion to draw. I can't know it without knowing what happened, but it's a natural conclusion to draw.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Covell is not alone in finding this highly dubious. 60 Minutes has learned federal investigators are probing these oil market trades as well.
John Wertheim
What are the odds the government knows the identity of whoever executed that?
David Covell
If they go to the exchanges, they can know them.
John Wertheim
This could have been someone inside the US this could have been someone from a foreign country. This could have been an enemy.
David Covell
Identifying who it was would be the secret to figuring out whether it was insider trading or not.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
It's not just markets that risk manipulation by war bets, it's truth as well. Emmanuel Fabian, a military correspondent for the Times of Israel, thought little of a piece he wrote in March about an Iranian missile strike in an empty forest near Jerusalem. But soon after he published the account, Fabian received a barrage of messages asking him to change his story. He ignored most, but they turned darker.
David Covell
One of them was, you're going to make us lose $900,000 and we'll invest even more than that to finish you, is what he wrote. He also wrote details about my siblings as well. He said, I know how often you visit your family.
John Wertheim
What's your fear factor?
David Covell
At this point, I was quite worried.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
He investigated and found more bets on polymarket hinging on whether an Iranian missile would enter Israel specifically on March 10th. And Fabian's small news story voided the side of the bets predicting no missile, angering the losers that it was at
David Covell
$14 million that were being wagered there.
John Wertheim
$14 million?
David Covell
Yeah, but by the time it closed, it actually went up to $22 million. If I'm not mistake. Also the person who wrote them, they. They wrote that if you abide by my instructions and change it, then you can end with money in your pocket and this will all be over.
John Wertheim
Despite this pressure campaign against you that escalated to death threats, you did not go in and change your copy. Do you worry that other people might not have your principled stance?
David Covell
I do worry. When there's a lot of money involved. In this case, $22 million, I think that can cause people to.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Fabian reported the threats to the police and to polymarket, which said that threatening a journalist was unacceptable and banned the accounts involved. Polymarket has said they work proactively on any suspicious activity, constantly behind the scenes overseeing all this, playing sheriff in this new wild west. In the US it's that niche government agency, the Commodity Futures trading commission, the CFTC set up in the 70s to regulate food prices, historically led by a commission of five. Today it's run by one person, Michael Selig, a 36 year old whom President Trump nominated chairman last fall.
David Covell
We will hold whoever is engaging in fraudulent, manipulative or insider trading activity accountable to the American people.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
But enforcement actions have dropped by more than 2/3 since 2024. Staffing has dropped sharply too. Seely declined our interview request, though the CFTC told us it is hiring more staff and using AI to go after bad actors. And government officials are aware of the new potential for corruption. In March, the White House issued a memo to staffers noting it is a criminal offense for anyone to use non public information on prediction markets.
Mark Bargetze
Where do you draw the line? I guess reasonable people can debate where the line is.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Source after source told us they fear today's insider trading scandal is tomorrow's national security scandal. If market watchers can spot irregular trades, surely enemies can too, and they'll make their war plans accordingly.
Nicolas Weiman
Just to put it plainly, this could be putting people's lives at risk. Other adversaries may be using this information in order to plan their own strategy.
John Wertheim
If you're taking a futures position a year from now, Sergeant Van Dyke is the only person charged with insider trading.
Mark Bargetze
No, I think it's just going to multiply from here.
David Covell
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David Covell
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Anderson Cooper
Our yoga instructor challenged us to find inner peace. I found it faster than anyone. After four seconds I stood up and screamed. I found nirvana. I win. They asked me to leave. I guess they don't respect winning bet365 does though. New customers get $365 in bonus bets just for betting $10. Namaste. Losers bet365. Winning is everything.
John Wertheim
Gambling problem.
Anderson Cooper
Call 1-800- gambler21/only must be physically located in Michigan. TNC supply in app only on ancient roads and in medieval alleyways in London, a very modern battle is brewing. Black cabs, which are as synonymous with that city as Buckingham palace, will soon be competing with artificial intelligence powered autonomous taxis. Tech companies promise these AI inventions, some of which are already operating in several American cities, are safer and smarter than human drivers. But as we found out, London's cabbies aren't about to hand over their keys after all just to get a license. They've already proven their own kind of intelligence, studying often for years to pass a 161-year-old test called the Knowledge. There's nothing artificial about it. They just have to memorize 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks and businesses and know the shortest routes between them all.
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
Look, we're the oldest form of transport in the world. Fact, we come before buses and trains and stuff. Yeah, we are the icons of London. If we do a left here, you'll have the goldsmith soul.
Anderson Cooper
Tom Scullion has been driving one of London's famous black cabs for the past 34 years. What's the weirdest request you've gotten from a passenger?
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
What, this week? Or you wouldn't believe. There's a guy, it's a regular ride and he's got an Irish wolf hand. Dog gives you a bit of paper where the dog lives. Dog jumps in the back. One of the best customers I've got never says a word, never complains. About a ride. But we get people hailing us down in the morning. Take my kid to school, never seen me before in their life, probably never seen me again. That's the trust we get the trust
Anderson Cooper
and confidence in cabbies here dates back to 1865 when the knowledge exam was first introduced to London's horse drawn cabmen. Do you have riders testing your knowledge every ride?
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
Which way you going, mate? And Google says this and Google says that. You're never going to beat the knowledge.
Anderson Cooper
Your knowledge is better than what a Google map will tell you to go.
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
Oh, don't bite me. Laugh. Seriously, you know, it's like comparing a hot dog vendor to a Gordon Ramsay.
Anderson Cooper
At the Transport for London office, nervous and aspiring cabbies dress up in their Sunday best to take a series of oral exams known as appearances.
John Wertheim
Whenever you're ready, sir.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
We'll go From Soho House, 40 Greek street to the Chancery Rosewood, please.
Anderson Cooper
Candidates are quizzed on how to get between two random points.
Mark Bargetze
Left Greig Street, Right Shaftesbury Avenue.
Steven Fairbrass
Left Great Windmill Street, Forward Haymarket.
Anderson Cooper
As examiners measure the distance ensuring they're calling the shortest route.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Unfortunately sir, I can't score you today.
Anderson Cooper
He failed this round. But for those who do pass the knowledge, this memorization has proven to be so challenging it can change the structure of their brains. A study from University College London found cab drivers posterior hippocampi, the part of the brain linked to memory, got bigger. Throughout their careers, everyone in their profession
Steven Fairbrass
has had to train their self with knowledge to be the best what they are. And that's what we're doing.
Anderson Cooper
Steven Fairbrass has been trying to pass the knowledge for eight years. Anshu Moorjani for five. They showed us the official study guide known as the Blue Book.
Steven Fairbrass
These are like the points, points of interest that any paying customer would want you to take them to.
Anderson Cooper
I mean there's thousands, Thousands of them.
John Wertheim
Yeah, 6,000 of them.
Anderson Cooper
I just have to look at this. The Last Judgment. Ph the Law Society hall. The London or Hotel. The Marquee, The Mond Library, the National Gallery. I mean this is crazy that you have to know all this. You have to learn individual restaurants.
Steven Fairbrass
Individual restaurants, public houses.
Anderson Cooper
What if a restaurant goes out of
Steven Fairbrass
business and he changes names and then you learn a new name?
John Wertheim
Then it comes on the list. Comes on the list?
Steven Fairbrass
Yeah, it goes on the list.
Anderson Cooper
Now their knowledge is being tested like never before. Autonomous vehicles haven't been approved to pick up passengers and lift London yet. But several companies are already trying out their cars here. Wave a British Startup backed by Nvidia and Microsoft hopes to be operational later this year, as does Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet. Takedra Mawakana is Waymo's co CEO. She says putting more of its robo taxis on the roads can save lives by reducing the million traffic deaths worldwide each year. You believe driverless cars are safer than a human driven vehicle?
Takedra Mawakana
In the case of Waymo, we actually have the data that shows us that we're five times safer than a human driver.
Anderson Cooper
Waymo has already made significant inroads in the U.S. it first began offering rides to customers in a Phoenix suburb in 2020. Now, millions of riders across 11 major US cities are being driven by way Waymos each month.
Takedra Mawakana
Humans want to get in the car, send that last email they didn't get to send and check on the kid that's screaming. But we're trying to drive and do that. So this really gives you the chance to take care of all of those things and then let the Waymo driver safely get you from point A to point B.
Anderson Cooper
You call it a Waymo driver, but there's no driver.
Takedra Mawakana
We really think it's important to think of it as there is a driver.
Anderson Cooper
Right.
Takedra Mawakana
This driver is the most experienced driver in the world. We travel over 2 million miles a week. So humans drive about 700,000 miles in a lifetime. So this is almost three lifetimes per week that our fleet is driving because
Anderson Cooper
it's been trained on every other ride that Waymo's given the whole fleet.
Takedra Mawakana
Yes.
Anderson Cooper
Waymo's AI has also driven billions of miles in simulation to train for the countless rare scenarios it might face on roads like snow on the Golden Gate Bridge or even an elephant stopping traffic.
John Wertheim
Start ride whenever you're ready.
Anderson Cooper
In San Francisco, we took a trip in one of its robo taxis with product manager Chris Ludwig.
John Wertheim
Happy Friday.
Anderson Cooper
It's a little freaky not to have a driver just hear this all the time, but like I'm watching the wheel very, very carefully.
Mark Bargetze
Yep.
Anderson Cooper
But after a few minutes, the ride fell. Felt strangely normal. Feels like a very careful driver.
David Covell
Our goal is kind of blissfully boring.
Anderson Cooper
The car is outfitted with 29 cameras, six radars, five microphones, and five LiDAR sensors which continuously pulse to measure distances, objects and people as far as three football fields away. Inside, a screen shows riders what the car is seeing. It sees an intersection, I don't know, 300ft away, but because there's other cars, I can't see it. But it sees around these other cars.
John Wertheim
That's Right. And that's partly the design of the
David Covell
placement of the sensors.
John Wertheim
Makes it superhuman compared to what a human would be able to do.
Anderson Cooper
Waymo says the data gathered from these sensors enables the AI to respond faster than a human. We saw that when a woman talking on her phone crossed right in front of us. It's kind of crazy to. To see a person change their mind and how quickly the Waymo responded to, like, a slight motion of them moving forward.
John Wertheim
Exactly. The system has learned to react to
David Covell
those subtle cues because that's what's necessary.
Anderson Cooper
Waymo's AI may have a lot of training, but it still makes some rookie mistakes.
Mark Bargetze
Oh, my God.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
What the is that Waymo doing?
Anderson Cooper
In Los Angeles, a Waymo drove through an active police scene.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Waymo, Come on.
Anderson Cooper
There's also been incidents of the Rock Robo taxis getting in the way of emergency responders and illegally passing stop school buses, leading to a software recall and a federal investigation. Back in London, Waymo's Robo taxis have been driving the streets to build a detailed 3D map to train its AI, a company standard before operating in a new area. But it does have competition.
Nicolas Weiman
We want to make sure our AI can understand every concept it might encounter.
Anderson Cooper
Alex Kendall is Wave's CEO. Unlike Waymo's, his artificial intelligence doesn't map out a city before driving in it. How is it possible you don't need to map a city entirely before getting your vehicles to drive autonomously in it?
Nicolas Weiman
Well, think about how you and I learned how to drive. I learned how to go through a few traffic lights, and that taught me how the concept of traffic lights work in a similar way. That's how our AI learns. We train it on millions of hours of experience driving all around the world. So this means when it goes somewhere it's never seen before, or it's never been mapped, it can understand what's in front of it and make decisions in real time.
Anderson Cooper
Wave's Robo taxis are still in testing and not yet available to the public.
Nicolas Weiman
The products that we're building will use inbuilt sensors.
Anderson Cooper
But Kendall believes his AI will be able to more easily adapt to new environments.
Nicolas Weiman
Let's go for a drive.
Anderson Cooper
Okay. He took us to Westminster, a district in London that's home to some of the city's most historic landmarks, to show us where he's been training his fleet since Waves early days in 2019. And your foot is not so.
Nicolas Weiman
I'm not touching the controls. The AI is controlling the steering, the speed, the indicators, the brake.
Anderson Cooper
Until Robo Taxis are approved by the government here. A human has to sit in the driver, driver's seat for safety.
Nicolas Weiman
Here's one of the busier roundabouts in front of Westminster, right in front of Parliament. Lots of tourists around, different vehicles.
Anderson Cooper
This guy just crossed into now back to another lane.
Nicolas Weiman
There's a bike that we have to wait for before making the lane change. Just such a long list of things that can happen on the road. I think that's the main advantage of an AI driver here, is that it can have the intelligence to deal with things that you may never expect on the roads.
Steven Fairbrass
I go lee by palm or east left into Marlborough Road.
Anderson Cooper
Aspiring cabbie Steven Fairbrass didn't seem too concerned about that. Do you worry about the future of this, you know, autonomous vehicles driving around?
Steven Fairbrass
No.
Anderson Cooper
Why don't you worry?
Steven Fairbrass
To me, the human brain will always be the strongest tool. Can you imagine you're trying to howl down a vehicle with no driver in it. You're standing there in the rain trying to get home and that vehicle just drives straight past you because it hasn't got a sensor or a human brain or an eye to turn. So to me, human beings, drivers, always
David Covell
going to be needed. Always.
Anderson Cooper
Anshu Moorjani, however, didn't seem so sure.
Steven Fairbrass
Every profession has been affected by AI.
John Wertheim
I don't know what it's going to do in near future, but it's always there on your mind that, yes, you're getting into a career not knowing what the future is. The future is.
Anderson Cooper
Over the last decade, London's black cab industry has seen a stage. The number of drivers has fallen from 25,000 to 16,000 today. So has their income as Uber and other ride hailing companies have been cutting into their business. Mr. Fairbrass. Even so, hundreds still sign up for the knowledge each year.
Steven Fairbrass
Okay, sir. Hello, sir.
Anderson Cooper
This was Stephen Fairbrass's 20th attempt.
Steven Fairbrass
We're going to go to the Ride
Anderson Cooper
and House Cafe, please.
Steven Fairbrass
Riding House Cafe, sir, is on Great Titchfield street, sir. Okay, sir, go right into Mortimer street, right into Nausea street, left into Ryden Ash street, left into Portland Place.
Christopher Nolan
Okay. All right.
Steven Fairbrass
Sorry, sir, I can't remember that other name of the. After Portland Place.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
All right, calm down.
Steven Fairbrass
Okay, deep breaths, yeah?
Anderson Cooper
Fairbrass failed this round and we'll have to try again. For Anshu Moorjani, this was his 41st try.
David Covell
Run me down to Ladywell station, please.
John Wertheim
Lead by Brockley Road, left Adelaide Avenue. Compliant modely by Ladywell Road, right, Railway Terrace Sedan left.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Today I'm going to score you okay?
Steven Fairbrass
Oh, thank you sir.
Anderson Cooper
He passed.
Matt Damon
Thank you.
John Wertheim
Thank you Mr. Very well, thank you.
Anderson Cooper
And just this week.
Correspondent (possibly John Blackstone or another investigative reporter)
Thank you.
Anderson Cooper
After five years of trying, Moorjani finally completed the knowledge and will now earn his license. There's probably some people going to be watching who think, you know, why spend years of your life studying for this exam when you could be Uber drivers much faster.
Steven Fairbrass
Do you want to drive around in one of them famous cabs out there?
John Wertheim
Hundreds of years of world of history.
Steven Fairbrass
It means a lot to people of London. It's like London without the queen.
Anderson Cooper
I'd say you can't have a London without a king or queen. You can't have London without a black cab.
John Wertheim
No.
Anderson Cooper
Correct.
Steven Fairbrass
Impossible.
David Covell
Woo hoo hoo.
Sharon Alfonsi
Celebrating 20 years of Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes.
Anderson Cooper
It's a privilege. It's incredible. That's been the honor of her Life. Go to 60minutesovertime.com
Scott Pelley
Christopher Nolan is among the great Hollywood directors of his generation. His blockbusters have won 18 Academy Awards and hauled in more than $6 billion. Next Nolan will release this summer his adaptation of the nearly 3,000 year old story the Odyssey. We met the 55 year old British American in his office in LA where he wrote epics including Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, Inception, Interstellar and the Dark Knight. A Nolan movie is a spectacle big and loud at the limits of what's possible. But a Nolan story is grace, imperfect people revealing what it is to be human. The Odyssey is Nolan's most ambitious yet. It had to be, he told us, because he imagines every film is the last he will ever make.
Christopher Nolan
I feel a real responsibility to try and get as much on screen for the audience as possible. To give the audience the fullest flavor, the fullest set of images and events that we can give them for a given story.
Scott Pelley
What are the essential elements of a Christopher Nolan film?
Christopher Nolan
I always try to have a point of view on the story that's from inside the film. So I'm not looking at the characters from 30,000ft. I'm trying to be in the race in the maze with them them. Cuz I want to try and give the audience a sense of what a place would smell like, what it would feel like. But you're also trying to make the most involving, the most extreme version of a story possible.
Scott Pelley
Nolan's Odyssey is an extreme version of the Bronze Age war fought by the soldier king Odysseus with his Trojan horse deception and 10 years struggle to return home. The Odyssey is Nolan's 13th film in 28 years. And unlike many directors he writes the screenplays.
Christopher Nolan
When I'm writing, I'm visualizing the film as an audience member, as somebody experiencing the story. Then when I direct the story, I'm trying to take the audience there. So in the case of the Odyssey, I'm trying to put the audience into that horse. I try to put them on the deck of a decisive ship.
Scott Pelley
You don't want the audience to watch the film. You want the audience to be in the film.
Christopher Nolan
Very much, yeah. I have a feeling of having connected with these characters, having lived in the world with these characters.
John Wertheim
Action.
Scott Pelley
We're sitting next to your desk.
Christopher Nolan
Yep.
Scott Pelley
And I couldn't help but notice there's a book right next to me called how to Make Good Movies. So this is it. This is the secret?
Christopher Nolan
That's the secret, yeah. I tried to tidy up before you came and hide all my secrets, but
Scott Pelley
it looks like it was written in the 1950s. And there's a guy with a Super 8 camera very much about.
Christopher Nolan
Super 8? Yeah, Super 8 horror movies. And I'm actually old enough to have started on Super 8. My family had a Super 8 camera instead of a video camera.
John Wertheim
My earliest memories, literally, are of Chris making movies.
Scott Pelley
Nolan's younger brother Jonathan, is a Hollywood director who told us that Chris was handed the family 8 millimeter camera to keep him busy.
John Wertheim
Our take on Star wars, of course. In the basement, blowing up some of my toys with firecrackers. Probably. Probably 8 or 9 years old. At that point, I would have been 3 or 4.
Scott Pelley
What was it that fascinated him about the camera?
John Wertheim
I think he's just always been captivated by the idea that you could take this device and use it as a portal into another universe. It was like a door.
Scott Pelley
Another universe, but a door that at first, Chris Nolan had to batter through like the astronaut in Interstellar. As a young man. You graduated with a degree in literature. You applied to film school, and they turn you down.
Christopher Nolan
How do you know that?
Scott Pelley
Research. You know about research?
Christopher Nolan
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yes.
Scott Pelley
What did the film school tell you?
Christopher Nolan
Nothing. You just get a letter saying, no, thanks, I want to be a writer.
Scott Pelley
Anyway, despite no thanks, he kept shooting films on weekends with friends. Then in 1999, a turning point he made Memento.
Matt Damon
I don't remember.
Scott Pelley
It's a complex mystery with an amnesiac investigator who remembers clues through tattoos. This was an early reveal of Nolan's trademark. An intricate plot of shifting timelines that challenges the audience to keep up. But movie executives feared it was confusing.
Anderson Cooper
Something doesn't feel right.
Scott Pelley
No one wanted to distribute memento yeah,
Christopher Nolan
we don't have to say quite like it's quite so sternly.
Scott Pelley
I mean, the story has a happy ending.
Christopher Nolan
The story does have a happy ending. And no, it was. It was a lesson in humility. It was a lesson in patience of independent filmmaking, which is, you know, you finish a film and you really feel you've achieved something. But convincing the industry of that, the distributors of that, it can take a long time.
Scott Pelley
It took a year to find someone to distribute Memento, but audiences found Amnesia unforgettable. And the so called confusing screenplay was nominated for an Oscar.
John Wertheim
Every no that he got just confirmed for him.
David Covell
Even more that he wanted to do this.
Scott Pelley
Emma Thomas met Nolan first day of college. She's produced all of his films and their four children. They've been married 26 years.
John Wertheim
I cannot imagine Chris if he wasn't making films and outside of, you know,
David Covell
family, which is probably the most important thing to him.
John Wertheim
No, genuinely, the most important thing to him.
London Black Cab Driver (Tom Scullion)
It's horrifying to think how frustrated he
John Wertheim
would be if he wasn't able to tell stories via the medium of film,
Scott Pelley
a medium he prefers. Extra large. He collapsed an actual building in the dark Night. Nolan uses computer animation, but not if the authentic is humanly possible. In the film Tenet, he bought a 747 and built a hangar to crash it into. In 2024, he blew up the Academy Awards. Oppenheimer won seven Oscars, including Nolan's first for Best Director and Best Picture. Seems to me you make movies the hard way and the harder the better, as far as you're concerned.
Christopher Nolan
The harder the better, right to the point of the Odyssey. And I think. I think we pushed pretty hard on this one and maybe found some limits.
John Wertheim
Let's go.
Scott Pelley
Nolan's Odyssey brought Matt Damon and thousands of cast and crew to Greece, Iceland, Morocco, Italy and Scotland. He shot 2 million feet of imax film.
Bill Whitaker
Unbelievable.
Scott Pelley
What do you think when you see that? You've seen it a hundred times.
Christopher Nolan
I've seen it a thousand times. I mean, I think it's a lot of work by a lot of people.
Scott Pelley
I have the sense that you don't think of yourself as the most important person on the set.
Christopher Nolan
I think of myself as the representative of the audience on set. That's my North Star. That's how I have to be looking at the film. So in a sense, I am the most important person on the set because I'm the audience. In taking on the Odyssey, it does become a bat scale. It needed to be the biggest film that we had done it needed to be challenging to all of us because that's the nature of the story.
Scott Pelley
Looks like you nearly drowned Matt Damon.
Christopher Nolan
He suddenly put him through his paces.
Matt Damon
I mean, it was the hardest movie I've ever done by far. I mean, not even close.
Scott Pelley
This is Damon's third Nolan film after Interstellar and Oppenheimer.
Matt Damon
The first meeting I had with him, at the end of the meeting, he said, this. This movie's gonna be hard. I kind of looked at him like, I've made, I don't know, 100 movies or whatever and looked at him like, yeah, I know. And he looked at me and went, no, this movie's gonna be really hard.
Scott Pelley
Nolan often returns to his stars, including Cillian Murphy, in the Batman films Dunkirk and Oppenheimer.
Matt Damon
He really understands what actors do and what is required of them to do it. He's an actor's director as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, people might not think of him that way because the canvas he paints on is so big. But look at the performances in his
Christopher Nolan
movies, particularly in the case of actors. You're handing them a script and you're saying, okay, you go away and you become an expert on that character's perspective on the story. So then when I'm on set, they're informing me, you know, they're bringing me information about how that character would see things, how that character plays. So in a way, it's the opposite of what people think it is.
Matt Damon
I think what separates him from other directors is the stories he wants to tell are incredibly ambitious, and the way he wants to tell them is incredibly ambitious. In this case, he wanted to do it 100% in IMAX, which had never been done.
Scott Pelley
IMAX is Nolan's great ambition.
Christopher Nolan
It's really a wonderful way to retain the original image.
Scott Pelley
The Odyssey is the first feature shot completely on the giant film format. When Nolan was 16, he saw an IMAX documentary at a museum and was spellbound by the five story screen. But IMAX is expensive and cumbersome. Digital photography and editing are faster and cheaper, so almost no one does this anymore. Look at the splicing machine. It looks like it was made in the 1940s.
Christopher Nolan
Probably was.
Scott Pelley
We watch the Odyssey being cut and glued together in the last film lab of its kind in the world. Why keep this ancient art Alive? Well, the 70 millimeter IMAX frame has resolution or image quality up to three times higher than digital art. The hard way.
Christopher Nolan
There it is.
Scott Pelley
Oh, nice. Very clean. Hollywood could say IMAX isn't practical. Screenplays shouldn't challenge the audience and computers are cheaper than a 747. But the people we call artists are inspired by dreams like a 7 year old with a Super 8. How would you like Hollywood historians to describe your career?
Christopher Nolan
Long. I'd love to feel that I had added something to the body of work of all the filmmakers I have admired and that great film history that's developing. If I can play some part in moving the language of it forward somehow, that would be a great thing to be remembered for.
Sharon Alfonsi
The Last minute of 60 minutes
Mark Bargetze
Mark
Bill Whitaker
Twain, Richard Pryor, Lucille Ball and Lenny Bruce all used comedy as a mirror to hold up to the nation. As Nate Bargetze sees it, the reflection helped shape America.
Mark Bargetze
In a country like ours, that is the most big it's comedy that brings us together through jokes about the experiences we all share. There is almost nothing that the Andy Griffith show, the Jefferson, Saturday Night Live or Seinfeld have in common other than the premise that a laugh can be found almost anywhere in this country on nearly any topic. When done right, American comedy shines light into dark places in a digestible way. For example, Blazing Saddles and All in the Family confronted bigotry by ridiculing prejudice. Walls were broken down in the process. Few things have that kind of power in America. I've always loved stand up comedy and encourage young artists to give it a try because I truly believe its authenticity will stand the test of time. And everyone knows that AI is not that funny.
Bill Whitaker
I'm Bill Whitaker. Tonight marks the end of the 58th season of 60 Minutes. We're already at work on stories for season 59, which starts in September. Between now and then, we'll bring you some of our favorite segments. See you next week.
Anderson Cooper
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This episode of 60 Minutes investigates the alarming rise of "war betting"—where individuals wager on the outcomes and timing of military actions, sometimes using insider information. It then shifts gears to the world of London black cab drivers and their unique test of expertise, "The Knowledge," as they prepare to compete with AI-driven autonomous taxis. Finally, the episode features an in-depth profile of filmmaker Christopher Nolan as he discusses his upcoming film The Odyssey, his creative process, and the quest for cinematic authenticity.
War as a Betting Market
Case Study: US Soldier Charged
Systemic Insider Trading Detected
Betting Outpaces Sports Wagering
Market Manipulation Reaches Traditional Finance
Threats to Journalistic Integrity
Government Response & Regulation
National Security and Ethical Dilemmas
The ‘Knowledge’ Tradition
Struggles and Pride in Mastery
Impacts of AI and Autonomous Vehicles
AI’s Challenges on City Streets
Cabbies’ Pessimism and Resilience
Nolan’s Vision and Process
Origins and Early Challenges
Authenticity Over Convenience
Actor’s Director
Philosophy and Legacy
| Segment | Main Focus | Notable Quote(s) and Timestamp(s) | |-------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------| | Betting on War | Insider trading on military actions, regulatory failure | "Unprecedented. This is a new kind of insider trading." [01:26, 06:09] | | The Knowledge | London’s cabbie traditions, AI taxi disruption | "You're never going to beat the knowledge." [20:12] | | Christopher Nolan: The Odyssey | Epic filmmaking, IMAX innovation, immersive cinema | "I want the audience to be in the film." [34:30] | | The Power of Comedy | Comedy’s social impact and resilience against AI imitation | "And everyone knows AI is not that funny." [45:58]|
This episode delivers a compelling mix of high-stakes journalism, cultural preservation, and artistic ambition, ranging from the very real dangers of financialized warfare, to the battle for tradition against technology on London’s streets, and the timeless art of Hollywood storytelling. For podcast listeners, each segment offers deep insight into modern dilemmas at the intersection of ethics, security, tradition, and creativity.