07/05/2026: Elemental Crisis, The Knowledge, Banana Ball

Bill Whitaker

An hour southwest of Las Vegas, in the guts of the Mojave sits the only active rare earth mine in the US an unlikely battlefield in our trade war with China, which has a near monopoly over these strategic metals. When Beijing choked off supplies last year, James Latinsky and his company got the call.

James Latinsky

We got called into the Pentagon, and it was clear that there was a directive from the President to solve this problem as quickly as possible.

Anderson Cooper

On ancient roads in London, a very modern battle is brewing.

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.

Tom Scullion

Oh, don't bite me. Laugh. Seriously. You know, it's like Compari comparing a hot dog vendor to Gordon Ramsay.

Dan Oberst

It looks like baseball and feels like baseball, but then there's this. An umpire feeling the music, a batter on no stilts, gymnastics in the outfield. And on the way home, longtime baseball writer Tim Kirchen came to a game and he said, this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I loved it. I'm Leslie Stahl.

Bill Whitaker

I'm John Wertheim.

Anderson Cooper

I'm Anderson Cooper.

Bill Whitaker

I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. In May, President Trump traveled to Beijing for a summit with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. One agenda item that figured prominently, rare earth elements. Right now, China holds a near monopoly over these strategic metals that are key components in so much that makes the modern world go smartphones, robotics, EVs, also fighter jets, drones, and radar technology. That is China controls materials essential to America's ability to wage war. But tonight, the story of an American company confronting this elemental crisis. It mines rare earth elements, processes them, and makes them into superpowered magnets. And as we first reported in March, it's part owned by us American taxpayers in an unusual deal crafted by the federal government. An hour southwest of Las Vegas, in the guts of the Mojave Mountain Pass, California, might be the ultimate front of our trade war with China. This massive cavity in the ground. Behold, the only active rare earth mine in the US this is an unlikely battleground. Are we stepping on rare earths as we speak? Yes, everywhere you look is rare earths. And Michael Rosenthal and James Latinski are the unlikely men in charge. Two Floridians in the snow, two finance types suddenly trafficking in mining and metallurgy. You have no background in geology, and now you're running the Biggest rare earth

James Latinsky

mine, US this is just such an important site. And the idea that this entire supply chain was on the other side of the world. In China, it just occurred to us that someone had to help fix this problem.

Bill Whitaker

The Trump administration is keenly aware of the problem of China's rare earth dominance. Doug Burgum is Secretary of the Interior.

Doug Burgum

If you have a cell phone, have a laptop, if you drive a car, then you're touching rare earth minerals and rare earth magnets. It's essential to everyday life, but it's also essential to aerospace, telecom, defense systems.

Bill Whitaker

Yes, defense systems. According to the military, one F35 fighter jet contains about 100 pounds of rare earths incorporated into its various parts. Just to be clear, the US Defense industry is subject to the whims of China and Xi Jinping for military technology.

Doug Burgum

Well, this is one of the reasons why President Trump created the National Energy Dominance Council with a broad set of objectives. One of those was to make sure that we had secure supply chains for critical and rare earth minerals.

Bill Whitaker

Right now, we don't have secure supply chains of rare earths because China has cornered the market.

Doug Burgum

They also weaponize it because if anybody in the rest of the free world said, hey, we're going to start mining or start refining, then they would target that particular mineral, dump a quantity onto the market, drive the price down, and companies, including US Companies that were profitable, suddenly became unprofitable.

Bill Whitaker

Before we proceed, let's dispense with the misnomer. Rare earths aren't rare. Here's what is. Rare sites with high enough concentrations of rare earths and accessible enough locations to make extraction worthwhile. In their purest form, rare earths aren't rocks, but elemental metals. Deep cuts on the periodic table, numbers 57 through 71 in two others for those scoring at home.

Julie Klinger

Lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, samarium.

Bill Whitaker

Julie Klinger is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a rare earths expert who's visited mines worldwide and written extensively on the subject. What are their qualities?

Julie Klinger

The thing that distinguishes rare earth elements are their fantastic magnetic, conductive and optical properties. So they're used often the way you might use spices in cooking. Because if you add just a little bit of a certain rare earth element, say, to a magnet, that enables that magnet to be both very small and very powerful.

Bill Whitaker

Geologists found rare earths at mountain pass in 1949. By the 60s, individual rare earths were being mined, separated, and utilized. Not least europium, which enhanced the Color red in early television sets. CBS presents this program in color. Then in 1982, researchers found that another neodymium strengthens magnets.

Julie Klinger

And these super high powered magnets are used in everything from making your cell phone buzz to. To the navigation components for drones and smart bombs, to high speed rail and electric vehicles.

Bill Whitaker

For decades, Mountain Pass was the world's rare earth mine. But gradually, then suddenly, mining and magnet making began moving offshore. Familiar story. China could do it cheaper. The US Disinvested in rare earths.

Julie Klinger

Absolutely.

Bill Whitaker

Why?

Julie Klinger

It's a dirty business. It's a risky business. It's a difficult business to really break even.

Bill Whitaker

In the 1990s, Mountain Pass fell victim to economics and to environmental regulators after radioactive water leaked into the desert. The mine languished for a decade until a new company, Mollicor, tried unsuccessfully to compete with China and revive the business. James Latinsky was running a Chicago hedge fund looking for value in distressed companies. When Malicor filed for bankruptcy in 2015, Latinsky glimpsed opportunity.

James Latinsky

When you're running a hedge fund, there's not much tangible to it. You're moving numbers on a screen. And then I made the mistake of going out and looking at the site,

Bill Whitaker

actually seeing what your investment looked like.

James Latinsky

Yes. And I was just blown away by the scale of the assets.

Bill Whitaker

The assets? This massive open pit, these concentric circles. A mine 3,000ft across, 600ft deep, with one of the world's richest deposits. Latinsky turned to Michael Rosenthal, then working for a New York hedge fund. The two were close friends growing up, and they decided to partner. You appreciate the absurdity of the story, for sure.

James Latinsky

Two hedge fund guys buy a mine. What could go wrong?

Bill Whitaker

For a while, plenty. When they bought the mine in 2017, it was underwater financially, and literally 30 million gallons had puddled at the bottom. There were only eight employees. They called their new company MP Materials and got the mine back up and running, blasting earth, then crushing rocks into gravel, then milling it into fine powder. Latinski took over the business as CEO, while Rosenthal spent long days on site becoming an expert on rare earth mining and refining. How do you characterize the division of labor here? I get dirty and Jim explains what we're doing Today, Mountain Pass employs more than 700. Rosenthal manages the operation. I cannot get over how extensive and intensive all of this process is once you're done with the actual mining. Yeah, the mining is really the easiest part, the hard part. Separating the rare earths from the rock and then each other. Three years ago, MP reached a milestone. After investing hundreds of millions of dollars. It was able to refine neodymium and praseodymium to 99.9% purity.

James Latinsky

This is the refined product. This is the money room.

Alex Kendall

This is it.

James Latinsky

This is it.

Bill Whitaker

Each bag was worth around $120,000. There were 300 bags, roughly 36 million in inventory when we visited. So this fine powder could end up in your pocket, could end up in my iPhone. MP needed one last link to bypass China and reclaim the supply chain, making the final product those high powered rare earth magnets. So in Fort Worth, Texas, MP built this facility where pure rare earth powder from Mountain Pass gets melted, cooled, compressed, diced, and eventually turned into, well, these. In a matter of months, millions will be going into GM cars and into Apple products. Starting next year, MP was fulfilling its business plan, taking rare earths from mine to magnets. In the spring of 2025, it alchemized from a vertically integrated business into a pivotal player in our national security.

Dakota Albritton

We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.

Tom Scullion

We will.

Bill Whitaker

Last year, President Trump unveiled his global tariffs plan, so called Liberation Day. China retaliated to devastating effect, choking off rare earths to the US Ford Motors, for one, suddenly without magnets, had to temporarily stop making Explorer SUVs. After a series of trade truces between the US and China, the rare earth spigot came back on. Latinsky says few realize how close we were to economic catastrophe.

James Latinsky

There were major manufacturers that didn't even realize the extent of the rare earth magnets that they had in their supply chain. We were seeing the economy on the verge of shutdown.

Bill Whitaker

With markets reeling, senior Trump administration officials summoned Latinsky and Rosenthal to Washington.

James Latinsky

We got called into the Pentagon and it was clear that there was a directive from the President to solve this problem as quickly as possible.

Bill Whitaker

What did the government want from you?

James Latinsky

The Pentagon wanted a Manhattan style project to accelerate the entire supply chain of rare earth magnetics in the country.

Bill Whitaker

That's the analogy.

James Latinsky

Those exact words were used Manhattan Project or Operation Warp speed. We've got to work to scale up everything that you're doing as quickly as we possibly can.

Bill Whitaker

A Manhattan project for rare earths resulted in an unusual deal. The Pentagon agreed to inject $400 million into MP Materials and and took a 15% ownership stake. So we Americans are all in the rare earth business now. Plus, critically, the deal came with a guaranteed 10 year price floor for rare earths. So even if China tries to flood the market again, driving down prices, MP is covered. Has there ever been anything like this?

James Latinsky

Well, exactly like this. Maybe Not. But if you look back, whether it was the railroads or. Or aluminum for aviation prior to World War II or the semiconductor industry, there's actually a long tradition of really critical industries where our country needs to bring online infrastructure. And I think this is one of those industries.

Bill Whitaker

And the government had one more stipulation for ramp up rare earth magnet production tenfold. To do so, MP is building an even bigger rare earth magnet factory also in Texas that it says could produce enough to meet the country's needs. It's expected to be complete in 2028. Still, as we sit here today, what percentage of the world's rare earth magnets are made in China?

James Latinsky

Well north of 90%.

Bill Whitaker

So China in effect can still hold the world hostage here.

James Latinsky

They currently do.

Bill Whitaker

Back in Washington, Secretary Burgum has been a vocal supporter of stockpiling America's critical minerals. He defends the MP deal even if it strays from the principles of market capitalism. You're talking about equity positions in private companies and price floors and in this case a demand that production increases 10x tenfold. Wait a second.

Tom Scullion

That.

Bill Whitaker

That is the whiff of socialism.

Doug Burgum

I wouldn't call it socialism. I'd call it. I'd certainly call it pragmatism. Because free markets work, but they don't work if you have an adversary that controls a monopoly that control the price.

Bill Whitaker

You're talking China.

Doug Burgum

I'm talking about China. There's no market setting the price. It's China setting the price. To get this industry started again, we have to do some things to kickstart the private capital.

Bill Whitaker

This kind of industrial policy you're talking about, does this happen? But for China's retaliation to last April,

Doug Burgum

I think it was a catalyst.

James Latinsky

Frankly, we probably needed a crisis to wake up. And so I think if there's a silver lining in the sense what happened last year was a big time crisis that we needed.

Bill Whitaker

I'm struck by how quickly the economics bleed into geopolitics. If China says, listen, we're going to go invade Taiwan and if you stand in our way, we're shutting off our

James Latinsky

rare earth magnets, well, that's the risk as it stands today. We need permission from the Chinese government to make things. We need permission from the Chinese government to make military things. And the practical reality is that is not an acceptable condition. And so we have to change this dynamic.

Bill Whitaker

The current U. S. China trade truce is set to expire in November. Absent a new deal, our rare earth supply, short term anyway, remains vulnerable.

Julie Klinger

Hey, it's Jen Hatmaker. Here's what I've learned in midlife. Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what this new series on for the Love is all about. The sacred yes. It's choosing delight, rest and pleasure on purpose. Because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your sacred yes with me. Follow and listen to for the Love wherever you get your podcasts.

Anderson Cooper

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 first told you earlier this year, 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.

Tom Scullion

Look, we're the oldest form of transport in the world. In 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?

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 see me again. That's the trust we the trust and

Anderson Cooper

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

Tom Scullion

every right, 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.

Tom Scullion

Don't find me, love. Seriously. You know, it's like comparing a hot dog vendor To Gordon Ramsay at the

Anderson Cooper

Transport for London office. Nervous aspiring cabbies dress up in their Sunday best to take a series of oral exams known as appearances.

Bill Whitaker

Whenever you're ready, sir. 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.

Stephen Fairbrass

11, left Greek street, right Shaftesbury Avenue, left Greatwood, Mill street, forward Haymarket.

Anderson Cooper

As examiners measure the distance, ensuring they're calling the shortest route.

Bill Whitaker

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

Stephen 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.

Stephen Fairbrass

These are like the points, points of interest that any paying customer uh huh, would want you to take them to.

Anderson Cooper

I mean there's thousands, thousands of them.

Stephen Fairbrass

Yeah, 6,000 of them.

Anderson Cooper

I just gotta look at this. The Last Judgment. Ph. The Law Society Hall. The Londoner Hotel. The Marquee, the Monde Library. The National Gallery. I mean this is crazy that you have to know all this. You have to learn individual restaurants.

Stephen Fairbrass

Individual restaurants, public houses.

Anderson Cooper

What if a restaurant goes out of business?

Stephen Fairbrass

Then he changes names and then you learn a new name, Then it comes on the list.

Julie Klinger

Comes on the list?

Stephen 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 in 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 us. It first began offering rides to customers in a Phoenix sun suburb in 2020. Now millions of riders across 11 major US cities are being driven by 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. Right. 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.

Bill Whitaker

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.

Dan Oberst

Happy Friday.

Anderson Cooper

It's a little freaky not to have a driver. You hear this all the time, but I'm watching the wheel very, very carefully.

Stephen Fairbrass

Yep.

Anderson Cooper

But after a few minutes, the ride felt strangely normal. Feels like a very careful driver.

Bill Whitaker

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.

Dakota Albritton

That's right.

Bill Whitaker

And that's partly the design of the placement of the sensors. 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 crash crossed right in front of us. It's kind of crazy to see a person change their mind and how quickly the Waymo responded to, like, a slight motion of them moving forward.

Dakota Albritton

Exactly.

Bill Whitaker

The system has learned to react to

Jesse Cole

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.

Stephen Fairbrass

Oh, my God.

Tom Scullion

What the is that?

Anderson Cooper

Waymo doing in Los Angeles, A Waymo drove through an active police scene.

Dan Oberst

Waymo, come on.

Anderson Cooper

There's also been incidents of the 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.

Alex Kendall

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?

Alex Kendall

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 works 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.

Alex Kendall

The products that we're building will use inbuilt sensors.

Anderson Cooper

But Kendall believes his AI will be to able. Able to more easily adapt to new environments.

Alex Kendall

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.

Alex Kendall

You're not touching the controls, so I'm not touching the controls. The AI is controlling the steering, the speed, the indicators, the brake, until robo

Anderson Cooper

taxis are approved by the government. Here, a human has to sit in the driver's seat for safety.

Alex Kendall

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 our lane.

Alex Kendall

Now back to another lane. 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.

Stephen Fairbrass

I'll 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?

Stephen Fairbrass

No.

Anderson Cooper

Why don't you worry?

Stephen 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 going to be needed or wise.

Anderson Cooper

Anshu Moorjani, however, didn't seem so sure.

Stephen Fairbrass

Every profession is being affected by AI. 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 a steep decline. 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.

Stephen Fairbrass

Okay, sir. Hello, sir.

Anderson Cooper

This was Stephen Fairbrass's 20th attempt.

Stephen Fairbrass

We're going to go to the Ridinghouse Cafe, please. Riding House Cafe, sir, is on Great Titchfield street, sir. Okay, sir, go right into Mortmouth street, right into Nausea street, left into Ryder Nash street, left into Portland Place. Great Titchell street, sat down, right.

Julie Klinger

Okay.

James Latinsky

All right.

Stephen Fairbrass

Sorry sir, I can't remember that other name of the. Of the Portland Place.

Bill Whitaker

All right, calm down.

Stephen Fairbrass

Okay, deep breaths, yeah.

Anderson Cooper

Fairbrass failed this round and will have to try again. For Anshu Moorjani, this was his 41st try.

Bill Whitaker

Run me down to Ladywell station, please.

Stephen Fairbrass

Lead by Brockley Road, left Adelaide Avenue. Compliant modely by Ladywell Road, right Railway Terrace. Sedan lift.

Bill Whitaker

Today I'm going to score you.

Alex Kendall

Okay?

Stephen Fairbrass

Oh, thank you, sir.

Anderson Cooper

He passed.

Jesse Cole

Thank you, mister.

Tom Scullion

Very well done. Thank you.

Anderson Cooper

And in May, after five years of trying, Moorjani finally completed the Knowledge. He'll 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?

Stephen Fairbrass

Do you want to drive around in one of them famous cabs out there? Hundreds of years of old history. It means a lot to people of London. It's like London without a queen, I'd say.

Anderson Cooper

You can't have A London without a king or queen. You can't have London without a black cab.

Stephen Fairbrass

No. Correct. Impossible.

Dan Oberst

There's been something unusual going on in a whole lot of major league baseball stadiums lately. And it isn't baseball. Well, at least not exactly. It's banana ball. And if you've never heard of it, get ready for something. Well, bananas. As we first reported last year, it's a classic against the odds story that started with a scrappy college summer league baseball team in Savannah, Georgia, lovingly named the Savannah Bananas. With an unorthodox owner who dreamed of making America's pastime livelier and more fun. With dancing players, trick plays and non stop entertainment for the fans. Think Harlem Globetrotters. Only more so. Take a look now, Dan Oberst.

Bill Whitaker

That one chopped up the middle.

Dan Oberst

It looks like they's fall as doctor

Bill Whitaker

takes off for second and first.

Dan Oberst

Feels like baseball. But then there's this. An umpire feeling the music. A batter on no stilts, gymnastics in the outfield, catches the ball.

Bill Whitaker

Are you kidding me?

Dan Oberst

And on the way home, the Bananas have won the inning. Banana ball is the creation of Jesse Cole who dresses in banana yellow daily. Got those hands?

Dakota Albritton

Here we go.

Dan Oberst

He's the owner and ringmaster of this circus. It's not baseball. Or is it baseball?

Jesse Cole

Obviously it started from the idea of baseball, but now let's just turn it up a little bit.

Dan Oberst

Turning it up a little bit. Savannah Banana style means the show starts hours before the game. With fans and players dancing outside before before the doors open. Then on the field, gymnasts, the banana splits. A dance team made up of grandmas, the Banana Nanas. And instead of cheerleaders, these guys, the man Nanas.

Jesse Cole

It's all intentional. So this is the script.

Dan Oberst

You have a script?

Jesse Cole

There's almost 50 things that happen before the game starts.

Dan Oberst

The idea is to have something entertaining for for everyone, like the six year old leading a crowd warm up to appeal to all ages, baseball fans or not. How long in the car? 10 hours. You drove here for 10 hours? The game itself between the Bananas and their main banana ball rivals, the Party Animals, also owned by Cole, is a real baseball competition with some rule twists. There's a two hour time limit, no mound visits, no walks or bunts. And if a fan catches a foul ball, it's an out. Trick plays like between the leg throws to make an out and backflip catches are encouraged. And a few times a game, players go to bat with lip synced choreographed productions like this one featuring infielder Jackson Olson. That's what makes you feel now ready, mate. Longtime baseball writer Tim Kirchen came to a game, and he said, this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I loved it.

Jesse Cole

So grateful he finished with the I

Tom Scullion

love it exactly right.

Dan Oberst

But, you know, there are people who would be offended that you're changing baseball.

Jesse Cole

I believe if you're not getting criticized, you're playing it too safe.

Dan Oberst

Safe isn't Jesse Cole's style. His early dreams of playing for his hometown Red Sox ended with a shoulder injury in college that sent him into coaching and a discovery he wasn't expecting.

Jesse Cole

I'm sitting in the dugout, and I realize something. I'm bored out of my mind. And if I'm bored, there's gotta be other people that are probably bored with baseball as well.

Dan Oberst

He got a job managing a failing college summer league team in Gastonia, North Carolina, Called the Grizzlies, where he started shaking things up with dancing and silliness.

Bill Whitaker

The first time I saw Jesse, he's the general manager of the team.

Dan Oberst

Keep in mind, Emily McDonald was working for a minor league team in Augusta at the time.

Bill Whitaker

He is on the field teaching his players how to do the Thriller dance.

Jesse Cole

So you gotta get the arms into it. You gotta get the head.

Dan Oberst

You said, oh, that guy's for me.

Jesse Cole

But we nailed that dance. We nailed that dance.

Dan Oberst

Emily joined the Grizzlies, and three years later. Will you make me the luckiest guy in the world? Will you marry me? Emily joined Jesse permanently. And yes, he was already wearing that yellow tux inspired by his idols, showmen P.T. barnum and Walt Disney.

Jesse Cole

It's something I believe in. It's standing out, it's being different. And if your owner is. Is dressed up in a yellow tuxedo, I mean, I think that gives permission to everyone else to not take themselves too seriously to have fun.

Dan Oberst

Were you able to turn the Grizzlies around?

Jesse Cole

Yeah. From the team that was probably worst in the country in attendance, we climbed up to be fourth in the country in attendance.

Dan Oberst

But what about playing?

Jesse Cole

Oh, we won championships. When you have fun, you play better.

Dan Oberst

In 2015, the newlyweds launched the Bananas as a new college summer league team in Savannah. Building fans with all you can eat food and always upping the fun. They won titles. But something kept gnawing at Jesse. Some fans were leaving the stadium before the game was over. Even with everything going on, it was

Jesse Cole

eating me up inside. But then I realized that means there's a fundamental problem with the actual game.

Dan Oberst

He began videotaping the crowd and studying

Jesse Cole

when Are fans looking at their phones? When are they not paying attention to the game? Mound visits, batters stepping out, taking forever. All right, if you step out, I

Dan Oberst

hate that play with their gloves.

Jesse Cole

And so we said, what are all the normal rules of a baseball game? What would be the exact opposite?

Dan Oberst

He started dreaming up ideas for a faster, more exciting game.

Jesse Cole

Think about this. In a baseball game, there's a play called a walk. It's unathletic. It's called a walk. So we said, what would be the exact opposite? A sprint.

Dan Oberst

And so was born the ball four sprint, where the batter takes off and can't be tagged out until every fielder has touched the ball.

Bill Whitaker

He's going to be rewarded with two bases.

Jesse Cole

So now a walk becomes one of the most exciting plays in sports.

Anderson Cooper

Bang, bang.

Jesse Cole

And then what about bunting? Now, I know this is controversial, but if you bunt and banana ball, you're thrown out of the game.

Dan Oberst

What's wrong with bunting?

Jesse Cole

There's no bunting.

Dan Oberst

I like bunting.

Jesse Cole

Some traditionalists do. When I came up to the plate the first time as a five year old, my dad said, jess, swing hard in case you hit. And I believe in baseball. Banana ball, come up and swing the bat. Try to create something really special instead of the bunk.

Dan Oberst

So that first tryout coaches Tyler Gillum and Adam Virent helped create the new game and recruit players to try it out. You were looking for really strong baseball players exclusively.

Dakota Albritton

I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of concrete and my phone went off and it was my mama.

Dan Oberst

Dakota Albritton had played high school baseball in his Georgia hometown, then got a job in construction.

Dakota Albritton

She said, hey, we got a baseball tryout this weekend. I said, why'd you do that? You know I ain't played ball in two years. She said, well, I told them you could walk on stilts. And with me not having any knowledge on what the bananas was, I asked her again, well, why'd you do that? I hadn't done that in 10 years.

Dan Oberst

You hadn't walked on stilts in 10 years?

Dakota Albritton

I have not walked on stilts in 10 years.

Dan Oberst

They'd been a Christmas present when he was 10.

Dakota Albritton

As a matter of fact, on the way to tryouts, I realized that the straps that held them on my legs were dry rotting. We stopped by tractor supply and got dog collars. They were held on my leg by dolphin.

Julie Klinger

Are you serious?

Jesse Cole

He had played high school baseball, not the highest level, and he probably wasn't gonna make the team. He said, I brought my stilts. Do you want me to wear them. And I said, nah, unless you can hit in them.

Dakota Albritton

I said, heck yeah, I can.

Bill Whitaker

I got up there, I had no idea.

Dakota Albritton

I had no idea I could do it. But I wasn't gonna back down from a challenge.

Bill Whitaker

And the entire tryout stops.

Dan Oberst

I wonder why.

Bill Whitaker

It's dead quiet.

Dan Oberst

Did you hit the ball?

Dakota Albritton

I did. I surprised myself just as much as I surprised everybody else.

Dan Oberst

The coaches were still going to cut him till Jesse intervened.

Bill Whitaker

Jesse says, guys, you don't see the vision. The vision is things being done on a baseball field nobody has ever seen.

Dan Oberst

Other players like Robert Anthony Cruz rack for short, joined the Bananas with stronger credentials. He'd been signed by the Washington Nationals. This video of him sharing the news with his dad.

Bill Whitaker

Oh my God.

Tom Scullion

Congratulations, son.

Dan Oberst

Went viral. But as with so many players, one

Bill Whitaker

year later, I got released by the

James Latinsky

Nationals and my wife and I moved back in with my parents.

Dan Oberst

Bananas players told us they'd all dreamed of playing in the major leagues. Raise your hand.

Doug Burgum

Yeah.

Dan Oberst

When baseball didn't work, did you all think you were done?

Bill Whitaker

Yeah, big time.

Dan Oberst

They say banana ball is a second life. They're still practicing that old game plus one upping each other on cool tricks and smooth moves. That elaborate batter walk up routine, also part of afternoon practice.

James Latinsky

I literally like four hours before the.

Dan Oberst

Oh my God. So in the middle of the afternoon, they are learning a dance for that night for the first time.

Jesse Cole

I mean players, the talent level. They learn a tremendous amount of steps for about 20 minutes, 30 minutes rehearsal, and then they're doing it in front

Dan Oberst

of a silk dog crowd and sometimes practicing in front of the crowd.

James Latinsky

I remember looking at you and you

Jesse Cole

were doing the dance too.

Bill Whitaker

You were trying to learn it like we're all trying to learn this stuff. Yet during the game,

Dan Oberst

banana ball players have full year contracts and are paid significantly more than most minor leaguers. Their salaries have risen every year, as has their fan base. This was the home stadium of the Philadelphia Phillies. On a Saturday night in September 2020, a completely sold out, standing room only crowd of 45,000. It was one of six Major League Baseball stadiums the Bananas sold out that season, including Fenway Park. With clips of dances like this going viral, the Bananas now have more TikTok followers than all 12 of last year's ML playoff teams combined.

Bill Whitaker

Billy, are you ready?

Dan Oberst

As in Savannah, crowds gather hours early. Bananaball is now a multimillion dollar private business. Jesse turns away investors to build fans. He reinvests. He keeps ticket prices low, $60 max and broadcasts all games free on YouTube playing in an MLB stadium, players told us, is thrilling, even for someone already 10ft tall.

Dakota Albritton

Just this section right here, as big as my whole entire hometown.

Dan Oberst

Stilts told us he'd be pitching this game. Do you really throw strikes?

Dakota Albritton

Oh, absolutely. It coming straight down like that. They got to hit it just perfect.

Bill Whitaker

Are they going to ground out or pop up?

Dan Oberst

And sure enough, the world's tallest pitcher in the top of the sixth, facing the party animals version of a switch hitter, show off his switch hitting skills. There was one of those strikes and

Anderson Cooper

now a three two count.

Dan Oberst

With the pressure on

Bill Whitaker

bouncer grab three six. The Olsen bounces it to first.

Dan Oberst

He got the third out.

Bill Whitaker

Stilts continues to shine.

Dan Oberst

Then in the bottom of the seventh, with the runner on first and the Bananas down by one, Jackson Olson took off on a ball four sprint. Ball four sprint. Then with men on the corners, the former national signee rack was up.

Bill Whitaker

Uh oh, Robert Anthony Cruz. See you, Peter.

Dan Oberst

A three run homer. As far as we could see, nobody left. Early last season, Banana Ball officially became a league with two more teams. And they were set to play not just at 17 MLB stadiums, but at three NFL football stadiums as well. Will you fill those stadiums?

Jesse Cole

They're sold out already. It's crazy.

Dan Oberst

All of it's crazy. Some might even say Bananas. This season, the Bananas signed a Broadway musical star as a singing pitcher and upped the number of banana ball teams to six. They'll play in 75 stadiums, including two that seat more than 100,000 fans.

Julie Klinger

See how Bananas Foster celebrates foster families.

Bill Whitaker

There's so many superheroes out there@60minutesovertime.com

Dakota Albritton

hey

Dan Oberst

there, it's Jill Schlesinger. I'm launching a new show. It's called Money Moves and your money is going to move. We're going to help you make better financial decisions. We're going to call out the B.S. you're finding all over social media. We're going to give you actionable guidance to make your financial life clearer, less stressful. We're going to answer your financial questions and take the mystery out of your financial life. Follow and listen to Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger. Wherever you get your podcasts.