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60 Minutes

08/17/2025: The Promise and The Land of Declining Sons

60 Minutes

CBS News

News, Tv & Film, Society & Culture

42.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Twenty-three years later, over 1,000 families are still waiting for news of loved ones lost in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. Correspondent Scott Pelley looks at how efforts to search for and identify their remains have never stopped, driven by the promise made by the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. Pelley visits their laboratory, which is using new advancements in DNA research and breakthrough techniques to provide answers for families holding on to hope. This is a double-length segment. The world’s population may have recently surpassed 8 billion, but it’s a misleading figure. Growth is unevenly distributed, and many countries are experiencing a decline in population – in some cases, steeply. Consider Japan. The country is now facing a rapidly declining birth rate, and a population projected to shrink in half by this century’s end. Correspondent Jon Wertheim reports from Japan, examining how these demographic changes are affecting the country and its culture. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

There's a lot going on right now.

0:02.9

Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air.

0:11.2

I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media.

0:15.0

Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the

0:22.4

pass? That's on the media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

0:36.7

When the police officer said, we found your husband's DNA, I mean, that must have hit you

0:41.5

as quite a shock.

0:42.5

It was a shock that they'd been looking all these 22 years.

0:47.7

Not many are aware, but more than a thousand families still wait for word of a missing

0:53.2

loved one from 9-11, and the work to identify their

0:57.0

remains has never stopped.

1:00.0

These remains went through every possible thing that could destroy DNA at Crown Zero, making

1:07.0

this not only the largest forensic investigation in the history of the United States,

1:11.7

but the most difficult.

1:15.4

Some of these World Trade Center remains have been tested.

1:16.1

How many times?

1:18.1

10, 15 times, yeah.

1:19.6

Without a result.

1:20.5

Without a result.

1:22.5

But if there's DNA yet, we're going to find it.

1:24.5

We're going to find it. We're going to generate a profile.

1:25.4

It may take us a while.

...

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