Obama 2007: Launching his candidacy
The first time Steve Kroft interviewed then-Senator Barack Obama it was February 2007. Obama was just announcing his candidacy in the presidential race, and so life in the Obama family was markedly different than it is now.
Back then, Obama's daughters answered the door of their Chicago home when Steve and our team arrived; Steve joined the Obama family as they made tuna sandwiches for lunch; and there were not a lot of time constraints put on our interview and very few staffers on the sidelines.
Albert Pujols signs with the L.A. Angels
Is Albert Pujols the best baseball player ever? Consider his stats over his first 10 years: he never hit less than .300, never had less than 30 homeruns, and never had fewer than 100 RBIs. No player in baseball's long history has ever achieved that in his first ten seasons. Yet much of the general public knows who Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Babe Ruth are, but they've never heard of Pujols. What gives?
In this Overtime Original first posted in April 2011, Overtime Editor Ann Silvio sits down with "60 Minutes" producer Draggan Mihailovich to go behind the scenes on the Pujols shoot and learn more about the low-profile power hitter.
Continue Reading »Onstage, backstage & offstage with Michael Buble
Michael Bublé's new CD, "Christmas" is the number one album in the country this week, a dream come true for a kid who grew up listening to his grandfather play Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and other classics from the crooners of another era.
But the 36-year-old Canadian entertainer does not take himself too seriously, as Laura Logan found out when she profiled him on "60 Minutes" in her piece, "Michael Bublé."
Behind the financial crisis: A fraud investigator talks
"It's been three years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy," Steve Kroft begins his 60 Minutes piece this week. "[Yet] there has not been a single prosecution of a high ranking Wall Street executive or major financial firm."
60 Minutes producer James Jacoby wanted to find out why, and one of the first people he spoke with was Tom Borgers, a man who literally helped write the book on the financial meltdown.
Congressman Barney Frank
"Barney Frank has been called the smartest guy in Congress," Lesley Stahl said in her 2008 profile of the Massachusetts congressman.
These smarts have come in helpful during Rep. Frank's tenure as the non-nonsense chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, tackling some of the toughest financial issues facing the country.
A reporter's story: Finding homeless families
"Guess what? It's getting worse."
Those were words that CBS News producer Nicole Young didn't expect to hear about poverty in central Florida. After all, last year Nicole worked with Scott Pelley on a "60 Minutes" piece about families in that region who had lost their jobs, lost their homes, and moved into highway motels.
Angelina Jolie: Answering the personal questions
"When you're doing an interview with a celebrity, there are a few questions you just have to ask," Bob Simon says about his profile of actress and director Angelina Jolie.
On Overtime this week, we give you some of those questions and answers to matters that you may have read about while thumbing through tabloids at the grocery check-out line. For example: Will Angelina and Brad Pitt marry? What kind of wedding would they have? Are their children having normal childhoods? What is their family life like?
Angelina Jolie: Her face, her fame
When we say here at CBS News that correspondent Bob Simon is one of our most experienced reporters, we are usually talking about his coverage of war, revolution, uprising, crime, and politics.
Yet when it came to his most recent assignment - a profile of the elegant actress Angelina Jolie - Bob was not without some familiarity.
Kermit & Miss Piggy: Before "The Muppets" movie
In his 40-plus years as a "60 Minutes" correspondent, Morley Safer has rarely been flustered in an interview - neither dictators nor drug lords can shake his confidence.
And then, in March 1979, Morley interviewed the Muppets' Miss Piggy for his piece "Backstage at the Muppets," and suddenly he was not the commanding correspondent we've come to know.
It all started out innocently enough -- Morley and his long-time friend and producer John Tiffin set out to do a piece on the Muppets, which had become a worldwide TV phenomenon.
Behind the scenes at a Taylor Swift concert
"Nashville-meets-Hollywood spectacular" is how one music writer describes Taylor Swift's current 76-city worldwide tour to promote her "Speak Now" album. Lesley Stahl, who profiles the singer this week on 60 Minutes, calls the concert "an extravaganza."
What else would you call a production that includes the singer ascending on an airborne balcony (she's Juliet in her song "Love Story") while glitter canons fire off in the background. And then there are dancers, acrobats, changing sets, pyrotechnics, huge projections screens, complex stage lighting, lots of costume changes, and Swift playing at least four instruments: banjo, guitar, piano, and ukulele.
