60 Minutes (1968) s45e15 Episode Script
March of the Machines | Justice Sotomayor | Free Diving
One of the hallmarks of the 21st century is that we are all having more and more interactions with machines and fewer with human beings.
If you've lost your white collar job to downsizing, or to a worker in India or China you're most likely a victim of what economists have called technological unemployment.
There is a lot of it going around with more to come.
At the vanguard of this new wave of automation is the field of robotics.
Everyone has a different idea of what a robot is and what they look like but the broad universal definition is a machine that can perform the job of a human.
They can be mobile or stationary, hardware or software, and they are marching out of the realm of science fiction and into the mainstream.
The age of robots has been anticipated since the beginning of the last century.
Fritz Lang fantasized about it in his 1927 film "Metropolis.
" In the 1940s and 50s, robots were often portrayed as household help.
And by the time "Star Wars" trilogy arrived, robots with their computerized brains and nerve systems had been fully integrated into our imagination.
Now they're finally here, but instead of serving us, we found that they are competing for our jobs.
And according to MIT professors, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, one of the reasons for the jobless recovery.
Andrew McAfee: Our economy is bigger than it was before the start of the Great Recession.
Corporate profits are back.
Business investment in hardware and software is back higher than it's ever been.
What's not back is the jobs.
Steve Kroft: And you think technology and increased automation is a factor in that? Erik Brynjolfsson: Absolutely.
The percentage of Americans with jobs is at a 20-year low.
Just a few years ago if you traveled by air you would have interacted with a human ticket agent.
Today, those jobs are being replaced by robotic kiosks.
Bank tellers have given way to ATMs, sales clerks are surrendering to e-commerce and switchboard operators and secretaries to voice recognition technology.
Erik Brynjolfsson: There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest.
Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them.
They could be software robots, they could be physical robots.
Steve Kroft: What is there out there that people would be surprised to learn about? In the robotics area, let's say.
Andrew McAfee: There are heavily automated warehouses where there are either very few or no people around.
That absolutely took me by surprise.
It's on display at this huge distribution center in Devens, Mass.
, where roughly 100 employees work alongside 69 robots that do all the heavy lifting and navigate a warehouse maze the size of two football fields -- moving shelf to shipping point faster and more efficiently than human workers ever could.
Bruce Welty: We think its part of the new American economy.
Bruce Welty is CEO of Quiet Logistics, which fills orders and ships merchandise for retailers in the apparel industry.
This entire operation was designed around the small orange robots made by a company outside Boston called Kiva.
And can now be found in warehouses all over the country.
Steve Kroft: Now this is the order that she is filling, right, on this screen.
Bruce Welty: Yes, in a typical warehouse, she'd have to walk from location to location with a number of totes.
And that's the innovation here is that the product comes to her.
Steve Kroft: And all of this is preprogrammed? Nobody has to sit there and tell these robots where to go? Bruce Welty: No, no, it's all done with algorithms.
A lot of mathematics, a lot of science that went into this.
Customer orders are transmitted from a computer to wifi antennas that direct the robots to the merchandise, guiding them across an electronic checkerboard with bar codes embedded in the floor panels.
Once the robot arrives at its destination, it picks up an entire shelf of merchandise and delivers it to the packing station.
It then speeds off to its next assignment.
Bruce Welty: They know if they need to get from point A to point B and they are not carrying anything , they can go underneath the grid.
We call that tunneling.
So they are very smart.
Steve Kroft: You'd think they'd run into each other.
Bruce Welty: Yeah, you'd think that but it never happens.
Steve Kroft: If you had to replace the robots with people, how many people would you have to hire? Bruce Welty: Probably one and a half people for every robot.
Steve Kroft: So it saves you a lot of money? Bruce Welty: Yes.
And it's not just going on in warehouses.
El Camino Hospital in California's Silicon Valley has a fleet of robots called tugs that ferry meals to patients, medicines to doctors and nurses, blood samples to the lab and dirty linen to the laundry.
A hospital spokesman told us the tugs are supposed to supplement nurses and hospital staff - not replace them.
But he also believes that robots and humans working together is the beginning of a new era.
Robots are now wielding scalpels for surgeons, assisting in the most delicate operations -- allowing them to see and snip their way through prostate surgeries with minimal damage.
And they have begun filling prescriptions in hospital dispensaries and local pharmacies.
Economic evolution has been going on for centuries and society has always successfully adapted to technological change creating more jobs in the process.
But Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT think this time may be different.
Erik Brynjolfsson: Technology is always creating jobs.
It's always destroying jobs.
But right now the pace is accelerating.
It's faster we think than ever before in history.
So as a consequence, we are not creating jobs at the same pace that we need to.
Andrew McAfee: And we ain't seen nothing yet.
The changes are coming so quickly it's been difficult for workers to retrain themselves and for entrepreneurs to figure out where the next opportunities may be.
The catalyst is something called computer learning or artificial intelligence -- the ability to feed massive amounts of data into supercomputers and program them to teach themselves and improve their performance.
It's how Apple was able to create Siri the iPhone robot and Google its self-driving car.
Erik Brynjolfsson: We've been amazed at how rapidly this has been happening.
[TV clip from "Jeopardy:" This is Jeopardy!.]
Erik Brynjolfsson: IBM's deep QA system that plays "Jeopardy," we had a contest here that played against our best MIT students, the best Harvard students we could put it up against.
And not surprisingly, Watson won.
And it's being used in real practical applications now on Wall Street and in call centers.
Siri -- millions of people are using that every day.
Andrew McAfee: The fact that computers can now understand and respond to human speech, the fact that they can actually generate prose of decent quality, they can drive cars, they can win at Jeopardy.
We're seeing technology demonstrate skills that it's never, ever done before.
And it is putting new categories of jobs in the sites of automation -- the 60 percent of the workforce that makes its living gathering and analyzing information.
This piece of software called e-discovery is now used by law firms in the discovery portion of legal proceedings, a job that used to require hundreds of people sifting through boxes and boxes of documents.
We now have robots gathering intelligence and fighting wars, and robot computers trading stocks on Wall Street.
It's all part of a massive high tech industry that's contributed enormous productivity and wealth to the American economy but surprisingly little in the way of employment.
Andrew McAfee: We absolutely are creating new jobs, new companies, and entirely new industries these days.
When Erik and I go out to Silicon Valley and look around, the scale and the pace of creation is astonishing.
What these companies are not doing, though, is hiring a ton of people to help them with their work.
Steve Kroft: Because they don't have them? Because they can't find them? Because they don't need them? Andrew McAfee: Because they can't find everyone they need, but they don't need that many people to work in these incredibly large and influential companies.
To make that concrete, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are now all public companies.
Combined, they have something close to $1 trillion in market capitalization.
Together, the four of them employ fewer than 150,000 people, and that's less than the number of new entrants into the American workforce every month.
And it's roughly half the number of people that work for General Electric.
Ironically, one of the few bright spots is a modest rise in U.
S.
manufacturing: an early casualty of automation that is making a comeback because it.
This Tesla factory in California turns out battery-powered cars, using state-of-the-art robots that can change tools and perform a multitude of different tasks negating some of the advantages of moving jobs offshore.
Annual investment by U.
S.
manufacturers in new technology has increased almost 30 percent since the recession ended, and research institutions and robotics companies, funded by venture capital, are constantly searching for innovations like the Roomba vacuum cleaner.
[Rodney Brooks: Traditional robots inside factories.]
That was the brain child of Rodney Brooks, a pioneer who ran the artificial intelligence lab at MIT, before launching iRobot one of the most successful robotics companies in the U.
S.
this is his latest progeny, a friendly, affordable chap named Baxter.
Rodney Brooks: It's meant to be able to go in a factory where they don't have robots at the moment.
And ordinary workers can train it to do simple tasks.
Steve Kroft: Uh-huh.
Such as? Rodney Brooks: Well, a simple one is just-- for instance, picking stuff up off a conveyor belt.
So it's going to go down and find the object and grab it and bring it over and put it to another spot.
Baxter costs $22,000, and can be trained to do a new task by a coworker in a matter of minutes.
It can also be upgraded like an iPad with new software as new applications are developed.
[Rodney Brooks: And when you're training it.]
Brooks and investors in his new startup, Rethink Robotics, see a potential market worth tens of billions of dollars, and believe that Baxter can help small U.
S.
manufacturers level the playing field against low cost foreign competitors.
Rodney Brooks: If you're using robots to compete with a simple task that a low-paid worker does in a foreign country you can bring it back here and do that task here.
Steve Kroft: Baxter costs 22 grand? Rodney Brooks: Yep.
Steve Kroft: How long does he last? Rodney Brooks: It lasts three years.
Steve Kroft: Three years? Rodney Brooks: So you can think that as 6,500 hours.
Steve Kroft: I think it works out to about $3.
40 an hour? Rodney Brooks: About that yeah.
Steve Kroft: $3.
40, that's probably the wages of the Chinese worker, right? Rodney Brooks: It's just about right there now.
Steve Kroft: So here you could buy one of these robots and it would be like getting a Chinese worker? Rodney Brooks: In a manner of speaking.
That strategy has already had some success at Adept Technology, the largest manufacturer of industrial robots in the country with a wide and varied product line.
John Dulchinos: So this is our flagship product.
This is our Cobra robot.
This is the class of robot that was used to automate Philips electric shavers.
The robots at the Dutch company's factory in the Netherlands proved to be so efficient and economical, that Philips decided to move its main shaver assembly line out of China and back to Holland.
Erik Brynjolfsson: I think that those workers in China, in India, are more in the bullseye of this automation tidal wave that we are talking about than the American workers.
But even if offshore manufacturing returns to the U.
S.
, most of the jobs will go to robots.
Andrew McAfee: When I see what computers and robots can do right now, I project that forward for two, three more generations, I think we're going to find ourselves in a world where the work as we currently think about it is largely done by machines.
Steve Kroft: And what are the people going to do? Andrew McAfee: That's the $64,000 question.
Andrew McAfee: Science fiction is actually my best guide because I think we are in that time frame going to be in a very weird, very different place.
It brings to mind Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the rebellious computer robot "HAL".
Technologically speaking, we are just about there.
[Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave, this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
.]
Everyone agrees that it's impossible now to short circuit technology.
It has a life of its own and the world is all in for better or for worse.
[HAL: Stop, Dave.
.]
We wanted to leave you on this positive note.
Erik Brynjolfsson: One thing that Andy and I agree on is that we're not super worried about robots becoming self aware, and challenging our authority.
That part of science fiction, I think, is not very likely to happen.
Interviews with Supreme Court justices are rare.
But tonight even more so because in like Sonia Sotomayor.
Among other things, she's the first Hispanic on the Court, she's the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who settled in the Bronx -- that New York melting pot that pours out streetwise kids and American success stories.
Sotomayor, now 58 years old, calls the streets of her childhood, "My Beloved World," and that's the name of her new memoir.
In her first broadcast interview, she told us that the neighborhood gave a poor girl, with a serious illness, a chance to serve and an opportunity to become one of the most powerful women in America.
Scott Pelley: This is where you grew up? Sonia Sotomayor: In a public housing project.
I lived in this one on the corner.
Hold on.
[Sonia Sotomayor (in Spanish): Hello.
How are you? Neighbor: Welcome to your old neighborhood.
Sonia Sotomayor (in Spanish): Thank you.
.]
You could believe she never left.
They remember and she's never forgotten.
Seems the only difference is the security detail which she really never needed in the Bronx.
Scott Pelley: You know, your brother told us that more than once in this neighborhood he got beaten up.
Sonia Sotomayor: Yep.
And more than once I beat up the person who beat him up.
Scott Pelley: You stood up for your brother.
Sonia Sotomayor: Oh, you asked me the other day if I was a tough cookie, and--- A tough cookie who never crumbled at a setback.
Sonia Sotomayor: I am the most obstinate person you will ever meet.
I have a streak of stubbornness in me that I think is what has accounted for some of my success in life.
There is some personal need to persevere, to fight the fight.
And if you just try and be stubborn about trying you can do what you set your mind to.
Sonia Sotomayor set her mind to being a judge at the age of 10.
And three presidents agreed.
Appointed to a federal court by the first George Bush, she was promoted to the Appeals Court by Bill Clinton.
And in 2009 selected for the Supreme Court by President Obama.
Scott Pelley: Your first day working here: terrifying? Sonia Sotomayor: Overwhelmingly terrifying.
I was so anxiety ridden.
I was so nervous that day that my knees knocked.
And I thought everybody in the courtroom could hear them knocking.
Scott Pelley: Well, come on.
You'd been a federal judge for more than 15 years at that point.
Sonia Sotomayor: I had not been a Supreme Court justice.
It's a very different stage.
On this stage she's one of the most vocal questioners.
And her vote most often falls on the liberal side.
She helped uphold the Health Care Act and strike down tough illegal immigration statues.
Back in the Bronx as a girl, she set her heart on being a cop --inspired by Nancy Drew novels and TV.
But by the age of 8, the plot of her life was rewritten by diabetes.
Scott Pelley: The doctors told you because of your Type 1 diabetes-- Sonia Sotomayor: --Type 1 diabetes.
At any rate-- Scott Pelley: --you couldn't be a cop.
Sonia Sotomayor: Yes, I couldn't be a cop.
I figured out very quickly, watching "Perry Mason," that I could do some of the same things by being a lawyer.
[Perry Mason: Objection.]
Scott Pelley: So, we are sitting in the Supreme Court today because you read "Nancy Drew" and watched "Perry Mason" on TV? Sonia Sotomayor: That's exactly right.
Her body would forever be dependent on insulin but her ambitions were set free.
Sonia Sotomayor: I had a life in which I was in a hurry.
Scott Pelley: How long did you expect to live? Sonia Sotomayor: At that time, it was not unusual for most juvenile diabetics to die in their 40s.
Scott Pelley: And this was hanging over you; this was something you thought about? Sonia Sotomayor: Oh, I thought about it a lot.
And I got in as much as I could do at every stage of my life.
I studied very hard.
I partied very hard.
I love playing very hard.
And I did it all to try to pack in as much as I could.
Did she ever.
Honors in Catholic high school led to a scholarship to Princeton.
Top honors there led to law at Yale and then straight to New York as a prosecutor.
The pay was lousy, the hours inhuman.
She was smoking three and a half packs a day -- listening to victims -- sending thieves and killers to prison and learning something about people.
Sonia Sotomayor; They can be evil.
I don't know that before I came to the DA's office, that I understood that there were some people who were that bad.
It's one of the reasons I left the DA's office, because that lesson made me realize that if I stayed in the practice of criminal law, I might lose some of my optimism about human nature.
Scott Pelley: Are some people beyond redemption? Sonia Sotomayor: People do some very bad things that are still human beings with some redeeming qualities.
They can do some horrible things, but they're still valuable human beings in other ways.
But yes, I do believe there are some people who are evil and perhaps can't be redeemed.
After four year with the DA, and the end of her marriage to her high school sweetheart, Sotomayor cleared her mind and the air.
She quit smoking and joined a firm practicing corporate law where some of the men didn't seem all that comfortable with her.
Scott Pelley: You write in your book that one day one of the associates-- one of your colleagues was on the telephone and he described you, your words, not mine, as-- Sonia Sotomayor: His words.
Scott Pelley: --as one tough bitch.
Sonia Sotomayor: Yeah.
Scott Pelley: And when you heard that, you thought what? Sonia Sotomayor: What in the world is wrong with me? I was a pretty tough negotiator and hard to push around.
And I don't think they were used to my kind of toughness then.
Scott Pelley: Is his description in any way unfair? Sonia Sotomayor: Probably not.
She's been called a lot of things, but she told us more than "Madam Justice" she prefers another title.
Sonia Sotomayor: It's Sonia from the Bronx.
Scott Pelley: What does it mean to be Sonia from the Bronx? Sonia Sotomayor: It means to be a part of this particular communitya vibrant, loving, giving community.
And it's something very special.
The Bronx of her childhood was a place where immigrants got a foothold on the dream.
It's a picture she paints in the memoir "My Beloved World" and a life she lives today.
You'll find her with the Bronx Bombers in Yankee Stadium and at the annual dream big celebration thrown by the Bronx Children's Museum.
[Sotomayor on stage: Don't ever stop dreaming, don't ever stop trying, there's courage in trying.
.]
Scott Pelley: Why is it important to you? Sonia Sotomayor: Kids are important to me.
I want one of the hallmarks of my tenure to be that I gave something to kids, that I gave something to our future.
Her own inspiration was her mother Celina Sotomayor, who would end up raising the children mostly alone.
Scott Pelley: Your father was an alcoholic? Sonia Sotomaor: He was.
Scott Pelley: Did you understand what that meant as a child? Sonia Sotomayor: No.
I had sort of a childlike appreciation that he couldn't help himself.
I also watched him die from drinking.
He died when she was 9.
Her mother pushed education.
And in 1972, Sotomayor was near the top in her high school class when she got an offer from a university she had never heard of, Princeton.
It was a combination of talent, perseverance and affirmative action.
Scott Pelley: Do you think anyone ever resented the notion that you might have had a door opened for you by affirmative action? Sonia Sotomayor: You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
From the first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was gonna get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not.
Now I didn't know about affirmative action.
But from the tone of her question I understood that she thought there was something wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students.
Now essentially the same question that the nurse asked is before Sotomayor on the Court.
A white student has filed suit saying that affirmative action kept her out of the University of Texas.
Scott Pelley: You have declined to talk to us about cases before the Court, whether they're before the Court currently or have already been ruled on by the Court, and I wonder why.
Sonia Sotomayor: People sometimes don't understand that judge can have personal experiences even personal opinions.
But I think that if you talk publicly about those things, that people will jump to the conclusion that you've already made up your mind in some way.
On affirmative action her "personal experience" has been powerful.
Scott Pelley: Is there a role for it today? Sonia Sotomayor: The affirmative action of today is very different than it was when I was going to school.
And each school does it in a different way.
I can't pass judgment on whether there's a role for it or not without it being seen as I'm making a comment on an existing case.
But I do know that, for me, it was a door opener that changed the course of my life.
What never changed was diabetes but it hasn't slowed her down, she tests her blood and takes insulin when and where she needs to.
In her chambers you hear Spanish in the air.
And it was here that we met a woman of great ambition -- but even she -- Celina Sotomayor had to be amazed that this was her daughter's office and that she would hold the Bible at the swearing in of a justice.
Celina Sotomayor: I didn't have to do anything.
I just taking the-- the-- taking-- glory for that.
But-- it had n-- nothing to do with it.
Scott Pelley: I suspect you may have had something to do with it along the way.
Sonia Sotomayor: I think -- my mom-- is too fond of not taking enough credit.
Celina Sotomayor: Sonia, you always were in charge.
Next week, Justice Sotomayor will be in charge of delivering the oath to the vice president of the United States.
It will be 40 years since that high school nurse asked why Princeton had picked Sonia from the Bronx.
Sonia Sotomayyor: And the memory of it has really never left me.
Because it is the look that so many people give you.
It's the look that I was still receiving when I was nominated to the Supreme Court.
Was I capable enough? We have to prove ourself.
And we have to work hard at doing it.
Scott Pelley: That's where the stubbornness comes from.
Sonia Sotomayor: That's where the stubbornness comes from.
For me at least it's the stubbornness to say, "I'm going to do it.
And I'm going to do it well.
Free diving has been around a very long time.
Homer and Plato wrote about it.
It was how the ancient Greeks went down for sponges.
Without so much as a snorkel, they'd dive to around 100 feet.
Today's free divers go down a lot further for fun and sport.
They want to join the sea world without disturbing it.
No tanks, no bubbles, no noise.
Yes, that is a shark but it seems friendly enough.
The diver, New Zealander William Trubridge has become just another guy in the neighborhood.
Trubridge is also a world champion in the competitive sport of free diving.
Here, he is getting ready to dive 331 feet, twice the height of the Statue of Liberty on a single breath.
He'll be doing this just with his arms and legs no fins to help him.
This film -- with the music -- was produced by his team.
Going down is the easy part.
After 70 feet, he's loses buoyancy and gets pulled down by gravity alone.
He reaches his target, collects a tag to prove that he got there and goes into reverse for the hard part: getting back up.
His body is craving oxygen but he goes up slowly and gracefully as if he were doing a water ballet.
He was underwater four minutes and 10 seconds.
A new world record: 331 feet.
That's 101 meters.
Five years ago the record was 80 meters.
Bob Simon: Five years ago, did anyone think it was possible to go down 100 meters? William Trubridge: When the record was 80? I don't think so.
I don't think anyone realistically thought it was going to happen or at least not soon.
Bob Simon: Isn't there a certain limit of underwater that's just-- you can't go beyond it without dying? William Trubridge: Definitely.
It's out there but there's no way of kind of knowing exactly where it is.
It's just deeper than we are now, we know that much.
And because of free diving, scientists now know that humans are closer to dolphins than had been thought.
Just like dolphins, when we go into cold water a reflex kicks in which slows down our pulse; shifts blood from our extremities to our heart and to our brain.
Our spleen contracts releasing oxygen rich blood into our arteries.
Is under the water a place humans belong? Free divers think so.
They point out that the amniotic fluid in the womb where a fetus lives for nine months is very similar to seawater.
That if a newborn is immediately submerged in a pool it will swim the breaststroke and be able to hold its breath for 40 seconds.
It will retain this ability until it learns how to walk.
Then it's all over.
Tanya Streeter: We're physiologically designed to hold our breath underwater.
We're not designed to breathe underwater.
During her career as a free diver Tanya Streeter held 10 world records.
She had gone down deeper than any man.
The key to her success, she says, is her ability to equalize the pressure underwater so her eardrums don't burst.
Tanya Streeter: As you dive, the pressure of the weight of water around you increases.
And it pushes your eardrums in and in and in.
And you have to push air into the Eustachian tubes to be able to pop the eardrums out to equalize that pressure.
I mean it hurts.
I've described it as an elephant sitting on my chest, stabbing hot pokers in my eardrums.
Bob Simon: Nobody would choose to do that.
Tanya Streeter: No.
But, you know, you sort of find yourself there at that point on your journey, and realize that that's what you signed up for.
So it's all par for the course.
Tanya and other free divers come to the Blue Hole because it's the perfect place to dive.
It's in the remotest part of the Bahamas called Long Island.
Christopher Columbus put it on the map in 1492 but you`ll have trouble finding it on any tourist map today.
The jet set doesn`t come here because jet planes don`t fly here from America or Europe.
There are hardly any hotels, no golf courses, no frozen margaritas.
Just that deep blue hole! This is where William Trubridge lives and trains.
For the last six months, he's led a monastic existence, getting ready to try for another world record.
He wants to make it down to 410 feet on one breath.
This time using a single fin.
To get ready he goes through a unique a set of exercises that he designed himself to make his body more flexible and supple, more like a dolphin.
His waist here is 27 inches.
Then the countdown.
His wife Brittany is on the platform.
His parents are on the shore.
The judges and safety divers are in the water.
Their job: to save him if he loses consciousness.
In any other sport, a spurt of adrenalin would be a good thing.
Not here -- tension, anxiety consume oxygen -- what you need is serenity.
He begins to swallow air.
He is literally swallowing air, packing his lungs with more air than they could receive from breathing alone.
Free divers discovered this technique themselves to expand their lungs.
And in his head? William Trubridge: Sometimes if I'm taking my last breath, a voice will pop into my mind saying, "This-- this is-- could be your last breath of your life.
" Or, "You're gonna die.
" It's kind of like the devil's advocate sitting on your shoulder whose going to think of the worst possible thing and voice that in your mind.
Bob Simon: The devil is still talking to you? William Trubridge: Always.
Yeah.
His lungs are now the size of watermelons.
As he descends, they will be squeezed until they're no larger than oranges.
His heartbeat slows down to 27 beats a minute.
His mother is counting seconds.
Down deep, the Blue Hole becomes the Black Hole.
William Trubridge: You're alone with yourself down there at depth.
And the-- even your body slips away so that it feels like you're just a kind of a speck of consciousness that's floating into the abyss.
You're weightless.
There's no light, no sound and so it's almost as if you're floating in a completely empty tank.
The pressure is causing his brain to absorb more nitrogen.
He is feeling light-headed, kind of drunk.
It happens to all divers deep down.
It's called narcosis.
Suddenly, a bright light on the base plate 410 feet down.
He takes his tag and begins his ascent.
At 100 feet he is joined by his safety divers like a pod of dolphins, they guide him through the most hazardous part of the dive, running out of oxygen can cause a blackout.
The sound you are hearing is William expelling air from his sinuses.
He's made it, but for his record of 410 feet to be ratified by the judges he needs to perform three simple tasks when he gets to the surface, take his goggles off, give the OK sign with his fingers and say, "l'm OK" in that precise order.
Sounds simple but William's brain isn't working.
He does these things in the wrong order.
The judges disqualify him.
Linden Wolbert: He took off the nose clip, made the sign and said "I'm OK" without removing his goggles.
Bob Simon: Boy o' boy.
He had just been down a quarter of a kilometer.
Linden Wolbert: That's correct.
Bob Simon: He did goggles in the wrong order and it cost him his record.
Linden Wolbert: It did.
It sounds like a technicality, but he has to prove that his mind is as tough as his body.
Bob Simon: You got there.
You got deeper than anyone has ever gotten before.
William Trubridge: Yeah.
Yeah.
Bob Simon: And then you took your mask off and said "OK" in the wrong order and it was all for nothing.
William Trubridge: Yeah.
Bob Simon: And you're smiling.
William Trubridge: I feel good because I know I can do it again-- maybe it might not be for a while, but I can definitely do that depth.
Bob Simon: But you did feel narcosis? William Trubridge: Yeah.
Tanya Streeter had a close call with severe narcosis 10 years ago.
She was doing what's called No Limits diving -- going down in a weighted device which moves fast and goes down deeper than most WWII era submarines.
This is Tanya at 525 feet, deeper than anyone had ever gone.
She blew a kiss to the ocean.
But then she became disoriented.
It took her pull a pin -- any longer and she might have stayed down there forever.
But with experiences like this, why go down at all? Tanya Streeter: It's just a little bit difficult for people to fathom, if you excuse the pun, but it's what I love to do.
You know, it's a common phrase in free diving, we don't dive to look around us, we dive to look within ourselves.
It's a journey of self-exploration.
Bob Simon: What can you possibly be exploring in your own mind when your ears hurt and you're out of breath and it's dark and, you know, it's dangerous? Tanya Streeter: I want to know what I've got.
I want to know what I'm made of.
If you've lost your white collar job to downsizing, or to a worker in India or China you're most likely a victim of what economists have called technological unemployment.
There is a lot of it going around with more to come.
At the vanguard of this new wave of automation is the field of robotics.
Everyone has a different idea of what a robot is and what they look like but the broad universal definition is a machine that can perform the job of a human.
They can be mobile or stationary, hardware or software, and they are marching out of the realm of science fiction and into the mainstream.
The age of robots has been anticipated since the beginning of the last century.
Fritz Lang fantasized about it in his 1927 film "Metropolis.
" In the 1940s and 50s, robots were often portrayed as household help.
And by the time "Star Wars" trilogy arrived, robots with their computerized brains and nerve systems had been fully integrated into our imagination.
Now they're finally here, but instead of serving us, we found that they are competing for our jobs.
And according to MIT professors, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, one of the reasons for the jobless recovery.
Andrew McAfee: Our economy is bigger than it was before the start of the Great Recession.
Corporate profits are back.
Business investment in hardware and software is back higher than it's ever been.
What's not back is the jobs.
Steve Kroft: And you think technology and increased automation is a factor in that? Erik Brynjolfsson: Absolutely.
The percentage of Americans with jobs is at a 20-year low.
Just a few years ago if you traveled by air you would have interacted with a human ticket agent.
Today, those jobs are being replaced by robotic kiosks.
Bank tellers have given way to ATMs, sales clerks are surrendering to e-commerce and switchboard operators and secretaries to voice recognition technology.
Erik Brynjolfsson: There are lots of examples of routine, middle-skilled jobs that involve relatively structured tasks and those are the jobs that are being eliminated the fastest.
Those kinds of jobs are easier for our friends in the artificial intelligence community to design robots to handle them.
They could be software robots, they could be physical robots.
Steve Kroft: What is there out there that people would be surprised to learn about? In the robotics area, let's say.
Andrew McAfee: There are heavily automated warehouses where there are either very few or no people around.
That absolutely took me by surprise.
It's on display at this huge distribution center in Devens, Mass.
, where roughly 100 employees work alongside 69 robots that do all the heavy lifting and navigate a warehouse maze the size of two football fields -- moving shelf to shipping point faster and more efficiently than human workers ever could.
Bruce Welty: We think its part of the new American economy.
Bruce Welty is CEO of Quiet Logistics, which fills orders and ships merchandise for retailers in the apparel industry.
This entire operation was designed around the small orange robots made by a company outside Boston called Kiva.
And can now be found in warehouses all over the country.
Steve Kroft: Now this is the order that she is filling, right, on this screen.
Bruce Welty: Yes, in a typical warehouse, she'd have to walk from location to location with a number of totes.
And that's the innovation here is that the product comes to her.
Steve Kroft: And all of this is preprogrammed? Nobody has to sit there and tell these robots where to go? Bruce Welty: No, no, it's all done with algorithms.
A lot of mathematics, a lot of science that went into this.
Customer orders are transmitted from a computer to wifi antennas that direct the robots to the merchandise, guiding them across an electronic checkerboard with bar codes embedded in the floor panels.
Once the robot arrives at its destination, it picks up an entire shelf of merchandise and delivers it to the packing station.
It then speeds off to its next assignment.
Bruce Welty: They know if they need to get from point A to point B and they are not carrying anything , they can go underneath the grid.
We call that tunneling.
So they are very smart.
Steve Kroft: You'd think they'd run into each other.
Bruce Welty: Yeah, you'd think that but it never happens.
Steve Kroft: If you had to replace the robots with people, how many people would you have to hire? Bruce Welty: Probably one and a half people for every robot.
Steve Kroft: So it saves you a lot of money? Bruce Welty: Yes.
And it's not just going on in warehouses.
El Camino Hospital in California's Silicon Valley has a fleet of robots called tugs that ferry meals to patients, medicines to doctors and nurses, blood samples to the lab and dirty linen to the laundry.
A hospital spokesman told us the tugs are supposed to supplement nurses and hospital staff - not replace them.
But he also believes that robots and humans working together is the beginning of a new era.
Robots are now wielding scalpels for surgeons, assisting in the most delicate operations -- allowing them to see and snip their way through prostate surgeries with minimal damage.
And they have begun filling prescriptions in hospital dispensaries and local pharmacies.
Economic evolution has been going on for centuries and society has always successfully adapted to technological change creating more jobs in the process.
But Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT think this time may be different.
Erik Brynjolfsson: Technology is always creating jobs.
It's always destroying jobs.
But right now the pace is accelerating.
It's faster we think than ever before in history.
So as a consequence, we are not creating jobs at the same pace that we need to.
Andrew McAfee: And we ain't seen nothing yet.
The changes are coming so quickly it's been difficult for workers to retrain themselves and for entrepreneurs to figure out where the next opportunities may be.
The catalyst is something called computer learning or artificial intelligence -- the ability to feed massive amounts of data into supercomputers and program them to teach themselves and improve their performance.
It's how Apple was able to create Siri the iPhone robot and Google its self-driving car.
Erik Brynjolfsson: We've been amazed at how rapidly this has been happening.
[TV clip from "Jeopardy:" This is Jeopardy!.]
Erik Brynjolfsson: IBM's deep QA system that plays "Jeopardy," we had a contest here that played against our best MIT students, the best Harvard students we could put it up against.
And not surprisingly, Watson won.
And it's being used in real practical applications now on Wall Street and in call centers.
Siri -- millions of people are using that every day.
Andrew McAfee: The fact that computers can now understand and respond to human speech, the fact that they can actually generate prose of decent quality, they can drive cars, they can win at Jeopardy.
We're seeing technology demonstrate skills that it's never, ever done before.
And it is putting new categories of jobs in the sites of automation -- the 60 percent of the workforce that makes its living gathering and analyzing information.
This piece of software called e-discovery is now used by law firms in the discovery portion of legal proceedings, a job that used to require hundreds of people sifting through boxes and boxes of documents.
We now have robots gathering intelligence and fighting wars, and robot computers trading stocks on Wall Street.
It's all part of a massive high tech industry that's contributed enormous productivity and wealth to the American economy but surprisingly little in the way of employment.
Andrew McAfee: We absolutely are creating new jobs, new companies, and entirely new industries these days.
When Erik and I go out to Silicon Valley and look around, the scale and the pace of creation is astonishing.
What these companies are not doing, though, is hiring a ton of people to help them with their work.
Steve Kroft: Because they don't have them? Because they can't find them? Because they don't need them? Andrew McAfee: Because they can't find everyone they need, but they don't need that many people to work in these incredibly large and influential companies.
To make that concrete, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are now all public companies.
Combined, they have something close to $1 trillion in market capitalization.
Together, the four of them employ fewer than 150,000 people, and that's less than the number of new entrants into the American workforce every month.
And it's roughly half the number of people that work for General Electric.
Ironically, one of the few bright spots is a modest rise in U.
S.
manufacturing: an early casualty of automation that is making a comeback because it.
This Tesla factory in California turns out battery-powered cars, using state-of-the-art robots that can change tools and perform a multitude of different tasks negating some of the advantages of moving jobs offshore.
Annual investment by U.
S.
manufacturers in new technology has increased almost 30 percent since the recession ended, and research institutions and robotics companies, funded by venture capital, are constantly searching for innovations like the Roomba vacuum cleaner.
[Rodney Brooks: Traditional robots inside factories.]
That was the brain child of Rodney Brooks, a pioneer who ran the artificial intelligence lab at MIT, before launching iRobot one of the most successful robotics companies in the U.
S.
this is his latest progeny, a friendly, affordable chap named Baxter.
Rodney Brooks: It's meant to be able to go in a factory where they don't have robots at the moment.
And ordinary workers can train it to do simple tasks.
Steve Kroft: Uh-huh.
Such as? Rodney Brooks: Well, a simple one is just-- for instance, picking stuff up off a conveyor belt.
So it's going to go down and find the object and grab it and bring it over and put it to another spot.
Baxter costs $22,000, and can be trained to do a new task by a coworker in a matter of minutes.
It can also be upgraded like an iPad with new software as new applications are developed.
[Rodney Brooks: And when you're training it.]
Brooks and investors in his new startup, Rethink Robotics, see a potential market worth tens of billions of dollars, and believe that Baxter can help small U.
S.
manufacturers level the playing field against low cost foreign competitors.
Rodney Brooks: If you're using robots to compete with a simple task that a low-paid worker does in a foreign country you can bring it back here and do that task here.
Steve Kroft: Baxter costs 22 grand? Rodney Brooks: Yep.
Steve Kroft: How long does he last? Rodney Brooks: It lasts three years.
Steve Kroft: Three years? Rodney Brooks: So you can think that as 6,500 hours.
Steve Kroft: I think it works out to about $3.
40 an hour? Rodney Brooks: About that yeah.
Steve Kroft: $3.
40, that's probably the wages of the Chinese worker, right? Rodney Brooks: It's just about right there now.
Steve Kroft: So here you could buy one of these robots and it would be like getting a Chinese worker? Rodney Brooks: In a manner of speaking.
That strategy has already had some success at Adept Technology, the largest manufacturer of industrial robots in the country with a wide and varied product line.
John Dulchinos: So this is our flagship product.
This is our Cobra robot.
This is the class of robot that was used to automate Philips electric shavers.
The robots at the Dutch company's factory in the Netherlands proved to be so efficient and economical, that Philips decided to move its main shaver assembly line out of China and back to Holland.
Erik Brynjolfsson: I think that those workers in China, in India, are more in the bullseye of this automation tidal wave that we are talking about than the American workers.
But even if offshore manufacturing returns to the U.
S.
, most of the jobs will go to robots.
Andrew McAfee: When I see what computers and robots can do right now, I project that forward for two, three more generations, I think we're going to find ourselves in a world where the work as we currently think about it is largely done by machines.
Steve Kroft: And what are the people going to do? Andrew McAfee: That's the $64,000 question.
Andrew McAfee: Science fiction is actually my best guide because I think we are in that time frame going to be in a very weird, very different place.
It brings to mind Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the rebellious computer robot "HAL".
Technologically speaking, we are just about there.
[Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave, this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
.]
Everyone agrees that it's impossible now to short circuit technology.
It has a life of its own and the world is all in for better or for worse.
[HAL: Stop, Dave.
.]
We wanted to leave you on this positive note.
Erik Brynjolfsson: One thing that Andy and I agree on is that we're not super worried about robots becoming self aware, and challenging our authority.
That part of science fiction, I think, is not very likely to happen.
Interviews with Supreme Court justices are rare.
But tonight even more so because in like Sonia Sotomayor.
Among other things, she's the first Hispanic on the Court, she's the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who settled in the Bronx -- that New York melting pot that pours out streetwise kids and American success stories.
Sotomayor, now 58 years old, calls the streets of her childhood, "My Beloved World," and that's the name of her new memoir.
In her first broadcast interview, she told us that the neighborhood gave a poor girl, with a serious illness, a chance to serve and an opportunity to become one of the most powerful women in America.
Scott Pelley: This is where you grew up? Sonia Sotomayor: In a public housing project.
I lived in this one on the corner.
Hold on.
[Sonia Sotomayor (in Spanish): Hello.
How are you? Neighbor: Welcome to your old neighborhood.
Sonia Sotomayor (in Spanish): Thank you.
.]
You could believe she never left.
They remember and she's never forgotten.
Seems the only difference is the security detail which she really never needed in the Bronx.
Scott Pelley: You know, your brother told us that more than once in this neighborhood he got beaten up.
Sonia Sotomayor: Yep.
And more than once I beat up the person who beat him up.
Scott Pelley: You stood up for your brother.
Sonia Sotomayor: Oh, you asked me the other day if I was a tough cookie, and--- A tough cookie who never crumbled at a setback.
Sonia Sotomayor: I am the most obstinate person you will ever meet.
I have a streak of stubbornness in me that I think is what has accounted for some of my success in life.
There is some personal need to persevere, to fight the fight.
And if you just try and be stubborn about trying you can do what you set your mind to.
Sonia Sotomayor set her mind to being a judge at the age of 10.
And three presidents agreed.
Appointed to a federal court by the first George Bush, she was promoted to the Appeals Court by Bill Clinton.
And in 2009 selected for the Supreme Court by President Obama.
Scott Pelley: Your first day working here: terrifying? Sonia Sotomayor: Overwhelmingly terrifying.
I was so anxiety ridden.
I was so nervous that day that my knees knocked.
And I thought everybody in the courtroom could hear them knocking.
Scott Pelley: Well, come on.
You'd been a federal judge for more than 15 years at that point.
Sonia Sotomayor: I had not been a Supreme Court justice.
It's a very different stage.
On this stage she's one of the most vocal questioners.
And her vote most often falls on the liberal side.
She helped uphold the Health Care Act and strike down tough illegal immigration statues.
Back in the Bronx as a girl, she set her heart on being a cop --inspired by Nancy Drew novels and TV.
But by the age of 8, the plot of her life was rewritten by diabetes.
Scott Pelley: The doctors told you because of your Type 1 diabetes-- Sonia Sotomayor: --Type 1 diabetes.
At any rate-- Scott Pelley: --you couldn't be a cop.
Sonia Sotomayor: Yes, I couldn't be a cop.
I figured out very quickly, watching "Perry Mason," that I could do some of the same things by being a lawyer.
[Perry Mason: Objection.]
Scott Pelley: So, we are sitting in the Supreme Court today because you read "Nancy Drew" and watched "Perry Mason" on TV? Sonia Sotomayor: That's exactly right.
Her body would forever be dependent on insulin but her ambitions were set free.
Sonia Sotomayor: I had a life in which I was in a hurry.
Scott Pelley: How long did you expect to live? Sonia Sotomayor: At that time, it was not unusual for most juvenile diabetics to die in their 40s.
Scott Pelley: And this was hanging over you; this was something you thought about? Sonia Sotomayor: Oh, I thought about it a lot.
And I got in as much as I could do at every stage of my life.
I studied very hard.
I partied very hard.
I love playing very hard.
And I did it all to try to pack in as much as I could.
Did she ever.
Honors in Catholic high school led to a scholarship to Princeton.
Top honors there led to law at Yale and then straight to New York as a prosecutor.
The pay was lousy, the hours inhuman.
She was smoking three and a half packs a day -- listening to victims -- sending thieves and killers to prison and learning something about people.
Sonia Sotomayor; They can be evil.
I don't know that before I came to the DA's office, that I understood that there were some people who were that bad.
It's one of the reasons I left the DA's office, because that lesson made me realize that if I stayed in the practice of criminal law, I might lose some of my optimism about human nature.
Scott Pelley: Are some people beyond redemption? Sonia Sotomayor: People do some very bad things that are still human beings with some redeeming qualities.
They can do some horrible things, but they're still valuable human beings in other ways.
But yes, I do believe there are some people who are evil and perhaps can't be redeemed.
After four year with the DA, and the end of her marriage to her high school sweetheart, Sotomayor cleared her mind and the air.
She quit smoking and joined a firm practicing corporate law where some of the men didn't seem all that comfortable with her.
Scott Pelley: You write in your book that one day one of the associates-- one of your colleagues was on the telephone and he described you, your words, not mine, as-- Sonia Sotomayor: His words.
Scott Pelley: --as one tough bitch.
Sonia Sotomayor: Yeah.
Scott Pelley: And when you heard that, you thought what? Sonia Sotomayor: What in the world is wrong with me? I was a pretty tough negotiator and hard to push around.
And I don't think they were used to my kind of toughness then.
Scott Pelley: Is his description in any way unfair? Sonia Sotomayor: Probably not.
She's been called a lot of things, but she told us more than "Madam Justice" she prefers another title.
Sonia Sotomayor: It's Sonia from the Bronx.
Scott Pelley: What does it mean to be Sonia from the Bronx? Sonia Sotomayor: It means to be a part of this particular communitya vibrant, loving, giving community.
And it's something very special.
The Bronx of her childhood was a place where immigrants got a foothold on the dream.
It's a picture she paints in the memoir "My Beloved World" and a life she lives today.
You'll find her with the Bronx Bombers in Yankee Stadium and at the annual dream big celebration thrown by the Bronx Children's Museum.
[Sotomayor on stage: Don't ever stop dreaming, don't ever stop trying, there's courage in trying.
.]
Scott Pelley: Why is it important to you? Sonia Sotomayor: Kids are important to me.
I want one of the hallmarks of my tenure to be that I gave something to kids, that I gave something to our future.
Her own inspiration was her mother Celina Sotomayor, who would end up raising the children mostly alone.
Scott Pelley: Your father was an alcoholic? Sonia Sotomaor: He was.
Scott Pelley: Did you understand what that meant as a child? Sonia Sotomayor: No.
I had sort of a childlike appreciation that he couldn't help himself.
I also watched him die from drinking.
He died when she was 9.
Her mother pushed education.
And in 1972, Sotomayor was near the top in her high school class when she got an offer from a university she had never heard of, Princeton.
It was a combination of talent, perseverance and affirmative action.
Scott Pelley: Do you think anyone ever resented the notion that you might have had a door opened for you by affirmative action? Sonia Sotomayor: You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
From the first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was gonna get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not.
Now I didn't know about affirmative action.
But from the tone of her question I understood that she thought there was something wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students.
Now essentially the same question that the nurse asked is before Sotomayor on the Court.
A white student has filed suit saying that affirmative action kept her out of the University of Texas.
Scott Pelley: You have declined to talk to us about cases before the Court, whether they're before the Court currently or have already been ruled on by the Court, and I wonder why.
Sonia Sotomayor: People sometimes don't understand that judge can have personal experiences even personal opinions.
But I think that if you talk publicly about those things, that people will jump to the conclusion that you've already made up your mind in some way.
On affirmative action her "personal experience" has been powerful.
Scott Pelley: Is there a role for it today? Sonia Sotomayor: The affirmative action of today is very different than it was when I was going to school.
And each school does it in a different way.
I can't pass judgment on whether there's a role for it or not without it being seen as I'm making a comment on an existing case.
But I do know that, for me, it was a door opener that changed the course of my life.
What never changed was diabetes but it hasn't slowed her down, she tests her blood and takes insulin when and where she needs to.
In her chambers you hear Spanish in the air.
And it was here that we met a woman of great ambition -- but even she -- Celina Sotomayor had to be amazed that this was her daughter's office and that she would hold the Bible at the swearing in of a justice.
Celina Sotomayor: I didn't have to do anything.
I just taking the-- the-- taking-- glory for that.
But-- it had n-- nothing to do with it.
Scott Pelley: I suspect you may have had something to do with it along the way.
Sonia Sotomayor: I think -- my mom-- is too fond of not taking enough credit.
Celina Sotomayor: Sonia, you always were in charge.
Next week, Justice Sotomayor will be in charge of delivering the oath to the vice president of the United States.
It will be 40 years since that high school nurse asked why Princeton had picked Sonia from the Bronx.
Sonia Sotomayyor: And the memory of it has really never left me.
Because it is the look that so many people give you.
It's the look that I was still receiving when I was nominated to the Supreme Court.
Was I capable enough? We have to prove ourself.
And we have to work hard at doing it.
Scott Pelley: That's where the stubbornness comes from.
Sonia Sotomayor: That's where the stubbornness comes from.
For me at least it's the stubbornness to say, "I'm going to do it.
And I'm going to do it well.
Free diving has been around a very long time.
Homer and Plato wrote about it.
It was how the ancient Greeks went down for sponges.
Without so much as a snorkel, they'd dive to around 100 feet.
Today's free divers go down a lot further for fun and sport.
They want to join the sea world without disturbing it.
No tanks, no bubbles, no noise.
Yes, that is a shark but it seems friendly enough.
The diver, New Zealander William Trubridge has become just another guy in the neighborhood.
Trubridge is also a world champion in the competitive sport of free diving.
Here, he is getting ready to dive 331 feet, twice the height of the Statue of Liberty on a single breath.
He'll be doing this just with his arms and legs no fins to help him.
This film -- with the music -- was produced by his team.
Going down is the easy part.
After 70 feet, he's loses buoyancy and gets pulled down by gravity alone.
He reaches his target, collects a tag to prove that he got there and goes into reverse for the hard part: getting back up.
His body is craving oxygen but he goes up slowly and gracefully as if he were doing a water ballet.
He was underwater four minutes and 10 seconds.
A new world record: 331 feet.
That's 101 meters.
Five years ago the record was 80 meters.
Bob Simon: Five years ago, did anyone think it was possible to go down 100 meters? William Trubridge: When the record was 80? I don't think so.
I don't think anyone realistically thought it was going to happen or at least not soon.
Bob Simon: Isn't there a certain limit of underwater that's just-- you can't go beyond it without dying? William Trubridge: Definitely.
It's out there but there's no way of kind of knowing exactly where it is.
It's just deeper than we are now, we know that much.
And because of free diving, scientists now know that humans are closer to dolphins than had been thought.
Just like dolphins, when we go into cold water a reflex kicks in which slows down our pulse; shifts blood from our extremities to our heart and to our brain.
Our spleen contracts releasing oxygen rich blood into our arteries.
Is under the water a place humans belong? Free divers think so.
They point out that the amniotic fluid in the womb where a fetus lives for nine months is very similar to seawater.
That if a newborn is immediately submerged in a pool it will swim the breaststroke and be able to hold its breath for 40 seconds.
It will retain this ability until it learns how to walk.
Then it's all over.
Tanya Streeter: We're physiologically designed to hold our breath underwater.
We're not designed to breathe underwater.
During her career as a free diver Tanya Streeter held 10 world records.
She had gone down deeper than any man.
The key to her success, she says, is her ability to equalize the pressure underwater so her eardrums don't burst.
Tanya Streeter: As you dive, the pressure of the weight of water around you increases.
And it pushes your eardrums in and in and in.
And you have to push air into the Eustachian tubes to be able to pop the eardrums out to equalize that pressure.
I mean it hurts.
I've described it as an elephant sitting on my chest, stabbing hot pokers in my eardrums.
Bob Simon: Nobody would choose to do that.
Tanya Streeter: No.
But, you know, you sort of find yourself there at that point on your journey, and realize that that's what you signed up for.
So it's all par for the course.
Tanya and other free divers come to the Blue Hole because it's the perfect place to dive.
It's in the remotest part of the Bahamas called Long Island.
Christopher Columbus put it on the map in 1492 but you`ll have trouble finding it on any tourist map today.
The jet set doesn`t come here because jet planes don`t fly here from America or Europe.
There are hardly any hotels, no golf courses, no frozen margaritas.
Just that deep blue hole! This is where William Trubridge lives and trains.
For the last six months, he's led a monastic existence, getting ready to try for another world record.
He wants to make it down to 410 feet on one breath.
This time using a single fin.
To get ready he goes through a unique a set of exercises that he designed himself to make his body more flexible and supple, more like a dolphin.
His waist here is 27 inches.
Then the countdown.
His wife Brittany is on the platform.
His parents are on the shore.
The judges and safety divers are in the water.
Their job: to save him if he loses consciousness.
In any other sport, a spurt of adrenalin would be a good thing.
Not here -- tension, anxiety consume oxygen -- what you need is serenity.
He begins to swallow air.
He is literally swallowing air, packing his lungs with more air than they could receive from breathing alone.
Free divers discovered this technique themselves to expand their lungs.
And in his head? William Trubridge: Sometimes if I'm taking my last breath, a voice will pop into my mind saying, "This-- this is-- could be your last breath of your life.
" Or, "You're gonna die.
" It's kind of like the devil's advocate sitting on your shoulder whose going to think of the worst possible thing and voice that in your mind.
Bob Simon: The devil is still talking to you? William Trubridge: Always.
Yeah.
His lungs are now the size of watermelons.
As he descends, they will be squeezed until they're no larger than oranges.
His heartbeat slows down to 27 beats a minute.
His mother is counting seconds.
Down deep, the Blue Hole becomes the Black Hole.
William Trubridge: You're alone with yourself down there at depth.
And the-- even your body slips away so that it feels like you're just a kind of a speck of consciousness that's floating into the abyss.
You're weightless.
There's no light, no sound and so it's almost as if you're floating in a completely empty tank.
The pressure is causing his brain to absorb more nitrogen.
He is feeling light-headed, kind of drunk.
It happens to all divers deep down.
It's called narcosis.
Suddenly, a bright light on the base plate 410 feet down.
He takes his tag and begins his ascent.
At 100 feet he is joined by his safety divers like a pod of dolphins, they guide him through the most hazardous part of the dive, running out of oxygen can cause a blackout.
The sound you are hearing is William expelling air from his sinuses.
He's made it, but for his record of 410 feet to be ratified by the judges he needs to perform three simple tasks when he gets to the surface, take his goggles off, give the OK sign with his fingers and say, "l'm OK" in that precise order.
Sounds simple but William's brain isn't working.
He does these things in the wrong order.
The judges disqualify him.
Linden Wolbert: He took off the nose clip, made the sign and said "I'm OK" without removing his goggles.
Bob Simon: Boy o' boy.
He had just been down a quarter of a kilometer.
Linden Wolbert: That's correct.
Bob Simon: He did goggles in the wrong order and it cost him his record.
Linden Wolbert: It did.
It sounds like a technicality, but he has to prove that his mind is as tough as his body.
Bob Simon: You got there.
You got deeper than anyone has ever gotten before.
William Trubridge: Yeah.
Yeah.
Bob Simon: And then you took your mask off and said "OK" in the wrong order and it was all for nothing.
William Trubridge: Yeah.
Bob Simon: And you're smiling.
William Trubridge: I feel good because I know I can do it again-- maybe it might not be for a while, but I can definitely do that depth.
Bob Simon: But you did feel narcosis? William Trubridge: Yeah.
Tanya Streeter had a close call with severe narcosis 10 years ago.
She was doing what's called No Limits diving -- going down in a weighted device which moves fast and goes down deeper than most WWII era submarines.
This is Tanya at 525 feet, deeper than anyone had ever gone.
She blew a kiss to the ocean.
But then she became disoriented.
It took her pull a pin -- any longer and she might have stayed down there forever.
But with experiences like this, why go down at all? Tanya Streeter: It's just a little bit difficult for people to fathom, if you excuse the pun, but it's what I love to do.
You know, it's a common phrase in free diving, we don't dive to look around us, we dive to look within ourselves.
It's a journey of self-exploration.
Bob Simon: What can you possibly be exploring in your own mind when your ears hurt and you're out of breath and it's dark and, you know, it's dangerous? Tanya Streeter: I want to know what I've got.
I want to know what I'm made of.