60 Minutes (1968) s46e10 Episode Script
Season 46, Episode 10
There has never been a company quite like Amazon.
Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes.
Amazon has 225 million customers around the world.
Its goal is to sell everything to everyone.
The brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things.
A few weeks ago the company announced it was launching Sunday delivery.
Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps Amazon's boldest venture ever.
Over the last month, 60 Minutes was granted unprecedented access inside Amazon's operations.
If you have ever wondered what happens after you've clicked and placed an order on Amazon, take a look.
If there is such a thing as Santa's workshop, this would be it.
A 1.
2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for the holiday shopping season.
There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what Amazon calls fulfillment centers.
Tomorrow, on what is known as Cyber Monday, it's expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on Amazon.
Jeff Bezos: If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and we were very primitive.
Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon, with an estimated worth of at least $25 billion.
He sold his first book on Amazon in another era, back in 1995.
Charlie Rose: Part of what Amazon customers expect - we want it now.
What's happening at the fulfillment centers that have made that possible? Jeff Bezos: The secret is we're on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers.
And we have gotten better every time.
When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift.
And Charlie Rose: You've got a forklift.
Jeff Bezos: We've got forklifts.
There's very little Amazon doesn't have.
Dave Clark: Right now we're really in the center of what is the physical manifestation of Earth's biggest selection.
Amazon vice president Dave Clark showed us how the process begins.
After the products arrive into the building, they are immediately scanned.
The products are then placed by stackers in what seems to outsiders as a haphazard waya book on Buddhism and Zen resting next to Mrs.
Potato Head Charlie Rose: Here's what I want to know.
This is a Swiffer.
Dave Clark: It is a Swiffer.
Charlie Rose: It's sitting next to the Encyclopedia of World History.
Dave Clark: Of course.
Charlie Rose: That doesn't make any sense to me.
Does it make sense to you? Dave Clark: It, it does.
Charlie Rose: What?! Dave Clark: Can those two things, you look at how these items fit in the bin.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, oh! Dave Clark They're optimized for utilizing the available space.
Charlie Rose: Oh I see.
Dave Clark: And we have computers and algorithmic work that tells people the areas of the building that have the most space to put product in that's coming in at that time.
Amazon has become so efficient with its stacking, it can now store twice as many goods in its centers as it did five years ago.
Dave Clark: Anything you want on, on Earth you're gonna get from us.
Charlie Rose: Anything you want on Earth you're gonna get from us? Dave Clark: Yeah, that's where we're headed I believe.
Once your order is placed, a so-called pick ambassador walks the aisles, plucking and scanning your items before placing them in bins.
Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows exactly how big of a box to use based on the weight and amount of items, your address is slapped onto the box and then a picture is taken of your address label, gadgets known as "shoes" sort and divert the boxes to the appropriate spiral chute, based on the postal code.
This accelerates the delivery process.
The boxes are then loaded onto awaiting trucks, which are assigned to particular regions -- Raleigh, North Carolina, in this case.
Amazon uses more trucks than planes because so many distribution centers have been built near customers.
Charlie Rose: If you can do this with all these products, what else can you do? You guys can organize the world? Dave Clark: Well, you've gotta start somewhere But the company has also started same day deliveries of groceries in two cities -- milk, vegetables and dry goods, to name a few items.
Amazon Fresh began in Seattle and only after five years has it expanded to Los Angeles.
Charlie Rose: What is it you're trying to learn that's taken you five years to learn? Jeff Bezos: How to make it make financial sense.
You know, what's not to love? You order the groceries online and we deliver 'em to your door.
But that's very expensive.
Charlie Rose: But is this the Holy Grail for Amazon? I can deliver it on the same day? Jeff Bezos: It's a possibility.
If we can make this model work, it would be great because it extends the range of products that we can sell.
Amazon is now flowing into other areas far removed from its original mission as an online book seller.
Amazon Fashion, launched this fall, sells high-end clothing Charlie Rose: Tell me what is Amazon today? Jeff Bezos: I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity, putting the customer at the center of everything we do, invention.
We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see what's on the other side.
On the other side of Amazon's online retailing is a business customers know little about.
It's called Amazon Web Services, AWS, and may soon become Amazon's biggest business.
To keep track of its massive online orders, Amazon built a large and sophisticated computing infrastructure.
Amazon figured out it could also expand that infrastructure to store data and run websites for hundreds of thousands of outside companies and government agencies on what is known as the cloud.
Charlie Rose: How much of the Internet, do you run? Jeff Bezos: It's a good question.
It's a lot though.
And people Charlie Rose: Well, what's a lot? What's the neighborhood? Jeff Bezos: I could tell you this.
Most Internet startups and a lot of big Internet companies run on top of AWS.
Netflix very famously, and you could say, "Oh that's very odd because Netflix in a way is a competitor of Amazon.
" Charlie Rose: Other than Netflix, who else uses AWS? Jeff Bezos: Oh, big enterprises, big government institutions Charlie Rose: Like the CIA? Jeff Bezos: The CIA.
Charlie Rose: Does that present any conflict for you, the fact that, that you provide the cloud that the CIA uses for its data? Jeff Bezos: We're building what's called a private cloud for them, Charlie, because they don't want to be on the public cloud.
But the company continues to branch out in areas the public can see and touch.
People read books the same way for centuries until Amazon introduced the Kindle e-reader and Amazon has just released its Kindle Fire HDX tablet - in typical Amazon style, without making a profit on the device.
Charlie Rose: So you sell this at break even? Jeff Bezos: We sell this at break even and then we hope to Charlie Rose: That's a very thin margin.
Jeff Bezos: It's a very thin margin.
But we hope to make money when you Charlie Rose: Sell all the stuff Jeff Bezos:buy books and movies Charlie Rose: That's always been your philosophy.
Jeff Bezos: Exactly.
Bezos believes low costs ensure customer loyalty to Amazon, even if it's at the expense of profits.
Amazon is one of the rare companies that on a quarterly basis shows little profit and yet is beloved by investors.
Jeff Bezos: In the long run, if you take care of customers, that is taking care of shareholders.
We do price elasticity studies.
And every time the math tells us to raise prices.
Charlie Rose: But why don't you do it? Jeff Bezos: Because doing so would erode trust.
And that erosion of trust would cost us much more in the long term.
That long view, Bezos believes, gives Amazon a distinct edge.
Jeff Bezos: The long term approach is rare enough that it means you're not competing against very many companies.
'Cause most companies wanna see a return on investment in, you know, one, two, three years.
Charlie Rose: You don't care about that? Jeff Bezos: I care, but I'm willing for it to be five, six, seven years.
So just that change in timeline can be a very big competitive advantage.
For example, Amazon's profits are redirected to building more distribution centers, like this one in New Jersey.
The more centers it constructs, the closer the customer and the faster the delivery.
And every time a new one goes up, publishers and traditional retailers shudder Charlie Rose: A lotta small book publishers and other smaller companies worry that the power of Amazon gives them no chance.
Jeff Bezos: You gotta earn your keep in this world.
When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it's disruptive to the old way.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, but I mean, there are areas where your power's so great and your margin, you're prepared to make it so thin that you can drive people out of business and, and you have that kind of strength.
And people worry: Is Amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share? Jeff Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie, you know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy.
And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.
Amazon is also pouring money into original television programming that can be streamed to Amazon customerslike its first series, Alpha House, a comedy written by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau about four Republican senators who live in the same townhouse.
Amazon didn't select the show the conventional, Hollywood way.
Alpha House was picked out of thousands of scripts, with the help of Amazon customers who reviewed the shows.
Charlie Rose: You are using your customer base to tell you rather than the opinion of some Jeff Bezos: That's exactly right.
Charlie Rose: Hollywood programmer? Jeff Bezos: We're changing the green lighting process.
Instead of a few you know studio executives deciding what gets green lighted Charlie Rose: So-called tastemakers? Jeff Bezos: Yes.
We're using what some people would call crowd sourcing to help figure this out.
What other industry will Amazon disrupt? At Amazon's secret Lab 126 in California, designers and engineers are experimenting on next generation devices, the contents of which are eagerly speculated about.
Charlie Rose: Are you working on a set top box that will allow people to watch streaming video and not need to have cable television? Jeff Bezos: I can't answer that question (laughs).
I don't wanna talk about the future roadmap of our devices.
So I'll have to just ask you to stay tuned.
Charlie Rose: Soon? Jeff Bezos: Charlie! But during our visit to Amazon's campus in Seattle, Bezos kept telling us that he did have a big surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time Jeff Bezos: Let me show you something.
Charlie Rose: Oh, manOh, my God! Jeff Bezos: This Charlie Rose: This is? Jeff Bezos:isthese are octocopters.
Charlie Rose: Yeah? Jeff Bezos: These are effectively drones but there's no reason that they can't be used as delivery vehicles.
Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.
Charlie Rose: All right.
We're talking about delivery here? Jeff Bezos: We're talking about delivery.
There's an item going into the vehicle.
I know this looks like science fiction.
It's not.
Charlie Rose: Wow! Jeff Bezos: This is early.
This is stillyears away.
It drops the package.
Charlie Rose: And there's the package.
Jeff Bezos: You come and get your package.
And we can do half hour delivery.
Charlie Rose: Half hour delivery? Jeff Bezos: Half hour delivery/and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds, which covers 86 percent of the items that we deliver.
Charlie Rose: And what is the range between the fulfillment center and where you can do this within Jeff Bezos: Thesethisthisthese gener Charlie Rose: 30 minutes? Jeff Bezos: These generations of vehicles, it could be a 10-mile radius from a fulfillment center.
So, in urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the population.
And so, it won't work for everything; you know, we're not gonna deliver kayaks or table saws this way.
These are electric motors, so this is all electric; it's very green, it's better than driving trucks around.
This isthis is all an R&D project.
Charlie Rose: With drones, there's somebody sitting somewhere in front of a screen.
Jeff Bezos: Not these; these are autonomous.
So you give 'em instructions of which GPS coordinates to go to, and they take off and they fly to those GPS coordinates.
Charlie Rose: What's the hardest challenge in making this happen? Jeff Bezos: The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, 'Look, this thing can't land on somebody's head while they're walking around their neighborhood' Charlie Rose: Yeah, that's not good.
Jeff Bezos: That's not good.
Jeff Bezos: And, you know, I don't want anybody to think this is just around the corner.
This is years of additional work from this point.
But this is Charlie Rose: But will 'years' mean five, Jeff Bezos: I think, I, I am, I'm an optimist Charlie.
I know it can't be before 2015, because that's the earliest we could get the rules from the FAA.
My guess is that's, that's probably a little optimistic.
But could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so.
It will work, and it will happen, and it's gonna be a lot of fun.
With the drones possibly taking flight in the not too distant future, Amazon is raising the stakes in the race for faster delivery.
Jeff Bezos believes the company has no choice.
Jeff Bezos: Companies have short life spans Charlie.
And Amazon will be disrupted one day.
Charlie Rose: And you worry about that? Jeff Bezos: I don't worry about it 'cause I know it's inevitable.
Companies come and go.
And the companies that are, you know, the shiniest and most important of any era, you wait a few decades and they're gone.
Charlie Rose: And your job is to make sure that you delay that date? Jeff Bezos: I would love for it to be after I'm dead.
If you're yearning for something that rises above the dysfunctional politics of Washington, we have just the thing, 288 feet above, in fact.
Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Capitol Dome.
It's hard to imagine America without this crowning achievement but when you hear the story of how it was created it becomes hard to imagine that our dome exists at all.
We were given amazing access for this story.
And you're about to see the dome like you've never seen it before.
George Washington knew what he wanted - a building so grand that no one could ever move the capitol from his city.
He'd still find it on Jenkins Hill where he laid the cornerstone.
And he'd might admire the dome, which was built later, for what it overcame.
Built by men who despised each other, topped by a Statue of Freedom cast by a slave - through war and rivalry the dome kept rising.
And, that's American character that runs deep below the skin.
Stephen Ayers: This is where we go from that beautifully richly decorated Capitol to the battleship gray industrials parts of the Capitol building.
Stephen Ayers holds the title "Architect of the Capitol.
" He takes care of the dome and everything below.
Scott Pelley: This is all original? It's all Stephen Ayers: Yes, it is.
All this was designed by Ayers' predecessor, Thomas Walter who proposed a dome no one had asked for.
This is the Capitol that George Washington knew and it's still the center of the Capitol Building today.
Walter won a competition to expand the House and Senate sides to hold all of the politicians coming in from the new states.
But then, Walter thought the original dome looked too small so he drew another.
Stephen Ayers: He posted it on the wall in his office.
And members of Congress would often come by and see that.
And it just stuck immediately.
Didn't even have a cost estimate.
Didn't know how they were gonna construct it, how they were gonna build it, and how they were gonna design it.
Yet it was so beautiful and so wonderful everyone just knew immediately that they had to do it.
Walter drafted it after the great marble domes he'd seen in Europe only to discover that the building couldn't support the weight.
So he conjured an illusion.
Everything, every column, every ornament is cast iron painted to look like stone.
The weight was cut in half.
Scott Pelley: Wow.
Stephen Ayers: This is from 1863 you can see it's signed by Thomas Ustick Walter.
His drawing in the archive reveals there are two domes, an inner dome with a ceiling painted with an "apotheosis" of George Washington ascending into heaven and the outer dome ascending into the sky.
Stephen Ayers: We are climbing up this inner dome the apotheosis of Washington fresco by Constantino Brumidi.
Scott Pelley: That's right below us, Stephen Ayers: Yes.
Scott Pelley: We're on top of that.
Stephen Ayers: That's exactly right and this is the level that we go outside.
Scott Pelley: This is the top.
Stephen Ayers: This is the top.
Scott Pelley: Wow.
What a beautiful view.
It's about 30 stories and because D.
C.
outlawed skyscrapers back in 1910 you can see forever.
For the record, the Washington Monument, still being refurbished, is nearly twice as tall.
Scott Pelley: So there's the National Mall.
They're taking the scaffolding down off the Washington Monument.
Stephen Ayers: Yes.
You can see the Potomac River and Anacostia Rivers coming together.
Scott Pelley: Steven, what did it mean to have this dome completed? Very near the end of the civil war.
Stephen Ayers: To me, it's a measure of our endurance, of our will to succeed, and our will to get it done, and our will to stay together as a country.
It took enormous will.
In Congress, the first vote on the dome passed 71 to 70.
A critic called it "a great mistake.
" And then, came the Civil War - not the war you're expecting-- this was the war between the greats.
The brilliant architect vs.
the genius in charge of construction, Army Captain Montgomery Meigs.
Bill Allen: He was incredibly honest, very efficient Bill Allen was the historian in the office of the architect who told us, that despite Meigs' virtues he was obsessed with winning fame.
Bill Allen: And the way that he chose to do this was to put his name in every place that it occurred to him where it could go.
It went on the bricks of the D.
C.
aqueduct and on its stairs.
M.
C.
Meigs even etched his name on copper plates and laid them between the stones of the Capitol.
Bill Allen: In case 2,000-3,000 years later that Capitol became an archeological site.
The archeologists would discover these plates and know exactly who built the Capitol extension.
But the last straw came when Meigs claimed authorship of the dome signing his name to Walter's drawings.
The two men stopped talking and raised their pens like swords.
Bill Allen: The letters are well worth reading.
They are they are amazing.
We found them in the archive: [Meigs: "You are welcome to assume the authorship ofthe pyramids of Egyptyou have no right tothe new dome" Walter: "If I am not the architect of the new dome I would like to know who is" "[I.]
shall be glad never to receive another line from you.
" Meigs: "I have the honor to inform you that your services are dispensed with".]
Scott Pelley: He fired him.
Bill Allen: He tried to.
Walter, very calmly, writes back and says, "I would like to remind you that my appointment is at the pleasure of the President of the United States.
" The work slowed but planning continued including a debate about what to put on top.
Lonnie Bunch: They decided that they would have a statue that would speak of freedom.
Historian Lonnie Bunch researched the project for Congress.
Lonnie Bunch: And they went to a young American in Rome who was studying, and he came up with this idea to create a statue that had the look of America.
Scott Pelley: Describe her to me in your mind's eye.
Lonnie Bunch: Well, she is this beautiful woman who has some Native American features is capped by this beautiful headdress as reminder that this is a country that was different because it was built first and foremost around the issue of freedom.
Scott Pelley: And one of the men instrumental in casting the statue was a slave named Philip Reid.
Lonnie Bunch: Philip Reid was an enslaved man who was owned by someone who owned a foundry here in Washington.
And that when the statue, initially plaster, came back to the United States, there was a concern about how do you take it apart? Philip was really one of the people who knew how to do this, and he came up with the idea of how to separate the model, how to then cast the model.
He led the people who were making the cast of the bronze statue.
But freedom would be grounded in 1861 when the real Civil War began.
Montgomery Meigs left to become quartermaster general, supplying the Army with all that it needed for victory.
But all money for construction was diverted to the war.
Scott Pelley: One of my favorite stories that I love to tell my friends is that Lincoln ordered the dome to continue as a symbol that the nation would continue and that story turns out to be false.
Matt Wasniewski: Yeah.
Matt Wasniewski, a historian for the House, told us it was the contractor, Janes, Fowler, Kirtland of New York, that resumed work without pay.
They'd delivered 1.
3 million pounds of cast iron and didn't want to see it rust away.
Lincoln didn't mind.
Matt Wasniewski: He has the famous line that if the people see the Capitol going on, it will be a sign that we intend the Union shall go on.
This is the rotunda, you're walking between statues of Washington and Jefferson.
Its just off this room that you find the office of the Speaker of the House John Boehner who administers a lot of what he called the campus.
Scott Pelley: Do you ever not look up? Do you ever take this for granted? John Boehner: Never.
Listen, for a kid who grew up mopping floors at his dad's bar, it's a pretty humbling experience.
Scott Pelley: You've come up in the world.
John Boehner: Just a little.
We went up in the world from the floor of George Washington's original Capitol to the heights of the inner dome.
John Boehner: I told you it'd be beautiful up here.
This is the apotheosis of Washington by Constantino Brumidi.
Scott Pelley: I understand that somewhere in here the artist painted the face of the architect who designed the dome.
John Boehner: It's right over here.
Scott Pelley: Thomas Walter is the one in the long white beard.
The scenes depict American hard work and ingenuity.
And 180 feet below 21st century citizens look up at Washington rising at the center of the city laid down by he and urban planner Pierre L'Enfant.
Stephen Ayers: Look how L'Enfant laid out this city with these radiating streets? Maryland and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Delaware.
Scott Pelley: The Capitol right in the center-- Stephen Ayers: Right in the middle.
Scott Pelley: --and everything proceeds from here.
Stephen Ayers: And you put the Capitol atop this hill.
And that's how you create this iconic symbolism.
Scott Pelley: It was a symbol for the whole nation that the Union would endure.
Now your job is to make the dome endure.
Up here you can see what is hidden from a distance.
The dome is falling apart.
Scott Pelley: Your guys bring in pieces into the office and say, "Hey boss, here's what I found?" Stephen Ayers: You can see the level of rust behind it that is just eating away at the cast iron.
Even worse, there are more than 1,300 serious cracks in the dome.
Architect Stephen Ayers is starting a massive repair project.
He showed us how they'll cover the dome with scaffolding for the next two years -- replace the rusted parts -- and stitch the cracks together with metal sutures.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helped Congress put up nearly 60 million for the work.
Scott Pelley: A lotta people think that you guys can't agree about anything.
And yet, everybody came around to the idea of refurbishing the dome.
Nancy Pelosi: This Capitol belongs to the American people.
It is this place for them to visit.
It is the most identifiable symbol of democracy that there is.
On Dec.
2, 1863, the dome was topped with the statue of freedom.
And below, Congress had been working on freedom too.
It'd passed an Emancipation Act for the District of Columbia.
Scott Pelley: When Philip Reid helped cast the Statue of Freedom, he was a slave.
By the time it's placed on top of the dome, he's a free man.
Lonnie Bunch: He is free.
What happens to him is that he symbolizes so many of the enslaved African-Americans who looked at that dome and saw it as a place of possibility, saw it as a place that said "Here is the freedom that we deserve.
" The titanic struggle that crowned the Capitol is largely forgotten now but next time you look on political gridlock and wonder whether anything can get done - remember how much can rise above the fractured politics of Washington.
The sport in our story tonight is called free diving and it involves going down hundreds of feet on one single breath.
It's an experimental sort because it's revealing human capabilities that had never even been imagined, forcing medical scholars to rewrite their textbooks on human physiology.
It's also a very dangerous sport.
But it's becoming more popular every year, attracting thousands of divers worldwide.
It's Mecca.
It's ultimate playing field is a deep water cave in the Bahamas called Dean's Blue Hole.
Two weeks ago, 32-year-old Nicholas Mevoli of Brooklyn, New York, went there to set a new American record -- 236 feet down without so much as a fin.
He got there and surfaced after three minutes and 38 seconds underwater, but something was wrong.
He looked stunned.
Seconds later, he lost consciousness.
Doctors and medics tried to resuscitate him, but failed.
He died a little more than an hour later.
Why would someone risk his life in these deep dark waters? We went to Dean's Blue Hole last year to explore this burgeoning sport.
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.
Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes.
Amazon has 225 million customers around the world.
Its goal is to sell everything to everyone.
The brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon prides itself on disrupting the traditional way of doing things.
A few weeks ago the company announced it was launching Sunday delivery.
Tonight, for the first time, you will be introduced to perhaps Amazon's boldest venture ever.
Over the last month, 60 Minutes was granted unprecedented access inside Amazon's operations.
If you have ever wondered what happens after you've clicked and placed an order on Amazon, take a look.
If there is such a thing as Santa's workshop, this would be it.
A 1.
2 million square foot distribution center, the size of more than 20 football fields, gearing up for the holiday shopping season.
There are 96 of these warehouses worldwide, what Amazon calls fulfillment centers.
Tomorrow, on what is known as Cyber Monday, it's expected that more than 300 items a second will be ordered on Amazon.
Jeff Bezos: If you go back in time 18 years, I was driving the packages to the post office myself, and we were very primitive.
Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon, with an estimated worth of at least $25 billion.
He sold his first book on Amazon in another era, back in 1995.
Charlie Rose: Part of what Amazon customers expect - we want it now.
What's happening at the fulfillment centers that have made that possible? Jeff Bezos: The secret is we're on, like, our seventh generation of fulfillment centers.
And we have gotten better every time.
When I was driving the packages myself, one of my visualizations of success is that we might one day be big enough that we could afford a forklift.
And Charlie Rose: You've got a forklift.
Jeff Bezos: We've got forklifts.
There's very little Amazon doesn't have.
Dave Clark: Right now we're really in the center of what is the physical manifestation of Earth's biggest selection.
Amazon vice president Dave Clark showed us how the process begins.
After the products arrive into the building, they are immediately scanned.
The products are then placed by stackers in what seems to outsiders as a haphazard waya book on Buddhism and Zen resting next to Mrs.
Potato Head Charlie Rose: Here's what I want to know.
This is a Swiffer.
Dave Clark: It is a Swiffer.
Charlie Rose: It's sitting next to the Encyclopedia of World History.
Dave Clark: Of course.
Charlie Rose: That doesn't make any sense to me.
Does it make sense to you? Dave Clark: It, it does.
Charlie Rose: What?! Dave Clark: Can those two things, you look at how these items fit in the bin.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, oh! Dave Clark They're optimized for utilizing the available space.
Charlie Rose: Oh I see.
Dave Clark: And we have computers and algorithmic work that tells people the areas of the building that have the most space to put product in that's coming in at that time.
Amazon has become so efficient with its stacking, it can now store twice as many goods in its centers as it did five years ago.
Dave Clark: Anything you want on, on Earth you're gonna get from us.
Charlie Rose: Anything you want on Earth you're gonna get from us? Dave Clark: Yeah, that's where we're headed I believe.
Once your order is placed, a so-called pick ambassador walks the aisles, plucking and scanning your items before placing them in bins.
Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows exactly how big of a box to use based on the weight and amount of items, your address is slapped onto the box and then a picture is taken of your address label, gadgets known as "shoes" sort and divert the boxes to the appropriate spiral chute, based on the postal code.
This accelerates the delivery process.
The boxes are then loaded onto awaiting trucks, which are assigned to particular regions -- Raleigh, North Carolina, in this case.
Amazon uses more trucks than planes because so many distribution centers have been built near customers.
Charlie Rose: If you can do this with all these products, what else can you do? You guys can organize the world? Dave Clark: Well, you've gotta start somewhere But the company has also started same day deliveries of groceries in two cities -- milk, vegetables and dry goods, to name a few items.
Amazon Fresh began in Seattle and only after five years has it expanded to Los Angeles.
Charlie Rose: What is it you're trying to learn that's taken you five years to learn? Jeff Bezos: How to make it make financial sense.
You know, what's not to love? You order the groceries online and we deliver 'em to your door.
But that's very expensive.
Charlie Rose: But is this the Holy Grail for Amazon? I can deliver it on the same day? Jeff Bezos: It's a possibility.
If we can make this model work, it would be great because it extends the range of products that we can sell.
Amazon is now flowing into other areas far removed from its original mission as an online book seller.
Amazon Fashion, launched this fall, sells high-end clothing Charlie Rose: Tell me what is Amazon today? Jeff Bezos: I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity, putting the customer at the center of everything we do, invention.
We like to pioneer, we like to explore, we like to go down dark alleys and see what's on the other side.
On the other side of Amazon's online retailing is a business customers know little about.
It's called Amazon Web Services, AWS, and may soon become Amazon's biggest business.
To keep track of its massive online orders, Amazon built a large and sophisticated computing infrastructure.
Amazon figured out it could also expand that infrastructure to store data and run websites for hundreds of thousands of outside companies and government agencies on what is known as the cloud.
Charlie Rose: How much of the Internet, do you run? Jeff Bezos: It's a good question.
It's a lot though.
And people Charlie Rose: Well, what's a lot? What's the neighborhood? Jeff Bezos: I could tell you this.
Most Internet startups and a lot of big Internet companies run on top of AWS.
Netflix very famously, and you could say, "Oh that's very odd because Netflix in a way is a competitor of Amazon.
" Charlie Rose: Other than Netflix, who else uses AWS? Jeff Bezos: Oh, big enterprises, big government institutions Charlie Rose: Like the CIA? Jeff Bezos: The CIA.
Charlie Rose: Does that present any conflict for you, the fact that, that you provide the cloud that the CIA uses for its data? Jeff Bezos: We're building what's called a private cloud for them, Charlie, because they don't want to be on the public cloud.
But the company continues to branch out in areas the public can see and touch.
People read books the same way for centuries until Amazon introduced the Kindle e-reader and Amazon has just released its Kindle Fire HDX tablet - in typical Amazon style, without making a profit on the device.
Charlie Rose: So you sell this at break even? Jeff Bezos: We sell this at break even and then we hope to Charlie Rose: That's a very thin margin.
Jeff Bezos: It's a very thin margin.
But we hope to make money when you Charlie Rose: Sell all the stuff Jeff Bezos:buy books and movies Charlie Rose: That's always been your philosophy.
Jeff Bezos: Exactly.
Bezos believes low costs ensure customer loyalty to Amazon, even if it's at the expense of profits.
Amazon is one of the rare companies that on a quarterly basis shows little profit and yet is beloved by investors.
Jeff Bezos: In the long run, if you take care of customers, that is taking care of shareholders.
We do price elasticity studies.
And every time the math tells us to raise prices.
Charlie Rose: But why don't you do it? Jeff Bezos: Because doing so would erode trust.
And that erosion of trust would cost us much more in the long term.
That long view, Bezos believes, gives Amazon a distinct edge.
Jeff Bezos: The long term approach is rare enough that it means you're not competing against very many companies.
'Cause most companies wanna see a return on investment in, you know, one, two, three years.
Charlie Rose: You don't care about that? Jeff Bezos: I care, but I'm willing for it to be five, six, seven years.
So just that change in timeline can be a very big competitive advantage.
For example, Amazon's profits are redirected to building more distribution centers, like this one in New Jersey.
The more centers it constructs, the closer the customer and the faster the delivery.
And every time a new one goes up, publishers and traditional retailers shudder Charlie Rose: A lotta small book publishers and other smaller companies worry that the power of Amazon gives them no chance.
Jeff Bezos: You gotta earn your keep in this world.
When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it's disruptive to the old way.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, but I mean, there are areas where your power's so great and your margin, you're prepared to make it so thin that you can drive people out of business and, and you have that kind of strength.
And people worry: Is Amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share? Jeff Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie, you know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy.
And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.
Amazon is also pouring money into original television programming that can be streamed to Amazon customerslike its first series, Alpha House, a comedy written by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau about four Republican senators who live in the same townhouse.
Amazon didn't select the show the conventional, Hollywood way.
Alpha House was picked out of thousands of scripts, with the help of Amazon customers who reviewed the shows.
Charlie Rose: You are using your customer base to tell you rather than the opinion of some Jeff Bezos: That's exactly right.
Charlie Rose: Hollywood programmer? Jeff Bezos: We're changing the green lighting process.
Instead of a few you know studio executives deciding what gets green lighted Charlie Rose: So-called tastemakers? Jeff Bezos: Yes.
We're using what some people would call crowd sourcing to help figure this out.
What other industry will Amazon disrupt? At Amazon's secret Lab 126 in California, designers and engineers are experimenting on next generation devices, the contents of which are eagerly speculated about.
Charlie Rose: Are you working on a set top box that will allow people to watch streaming video and not need to have cable television? Jeff Bezos: I can't answer that question (laughs).
I don't wanna talk about the future roadmap of our devices.
So I'll have to just ask you to stay tuned.
Charlie Rose: Soon? Jeff Bezos: Charlie! But during our visit to Amazon's campus in Seattle, Bezos kept telling us that he did have a big surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time Jeff Bezos: Let me show you something.
Charlie Rose: Oh, manOh, my God! Jeff Bezos: This Charlie Rose: This is? Jeff Bezos:isthese are octocopters.
Charlie Rose: Yeah? Jeff Bezos: These are effectively drones but there's no reason that they can't be used as delivery vehicles.
Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.
Charlie Rose: All right.
We're talking about delivery here? Jeff Bezos: We're talking about delivery.
There's an item going into the vehicle.
I know this looks like science fiction.
It's not.
Charlie Rose: Wow! Jeff Bezos: This is early.
This is stillyears away.
It drops the package.
Charlie Rose: And there's the package.
Jeff Bezos: You come and get your package.
And we can do half hour delivery.
Charlie Rose: Half hour delivery? Jeff Bezos: Half hour delivery/and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds, which covers 86 percent of the items that we deliver.
Charlie Rose: And what is the range between the fulfillment center and where you can do this within Jeff Bezos: Thesethisthisthese gener Charlie Rose: 30 minutes? Jeff Bezos: These generations of vehicles, it could be a 10-mile radius from a fulfillment center.
So, in urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the population.
And so, it won't work for everything; you know, we're not gonna deliver kayaks or table saws this way.
These are electric motors, so this is all electric; it's very green, it's better than driving trucks around.
This isthis is all an R&D project.
Charlie Rose: With drones, there's somebody sitting somewhere in front of a screen.
Jeff Bezos: Not these; these are autonomous.
So you give 'em instructions of which GPS coordinates to go to, and they take off and they fly to those GPS coordinates.
Charlie Rose: What's the hardest challenge in making this happen? Jeff Bezos: The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, 'Look, this thing can't land on somebody's head while they're walking around their neighborhood' Charlie Rose: Yeah, that's not good.
Jeff Bezos: That's not good.
Jeff Bezos: And, you know, I don't want anybody to think this is just around the corner.
This is years of additional work from this point.
But this is Charlie Rose: But will 'years' mean five, Jeff Bezos: I think, I, I am, I'm an optimist Charlie.
I know it can't be before 2015, because that's the earliest we could get the rules from the FAA.
My guess is that's, that's probably a little optimistic.
But could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so.
It will work, and it will happen, and it's gonna be a lot of fun.
With the drones possibly taking flight in the not too distant future, Amazon is raising the stakes in the race for faster delivery.
Jeff Bezos believes the company has no choice.
Jeff Bezos: Companies have short life spans Charlie.
And Amazon will be disrupted one day.
Charlie Rose: And you worry about that? Jeff Bezos: I don't worry about it 'cause I know it's inevitable.
Companies come and go.
And the companies that are, you know, the shiniest and most important of any era, you wait a few decades and they're gone.
Charlie Rose: And your job is to make sure that you delay that date? Jeff Bezos: I would love for it to be after I'm dead.
If you're yearning for something that rises above the dysfunctional politics of Washington, we have just the thing, 288 feet above, in fact.
Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Capitol Dome.
It's hard to imagine America without this crowning achievement but when you hear the story of how it was created it becomes hard to imagine that our dome exists at all.
We were given amazing access for this story.
And you're about to see the dome like you've never seen it before.
George Washington knew what he wanted - a building so grand that no one could ever move the capitol from his city.
He'd still find it on Jenkins Hill where he laid the cornerstone.
And he'd might admire the dome, which was built later, for what it overcame.
Built by men who despised each other, topped by a Statue of Freedom cast by a slave - through war and rivalry the dome kept rising.
And, that's American character that runs deep below the skin.
Stephen Ayers: This is where we go from that beautifully richly decorated Capitol to the battleship gray industrials parts of the Capitol building.
Stephen Ayers holds the title "Architect of the Capitol.
" He takes care of the dome and everything below.
Scott Pelley: This is all original? It's all Stephen Ayers: Yes, it is.
All this was designed by Ayers' predecessor, Thomas Walter who proposed a dome no one had asked for.
This is the Capitol that George Washington knew and it's still the center of the Capitol Building today.
Walter won a competition to expand the House and Senate sides to hold all of the politicians coming in from the new states.
But then, Walter thought the original dome looked too small so he drew another.
Stephen Ayers: He posted it on the wall in his office.
And members of Congress would often come by and see that.
And it just stuck immediately.
Didn't even have a cost estimate.
Didn't know how they were gonna construct it, how they were gonna build it, and how they were gonna design it.
Yet it was so beautiful and so wonderful everyone just knew immediately that they had to do it.
Walter drafted it after the great marble domes he'd seen in Europe only to discover that the building couldn't support the weight.
So he conjured an illusion.
Everything, every column, every ornament is cast iron painted to look like stone.
The weight was cut in half.
Scott Pelley: Wow.
Stephen Ayers: This is from 1863 you can see it's signed by Thomas Ustick Walter.
His drawing in the archive reveals there are two domes, an inner dome with a ceiling painted with an "apotheosis" of George Washington ascending into heaven and the outer dome ascending into the sky.
Stephen Ayers: We are climbing up this inner dome the apotheosis of Washington fresco by Constantino Brumidi.
Scott Pelley: That's right below us, Stephen Ayers: Yes.
Scott Pelley: We're on top of that.
Stephen Ayers: That's exactly right and this is the level that we go outside.
Scott Pelley: This is the top.
Stephen Ayers: This is the top.
Scott Pelley: Wow.
What a beautiful view.
It's about 30 stories and because D.
C.
outlawed skyscrapers back in 1910 you can see forever.
For the record, the Washington Monument, still being refurbished, is nearly twice as tall.
Scott Pelley: So there's the National Mall.
They're taking the scaffolding down off the Washington Monument.
Stephen Ayers: Yes.
You can see the Potomac River and Anacostia Rivers coming together.
Scott Pelley: Steven, what did it mean to have this dome completed? Very near the end of the civil war.
Stephen Ayers: To me, it's a measure of our endurance, of our will to succeed, and our will to get it done, and our will to stay together as a country.
It took enormous will.
In Congress, the first vote on the dome passed 71 to 70.
A critic called it "a great mistake.
" And then, came the Civil War - not the war you're expecting-- this was the war between the greats.
The brilliant architect vs.
the genius in charge of construction, Army Captain Montgomery Meigs.
Bill Allen: He was incredibly honest, very efficient Bill Allen was the historian in the office of the architect who told us, that despite Meigs' virtues he was obsessed with winning fame.
Bill Allen: And the way that he chose to do this was to put his name in every place that it occurred to him where it could go.
It went on the bricks of the D.
C.
aqueduct and on its stairs.
M.
C.
Meigs even etched his name on copper plates and laid them between the stones of the Capitol.
Bill Allen: In case 2,000-3,000 years later that Capitol became an archeological site.
The archeologists would discover these plates and know exactly who built the Capitol extension.
But the last straw came when Meigs claimed authorship of the dome signing his name to Walter's drawings.
The two men stopped talking and raised their pens like swords.
Bill Allen: The letters are well worth reading.
They are they are amazing.
We found them in the archive: [Meigs: "You are welcome to assume the authorship ofthe pyramids of Egyptyou have no right tothe new dome" Walter: "If I am not the architect of the new dome I would like to know who is" "[I.]
shall be glad never to receive another line from you.
" Meigs: "I have the honor to inform you that your services are dispensed with".]
Scott Pelley: He fired him.
Bill Allen: He tried to.
Walter, very calmly, writes back and says, "I would like to remind you that my appointment is at the pleasure of the President of the United States.
" The work slowed but planning continued including a debate about what to put on top.
Lonnie Bunch: They decided that they would have a statue that would speak of freedom.
Historian Lonnie Bunch researched the project for Congress.
Lonnie Bunch: And they went to a young American in Rome who was studying, and he came up with this idea to create a statue that had the look of America.
Scott Pelley: Describe her to me in your mind's eye.
Lonnie Bunch: Well, she is this beautiful woman who has some Native American features is capped by this beautiful headdress as reminder that this is a country that was different because it was built first and foremost around the issue of freedom.
Scott Pelley: And one of the men instrumental in casting the statue was a slave named Philip Reid.
Lonnie Bunch: Philip Reid was an enslaved man who was owned by someone who owned a foundry here in Washington.
And that when the statue, initially plaster, came back to the United States, there was a concern about how do you take it apart? Philip was really one of the people who knew how to do this, and he came up with the idea of how to separate the model, how to then cast the model.
He led the people who were making the cast of the bronze statue.
But freedom would be grounded in 1861 when the real Civil War began.
Montgomery Meigs left to become quartermaster general, supplying the Army with all that it needed for victory.
But all money for construction was diverted to the war.
Scott Pelley: One of my favorite stories that I love to tell my friends is that Lincoln ordered the dome to continue as a symbol that the nation would continue and that story turns out to be false.
Matt Wasniewski: Yeah.
Matt Wasniewski, a historian for the House, told us it was the contractor, Janes, Fowler, Kirtland of New York, that resumed work without pay.
They'd delivered 1.
3 million pounds of cast iron and didn't want to see it rust away.
Lincoln didn't mind.
Matt Wasniewski: He has the famous line that if the people see the Capitol going on, it will be a sign that we intend the Union shall go on.
This is the rotunda, you're walking between statues of Washington and Jefferson.
Its just off this room that you find the office of the Speaker of the House John Boehner who administers a lot of what he called the campus.
Scott Pelley: Do you ever not look up? Do you ever take this for granted? John Boehner: Never.
Listen, for a kid who grew up mopping floors at his dad's bar, it's a pretty humbling experience.
Scott Pelley: You've come up in the world.
John Boehner: Just a little.
We went up in the world from the floor of George Washington's original Capitol to the heights of the inner dome.
John Boehner: I told you it'd be beautiful up here.
This is the apotheosis of Washington by Constantino Brumidi.
Scott Pelley: I understand that somewhere in here the artist painted the face of the architect who designed the dome.
John Boehner: It's right over here.
Scott Pelley: Thomas Walter is the one in the long white beard.
The scenes depict American hard work and ingenuity.
And 180 feet below 21st century citizens look up at Washington rising at the center of the city laid down by he and urban planner Pierre L'Enfant.
Stephen Ayers: Look how L'Enfant laid out this city with these radiating streets? Maryland and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Delaware.
Scott Pelley: The Capitol right in the center-- Stephen Ayers: Right in the middle.
Scott Pelley: --and everything proceeds from here.
Stephen Ayers: And you put the Capitol atop this hill.
And that's how you create this iconic symbolism.
Scott Pelley: It was a symbol for the whole nation that the Union would endure.
Now your job is to make the dome endure.
Up here you can see what is hidden from a distance.
The dome is falling apart.
Scott Pelley: Your guys bring in pieces into the office and say, "Hey boss, here's what I found?" Stephen Ayers: You can see the level of rust behind it that is just eating away at the cast iron.
Even worse, there are more than 1,300 serious cracks in the dome.
Architect Stephen Ayers is starting a massive repair project.
He showed us how they'll cover the dome with scaffolding for the next two years -- replace the rusted parts -- and stitch the cracks together with metal sutures.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helped Congress put up nearly 60 million for the work.
Scott Pelley: A lotta people think that you guys can't agree about anything.
And yet, everybody came around to the idea of refurbishing the dome.
Nancy Pelosi: This Capitol belongs to the American people.
It is this place for them to visit.
It is the most identifiable symbol of democracy that there is.
On Dec.
2, 1863, the dome was topped with the statue of freedom.
And below, Congress had been working on freedom too.
It'd passed an Emancipation Act for the District of Columbia.
Scott Pelley: When Philip Reid helped cast the Statue of Freedom, he was a slave.
By the time it's placed on top of the dome, he's a free man.
Lonnie Bunch: He is free.
What happens to him is that he symbolizes so many of the enslaved African-Americans who looked at that dome and saw it as a place of possibility, saw it as a place that said "Here is the freedom that we deserve.
" The titanic struggle that crowned the Capitol is largely forgotten now but next time you look on political gridlock and wonder whether anything can get done - remember how much can rise above the fractured politics of Washington.
The sport in our story tonight is called free diving and it involves going down hundreds of feet on one single breath.
It's an experimental sort because it's revealing human capabilities that had never even been imagined, forcing medical scholars to rewrite their textbooks on human physiology.
It's also a very dangerous sport.
But it's becoming more popular every year, attracting thousands of divers worldwide.
It's Mecca.
It's ultimate playing field is a deep water cave in the Bahamas called Dean's Blue Hole.
Two weeks ago, 32-year-old Nicholas Mevoli of Brooklyn, New York, went there to set a new American record -- 236 feet down without so much as a fin.
He got there and surfaced after three minutes and 38 seconds underwater, but something was wrong.
He looked stunned.
Seconds later, he lost consciousness.
Doctors and medics tried to resuscitate him, but failed.
He died a little more than an hour later.
Why would someone risk his life in these deep dark waters? We went to Dean's Blue Hole last year to explore this burgeoning sport.
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.