from puerto rico. she and her little brother were raised in public housing in the bronx, new york, where she was laying down the law even then. your brother told us that, more than once in this neighborhood, he got beaten up. >> and more than once, i beat up the person who beat him up. ( laughter ) >> pelley: so how did she move from this neighborhood to this one? that's our story tonight. >> simon: this is called lung packing, and william trubridge is doing it to attempt something known as a free dive-- going down more than 400 feet, longer than a football field, on a single breath. he carries no weights, but he'll go down quickly. at 70 feet, he'll lose buoyancy and will be pulled by gravity alone. medical scholars say the sport is revealing human capabilities that are making them rewrite textbooks on human physiology.

>> ( grunting ) >> i'm steve kroft >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm lara logan. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on "60 minutes." people really love snapshot from progressive, but don't just listen to me. listen to these happy progressive customers. i plugged in snapshot, and 30 days later, i was saving big on car insurance. with snapshot, i knew what i could save before i switched to progressive. the better i drive, the more i save. i wish our company had something this cool. you're not filming this, are you? aw! camera shy. snapshot from progressive. test-drive snapshot before you switch. visit progressive.com today. hi victor! mom? i know you got to go in a minute but this is a real quick meal, that's perfect for two! campbell's chunky beef with country vegetables, poured over rice! [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. it fills you up right.

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am i in the best fund for me, or them? search "proprietary mutual funds". yikes, it's best for them. then go to e-trade. we've got over 8,000 mutual funds and not one of them has our name on it. why? because that's not the business we're in. we're in the business of finding the right investments for you. e-trade. less for us. more for you. >> kroft: 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. >> may i take your hat and coat? >> kroft: and by the time the "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 find them competing for our jobs; and according to m.i.t. 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. >> kroft: and you think technology and increased automation is a factor in that? >> erik brynjolfsson: absolutely. >> kroft: 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... >> i'm an automated system. >> kroft: ...and switchboard operators and secretaries to voice recognition technology. >> 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. >> kroft: what is there out there that people would be surprised to learn about in the robotics area, let's say. >> mcafee: there are heavily automated warehouses where there are either very few or no people around. that absolutely took me by surprise. >> kroft: it's on display at this huge distribution center in devens, massachusetts, 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 10,000 pieces of merchandise a day from storage shelf to shipping point faster and more efficiently than human workers ever could. >> bruce welty: we think its part of the new american economy. >> kroft: bruce welty is c.e.o. 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. now, this is the order that she's is filling right on this screen. >> 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. >> kroft: and all of this is preprogrammed? nobody has to sit there and tell these robots where to go? >> welty: no, no, it's all done with algorithms. a lot of mathematics, a lot of science that went into this. >> kroft: customer orders are transmitted from a computer to wi-fi 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. >> 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. >> kroft: you'd think they'd run into each other. >> welty: yeah, you'd think that but it never happens. >> kroft: if you had to replace the robots with people, how many people would you have to hire? >> welty: probably one and a half people for every robot. >> kroft: so it saves you a lot of money? >> welty: yes. >> kroft: 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. >> crossing hallway. >> kroft: 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 m.i.t. think this time may be different. >> brynjolfsson: technology is always creating jobs, 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. >> mcafee: and we ain't seen nothing yet. >> kroft: 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 super-computers and program

them to teach themselves and improve their performance. >> siri: what's the weather like today? >> kroft: it's how apple was able to create siri, the iphone robot... >> siri: here's the weather for today. >> kroft: ...and google its self-driving car. >> brynjolfsson: we've been amazed at how rapidly this has been happening. >> this is jeopardy! >> brynjolfsson: ibm's deep qa system that plays "jeopardy," we had a contest here that played against our best m.i.t. 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. >> 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. >> kroft: and it is putting new categories of jobs in the sites

of automation-- the 60% 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. >> mcafee: we absolutely are creating new jobs, new companies, and entirely new industries these days. when... 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. >> kroft: because they don't have them? because they can't find them? because they don't need them? >> mcafee: because they... they can't... 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. >> kroft: 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 of 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% 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... >> kroft: that was the brainchild of rodney brooks, a pioneer who ran the artificial intelligence lab at m.i.t. before launching i-robot, one of the most successful robotics companies in the u.s. this is his latest progeny, a friendly, affordable chap named baxter. >> 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. >> kroft: uh-huh. such as? >> 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... find the object and grab it and bring it over and put it to another spot. >> kroft: baxter costs $22,000, and can be trained to do a new task by a co-worker in a matter of minutes. it can also be upgraded like an ipad with new software as new

applications are developed. >> brooks: and when you're training it... >> kroft: brooks and investors in his new start-up, 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. >> 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. >> kroft: baxter costs 22 grand? >> brooks: yep. >> kroft: how long does he last? >> brooks: it lasts three years. >> kroft: three years? >> brooks: so you can think that as 6,500 hours. >> kroft: i think it works out to about $3.40 an hour? >> brooks: about that, yeah. >> kroft: right, $3.40, that's probably the wages of the chinese worker, right? >> brooks: it's just about right there now. >> kroft: so here you could buy one of these robots and it would be like getting a chinese worker? >> brooks: in... in a manner of speaking. >> kroft: 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 is the c.e.o. >> 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. >> kroft: 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. >> brynjolfsson: i think that those workers in china, in india, are more in the bull's- eye of this automation tidal wave that we are talking about than the american workers. >> kroft: but even if offshore manufacturing returns to the u.s., most of the jobs will go to robots. >> 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.

>> kroft: and what are the people going to do? >> mcafee: that's the $64,000 question. 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. >> kroft: it brings to mind stanley kubrick's "2001: a space odyssey" and the rebellious computer robot, hal. technologically speaking, we are just about there. >> open the pod bay doors, hal. >> hal: i'm sorry, dave. this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. >> kroft: 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. >> kroft: we wanted to leave you on this positive note. >> 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.

>> cbs money watch update sponsored by: >> good evening. oracle says the government warned of a serious hacking risk. the u.s. treasury will not mint a trillion dollar coin to avoid the debt ceiling. and chevy rolled out a new corvette, hoping to reinvigorate the brand. i'm jeff glor. cbs news.

>> pelley: interviews with supreme court justices are rare, but tonight, even more so because, in 223 years, there has never been a justice 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. this is where you grew up? >> sonia sotomayor: in a public housing project. i lived in this one on the corner. hold on. hola. ¿como estas? >> welcome to your old neighborhood. >> sotomayor: gracias. >> kroft: 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. you know, your brother told us that, more than once in this neighborhood, he got beaten up. >> sotomayor: yep.

and more than once, i beat up the person who beat him up. ( laughter ) >> pelley: you stood up for your brother. >> sotomayor: oh, you asked me the other day if i was a tough cookie and... >> pelley: a tough cookie who never crumbled at a setback. >> 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. >> pelley: sonia sotomayor set her mind to being a judge at the age of ten, and three president's 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.

your first day working here-- terrifying? >> sotomayor: overwhelmingly terrifying. i was so nervous that day that my knees knocked, and i thought everybody in the court room could hear them knocking. >> pelley: well, come on. you'd been a federal judge for more than 15 years at that point. >> sotomayor: i had not been a supreme court justice. it's a very different stage. >> pelley: 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 eight, the plot of her life was rewritten by diabetes. the doctors told you because of your type 1 diabetes...

>> sotomayor: type 1 diabetes. at any rate... >> pelley: ...you couldn't be a cop. >> 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. >> objection! >> pelley: so, we are sitting in the supreme court today because you read nancy drew and watched perry mason on tv? >> sotomayor: that's exactly right. ( laughs ) >> pelley: her body would forever be dependent on insulin, but her ambitions were set free. >> sotomayor: i had a life in which i was in a hurry. >> pelley: how long did you expect to live? >> sotomayor: at that time, it was not unusual for most juvenile diabetics to die in their 40s. >> pelley: and this was hanging over you, this was something you thought about? >> 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. >> kroft: 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. >> sotomayor: they can be evil. i don't know that, before i came to the d.a.'s office, that i understood that there were some people who were that bad. it's one of the reasons i left the d.a.'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. >> pelley: are some people beyond redemption? >> 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. >> pelley: after four years with the d.a. 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. 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.. >> sotomayor: his words. >> pelley: ...as "one tough bitch." >> sotomayor: yeah. ( sighs ) >> pelley: and when you heard that, you thought what? >> 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. >> pelley: is his description in any way unfair? >> sotomayor: probably not. >> pelley: she's been called a lot of things but, she told us, more than "madam justice," she prefers another title. >> sotomayor: it's "sonia from the bronx." >> pelley: what does it mean to be sonia from the bronx? >> sotomayor: it means to be a part of this particular community... how are you? ...a vibrant, loving, giving community. and it's something very special. >> pelley: 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: don't ever stop dreaming, don't ever stop trying. there's courage in trying. >> pelley: why is it important to you? >> 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. >> pelley: her own inspiration was her mother, celina sotomayor, who would end up raising the children mostly alone. your father was an alcoholic? >> sotomayor: he was. >> pelley: did you understand what that meant as a child? >> sotomayor: no. i had sort of a childlike appreciation that he couldn't help himself. i also watched him die from drinking. >> pelley: he died when she was nine. 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. do you think anyone ever resented the notion that you might have had a door opened for you by affirmative action? >> 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 going to get in, i was stopped by the school nurse and asked why i was sent the "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. >> pelley: 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. 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. >> sotomayor: people sometimes don't understand that judges 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.

>> pelley: on affirmative action, her "personal experience" has been powerful. is there a role for it today? >> 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. >> pelley: 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 nothing to do with it. >> pelley: i suspect you may have had something to do with it along the way. ( laughter ) >> sonia sotomayor: i think my mom is too fond of not taking enough credit. >> celina sotomayor: sonia, you always were in charge. ( laughter ) >> pelley: 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 sotomayor: 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. >> pelley: that's where the stubbornness comes from. >> 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." >> welcome to the cbs spores update presented by e.trade. i'm james brown in new york with a will be ahead to next weekend's conference championship games. the new england patriots defeated the houston texans this evening and will host the baltimore ravens for the a.f.c. title sunday night at 6:30 p.m. eastern. earlier in the n.f.c., top-seeded atlanta held off seattle. sunday they will host the san francisco 49ers for the n.f.c. championship at 3:00 eastern. for more sports news and information, go to cbssports.com. smoke?

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>> simon: ever tried to hold your breath for as long as you can? most of us have.

well, this is a story about people who hold their breath for a really long time and dive down to depths never even approached before. the sport is called free diving, and it involves going down hundreds of feet into cold and dark waters on one single breath. it's considered an extreme sport because it is very dangerous. it's an experimental sport because it is revealing human capabilities which had never even been imagined, forcing medical scholars to rewrite their textbooks on human physiology. it's becoming more popular every year, and our story might encourage more people to try it... or not. 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. >> ten seconds. >> simon: trubridge is also a world champion in the competitive sport of free diving. >> three, two, one... >> simon: here he is getting ready to dive 331 feet, twice the height of the statue of liberty on a single breath. >> five, six, seven... >> simon: 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 loses buoyancy and gets pulled down by gravity alone. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> simon: 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 ten seconds. >> nose clip. look at the judges. >> simon: a new world record, 331 feet. that's 101 meters. five years ago, the record was 80 meters. ( applause ) 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. >> simon: isn't there a certain limit of underwater that's just... you can't go beyond it without dying? >> trubridge: definitely, it's... 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. >> simon: 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 breast stroke 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. >> simon: during her career as a free diver, tanya streeter held ten 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. >> streeter: as you dive, the... 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... it hurts. i've described it as an elephant sitting on my chest, stabbing hot pokers in my eardrums. >> simon: nobody would choose to do that. >> streeter: no. but, you know, you sort of find yourself there on... at that point on your journey, and realize that that's what you signed up for. so, it... it's all par for the course. >> simon: tanya and other free divers go to the remotest part of the bahamas, called long island, which is the mecca of free diving. christopher columbus put long island 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. right off the beach, there is a massive limestone cavern called dean's blue hole. it is 663 feet deep, and it is dangerous. a few days after we left, a teenager dove into the blue hole and didn't come up. his body was never found. 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 adrenaline 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? >> trubridge: sometimes, if i'm taking my last breath, a voice will pop into my mind saying, "this is... could be your last breath of your life," or, "you're going to die." it's kind of like the devil's advocate sitting on your shoulder who's going to think of the worst possible thing and voice that in your mind. >> simon: the devil is still talking to you? >> trubridge: always. yeah. >> simon: 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. >> trubridge: you're alone with yourself down there at depth. 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.

>> simon: 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. >> trubridge: ( grunting ) >> simon: the sound you are hearing is william expelling air from his sinuses. >> trubridge: ( grunting ) >> simon: 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 okay sign with his fingers, and say i'm okay, 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 okay" without removing his goggles. >> simon: boy, oh, boy. he had just been down a quarter of a kilometer. >> wolbert: that's correct. >> simon: he did goggles in the wrong order and it cost him his record. >> wolbert: it did. >> simon: it sounds like a technicality, but he has to prove that his mind is as tough as his body. you got there. you got... you got deeper than anyone has ever gotten before. >> trubridge: yeah. yeah.

>> simon: and then, you took your mask off and said okay in the wrong order, and it was all for nothing. >> trubridge: yeah. >> simon: and you're smiling. >> trubridge: i feel good because i... i know i can... i can do it again-- maybe it might not be for a while, but i can definitely do that depth. >> simon: but you did feel narcosis? >> trubridge: yeah. >> simon: tanya streeter had a close call with severe narcosis ten 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 world war ii-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 17 agonizing seconds to remember she had to pull a pin. any longer and she might have

stayed down there forever. but with experiences like this, why go down at all? >> streeter: it's just a little bit difficult for people to fathom, if you excuse the pun, but it's... it's what i love to do. you know, it's... 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. >> 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? >> streeter: i want to know what i've got. i want to know what i'm made of. >> simon: when we watched this, we thought about other sports-- running, climbing, boxing, swimming. they've all been essential for the survival of the human race. but descending into blackness

where there's no air? yet, free diving is becoming more popular every year. >> go to 60minutesovertime.com to explore the mysterious blue hole through the eyes of our team. [ male announcer ] we've all read the reports. seen the studies. fast food restaurants are catching an earful these days. too much fat. too much cholesterol. too much too much. so when the american heart association says something positive about a fast food restaurant, that's news, too, isn't it? subway is proud to be the first restaurant with meals to earn the american heart association heart check. look for the "heart check" on many tempting subway fresh fit meals. subway. eat fresh. scroll... tap... pinch... and zoom... in your car. introducing the all-new cadillac xts with cue. ♪ don't worry.

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>> pelley: now, an update on a 2008 story that we called "the wasteland" on how discarded electronics are disassembled and recycled under appalling conditions in china. our story uncovered how a colorado company, executive recycling, and its c.e.o., brian richter, illegally shipped toxic electronic waste to china for disposal. this is a photograph from your yard, the executive recycling yard... >> brian richter: uh-huh. >> pelley: we followed this container to hong kong. >> richter: okay. >> pelley: and i wonder why that would be. >> richter: hmm. i have no clue. >> pelley: well, last month, a federal jury in denver found plenty of clues and convincing evidence. they convicted richter and a colleague of multiple counts of mail fraud, environmental

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. cbs five eyewitness news in high definition out of control violence in okay land has people calling for backup, but what's the likelihood the national guard will come. >> looks like, we have created an artificial demand. >> the nra makes another statement as they continue to argon control. keep the heaters on. why tonight will be the coldest night of the year so far. good evening, thank you for joining us. the new year is off to a violent start in oakland. on friday, four people were killed in separate street shootings. now some people are calling for the