safe driver, paperless, paid-in-full, multi-car and joey fatone. ♪ savin' you five hundred ♪ i'm savin' you five hundred we have auto-tune, right? oh, yeah. that's a hit! all: yeah! >> tonight nbc news goes on assignment. >> people have idea this is a factory. >> they're inside the only place in the world where they will do this. >> looks like a happy dog. >> clone your pet. >> cloned. >> six of them. all clones. >> they're all clones. >> genetic carbon copies of cute little pup pass and rough and ready crime fighters. >> what might they clone next?

>> it would be an amazing feet. an impossible feat. >> keith morrison reports on the challenge of a lifetime. tech billionaire of facebook and napster and it's nothing more than attacking cancer. >> they're like little computers. >> a revolutionary therapy that's saving lives like hers. >> i found out i was cancer free. >> reborn. >> yes, reborn. i think this billionaire is on to something. >> but first richard with an nbc news exclusive. >> i let my family down and my nation down. >> why should i believe you? >> he's the young american that went from the ivy league to isis. >> he asked to help isis bring down planes. >> why did he join and why did he return? >> they just got more brutal and brutal. >> you saw heads on a stake?

>> yeah. >> tonight a dark journey inside isis. >> you see madness in their eyes. >> that story now. on assignment. >> good evening and welcome to on assignment. i'm lester holt. we take you into the heart of the terrorist world. an american that joined isis in syria returned to reveal the inner workings of the terrorist group. he told his story exclusively to richard engle. >> for the first 19 months the u.s. government has been hiding a valuable intelligence asset somewhere in new york. this week they revealed him but only to us. we have been asked to call him only mo and when fbi agents brought him out he didn't look like a dangerous criminal but make no mistake, he has pled guilty to two terrorism charges because in 2014 he spent five

months in syria training with isis. >> i let my family down. i let my nation down and i let god down. and i have a lot to make up for. >> so are you in this interview and other places apologizing? >> absolutely. >> why should i believe you? that you really regretted it? you could say now you're face a difficult situation and you have to say it was a big mistake. >> well, i mean, i took my steps on my own going in. i also took a lot of steps on my own getting out and i'm helping in every sense that i can to help rid the world of the evil that i saw. >> mo is awaiting sentencing and hopes that cooperating with the government will buy him some leniency. he came here from bangladesh when he was a baby and grew up

in new york city. >> did you grow up in a religiously extreme environment? >> no not at all. >> what was it like to be a kid in your house? >> i don't imagine anything different from any other new yorker. at least a muslim new yorker because there's some religion involved. yeah, sure but i grew up playing basketball, going to school. >> mo's high school paper published an essay he wrote praising super heros including albert einstein, winston churchill and mr. burke his english teacher. he went to community college, made the deans list and then caught the eye of a columbia university recruiter. >> there you are. one of the top schools of the country. very hard to get in. >> yeah. i was excited. >> until a teacher in a class about islam played a provocative and controversial film called submission. >> it's a video about a woman in a transparent burka. she had writing painted on her

and it was one of the most offensive things. it made me feel alienated and it's an emotional thing and still bothers me. >> do you think this video was a turning point for you? >> i think it's catalytic and i decided i want to be religious and i want to observe again so i became observant. >> he left columbia and for awhile drove a taxi through the streets of new york city. he was repelled by what he saw as temptation all around him but he didn't take his questions of faith and identity to his local mosque. >> where do you look for these answers about islam? >> mine was mostly independent or what i thought was independent. online. >> according to a former fbi agent that tracked islamic radicals social media has been isis's main method for recruiting americans. >> first of all they have the communications with them on social media and then they go to apps where it allows them to do

peer to peer communication. >> influenced by what he saw online he began dreaming of going to syria where he believed a pure islamic state was rising. >> is it possible that in the spring of 2014 that someone wouldn't have known what isis was all about? how brutal the group was? >> if you look back in the united states for example most of the experts that you are talking to, they all say hey, isis, they only care about establishing it. they are not like al qaeda. they're not looking to expand terrorism. >> mo says he wasn't sure he was ready to leave the u.s. behind until one day in 2014, the fbi came knocking. >> why did the fbi come to visit you? >> they were wondering about my activity online. >> so they were following your social media. >> yeah. >> they thought it was suspicious. >> they thought it was suspicious. they asked about if i had any inclination to go? i was mostly honest. i did lie a little. i was kind of like i'm

interested in going. i'm interested in syria. >> two days later mo pretended to go to work but headed instead to the airport. >> it was a spur of the moment decision. >> it happened very fast. i bought the ticket and the night before i packed my bags left a letter to my parents and -- >> what did you say? >> i was planning to not come back. it was a fair well. >> he was able to board a flight to istanbul and make his way to a turkish town that served as a stop over for thousands of foreign fighters on their way to syria. he made contact with isis over twitter and was driven with four other recruits to the border where they ran into trouble. >> we were caught by turkish border control. >> they beat the crap out of us. >> punching you, kicking you. >> kicking, metal rod, the butts of their aks. >> and then. then they told us to cross into

syria. >> they told you to go into syria. >> yeah. they had stopped you and arrested you and beaten you and they said okay get lost. just go into syria? >> yeah and they were pointing a gun and i just did what i had to. i just ran. >> mo soon reached a safe house and the first thing he was asked to do as a residence of the islamic state was to fill out a form. >> it was just a guy that took us separately and asked a bunch of background type questions. >> there was one box where they could say special skills. on your form it said studied at columbia university. has plan for taking down aircraft. could be useful. what is that? >> well, i guess that's how he wrote it. he said do you want to be a fighter, a fighter, or a fighter? and i was just trying to think of an excuse not to be a fighter. >> but you were saying don't use me as a fighter because i'm some terrorism mastermind? >> huh?

>> don't send me off to the front lines because i can be useful in other ways. >> it's very shortsighted but it seemed to me that it would save my skin. >> two weeks after the initial processing, mo was sent to an islamic training camp like this one where he claims he was shocked by what the isis instructors were saying. >> what kind of things were they telling you? >> that perspectives on, for instance, slave girls. it was something that they perpetrated and thought of as actual slavery and enslavement of just regular civilians and people. >> he says he was appalled but things were about to get much worse. he headed for military training next. >> a weapons class. a tactical class, and there would be like a physical training class. >> what kind of weapons did you train on? >> they gave me an ak and they had you memorize it and everyone

got three bullets a person. >> so they didn't want you to use too much ammunition. >> they were low on ammunition i guess. >> did they show you how to make bombs? >> no, they explained how to use it when someone brings it. >> the isis videos that i have seen and by now everyone has seen are so brutal. >> all of those videos came out a couple of months after me being there. they just got more brutal and brutal right in front of me. it's like a blood thirst i guess. people just had a readiness for violence. >> the group was attracting violent people do you think? >> absolutely. that's the bulk of the people that were going there. >> did you see evidence of the gore that we see in the isis propaganda? >> toward the end, as things were getting more and more serious, i did see severed heads on spiked polls. >> you saw heads on a stake. >> yeah. >> what did you think? >> i just blocked it out.

i tried to ignore it. >> you thought that this was going to be an islamic utopia you said. >> yeah. >> what was it like when you got there. >> dystopia. >> dystopia. >> all sorts of crazy. you can see madness in their eyes. >> you have been presenting yourself as a victim. someone that fell for their propaganda but you went and joined a group that is known the world over for its savagery and brutality. >> i'm not saying i'm a victim. i've seen the victims there. i don't support terrorism and islam and the idea of islam. >> lots of people like islam and want to follow their religion and don't join an international terrorism group. >> see that's the trap. it's a very, very thin line. >> he said he was seduced by isis. he was effectively a victim. do you buy that? >> i don't buy it. this is bologna to be honest

with you. there's an individual that went, joined isis. and when he applied to join the organization on the form he asked to help isis bring down planes. this cannot be -- this is a person who went to join isis with terrorist intentions on his mind. >> did you do any fighting? >> no. >> when did you decide you were going to leave? >> one morning everyone was busy and they left me alone for an hour so i took that chance and i walked out. >> he found a sympathetic syrian that promised to help him sneak back across the border. >> i remember sitting in an internet cafe waiting for the guy to pick me up and i was sitting there for over 12 hours. i was trying to e-mail my parents. >> saying i'm trying to come home. i made a terrible mistake but i

might not survive. >> i may be caught and i may be killed and i was shaking in my hands. that's what terror is and that's what evil is. >> as soon as he got to the turkish side he headed for the nearest u.s. conciliate. american agents escorted him all the way back to the states where he was promptly arrested by the fbi. he's been in jail ever since and faces up to 25 years in prison. the government allowed him to speak to us hoping his story would deter other young americans from falling for isis's pitch. >> i have a real message and that's the most important thing. the message is that islamic state is not bringing islam to the world and people need to know that. and i'll say that until the day i die. >> how genuine the promise from an american that previously pledged his life to isis really is will be for a federal judge to decide. >> coming up, love your pet? how about a spare set? >> when you see the dogs, do you

think clones or do you think puppies? >> cloning your dog. >> it's so incredible. >> why the man behind it all is breeding controversy. >> it's going to be very hard for the scientific community to get behind him. if you suffer fr, then you'll know how uncomfortable it can be. but did you know that the lack of saliva can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath? well, there is biotene, specially formulated with moisturizers and lubricants... biotene can provide soothing relief and it helps keep your mouth healthy too. biotene, for people who suffer from a dry mouth. ... 83% try to eat healthy. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day women's gummies. complete with key nutrients we may need... ...plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day vitacraves gummies.

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a cancer break through. >> it's a man hat tan project for curing cancer with the immune system. >>nd harry smith visits a science lab with cute little clones. >> the only place in the world where you can get one of these. want one? onto the shag carpeting... ...and his pants ignited into flames, causing him to stop, drop and roll. luckily jack recently had geico help him with renters insurance. because all his belongings went up in flames. jack got full replacement and now has new pants he ordered from banana republic. visit geico.com and see how affordable renters insurance can be. real is touching a ray. amazing is moving like one. real is making new friends. amazing is getting this close. real is an animal rescue.

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>> there's one place where you can buy a pet clone of your very own. >> harry smith travelled to asia. >> we're in south korea. a country proud of its technology based economy but we didn't come to seoul to look at the latest electronic gadgets. we're here to see puppies. if you have a dog in your home you love more than some family members you can get it cloned here. an exact genetic duplicate and if you think that's impressive you'll want to hear what they want to clone next. >> meet laura and richard. they travelled 5,000 miles from their home in the north of england to korea to see two

little boxer pups. these pups are clones of laura's dog dillon and this is the only place in the world where you can get your pet dog cloned. >> do they look like dylan. >> i saw him when he was a few weeks old and they look just like him. >> laura help with the business and walks dog. richard says laura is dog mad. dog mad in a good way. >> when you see the dogs and the puppies do you think clones or do you think puppies? >> puppies i think. it's too hard to comprehend that i took these samples from my dog after they died and these two puppies have come from that. it's so unbelievable and incredible. >> laura's 8-year-old dog died quite suddenly leaving her an emotional wreck. >> would it be too much to say he was your best friend? >> he was my total best friend yeah. i spent more time with him in those 8 years than i did with

anyone else. >> in her grief he remembered seeing a story on television about dog cloning. >> and i remember thinking i would love to do that with him but you can never warrant spending all of that money. where would you get that money from? then the day after he died and it's 65,000 pounds. >> you heard that right. the sticker price is $100,000. laura was there when their puppies were born. >> 780 dogs and including these terriers for the billionaire and his wife. >> we have a yorkshire from the united states. >> clones. >> yes, they're all clones. >> yes. >> they're all clones.

>> yes they're all clones. >> just want to make sure. >> here we have another clone for a client in india. >> right. >> there you go. >> looks like a happy dog. >> yeah. >> a happy clone. >> the man behind all of this dog cloning is a scientific super star in south korea. in 2005, he cloned the first dog. a feat time magazine hailed as the invention of the year. just the year before he created a worldwide sensation when he claimed to have cloned a human embryo. a dramatic scientific first. >> do you trust this guy? >> i can't trust him. no. >> dr. beth shapiro is an evolutionary biologist and genius grant awardee. >> he claimed to have cloned a human embryo. >> right he did. >> and the whole world said oh my gosh look what happened. >> right. >> what happened to the science. >> it turns out that he hasn't actually cloned a human embryo

and he had done some things that were not favoredly looked upon by the scientific and global community. >> investigators found that his data on human cloning had been fabricated and female lab workers were pressured into donating their eggs. he lost his job and lost face. he vowed he would spend the rest of his life repenting. >> anyone who has lied very publicly and been found guilty of that i think it's going to be very hard for the scientific community to get behind him. >> but he has come roaring back. building the bio tech research foundation into an international cloning megabusiness. and while we were welcomed at his lab, he turned down our request for an interview offering instead a proxy, researcher david kim. >> i think people have an idea that bizarre cloned animals are coming out of these dogs and they have two heads and three

legs. but this is some frankenstein factory. >> cloning itself has been sort of warped because of the science fiction movies and all of that but it itself is relatively very basic. >> we watched him perform the procedures necessary to clone a dog. he removes eggs from a donor dogs ovaries and then all he needs is a dna sample from a living or recently deceased animal. >> cloning a dog or a horse or in these pictures a pig, the dna is lit up with dye and then sucked out of the egg. then the dna from the animal you want to clone replaces it. shoot in a little electricity and presto soon you have an embryo forming. not exactly biology 101. for laura and richard it worked twice. >> i would literally like could not believe it.

>> screaming. there's two. and i think god. >> oh no, do we have the pair. >> they offered the second pup as a gift but there's a different kind of cost to producing a healthy clone. numerous surgical procedures on otherwise healthy dogs from the egg donor to the surrogates that carrie the cloned pups to term. >> there's a lot of medical procedures that have to take place in order for you to get your successful clone. >> yeah. >> is that all worth it? >> i mean that's the part that i do feel the worst about knowing that these dogs are having an unnecessary operation because i'm such a dog lover. >> laura spent a lot of time at the lab and is convinced the dogs here are treated humanely. >> dr. shapiro doesn't object to some cloning for science she objects to it for pets.

>> if they give you $100,000 you can give them an identical copy of a beloved pet it's not fair. >> i have the genetic replica. looks like fido, right, barks like fido. >> there will be behaviors, physical traits and other aspects of this dog that will be identical to the dog that once lived but it's not the same dogs. identical twins are clones of each other but they're different people. >> some people see this program as playing on the emotions of people like you who are grieving so desperately for the animal they lost. >> yeah. >> do you feel exploited at all in this process? >> no. not in anyway whatsoever. i see it probably as -- it's a way to deal with my grief and just to make me feel like there's still a part of him somewhere in this world. >> but dr. wong is doing more

than cloning warm fuzzy puppies. half a world away in rural western pennsylvania another of his clones is learning a bit more than how to sit, fetch and roll over. >> good boy. he is being taught how to identify different types of explosives. >> that's black powder. he is going to be an explosives dog. >> specter is the clone of an animal of rare courage and exceptional ability. a once in a lifetime u.s. special forces dog. >> can you tell me the dog's name or where the dog working right now. >> the dog's name is branko and assigned to a unit that i can't tell you who he is with. >> classified? >> classified yes. >> he has 30 years experience working with police and military dogs. a former cop, he now runs shallow creek kennels. >> training dogs and their handlers for law enforcement. >> somebody calls you up one day and says do you want to work with a clone?

what was your response? >> i laughed at first. i didn't think it would work. i didn't think there would be any difference between a normal puppy compared to a cloned puppy and we were proven wrong. >> specter is the third clone of that u. s. special forces dog. the first two are already working for the atf s.w.a.t. team. >> just for the record, this is a good idea right? >> this is a good idea. >> at five months old his bite is already much worse than his bark. >> oh, man. >> those are some serious jaws. >> so the genes are the same. the dog looks the same. is there something else you're sensing about this clone. >> they seem to have previous life experience. they seem to be more mature and more focused than a puppy should be. >> does it freak you out a little bit? >> yes. absolutely. it's like a science experiment. yes. >> and if cloning pets and combat dogs isn't impressive

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>> he's involved in a multimillion dollar deal to clone cattle to feed beef hungry china and working to modify pigs for human organ transplants. but if you've seen jurassic park get this, he has been to the arctic to recover remains of extinct species like the mammoth that walked the earth 3,000 years ago. >> he plans to clone one using presumably the same process that he would use to clone a dog. is that possible? >> it is not possible. >> why not. >> in order to clone something using this process one needs not only a very well preserved cell but a cell that is actually still alive and in anything that is dead like a mammoth has been dead. the most recent ones lived about 3,000 years ago, that is way too much time to have passed for any cell to still be alive.

>> shapiro has done her own research in the arctic. hunting for remains. she is an expert in ancient dna. >> what species would you like to bring back if you could. and the author of ironically enough how to clone a mammoth. >> why do you think he's trying to clone a mammoth? >> his career is checkered with things that he is doing to create attention. it would be an amazing feat. an impossible feat and he would be famous. >> the fact is a number of labs are trying to bring back extinct species. they're hoping to unearth viable dna to clone a mammoth and surely someone somewhere is trying to clone a human. >> if i get good at cloning dogs might i get good at or better at trying to clone a human emotions

p embryo. >> humans are a species that for better or for worse seem to be very hard to figure out how to do this for. that's not to say it's impossible. >> while the world waits for that or the cloned mammoth laura and richard will have to wait for their dogs to clear quarentine before they can bring them home. >> $100,000. does that feel like money well spent? >> at the end of the day it's only money. we have the dogs. it's money well spent. >> he's beautiful. >> laura is also adopting the two surrogates that gave birth to her cloned pups. she is dog mad, remember? >> show us how you play. >> coming up. >> you're looking for vulnerabilities. you're looking for broken things in order to go and fix them. >> he's the tech world pioneer on cancers next frontier. >> ten days into the new year i found out i was cancer free.

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you may not know the name sean parker but you sure know what he's been a part of. facebook, nap administer, spotify. now he's bringing his silicon valley smarts to something bolder. curing cancer. call it the ultimate computer hack. keith morrison reports from california. >> it's a chilly spring evening in deepest bel air california. too chilly for this sort of

thing, quite frankly. and yet this flashy ritual is the most ordinary thing about the remarkable doings just outside his back door. >> i don't feel like i'm in my backyard. it's the weirdest feeling. >> his name is sean parker and this is his backyard in which he built a giant glass atrium for his dinner guest who will be entertained by the likes of lady gaga all to announce he intends to do something no one has ever been able to do. >> it's a man hat tan project for curing cancer with the immune system. >> billionaires. think they can do anything. what in heaven's name possessed you to think that you could wade into a field where the world's great medical minds have been working so hard for so long and make a big difference? >> well, you're talking to somebody that has an entrepreneur has waded into a lot of fields and somehow managed to have a really big

difference. >> which may sound like the ultimate except this guy may actually be on to something. >> i'm sean parker. >> what are you doing? >> this is how most people were introduced to sean parker. played as a greedy arrogant party boy by justin timberlake in the social network. >> the thing that hurts the most is when someone's only impression of me comes from having watched that film and they have preconceived notions about who i am. all of which are completely wrong. >> what's right? well he was the first president of facebook and he certainly has been disruptive. in high school he got into trouble with the fbi for illegal hacking. at 19 he and an internet buddy named sean fanning created napster. the music sharing service that up ended the recording industry. >> we were troubled kids that

weren't totally happy with the life we were living and we were incredibly curious. >> and now he is rich. book made him a billionaire and then he helped unleash spotify and at 36 he is husband of alexandra, father of 2, and the proud owner of one of l.a.'s most expensive and iconic mid century mansions. >> the architecture is modern. >> but curious kid, yes that he most certainly still is. so when his good friend the hollywood producer was fighting cancer he got curious about a cutting edge treatment called immunotherapy. >> she participated in early clinical trials around immunotherapy which had it been maybe two years later -- >> maybe. >> perhaps it would have worked. >> but it didn't. even though it seemed so

promising. >> you know losing laura changed me. i went from being someone for whom this was an abstract problem to a militant activist. >> it harnesses the body's immune system and equips it to attack and kill cancer cells. his tech background persuaded him that the theory should work. >> it had an appeal to me. you start to learn about things like killer t-cells. they are incredibly sophisticated killing machines. they're like little computers. >> could they be harnessed to fight cancer? parker sought out leading doctors and hospitals working with immunotherapy. heard about people like stacy pelts kept alive by intense chemotherapy. >> i couldn't function or think about the next week. >> the best you're going to get is prolonging this. >> yes and it was literally

killing me. >> then she was offered a place in a trial of immunotherapy drugs. >> do you feel normal. >> i feel normal. if you didn't tell me i had cancer i wouldn't know it. >> you can live with that. >> i can live with that. that's the plan. to live with that. >> mary elizabeth williams wasn't going to live at all. her melanoma was a death sentence. 7 months to live. >> it's the end of summer and your kids are starting school and you will not be there to see them through the school year. it's going to get worse. it's going to get bad. >> what are the feelings that go with that. i felt like a failure. i felt like i had disappointed everybody. i felt ashamed and i felt really scared. >> then in 2011 mary elizabeth got to be a gineau pig at a trial here at the cancer center in new york and though she began to feel better almost right away

the scans that would tell her if the treatment actually worked were months away. >> i took my daughters to macy's and we saw santa claus and my kids told santa something in secret that they didn't want to tell me what it was. and we celebrated new years and i was really aware that that year could be the bookend of my life and then ten days into the new year i found out i was cancer free. >> reborn. >> yes. reborn. yes. >> just three months into treatment. her doctor is the preimminent immunologist. >> good work, man. >> immunotherapy for melanoma has been transformative and also bladder cancer. some subtypes of lipoma for

kidney cancer and nonsmall cell lung cancer which is the number one cause of cancer death in north america. >> so sean parker's questions if it's so promising why aren't there more new treatments? why aren't more people getting them? he plowed through dense medical journals, badgered the top experts for information. >> it goes back to being a hacker. you're looking for vulnerabilities. you're looking for broken things in order to go and fix them. >> what's broken? immunotherapy research has been gummed up. slowed down by a bureaucratic funding system >> scientists struggled to keep their labs going and every time they applied for grants they're being rejected because the funding tends to go to the same people. >> he calculated that less than 4% of search granlts have been going to immunotherapy and doctors must devote a third of

their time for applications and competitions for the grants to pay for research. >> there was no other way short of me winning the new york state lotto and funding myself. >> but the process could take years and thus delay new treatments for patients. >> what do you think of that? >> well, it's incredibly frustrating. patients that don't want to wait a generation for governments and other large institutional funders to provide answers. >> parker saw the cancer ones. and the life expectancy of patients. >> one of the road blocks established research centers have been reluctant to share rights of new therapies, which is, says parker about the same problem he encountered when he helped get spotify up and

running. >> how is organizing cancer research like organizing spotify. >> we had to work with four major record labels and we had to get the rights to license all of this content to launch the service in the u.s. >> so in his meetings with cancer centers parker proposed >> what if we had a system where all of the intellectual property could be shared amongst the scientists so a breakthrough made at one place can be used by someone in another place? >> all of the possible different techniques -- >> imagine, a meeting with some of the best minds of medicine and some guy from silicon valley is trying to persuade them to fall in with him. isn't that a little like herding cats, trying to get them all to work together? >> i think the logic of what we wanted to do was so clear to everyone. the trouble with it was nobody had ever done it before. >> but he did it. his new parker institute for cancer immunotherapy will market any successful drugs the centers create and split part of the profits with the institutions,

plow the rest into more money for research. and he put down $250 million of his own money, stripping away the need for that endless fund-raising. the result, a history-making alliance with six of the leading cancer centers including jed's program at memorial sloan. parker calls them his immunotherapy dream team. >> is this something that really has the capability of ramping up the speed with which you folks can address cancers and fix them? >> it already has. because of the power of six, you know, we really have the ability to engage multiple pharmaceutical and biotechs at a very high level and do the science with them. >> but does the billionaire know what he's doing? dr. lewis lanier of uc san francisco gives him high marks. >> sean is a quick studier.

he has the enthusiasm of a first year graduate student. he really loves the stuff. his whole heart is in it. >> which brings us back to the big kickoff party parker threw last month in his backyard. it was not your average gala, part science lesson led by tom hanks. >> let's all say together and immune checkpoint blockade inhibiter. >> part encouragement for cancer survivors. from performers like lady gaga. and a hollywood-worthy tribute to the scientists and patients like mary elizabeth williams parker hopes to benefit. >> i want you to know what happens after your doctor tells you you used to have a life threatening form of cancer. >> so maybe this billionaire is on to something. >> i think this billionaire is on to something. >> other people seem to think so, too. vice president biden whose leading the government's new cancer initiative recently met with parker, so has former

president carter who's had remarkable success with his immunotherapy treatment. this month, parker jetted off to receive an award at the vatican. so just maybe the one time internet bad boy has found his life's work. >> the structural changes that need to happen won't happen overnight. they're going to play out over a generation. >> and you're going to hang in with it. >> as long as there are people dying of cancer, then, yeah, i'm going to hang with it. coming up -- >> hi, i'm in the middle of an interview. >> our high-tech kids. turns out not all technology is their type. >> old-fashioned telephone. >> you use it for calling people? >> you have to dial the name of the person then you call them? >> uh-oh, we're going retro next on the "the kids' table." ...

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google had the tech world agog this past week with its new products. kids can't wait to get their hands on them. watch what happens when technology goes old school at the kids' table. ♪ >> it's an old-fashioned telephone. >> it helps you type messages to other people. >> so you use it for calling people?

>> it's like the querty board on your iphone. >> i think you have to dial the name of the person then you call them? >> it's a typewriter. >> a typewriter. >> yeah, a typewriter. >> my grandpa has one, so i know what this is. ♪ >> i think it's a poster. >> a cd player. >> these are disk holders. >> oh. >> they used to have these huge disks. >> if you put this in, it would play a song. >> they were just so humongous. >> yeah, the disks were really big. ♪ >> i think it's a radio. >> i think it's like a sound machine or something. >> don't think so. >> oh, i know what this is. this is a record player. i think. >> a radio.

>> they were also used in the olden days because we didn't have the computer, too, which plays music. >> it's an older day telephone. >> how do you use it? >> you dial the numbers. i don't know how to do that. >> how do you dial this thing? >> i don't know. >> then it goes like click, then it goes five, click. >> this is hard. >> four. >> click. >> and then just do like this. >> hi, i'm in the middle of an interview. well, just wait until they try to find their favorite song on an eight track. remember that? that's going to do it for us tonight "on assignment." we'll see you here again next sunday at 7:00, 6:00 central. here's what we're working on for next week. >> we're just off the brand new bay bridge. an architectural marvel connecting san francisco with o

oakland. the bridge came in billions of dollars over budget and actually costs thousands of american jobs. how did that happen? well, buckle your seat belt, we're on a voyage to find out. >> that's all for now. i'm lester holt. thanks for joining us. a rampaging elephant. >> i probably should have died that day. >> a runaway cadillac. >> i initially thought someone threw a bomb through the front door. >> and a terrifying earthquake. >> i'm thinking i don't know if i'm going to get to the bottom of this stairwell. >> on the job nightmares caught on camera. >> watch out for the chimney. >> some end with a crash. >> stand back now. >> others are blown away. and sometimes broadcast on live tv. >> i didn't know what to do. >> but hey, it's no use crying over sll