09/06/2026: Sharswood, Boom Chicago
About this episode
Lesley Stahl explores the Miller family's discovery of their ancestral ties to slavery while Jon Wertheim reports on the impact of Boom Chicago on American comedy.
Lesley Stahl visits Fred Miller and his family in the large house in southern Virginia that they bought to host family gatherings, only to discover that their own ancestors had once been enslaved on that very property. Miller’s sister and cousins scoured historical records and enlisted a genealogist, who found evidence that their great-great-grandparents, Violet and David Miller, were enslaved on the plantation, then called Sharswood. The dilapidated building still standing behind the main house has been identified by archeologists as living quarters for some of the enslaved men and women on the plantation. Buying this home opened a window into the Miller family’s past that they had never discussed, and that many African American families struggle to obtain. This is a double-length segment. Shari Finkelstein is the producer. If you think America’s top laugh factories are only in New York, Chicago, and LA, think again. Reporting from Amsterdam, correspondent Jon Wertheim takes us inside Boom Chicago, an English-language improv theater founded in the early ’90s by two American comics. What sounded like a punchline became a pipeline, launching future stars like Seth Meyers, Jordan…
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