60 Minutes presents an encore edition on Sunday, September 6, 2026, with reports exploring a family’s unexpected connection to a Virginia plantation and the Amsterdam comedy theater that became an unlikely training ground for some of America’s biggest performers.
The previously aired segments have been updated for the postseason presentation. Lesley Stahl reports the double-length “Sharswood,” while Jon Wertheim travels to the Netherlands for “Boom Chicago.” The episode airs from 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and streams on Paramount+.
Sharswood
A house purchased as a gathering place for Fred Miller and his relatives became the starting point for an extraordinary investigation into their family’s past. Lesley Stahl visits Miller at his property in southern Virginia, where he discovered that his own ancestors had once been enslaved on the land he now owns.
The property was formerly part of a plantation known as Sharswood. Miller did not know about his family’s connection to the plantation when he bought the house. The discovery emerged as his sister and cousins began investigating the property’s history and searching for information about the generations who had lived there before them.
Working through historical records and with the assistance of a genealogist, the family found evidence concerning Miller’s great-great-grandparents, Violet and David Miller. The records showed that the couple had been enslaved at Sharswood, establishing a direct link between the family’s modern ownership of the property and the lives of their ancestors.
The discovery gave Miller and his relatives access to a part of their family history that had rarely been discussed. It also illustrates the challenges many African American families encounter when attempting to trace relatives through the era of slavery, when records concerning enslaved people can be fragmented and difficult to follow.
Evidence of that history remains on the property. Behind the main house stands a dilapidated building that archaeologists have identified as living quarters used by some of the enslaved men and women at Sharswood. The surviving structure provides a physical connection to the people whose lives the Miller family has been attempting to reconstruct.
For the family, the house has therefore acquired a meaning far beyond its original purpose. Fred Miller bought Sharswood so his relatives would have somewhere to gather. He later learned that generations of his family had already occupied the same land under profoundly different circumstances.
Stahl examines how the discovery changed the family’s understanding of its past and what it means for descendants of enslaved people to now control property where their ancestors were denied their freedom. “Sharswood” is a double-length 60 Minutes report produced by Shari Finkelstein.
Boom Chicago
Jon Wertheim heads to Amsterdam to explore Boom Chicago, an English-language improv theater with an unexpected connection to some of the most successful names in modern American comedy.
Two American comedians founded Boom Chicago in the early 1990s, bringing American-style improvisational comedy to the Netherlands. The idea could easily have remained a small experiment for expatriates and tourists. Instead, the theater endured and developed a reputation as a place where young comedians could gain extensive experience in front of live audiences.
Its former performers include Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis. Those alumni went on to prominent careers across late-night television, sketch comedy, film and scripted television, making Boom Chicago’s influence considerably larger than its Amsterdam location might suggest.
Wertheim visits the theater to examine why it proved to be such an effective environment for developing performers. Improv requires comedians to create scenes without a conventional script, respond immediately to their fellow performers and judge an audience’s reaction in real time.
Performing in the Netherlands introduced another challenge. American comedians working at Boom Chicago could not always depend on the cultural references that might connect with audiences at home. They had to learn what translated across national and cultural boundaries while continuing to develop their own comedic voices.
Boom Chicago also offers a different perspective on where American comedy talent can emerge. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have traditionally served as major destinations for aspiring performers, yet an English-language theater thousands of miles away became an important early stop for several future stars.
More than three decades after its creation, Boom Chicago continues to operate at a time when comedy in the United States faces continuing arguments about politics, cultural boundaries and what audiences consider acceptable. The Amsterdam theater’s longevity demonstrates how live comedy can adapt while still relying on the basic relationship between performers and their audience.
Wertheim looks at how an improbable American comedy experiment in the Netherlands became a lasting institution and a pipeline to much bigger stages. Michael Gavshon is the producer of “Boom Chicago.”
60 Minutes airs Sunday, September 6, 2026, from 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and streams on Paramount+.
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