Social media has turbocharged travel to these destinations, overwhelming local infrastructure
Each week, the rituals of a Sunday morning broadcast offer a quiet mirror to the larger currents of human life — and this edition of CBS News Sunday Morning holds up that mirror to reveal a civilization grappling with its own appetites, its wounds, and its need to remember where it came from. From the overcrowded piazzas of Venice to a therapeutic stable in New York, from Mozart's childhood manuscripts to a shipbuilder's son turned rock star, the stories gathered here ask a common question: what do we owe to the places and people that shaped us? Jane Pauley guides viewers through a program that finds urgency in beauty, healing in unexpected places, and meaning in the act of preservation itself.
- The world's most beloved destinations are buckling under the weight of their own fame, as social media-fueled tourism overwhelms centuries-old neighborhoods and sparks open resistance from the people who actually live there.
- In a stable in Bedford Corners, horses are doing what conventional medicine sometimes cannot — reading human emotion and offering veterans, people with disabilities, and the formerly incarcerated a path back to themselves.
- A new neurological tool called the Brain Care Score is quietly dismantling the fatalism surrounding dementia, suggesting that daily choices about sleep, diet, and exercise carry more power over cognitive fate than family history alone.
- Sting is taking a musical about the death of Newcastle's shipbuilding industry to the Metropolitan Opera, turning personal grief over a hometown's lost identity into a work of international scale.
- A golf writer in the Catskills spent a year trying to rescue a struggling nine-hole course, and came away with something larger — a meditation on what it takes to keep the small, beloved institutions of rural life from disappearing.
Jane Pauley hosts this week's CBS News Sunday Morning with a lineup that moves between global crisis and intimate healing, between cultural legacy and the quiet work of keeping things alive.
The broadcast's cover story confronts overtourism head-on. Tourism now represents a tenth of the global economy, but the residents of Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, and Portofino are paying a price that money cannot easily measure. Seth Doane documents how social media has accelerated the flood of visitors to these places, straining infrastructure and eroding the character of neighborhoods built over centuries. He also finds the resistance — locals pushing back, and operators trying to imagine a more sustainable relationship between travelers and the places they love.
Lesley Stahl reports from Endeavor Therapeutic Horsemanship in Bedford Corners, New York, where horses are proving to be remarkable healers. Attuned to human emotion in ways that defy easy explanation, these animals are reaching veterans with PTSD, people living with disabilities, and formerly incarcerated individuals — offering connection that traditional therapy sometimes cannot. Separately, neurologist Jonathan Rosand and NPR's Allison Aubrey discuss the Brain Care Score, a new metric suggesting that dementia is far less inevitable than many believe, and that everyday habits hold genuine power over cognitive decline.
Culturally, the program visits the Morgan Library's new Mozart exhibition, which moves past mythology to show the composer as a working human being — his earliest pieces written at age five, alongside letters, manuscripts, and the instruments he actually played. Sting appears to discuss 'The Last Ship,' his musical about Newcastle's vanished shipbuilding industry, now headed to the Metropolitan Opera. And editor Tom Coyne reflects on a year spent trying to save a nine-hole Catskills golf course, a project that became a book and a lesson in what rural communities stand to lose when their gathering places disappear.
The broadcast rounds out with David Sedaris on dog parks, a look at bighorn sheep in Washington State, and tributes to those lost this week.
Jane Pauley returns to host CBS News Sunday Morning this week with a lineup that spans the world's most crowded destinations, the healing power of animals, and the ways artists preserve the places they come from.
The broadcast opens with a hard look at what happens when too many people want to visit the same place at the same time. Tourism now accounts for a tenth of the global economy, but that growth has come with a cost that residents of popular cities are increasingly unwilling to bear. Seth Doane travels to Amsterdam, Paris, Venice, and Portofino to document how social media has turbocharged travel to these destinations, overwhelming local infrastructure and changing the character of neighborhoods that have stood for centuries. The story examines not just the strain on buildings and streets, but the resistance movements taking shape—locals who are pushing back against the tide of visitors, and tourism operators who are trying to reimagine what travel to these places could mean.
Elsewhere in the health segment, Lesley Stahl reports on a different kind of healing. At Endeavor Therapeutic Horsemanship in Bedford Corners, New York, horses are being used to help people recover from trauma and disability. The animals have a particular gift: they can sense human emotion and respond to it in ways that create genuine connection. Veterans dealing with PTSD, people living with disabilities, and formerly incarcerated individuals are all finding something through their interactions with these horses that traditional therapy sometimes cannot provide.
The program also explores a tool that may help people take control of their own neurological futures. A new metric called the Brain Care Score is showing that family history of dementia is not destiny. Neurologist Jonathan Rosand discusses with NPR correspondent Allison Aubrey how changes to daily habits—the choices people make about sleep, exercise, diet, and mental engagement—can meaningfully reduce the risk of cognitive decline. It's a message of agency in the face of a disease many people assume is inevitable.
On the cultural side, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York is mounting an exhibition devoted to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that goes beyond the legend to illuminate the man. The show includes his earliest compositions, written when he was five years old, alongside personal letters, manuscripts, and the actual instruments he used to create his immortal works. Pauley reports on what these objects reveal about how Mozart thought and worked.
Musician Sting is also in the program, discussing his musical "The Last Ship," which he wrote and stars in. The work is rooted in his hometown of Newcastle, England, a city that once thrived on shipbuilding but watched that industry collapse during his lifetime. Now he's taking the musical on an international tour, including performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in June. In conversation with Mark Phillips, Sting reflects on a long career and an inability to stop creating.
Tom Coyne, editor of The Golfer's Journal, has a different kind of preservation story to tell. When he encountered a struggling nine-hole golf course in New York's Catskills that was for sale, he decided to take it on for a year—not as a permanent owner, but as someone willing to try to save it. His book "A Course Called Home" documents what he learned about rural communities, golf, and the work required to keep beloved local institutions alive.
The broadcast also includes commentary from humorist David Sedaris on dog parks and the people who inhabit them, a look at bighorn sheep in Washington State, and remembrances of notable figures who died this week. For those wanting to dive deeper, the Sunday Morning website offers archival material on Iceland and a profile of German artist Georg Baselitz, who died on April 30 at age 88.
Notable Quotes
Horses can form powerful bonds with people owing to their ability to sense and feel human emotions— Endeavor Therapeutic Horsemanship program description
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does overtourism matter enough to lead the broadcast?
Because it's the collision between two things we're told are good—travel, exploration, economic growth—and the reality that unlimited access destroys the very places people want to see. It's not abstract anymore. Real people are being displaced from their homes.
The horse therapy piece seems like a departure from hard news. What makes it belong in the same broadcast?
It's about what heals people when systems fail them. Veterans come home broken. People with disabilities are often isolated. Horses don't care about your rank or your diagnosis—they just respond to who you are. That's not soft news. That's survival.
The Brain Care Score sounds like it could be just another wellness trend. What's actually new here?
The newness is the specificity. It's not "be healthy." It's measurable changes to concrete behaviors that reduce risk by a real percentage. It gives people something to do instead of something to fear.
Sting and Mozart in the same broadcast—what's the thread?
Both are artists who can't stop working, who are obsessed with their craft. But also both are rooted in place. Mozart's letters and instruments show a man embedded in his time. Sting's musical is a love letter to Newcastle. They're not making art in a vacuum.
The golf course story seems lighter than the others. Why include it?
Because it's about someone with access and resources choosing to fight for something ordinary and local instead of chasing the exclusive. That's its own kind of resistance—not against overtourism, but against the idea that only the rare and expensive things are worth saving.